'Yes, sir. I can't work myself, because I've got the baby and the others to look after.'
'Well, my dear,' says the chairman, 'I am very sorry for you, but your brothers can only have half-time or come back to school.'
The girl says nothing, she is only fifteen, and can't argue it out with the gentleman—so she curtseys and is ushered out. I wonder, if the mother dies and the father gets a long term of imprisonment, what the fate of the family will be?
I have said that the hardships entailed upon the poor by the Education Act are numerous. Let me quote a few statistics gleaned from the papers which I turn over on the chairman's desk by his kind permission.
They are cases in which the parents apply to have the fees remitted because they cannot afford to pay them.
1. Mrs. Walker. 7 children of school age; fee 2d. a week each. Total earnings of entire family, 10s. Rent, 5s. 6d. Husband once good mechanic, lost employment through illness and deafness. Parish relief none. Character good. Is now a hawker—sells oranges and fish. Children half-starved. When an orange is too bad to sell they have it for breakfast, with a piece of bread.
2. Mr. Thompson. 5 children of school age. Out of work. No income but pawning clothes and goods. Rent, 4s. Wife drinks surreptitiously. Husband, good character.
3. Mrs.——-. 5 children of school age; widow. Earnings, 6s. Rent, 3s. Her husband when alive was a Drury Lane clown. Respectable woman; feels her poverty very keenly.
4. Mr. Garrard. 8 children of school age; two always under doctor. No income. Pawning last rags. Rent, 5s. 6d. No parish relief. Starving. Declines to go into workhouse.
I could multiply such instances by hundreds. These, however, will suffice to show how serious a burden is added to the lives of the very poor by the enforced payment of school fees. As a rule they are remitted for very good and sufficient reasons.