Amongst the most characteristic of these activities was the movement for the feeding of poor school children. In the early years of the movement the motives were chiefly philanthropic. The establishment of the Ragged and other schools had brought under the notice of teachers and others large numbers of children, underfed and ill-clothed. Still more was this the case when education was made compulsory under the Education Act of 1870. It was impossible for humanitarians to attempt to educate these children without at the same time trying to alleviate their distress. Education, in fact, proved useless if the child was starving; more, it might be positively detrimental, since the effort to learn placed on the child's brain a task greater than it could bear. All these early endeavours to provide meals were undertaken by voluntary agencies. Their operations were spasmodic and proved totally inadequate to cope with the evil. Towards the end of the century we find a growing insistence on the doctrine that it was the duty of the State to ensure that the children for whom it provided education should not be incapable, through lack of food, of profiting by that education. On the one hand some socialists demanded that the State ought itself to provide food for all its elementary school children. Another school of reformers urged that voluntary agencies might in many areas deal with the question, but that where their resources proved inadequate the State must step in and supplement them. Others again objected to any public provision of meals on the ground that it would undermine parental responsibility. The demand that the State must take some action was strengthened by the alarm excited during the South African war by the difficulty experienced in securing recruits of the requisite physique. The importance of the physical condition of the masses of the population was thus forced upon public attention. It was urged that the child was the material for the future generation, and that a healthy race could not be reared if the children were chronically underfed. In the result Parliament yielded to the popular demand, and by the Education (Provision of Meals) Act of 1906 gave power to the Local Education Authorities to assist voluntary agencies in the work of providing meals, and if necessary themselves to provide food out of the rates.
(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]]