[page 456]
Part V
Charitable Endowments
I
EDUCATIONAL CHARITIES
In recommending the continued expenditure of public money for the assistance of popular education, we feel it our duty to consider all the existing sources from which aid may be derived. We are thus led (1) to examine the state of the Educational Charities, and (2) to call attention to a recommendation of the Commissioners for Inquiring concerning Charities (1837), respecting certain charities for the poor which are not at present applicable to education, but which, in the opinion of the Commissioners, might be so applied. We employed Mr. Cumin, who had previously been our Assistant Commissioner for the specimen district of Bristol and Plymouth, to collect information for us respecting both branches of this inquiry.
The advantage which England enjoys in having numerous charitable foundations for the education of all classes of the people, and the important bearing of this circumstance on the question of National Education in this country, did not escape the observation of M. Guizot when preparing to legislate for National Education in France. After remarking that he had found English statesmen in general adverse to the introduction of a National system of State Education, he says:
I can understand how the English arrive at this conclusion, and I think them right. In France we have not even to consider the question by which they are led to it. In our country all the ancient and various establishments for public instruction have disappeared, with the masters and the property, the corporations and the endowments. We have no longer within the great society small societies of a private kind, subsisting independently, and devoted to the various grades of education. What has been restored, or is struggling into birth, of this description, is evidently not in a position to meet the public wants. In the matter of public instruction, as in the whole of our social organization, a general system, founded and maintained by the State, is to us a necessity; it is the condition which our history and the genius of the nation have imposed on us. We desire unity; the State alone can give it: we have destroyed everything; we must create anew.
It is our opinion that the Educational Charities possess powers of promoting education among "all classes of the people" which
*Guizot, Mémoires, vol. iii. p. 24.
[page 457]
are at present undeveloped, and which better organization, more active supervision, and greater freedom of progressive improvement and adaptation to the changing exigencies of the times would call into action. We hope also that the spirit of social duty and munificence which gave birth to these charities may, if full facilities are given to its progress, proceed with its work.
There are no means of ascertaining exactly the present aggregate revenue of the charities devoted to education. The law requires annual returns of the income of each charity to be made to the Charity Commissioners, but the Commissioners find it difficult to enforce the law; and it appears that they are unable to get the general returns with regularity, though they can elicit the income of any particular charity by a special inquiry. The estimate made by the successive Commissions which inquired into charities in the course of the years 1818-1837, was £312,544. To this Mr. Erle, the Chief Commissioner of Charities, would add one-fifth for subsequent increase of value.
These foundations, like the other charities, are scattered unevenly over the country, being most numerous in the places which were populous and wealthy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while places of modern growth often remain comparatively unprovided. The distribution of the charities, both educational and general, over the several counties, together with the Government grants to each of the counties for popular education, m&y be seen by reference to the tables in Mr. Cumin's report,* and the following pages.
These charities are generally under the immediate control of their several bodies of trustees, though in some cases the schoolmaster is a corporation sole. The power of the trustees is far more limited than that of the managers of ordinary schools, owing to the legal position of the masters and mistresses of endowed schools, who have been generally held to have a freehold in their office, and have thus been practically incapable of being removed. An Act of Parliament of the last Session, rendering masters and mistresses removable in the cases to which it applies, will considerably increase in these cases the authority of the trustees.
The charities are also for certain purposes under the jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners, who are empowered by three Acts of Parliament,† including one of the last Session, to inquire
*Report on Educational Charities, p. 275.
†16 & 17 Vict. c. 137.; 18 & 19 Vict. c. 124..; 23 & 24 Vict. c. 136.
[page 458]
into the state of all charities, to receive annual returns of the income of each, to advise and indemnify trustees in the execution of their duty, to certify to the Attorney-General cases for the institution of legal proceedings, to control legal proceedings instituted by others with a view to the avoidance of needless litigation and expense, to facilitate in various ways the administration, transmission, and improvement of the property, and to authorize and expedite the removal and pensioning off of masters and mistresses of endowed schools by the trustees. They have also the power of provisionally approving new schemes for the application of charities, such as it would be beyond the power of a Court of Equity to sanction, and laying them before Parliament in an annual report with the reasons for approving them, in order that the Legislature may thereupon take such course as it thinks fit.
