(a)—Provision by Voluntary Agencies.
The first experiments in the provision of free or cheap dinners for school children appear to date from the early 'sixties.[[1]] One of the earliest and most important of the London societies was the Destitute Children's Dinner Society, founded in February, 1864, in connection with a Ragged School in Westminster.[[2]] This Society quickly grew and, between October 1869 and April 1870, fifty-eight dining rooms were opened for longer or shorter periods.[[3]] The motive, though largely sentimental, was from the first supported by educational considerations. "Their almost constant destitution of food," write the Committee in their appeal for funds, "is not only laying the foundation of permanent disease in their debilitated constitutions, but reduces them to so low a state that they have not vigour of body or energy of mind sufficient to derive any profit from the exertions of their teachers."[[4]] The influence of the newly-formed Charity Organisation Society is seen in the nervous anxiety of the promoters to avoid the charge of pauperising. "Our object is not the indiscriminate relief of the multitude of poor children to be found in the lowest parts of the metropolis. Our efforts are limited to those in attendance at ragged or other schools so as to encourage and assist the moral and religious training thus afforded."[[5]] The dinners were not self-supporting,[[6]] but a great point was made of the fact that a penny was charged towards paying the cost. Nevertheless the promoters admitted that "it has been found impossible in some localities to obtain any payment from the children."[[7]]
The methods adopted by other societies were very similar. A common feature of all was the infrequency of the meal. As a rule a child would receive a dinner once a week, at the most twice a week.[[8]] It is true that the dinners, unlike those supplied at the end of the century, when the predominant feature was soup, seem always to have been substantial and to have consisted of hot meat.[[9]] But making all allowance for the nutritive value of the meal, its infrequency prevents us from placing much confidence in the enthusiastic reports of the various societies as to the beneficial result upon the children. "Experience has proved," writes the Destitute Children's Dinner Society in 1867, "that one substantial meat dinner per week has a marked effect on the health and powers of the children."[[10]] "Not only is there a marked improvement in their physical condition," reports the same society two years later, "but their teachers affirm that they are now enabled to exert their mental powers in a degree which was formerly impossible."[[11]] The Ragged School Union in 1870 reports to the same effect. "The physical benefit of these dinners to the children is great; but it is not the body only that is benefited; the teachers agree in their opinion that those who are thus fed become more docile and teachable."[[12]]
Meals were given only during the winter, though one society at any rate, the Destitute Children's Dinner Society, realised the importance of continuing the work throughout the year—an importance even now not universally appreciated—their object being "not to relieve temporary distress only, but by an additional weekly meal of good quality and quantity, to improve the general health and moral condition of the half starved and neglected children who swarm throughout the poor districts of London."[[13]] Funds apparently did not permit of their achieving this object.[[14]]
After the passing of the Education Act of 1870, educational considerations became the dominant motive for feeding. Teachers and school managers as well as philanthropists found themselves increasingly compelled to deal with the problem. It was not only that compulsory education brought into notice hundreds of needy children who had before been hidden away in courts and back alleys,[[15]] but the effect of education on a starving child proved useless.
