TURNING WORKHOUSE CHILDREN INTO USEFUL CITIZENS
A Home for Little "Ins-and-Outs"--Technical Education for Workhouse
Children--A Good Report for the Forest Gate Schools--Trophies won
by Scholars--The Children's Pat-a-Cakes.
After he had fed the old people and clothed the old people, and in other
ways brought into their darkened lives a little good cheer, Crooks
turned his care upon the workhouse children.
The Guardians' school at Forest Gate lay four miles from the Union
buildings at Poplar. With five or six hundred children always under
training in the school there still remained varying batches of neglected
little people in the workhouse. The greater number of these belonged to
parents who came into the House for short periods only.
These little "ins-and-outs" were getting no schooling and no training
save the training that fitted them for pauperism. What to do with them
had long been a perplexing problem. If they were sent to Forest Gate one
day their parents in the workhouse could demand them back the next day
and take their discharge, even though they and their children turned up
at the gates for re-admission within the next twenty-four hours.
When Crooks proposed the simple expedient of sending these children to
the surrounding day-schools everybody seemed amazed.
The idea had never been heard of before. The London School Board of the
day did not take kindly to it at all. It poured cold water on the
project at first. The neighbouring schools were nearly all full, and the
Board thought it would hear no more of the matter by suggesting that if
the Guardians could find vacant places they were at liberty of course to
send the children.
Crooks framed an answering letter that it was the School Board's duty to
find the places, and that, come what would, the Guardians were
determined to send the children to the day schools.
Soon places were found for all. The little people who, through neglect
and idleness in the workhouse, had been getting steeped in pauperism,
were now dressed in non-institution clothes, and they went to and from
the neighbouring schools, playing on the way like any other children.
That was the beginning of a system destined to have a far-reaching
effect on Poor Law children all over the country. Other Unions, faced
with the same problem, seeing how well it had been dealt with at Poplar,
went and did likewise.
The Labour Guardian did not rest there. The children were a great deal
better for coming in daily contact with the outside world, but much of
the good work was undone by their having to spend every night in the
workhouse. He wanted to keep them away altogether from its
contaminating influence. He persuaded the Guardians to purchase a large
dwelling house about a quarter of a mile away from the workhouse. This
became a real home for the children. There they are brought up and
regularly sent to the public day schools outside, entirely free from
workhouse surroundings.
So long as the mark of the workhouse clings to children, so long, says
Crooks, will children cling to the workhouse. That is what makes him so
keen in getting rid of the institution dress and of everything else
likely to brand a child.
He helped to banish all that suggested pauperism from the Forest Gate
School. The children were educated and grew up, not like workhouse
children, as before, but like the children of working parents. With what
result? Marked out in their childhood as being "from the workhouse,"
they often bore the stamp all their life and ended up as workhouse
inmates in their manhood and womanhood. Under the new system, they were
made to feel like ordinary working-class children. They grew up like
them, becoming ordinary working-men and working-women themselves; so
that the Poor Law knew them no longer.
"If I can't appeal to your moral sense, let me appeal to your pocket,"
Crooks once remarked at a Guildhall Poor Law Conference. "Surely it is
far cheaper to be generous in training Poor Law children to take their
place in life as useful citizens than it is to give the children a
niggardly training and a branded career. This latter way soon lands
them in the workhouse again, to be kept out of the rates for the rest of
their lives."
How far the principle was carried out at Forest Gate may be judged from
the report made by Mr. Dugard, H.M. Inspector of Schools, after one of
his visits. Thus:--
There is very little (if any) of the institution mark among the
children.... Both boys' and girls' schools are in a highly
satisfactory state, showing increased efficiency, with increased
intelligence on the part of the children.... They compare very
favourably with the best elementary schools.
In all that related to games and healthful recreation Crooks agreed in
giving the scholars the fullest facilities. The lads were encouraged to
send their football and cricket teams to play other schools. The girls
developed under drill and gymnastic training, and became proficient
swimmers.
In fact, the scholars at Forest Gate began to count for something. They
learnt to trust each other and to rely upon themselves. They grew in
hope and courage. They learnt to walk honourably before all men. In
consequence, thousands of them have become merged in the great working
world outside, self-respecting men and women.
I met Crooks looking elated one evening, and he told me he had just come
from the Poor Law schools' swimming competition at Westminster baths.
"There were three trophies," he said. "The first, the London Shield, was
for boys. Poplar won that with 85 marks, five more than the next best.
The second, the Portsmouth Shield, was for girls, with a Portsmouth
school competing. Our Poplar girls won that with 65 marks, the two next
schools getting only 35 each. The third trophy, the Whitehall Shield,
for the school as a whole with the highest number of marks, was also won
by Poplar. I feel as pleased as though I'd done it myself."
The best administration in an out-of-date building is always hampered.
Forest Gate belonged to the old order of Poor Law schools known as
barrack buildings. Although the Guardians made the very best of the
school, there were structural defects that hindered the work seriously.
It was therefore decided to build cottage homes at Shenfield in Essex,
where a special effort is being made to train the girls as well as the
boys in rural pursuits in order to keep them out of the overcrowded
cities.