It is difficult to say what proportion of the Educational Charities belongs to popular education. Nearly half the aggregate income is set down under the head of "Grammar Schools." "Grammar Schools" have been legally held to be, and are for the most part practically made, classical schools, confined to the class who desire that kind of education. It is, however, now admitted that the interpretation which fixed this exclusive sense on the word "Grammar" was historically erroneous, and that many grammar schools were destined by their founders to supply not only a classical but a general education. Numerous proofs of this fact, drawn from charters, statutes, and instruments of endowment, have been given by Mr. Fearon, in his treatise on the Endowed Charities (pp. 59-64). Thus Enfield Grammar School was "to teach children, within, the town of Enfield, to know and read their alphabet letters, to read Latin and English, and to understand grammar and to write their Latins according to the use and trade of Grammar Schools." The statutes of the Free Grammar School of Hartlebury (7th Eliz.), direct that the schoolmaster and usher shall, at least one afternoon in every week, teach the scholars to write and cast accounts. The master of the Free Grammar School of St. Bees (1583) was to have authority to appoint some poor scholar that understood his grammar and could write a reasonable hand to be his usher under him, who should teach the children to read and write English, and to say by heart the catechism set forth by public authority, with the additions and the accidence; and when they were able to learn construction they were to be admitted into the master's school. The statutes of the Charter House (1627) declare
[page 459]
that it shall be the schoolmaster's care and the usher's charge to teach the scholars to cipher and cast an account, especially those that are less capable of learning, and fittest to be put to trades. Lord Eldon himself, who decided in the case of the Leeds Grammar* School, that there was no precedent to warrant the opening of a Grammar School to scholars learning anything except Greek and Latin, appears to have modified his opinion on subsequently reading Mr. Carlisle's book on Grammar Schools,† and to have admitted that there were cases where founders contemplated elementary instruction. At the time when many of the Grammar Schools were founded, Latin was not only a classical language, but the ordinary language of literature, and to a great extent of the educated classes throughout Europe. In Shawell Grammar School, the talk of the grammar scholars was to be in Latin. A provision for the teaching of Greek would be a better criterion of a classical school. In some cases, as in that of Hartlebury above referred to, there were two departments, the upper for Latin, the lower for a more popular kind of instruction. At Cartmel Grammar School there were two classes of scholars, grammarians and petties; and the master was to have sixpence for those of the first class, and fourpence for those of the second.
These charities were, generally speaking, for the poorer classes. Even colleges at the Universities, and great public schools, which are exempted from the jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners, were confined by their statutes to poor persons, often in the most stringent terms. But it is not to be assumed that foundations intended for the poor were intended for popular education, an idea which in all probability had never presented itself to the minds of the most ancient founders. The education provided for the colleges, and for the schools of Winchester and Eton, by their statutes, was the highest then known; and the poor persons admitted to it were raised above their class, and carried forward to the high places of the Church and the liberal professions. Persons of the wealthier classes were educated in these institutions from a very early period, though they were excluded from the pecuniary benefit of the foundation. The framers of college statutes in the middle ages, who thus favoured poverty, were probably influenced in some degree by ascetic sentiment, and by the belief that the poorest youths would be the humblest and the most amenable to a severe and half monastic rule. The changing circumstances of society and education have
*Attorney-General v. Whiteley, 11 Ves. 241.
†Attorney-General v. Hartley, 2 Jac. & W. 382.
[page 460]
divorced the literary object of the ancient founders from their eleemosynary object, and rendered it impossible to confine the foundations of our colleges and our great public schools to indigence; while, on the other hand, the loss of these foundations has been more than compensated to the poorer classes by the public and private liberality which has created and supports a great system of popular education. We do not propose to divert from the higher or middle education any endowments which are now usefully serving that purpose. Middle class education, in particular, seems to require especial encouragement in the interest, not only of the middle classes themselves, but of those with whom they are brought into immediate relation. But if in the case of foundations originally confined to the poor any provision can be safely made whereby they may indirectly promote the education of the poorer classes, or whereby the more promising youths of those classes may from time to time be drafted into them, and raised through them to higher callings, it will be an approximation to the founder's will.
The public taxpayer when he is called upon to supply further aid to education out of the public purse is entitled to require that the educational charities shall be turned to good account. "We believe," say the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Operation of the Poor Laws,* "that if the funds now destined to the purposes of education, many of which are applied in a manner un suited to the present wants of society, were wisely and economically employed, they would be sufficient to give all the assistance which can be prudently afforded by the State."
It appears that a large proportion of the educational charities are not turned to good account at present. The cases of abuse calling for legal interposition since the institution of the Charity Commission, and the inquiries by which it was preceded, are, no doubt, comparatively few. It is not so much positive abuse that now calls for a remedy, as inefficiency, languor, and inadequacy of the results to the pecuniary means of the foundations. That in these respects remedial measures are needed, all the evidence before us on the subject conspires to show.
The inquiries of our Assistant Commissioners in the specimen districts were confined to the schools devoted to popular education. Dr. Hodgson says in reference to the endowed schools of that class in his part of the Metropolitan District:†
*Report, p. 362, oct. edit.
†Report, p. 536.
