The education of pauper children
Workhouse children received a basic education, often in a small school attached to the institution. The quality of education varied; some workhouse schools taught reading but not writing, and industrial training such as agricultural labour for boys and domestic skills for girls was considered more useful for their station in life.
The larger metropolitan Poor Law authorities ‘farmed out’ their child paupers to private contractors to save money and remove them from the ‘contaminating’ atmosphere of older paupers. However, these ‘farm schools’ fell from favour after more than 140 children died during a cholera epidemic at Drouet’s Pauper Establishment in Tooting in the late 1840s.
During this decade, the bigger Poor Law Unions set up large residential institutions known as ‘barrack schools’, ‘district schools’ or ‘industrial schools’ like Kirkdale in Liverpool.
One of the most famous was Swinton Industrial School (1846) in Manchester. This purpose-built ‘palace’ housed more than 600 children, and had a playground for the little ones. Older boys learned shoe-making or tailoring, and girls trained as domestic servants.
By 1853 more than 33,700 children attended workhouse and district schools in England and Wales, but after the mid-1870s they were increasingly ‘boarded out’ with foster parents or in ‘cottage homes’ – you can see a list by region at childrenshomes.org.uk/list/CtH.shtml. These homes were run by a married couple who looked after up to 40 pauper children; their charges attended local elementary schools. You can use The National Archives’ online catalogue to locate creed registers for Poor Law schools and local authority children’s homes and orphanages: discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk.