His observation thus trained to follow along this particular social line, he soon became attracted toward the children apprenticed to a certain pin factory. He saw that the discipline of work, however exacting, however it denied them the care and attention due to all young persons, was the only restrictive guidance they had. When Sunday came, they ran wild, relieved of duty, and not imbued with any idea of personal control. Their elders were living immoral lives; they had no opportunity or incentive to improve; and their natural inclination was to follow animal impulse and blind desire. To such a religious man as Raikes, the mandate, “Suffer little children to come unto me,” was most naturally suggested by such circumstances. Some means of occupying these children on the Sabbath day must be devised.
So it was that on January 26, 1781, the first Sunday-school was opened. Raikes poured his whole energy into organization, and, through the medium of his own paper, the Gloucester Journal, spread broadcast his written suggestions about the work to be done, and his descriptions of the particular localities which most needed attention. He was in a position to gain publicity, and his own personal earnestness counted for a great deal. Already we have noted his relationship to Newbery, whose literary connections probably afforded Raikes some assistance.
The movement had been of five years’ growth, when, in 1786, Raikes was summoned before King George III. Their Majesties, both the King and Queen, were interested by what they had heard, and wished to know something more. The Queen was being almost daily enthused through the intensity of Mrs. Trimmer’s pleadings. This good lady, already known for her children’s books, had put into operation a Sunday-school of her own at Brentwood, and it was to this that the King had paid a memorable visit, leaving behind him a reputation for “kind and condescending behaviour,” which won the hearts of all the children. In this way was the official sanction placed upon Christianity as a practical force; there was even every prospect of starting a Sunday-school at Windsor. “A general joy reigns among the conductors,” cried the enthusiastic Mrs. Trimmer, when she realised what interest was being shown in every quarter.
The programme framed for Raikes’s little protégés was indeed sufficiently full to keep them from the highways. He writes:
“The children were to come after ten in the morning, and stay till twelve; they were then to go home and return at one; and after reading a lesson, they were to be conducted to Church. After Church, they were to be employed in repeating the catechism till after five, and then dismissed, with an injunction to go home without making a noise.”
Lamb and Leigh Hunt, when together at Christ Hospital, were regarded as veritable monks in their knowledge of the Bible; but these little waifs were slaves of a rigorous order; there was nothing voluntary in their desire for spiritual light. The time was to arrive when more sunshine was to be mixed with the teaching, but in the beginning it was necessary for Raikes to keep the Sabbath forcibly observed rather than to devise a less exacting routine. He went about, untiring in his efforts; he plead personally with parents, besides hoping that, through the moral instruction being given to their children, they might be made to see the outlet for their own salvation.
Years after, testimony was obtained from the survivors of Raikes’s discipline. One William Brick had been a scholar of his, and the memory of those days was vivid—perhaps a little too much so, but none the less picturesque:
“I can remember Mr. Raikes well enough,” he said. “I remember his caning me. I don’t suppose I minded it much. He used to cane boys on the back of a chair. Some terrible bad chaps went to school when I first went.... I know the parents of one or two of them used to walk them to school with 14-lb. weights tied to their legs, to keep them from running away.... When a boy was very bad, he would take him out of the school, and march him home and get his parents to ‘wallop’ him. He’d stop and see it done, and then bring the young urchin back, rubbing his eyes and other places.... Every one in the city loved and feared him.”
Such a scene is not prepossessing; nor does moral suasion appear to have been as efficacious as the rod. Besides which, Raikes had a way of looking at a trembling victim through his reading-glass, and exclaiming in thunderous voice: “Ah, I can see you did not say your prayers this morning.” An old man of eighty spoke of this circumstance with deep feeling; and, in awe-stricken tones, he ended by saying: “The boys believed he could see through stone walls with that glass; and it magnified his eye, so that they were sometimes frightened, and told wonderful stories about what Mr. Raikes could do with his wonderful glass.”
The immediate influence this movement had upon children’s books was to create a demand for tracts. Later on, after Thomas Carlyle, in 1839, had plead the cause of London public libraries, it suggested a special class of library as a part of the Sunday-school machinery. A general call was raised for juvenile books of a strictly religious nature, with an appeal intended for a poorer class of readers. Miss Hannah More represents the chief exponent of this grade of writing. “All service ranks alike with God,” says Browning. But these ladies, who were untiring in their devotion to the cause, who were, in their parochial character, forerunners of the social worker of to-day, each was known through her special interest. We speak of Miss Catherine Sinclair, author of “Holiday House,” as the first to introduce benches in the parks of Edinburgh, as the originator of drinking-fountains, as the founder of cooking-depots; of Priscilla Wakefield as the originator of savings-banks for the poor; of Miss More as the author of tracts; and of Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith, one of the forgotten New-England writers, as the first to draw attention to the condition of the newsboys. Mrs. Trimmer, therefore, is justly connected with the history of the development of Sunday-schools.