The Founder of Ragged Schools.
John Pounds, a poor shoemaker of Portsmouth, was the originator of this well-known method of educating city arabs and other very poor children. For twenty years before his death in 1839, he used to collect around him the ragged children of the district in which he lived, and teach them while he worked at his cobbling. He taught them for nothing, and his class was well attended. His success at length attracted general notice, and systematic effort was in due course made for the establishment of such schools in other towns and cities throughout the kingdom.