[154] Official Circular, 31st January 1844, No. 31, pp. 178-9.
[155] Instructional Letter, 1838, in Fifth Annual Report, 1839, p. 76.
[156] At Midsummer, 1838, the children under sixteen in the workhouses of the 478 unions then making returns numbered no fewer than 42,767, out of a total workhouse population of 97,510. (Special Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, p. 56.) In 1840 the Poor Law Commissioners estimated the total number under 16 to be 64,570, of whom 56,835 were between 2 and 16 (Report on the Training of Pauper Children, 1841, p. iii.).
[157] "It would be said that we should be giving the pauper children a better education than that obtainable by the independent labourer's child. While I allow and lament this truth, I wholly deny its force. Because the schooling of children out of the workhouse is neglected, is this a valid reason and excuse for equally neglecting those who are within it? According to this argument, not a single ray of moral or religious knowledge should be allowed to illumine the mind of a pauper child; he should be brought up a perfect brute, since it is certain that this is the lot of innumerable independent children" (E. Carleton Tufnell, in Report on the Training of Pauper Children, 1841, p. 355).
[158] Official Circular, No. 5, 16th June 1840, p. 56.
[159] General Order, 31st December 1844, and 29th January 1845, in Eleventh Annual Report, 1845, pp. 72-96; 15th and 22nd August 1845, in Twelfth Annual Report, 1846, pp. 60-71; and Arts. 52-74 of General Consolidated Order of 24th July 1847.
[160] Circular, 1st January 1845, in Eleventh Annual Report, 1845, pp. 96-7.
[161] Instructional Letter, 6th May 1836, in Second Annual Report, 1836, p. 50.
[162] Report on the Further Amendment of the Poor Law, 1839, pp. 73-81.
[163] Minute, 27th March 1840, in Sixth Annual Report, 1840, pp. 95-96.