The Parliamentary Committee on Poor Law Schools that sat in 1896 invited
Crooks to give evidence. Many of the things he urged were included in
the Committee's recommendations. Among them was the extension of the
full benefit of the Education Act and the Technical Education Acts to
all Poor Law children.
"The wine and spirit dues that provide the technical education grants,"
he told the committee, "might be said to belong to Poor Law children by
right, because it is always being urged that it is owing to drunken
parents that these children get into the workhouse. I don't believe it,
but there is the claim."
At that time the Poor Law schools received no benefits in the way of
scholarships or technical education grants. It was largely due to his
advocacy that the scholars were at last given the same opportunities as
other children. One of the great moments of his life was when he opened
a letter from the headmaster at the Hunslet Poor Law school, telling him
that "in consequence of what you have done, one of our boys has just
taken a County Scholarship--the first Poor Law child to benefit under
the Technical Education Acts."
Crooks would like to go much further. Until Poor Law children are taken
entirely away from the control of Guardians he will never be satisfied.
Why should the authority that looks after workhouses for the old and
infirm be entrusted with the task of training the young? The two duties
lie as far apart as East from West. He would place these children wholly
under the education authority.
No matter where, he is always ready to put in a word for Poor Law
children on the least opportunity. It was news to his colleagues on the
London County Council when, in the course of a debate in the summer of
1894, he told of his own experience in a Poor Law school. He seems to
have made a deep impression by his speech on that occasion, judging by
the following comment made shortly afterwards by the _Municipal
Journal_;--
Those who heard Mr. Crooks's speech in the Council Chamber, when
the subject of the training of Poor Law children came up on a side
issue, will not readily forget it. One of the daily papers, in its
admiration the next day, declared it to be the best speech heard at
the Council. Be that as it may, the speech, coming spontaneously
with the pent-up indignation of a soul that had suffered sorely
from a pernicious system, was a marvellous one, producing a
marvellous effect. Councillors in the front benches turned round
and visitors in the gallery stretched forward to catch a glimpse of
the short dark figure on the Labour bench pleading so powerfully
for the children of the poor.
Nor had he been in the House of Commons long before his voice was heard
there on behalf of workhouse children. Speaking in a debate in 1903 on
the various methods of dealing with these children, he said:--
At one time there was no stronger advocate of boarding-out than
myself. It is an ideal system in theory, but its success by
practical application has yet to be proved. Many requests are made
by country people to be allowed to adopt children on charitable
grounds, but when inquiries come to be made into the incomes of
these people the Guardians generally find it is hoped to make a
profit out of the children. I have visited a village where a widow
boarded four children--two more than the law allows. For these
children she was paid sixteen shillings a week. She lived in a
district where the labourer's wages were only eleven shillings.
In regard to another case I personally investigated, I asked how
the boy was getting on.
"Oh, all right; but he is growing so big and eats such a lot that I
wish you would take him away and send me a smaller boy."
The boarded-out children, so far from losing the pauper taint, are
more frequently known by the name of the Union from which they
come than by their own names. In fact, in some villages, I found
"boarding-out" a staple industry. Boarding-out is all right in good
homes; the difficulty is to find good homes.
Not long after he made this speech, there was an outcry in a section of
the Press over "an amazing example of extravagance" at Poplar. It
appeared in the form of a letter from a correspondent. The
correspondent--who turned out to be a member of a firm of
contractors--waxed virtuously indignant over the Guardians' tenders
because they included, he alleged, supplies of luxuries for paupers. The
so-called luxuries for the most part proved to be medical comforts
ordered by the doctor for the ailing. Among the other items was 1 cwt.
of pat-a-cake biscuits, and these were singled out specially as a
specimen of how the workhouse inmates were pampered.
I met Crooks in the Lobby of the House of Commons at the time of the
outcry, and asked what he thought of it all.
"Perfectly true," he said. "We in Poplar are guilty of the great crime
of inviting tenders for the supply of a few pat-a-cakes; but our
horrified critics are in error in assuming that the pat-a-cakes are for
the workhouse inmates. They are for the children. We order 1 cwt. for
the half-year, which I believe works out at the rate of a cake for each
child about once a week. There's extravagance for you! Isn't it
scandalous? Just imagine our kiddies in the workhouse school getting a
whole pat-a-cake to eat!
"That's not the worst of it. Those youngsters of ours, not content with
getting an occasional pat-a-cake, have actually been overheard to sing
the nursery rhyme on the subject. We shall be having a Local Government
Board inspector sent down to stop it if it leaks out. You should hear
the little ones holding forth!
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can!
Prick it, and pat it, and mark it with T,
And put it in the oven for Tommy and me.
"The youngsters lie awake at nights, wondering when their turn will come
again to have a farthing pat-a-cake. One of the little girls came
running up to me in the playground the other day, exclaiming: 'Oh, Mr.
Crooks, what do you think? I had a pat-a-cake for tea last Sunday. They
promised it to us the day before, and I was so pleased when I went to
bed that night that I nearly forgot to go to sleep.'"