The Referee Fund, started in 1874, was the result of Mrs. Burgwin's experience when head teacher of Orange Street School, Southwark. She found the children in a deplorable condition and on appealing to a medical man for advice was told that they were simply starving. With the help of her assistant teachers she provided tea, coffee or warm milk for the most needy. Soon a small local organisation was started, and a year or two after Mr. G. R. Sims drew public attention to the question by his articles on "How the Poor Live," and appealed for funds through the Referee.[[16]] The operations of the fund thus established were at first confined to West Southwark—"in that area," Mrs. Burgwin triumphantly declared, "there was not a hungry school child"[[17]]—but were gradually extended to other districts. As a result of the meals thus provided it was said that the children looked healthier and attended school better in the winter when they were being fed than they did in the summer.[[18]]
The standard example, however, constantly quoted as evidence of the value of school meals, was the experiment started by Sir Henry Peek at Rousdon in 1876. The children in that district had to walk long distances to school, "bringing with them wretched morsels of food for dinner," with, naturally, most unsatisfactory results. Sir Henry Peek provided one good meal a day for five days, charging one penny a day. The system was practically self-supporting. The experiment was declared by the Inspector to have "turned out a very great success. What strikes one at once on coming into the school is the healthy vigorous look of the children, and that their vigour is not merely bodily, but comes out in the course of examination. There is a marked contrast between their appearance and their work on the day of inspection, and those of the children in many of the neighbouring schools. The midday meal is good and without stint. It acts as an attraction, and induces regularity of attendance.... Before the school was started the education of the children of the neighbourhood was as low as in any part of the district."[[19]]
About 1880 another motive for school meals emerges. Public opinion began to be aroused on the subject of over-pressure. It was said that far too many subjects were taught and that the system of "payment by results" forced the teachers to overwork the children for the sake of the grant. It was pointed out that not only was it useless to try to educate a starving child, but the results might be positively harmful. Numerous letters from school managers, doctors and others appeared in The Times. "In dispensary practice," writes Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake, "I have lately seen several cases of habitual headache and other cerebral affections among children of all ages attending our Board Schools, and have traced their origin to overstrain caused by the ordinary school work, which the ill-nourished physical frames are often quite unfit to bear. I have spoken repeatedly on the subject to members of the School Boards, and also to teachers in the schools, and have again and again been assured by them that they were quite alive to the danger, and heartily wished that it was in their power to avert it, but that the constantly advancing requirements of the Education Code left them no option in the matter."[[20]]
The Lancet spoke strongly on the subject[[21]] and in 1883 it was hotly discussed in Parliament. Mr. Mundella spoke in warm praise of Sir Henry Peek's experiment, while Mr. S. Smith, the member for Liverpool, went so far as to say that "if Parliament compelled persons by force of law to send their children to school, and the little ones were to be forced to undergo such a grinding system, they ought not to injure them in so doing, but should provide them, in cases of proved necessity, with sufficient nourishment to enable them to stand the pressure."[[22]] Such a proposition sounds "advanced" for the year 1883, but he added the still more modern suggestion—"that not only should we have a medical inspection of schools, but that the grants should be partly dependent upon the physical health of the children.... We were applying sanitary science to our great towns, and we should apply the same science also to the educational system of the country."[[23]] At last Mr. Mundella instigated Dr. Crichton Browne to undertake a private enquiry into the subject. The report was somewhat vague and rhetorical, and Dr. Browne's judgments were said to be based on insufficient data, so that little fresh light was thrown on the question. It is, however, noteworthy that he too recommended medical inspection and also that a record of the height, weight and chest girth of the children should be kept.[[24]]
In spite of conflicting opinions, one point became increasingly clear. Whether the amount of mental strain necessitated by the Educational Code was exaggerated or not, there was no doubt that good educational results were dependent upon health and could not be attained where the children were seriously underfed. The situation was summed up by Mr. Sydney Buxton during a conference of Managers and Teachers of London Board Schools in 1884. The School Boards, he said, had by their compulsory powers been "year by year tapping a lower stratum of society, bringing to light the distress, destitution and underfeeding which formerly had escaped their notice. The cry of over-pressure had drawn public attention to the children attending elementary schools, and he thought it was now becoming more and more recognised that 'over-pressure' in a very large number of cases was only another word for 'underfeeding.'"[[25]]
