Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 707, July 14, 1877

Industrial schools, in which poor children, the waifs of the streets, are fed, lodged, and taught some useful employment, have been in existence for more than thirty years, and are on all hands acknowledged to have been successful as a means of preventing—or lessening the amount of—juvenile crime and vagrancy. The weak point in the organisation of these schools is that they rely for support on the voluntary contributions of benevolent individuals, instead of forming part of the poor-law system, and being thereby maintained by the whole taxable community. Some will think there is a more serious drawback in their constitution. By whatever name these schools are known, they are in effect asylums for the grouping of children to the number of several hundreds in a large establishment; and so far are a repetition of the old species of hospitals, which are now generally condemned. On a late occasion we brought under the notice of our readers a method of boarding-out pauper children among the families of rural labourers and small tradesmen in country towns, which has proved eminently successful wherever it has been tried in Scotland. As this method of boarding-out is under the administration of parochial boards relying on rates, it has, with other merits, that of not specially taxing the benevolence of particular individuals.
What we peculiarly admired in the boarding-out system was its conservation of the family-home as a means of juvenile nurture and intellectual and moral culture. We now propose to give some account of a family-home system which has been established in England. It differs materially from that prevalent in Scotland, and further labours under the objection of being a voluntary charity similar to that of the Industrial schools. Though not quite to our mind, it is much better than nothing, and we bespeak for it the kindly attention of the public.
This English 'Village Home' system originated in the efforts of Dr Bernardo, who began with a 'Home' for Arab and gutter boys in London. No sooner was this Home in operation than he set about founding a similar establishment for girls, in which good work he was ably assisted by his wife. 'The Village Home' at Ilford in Essex, for orphan, neglected, and destitute girls is the result.