EDUCATION

Education in the 'forties was the Cinderella of the Legislature. Parliament, it is true, spent laborious hours in discussing the theory of education, but in debating the principle overlooked the practice. Money was doled out in homœopathic doses. In 1841 the sum of £10,000 was voted for the education of the people in the same session in which £70,000 was voted for the Royal Stables at Windsor, a contrast which Punch had not forgotten five years later. The direct connexion between ignorance and crime was constantly forced on the attention of humane magistrates. When the Lord Mayor of London, in January, 1846, declared that "society was responsible for the contamination to which poor children were subjected," and that there was no calamity, to his way of thinking, "comparable to that which sprang from the bringing up of youth in habits and practices of idleness and vice," Punch found himself in the unfamiliar position of being called upon to eulogize a functionary who as a rule never gave him a chance. "Juvenile delinquents," he points out, were "as much reared for Newgate as many of the beautiful babies, taking their morning airings in the parks, are reared for hereditary legislators." In another graphically brusque passage describing the transportation for life of four lads aged from 18 to 21, we read "they were brought up as brutes, and society reaps the terrible fruits of their rearing." Hullah's music classes for the people at Exeter Hall in 1842 were excellent in their way, but the solace of song was a doubtful boon in the Hungry 'Forties, and though Punch supported the establishment of schools of cookery throughout the kingdom, the supply of things to cook was more urgently needed. The years rolled on, the Corn Laws were repealed, and prosperity revived, but illiteracy remained, and it was due in the country districts, in Punch's view, to the fact that "contending zealots cannot agree with what theological mysteries they shall leaven the common information which the schoolmaster is to impart to the country bumpkin."

THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION

Abysmal Ignorance

In 1850 the following dialogue was given in The Times police report of Wednesday, January 9, and quoted in Punch:—

George Ruby, a boy aged 14, was put into the box to be sworn, and the Testament was put into his hand. He looked quite astonished upon taking hold of the book.

Ald. Humphrey. Well, do you know what you are about? Do you know what an oath is?

Boy. No.

Ald. H. Do you know what a Testament is?

Boy. No.

Ald. H. Can you read?

Boy. No.

Ald. H. Do you ever say your prayers?

Boy. No, never.

Ald. H. Do you know what prayers are?

Boy. No.

Ald. H. Do you know what God is?

Boy. No.

Ald H. Do you know what the devil is?

Boy. I've heard of the devil, but I don't know him.

Ald. H. What do you know, my poor boy?

Boy. I knows how to sweep the crossing.

Ald. H. And that's all?

Boy. That's all. I sweeps the crossing.

The Alderman said he, of course, could not take the evidence of a creature who knew nothing whatever of the obligation to tell the truth.

It was to cope with this sort of destitution that the Ragged Schools movement had been started several years before. From the first Punch lent it his hearty support, though in his first notice, in 1846, he was unable to resist the opportunity of combining his approval with a dig at the aristocracy:—

WHAT RAGGED SCHOOLS MAY COME TO

It is with peculiar satisfaction that we view the establishment of Ragged Schools in various parts of the Metropolis. We speak advisedly when we describe our satisfaction as peculiar. For it is not merely that we are rejoiced at the idea of a number of youthful mendicants being prevented from becoming thieves and pickpockets, taught to earn an honest livelihood, and rescued from vice and misery through the instrumentality of these seminaries. No; our views are much higher than such plebeian considerations as these, and they also extend far beyond the present time. We have an eye to the benefit of our posterity and to that of the superior classes generally.

When we consider that Eton was established for the reception of poor and indigent scholars, and that Winchester and most of our other public schools were, at their first foundation, charities, we may not unreasonably indulge the hope that the Ragged Schools, originally, like them, destined for the instruction of the tag-rag-and-bobtail, may ultimately become gratuitous institutions for the education of the children of the aristocracy.

Yet it was an aristocrat of the "old nobility" who started and devoted his best energies to the furtherance of the Ragged Schools movement, as all the world knows. His name is not even mentioned here, and when it is mentioned in these years is too often coupled with tasteless gibes at Lord Shaftesbury's proclivities and Sabbatarianism. Punch could not forgive Lord Shaftesbury for his association with Exeter Hall (which to Punch meant fireside philanthropy and Jellybyism) and his support of laws which enabled magistrates to fine boys fifteen shillings or a fortnight's wages each for playing cricket on Sunday. Sir Robert Peel had to die before Punch did him justice. Lord Shaftesbury was more fortunate, for thirty years before he died Punch made the amende in "The Earl King, or the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Juvenile Mendicant."