The principle that compulsory education involved some provision of food being thus generally admitted,[[26]] the question remained how was this to be done? Should the meals be provided free or should they be self-supporting? A keen controversy ensued as to the merits of penny dinners. The Times quoted with apparent astonishment and alarm the view of the Minister of Education that it would not be enough to provide meals for those who could pay for them, and that whatever might be the vices of the parents the children ought not to suffer.[[27]] The Charity Organisation Society held more than one conference on the subject and emphatically contended that the only means of avoiding "pauperisation" was to insist on payment for the meals. Indeed some members felt so strongly that penny dinners were bound to be converted into halfpenny or free dinners, that they were reluctant to give the movement any support at all.[[28]] The attitude of the society was, as The Times said, "one of watchful criticism."[[29]] Yet there were some, at any rate, who recognised that the obligation on the part of the parent to send his children to school involved a very real pecuniary sacrifice which might often more than counterbalance any advantage to be obtained from free meals. "We must not teach poor children or poor parents to lean upon charity," says the School Board Chronicle in 1884. "But, on the other hand, it ought never to be forgotten that this new law of compulsory attendance at school, in the making whereof the poorest classes of the people had no hand whatever, exacts greater sacrifices from that class than from any other. We hear a good deal sometimes ... of the grumbling of the ratepayers ... as to the burden of the school rate.... But do these grumblers ever reflect that the very poor of whom we are speaking never asked to have education provided for their children, never wanted it, have practically nothing to gain by it and much to lose, and that this law of compulsory education is forced on them, not for their good or for their pleasure, but for the safety and progress of society and for the sake of economy in the administration of the laws in the matter of poor relief and crime."[[30]] Amidst all the discussion on the needs and morals of the poor from the standpoint of the superior person, it is refreshing to find so honest and sympathetic a criticism.
The outcome of this lengthy public discussion was a great increase in voluntary feeding agencies all over the country about the year 1884.[[31]] At the Conference of Board School Managers and Teachers in that year, Mr. Mundella stated that, since he referred in the House of Commons to the Rousdon experiment, provision for school meals was being made in rural districts to an extent which he could hardly believe.[[32]] In London the Council for Promoting Self-supporting Penny Dinners was established and the movement spread rapidly. In August, 1884, there were only two centres where penny dinners on a self-supporting basis were provided. By December such dinners had been started in thirteen other districts.[[33]]
Meanwhile the promoters of free meals continued their work unabashed. The Board School Children's Free Dinner Fund declared in 1885, "our work does not cross the lines of the penny dinner movement. It was started before that movement and has been in some cases carried on side by side with it, its object being to feed those children whose parents have neither pennies nor half-pennies to pay for their dinners. Free dinners are restricted to the children of widows, and to those whose parents are ill or out of work."[[34]] The Referee Fund now supplied schools over a large part of South London and had always given free meals. In most provincial towns, whether the dinners were nominally self-supporting or not, necessitous children were seldom refused food on account of inability to pay. Private philanthropists saw the suffering and tried to alleviate it, not enquiring too closely into the consequences.
It was generally taken for granted that the meals, whether free or self-supporting, should be provided by voluntary agencies. The Local Education Authorities sometimes granted the use of rooms and plant,[[35]] but seldom took any further action. It is remarkable that the Guardians, whose duty it was to relieve the destitution existing, seem to have paid but the scantiest attention to it. Even where they attempted to deal with it by granting relief to the family, this relief was generally inadequate and the children were consequently underfed, with the result that they were given meals by the voluntary feeding agencies.[[36]] There seems indeed to have been no co-operation whatever between the various voluntary agencies established all over the country and the Boards of Guardians.[[37]] By an Act of Parliament passed in 1868 it was enacted that where any parent wilfully neglected to provide adequate food for his child the Board of Guardians should institute proceedings.[[38]] This Act seems to have remained almost a dead letter. In giving evidence before the House of Lords Select Committee on Poor Law Relief in 1888, Mr. Benjamin Waugh, Director of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in speaking of the Act, stated, "first, that the Guardians do not act upon it to any very great extent; secondly, that the police know that it is not their business, and they do not act upon it; and, thirdly, the public have an impression that they are excluded from taking cognisance of starvation cases because the term used is 'the Guardians shall' do it." "There are cases in which they are habitually doing it, chiefly where ladies are upon the board, but in a very small number of cases indeed throughout the country."[[39]] The part taken by the State in the matter of relieving the wants of underfed children was thus as yet a small one.[[40]]