This establishment consists of two good sized airy rooms, in a quiet part
of the town, fitted up with cradles, mattresses, and other articles of
infantile furniture, for the reception of babies, whose mothers are
engaged in daily employment. A small yard or playground is attached,
where the children old enough to run alone may take their exercise
without any fear of the dangers incidental to the streets. The charge of
this infant family is confided to an experienced matron, who with the
assistance of a competent nursery-maid, conducts the affairs of her
Lilliputian kingdom to the satisfaction of the many parents interested in
its prosperity. During the past year, the attendances of infants have
reached the startling number of 2788, being 286 beyond those recorded in
the last Report. The payments for their safe keeping have exceeded £20,
while the reduction in expence to their mothers is calculated at no less
amount than £278 16_s._
To all who, in watching over the helplessness and innocence of infancy,
have learnt how delicate is the constitution, how difficult is the
rearing of a child, the Committee hopefully commend the cause of these
babes of toil. To rescue them from the evils of a careless tending; to
preserve them from disease engendered by deleterious cordials,
administered by ignorant and impatient guardians to hush their cries; to
insure them the common blessings of light and air, of cleanliness and
warmth, is essentially a mother’s charity. Nor will the lady, surveying
with a grateful heart, the commodious arrangement of the apartments of
her little ones, have her sense of gratification, in bending over the
cradle of her son and heir, diminished by the recollection that she has
been instrumental in procuring for the offspring of others, some amongst
those comforts so abundantly bestowed upon her own. And if, as is
presumed, our boys and girls are taught, in advancing youth, to set
apart, on principle, a certain percentage of their allowances for
purposes of Christian love, where will they find an object for their
sympathies more in unison with their age and feelings than one devoted to
the reception of children far younger and more feeble than themselves?
At the age of two years, the infants are transferred to one of the three
Schools of the District. Of these, that in Church Court, which, as the
feeder of the central National School, has enrolled upon its books about
one hundred and fifty scholars between the ages of two and seven years,
receives the great proportion. The rest, for the most part, are absorbed
by either the Jennings’ Buildings or the Gore Lane School, each of which
possess a prescriptive right to mention in these pages, not only from the
grants they have severally obtained, but from the position they hold in
the Parochial organization.