[page 461]
Of endowed schools my impression is far from satisfactory; I have found a general dulness and want of life to be their general characteristic, and even the best among them are seldom equal in the elements of instruction to a well conducted or even average National or British and Foreign school.
Mr. Fraser* was told, as to the endowed schools of Herefordshire, by a gentleman of extensive local knowledge and long educational experience, that "the greatest benefactor to Herefordshire would be the man who should sweep away all its endowments and cut down all its apple-trees; the one pauperize, the other brutalize the population." Mr. Fraser himself found "a sufficient number of endowed schools in a healthy condition and doing their work usefully, to show that the blame must lie (as he believes his informant meant it to lie), not on the endowment itself, as a mode of supporting a school, but on the way in which it is too generally administered." The very best school, indeed, or one of the four best, which came under his observation, was an endowed school, the Blue Coat School at Hereford. But, on the other hand, he heard many endowed schools (the names of eight of which he mentioned to us) spoken of in their neighbourhood, "not only as being utterly ineffective for the purposes of education, but as, by their mere existence, by the very name even of the most inadequate endowment, repressing all local liberality and energy, and so standing in the way of any improvement." The buildings in which the endowed schools visited by Mr. Fraser were held were "often ruinous and generally inconvenient;" the fittings of the rooms for the purposes of instruction were "of the clumsiest and most antiquated kind;" the teachers "had rarely had any special training for their office, though a lair proportion of them were intelligent persons, who are doing their duty with a creditable amount of skill and success." The trustees appeared utterly apathetic and at the same time extremely jealous of interference. Mr. Fraser did not discover any traces in the case of moribund or neglected endowments of the Charity Commissioners having brought proprio motu [on their own initiative], any effective influence to bear upon their improvement or resuscitation. In many places he heard wishes expressed that they should.
The result of Mr. Hare's observations in Hull, Yarmouth, and Ipswich is more favourable, though still of a mixed character:†
The Cogan charity at Hull is devoted to the instruction and clothing of a fixed quota of girls designed for domestic service. As an educa-
*Report, pp. 40, 41, 42, 43,
†Report, p. 279.
[page 462]
tional institution, it falls behind the girls' schools under inspection, though possessing funds available, perhaps, for affording superior training to a greater number. The Sailors' Orphan Girls' school also is by no means so prosperous and efficient as the claims of the objects of the charity upon the wealthy and populous town and port of Hull deserve that it should be made. The endowed and free schools in Sculcoates are all, except the Ragged, of a minor description, in which small means appear to be made honestly and carefully available for useful ends.
Yarmouth contains two endowed foundations of some antiquity. In both, the girls' department is decidedly inferior to the boys', though in St. Mary's Hospital, the girls as well as the boys are under inspection. The latter will bear comparison with the boys in the National schools. The boys in the other charity schools are of a rougher sort; but they are receiving, under Government inspection, as good an education as is given in many schools where fees are charged.
In Ipswich there are five free schools, Christ's Hospital Boarding school, the Red Sleeve, the Grey Coat and the Blue Coat, and the Ragged school. The Red Sleeve children are incorporated with the St. Margaret's National schools, in which they receive, without charge, an education as good as the paying children, and are under Government inspection. The other endowed schools are not under inspection; but they are in very different states. The boys in the Grey Coat and the girls in the Blue Coat schools are receiving more meagre instruction than is given in any other public school in Ipswich, the Ragged school alone excepted. The Christ's Hospital day and boarding schools, on the contrary, are in a state of great efficiency. By a decree of the Court of Chancery, the day school, no longer free, is made a toll-bar in the way to the boarding school, where a select number of the most deserving boys, drafted from the day school, receive board and lodging, with clothing and other advantages, and complete an elementary education, under circumstances, as to instruction and domestic comfort, which any parent, content to waive languages and mathematics, might covet for his son.
It will be observed that the Christ's Hospital schools at Ipswich, which are here reported by Mr. Hare to be in a state of remarkable efficiency, have been brought to that state by the remedial action of a decree of the Court of Chancery re-organizing the schools, and. rendering the admission to the free boarding school a matter of competition.
The results of Mr. Hedley's observations in the agricultural district he inspected, comprising the Poor Law Unions of Lincoln, Gainsborough, &c., are likewise of a mixed character:*
Charity schools may be divided into different classes:
1. Schools to which a sufficient endowment has been attached to give a master ample support - an endowment, that is, of £70 or £80 a year. I have found some such schools in a very good condition; one or two I have met with that are excessively bad. I think the difference may be traced altogether to the nature of the trust. If the trustees are few in number and independent in position, a well-qualified master is elected, and the school is found in good order. If, on the contrary, the election
*Report, p. 158.
[page 463]
is in the hands of the ratepayers, or any such body, the appointment, most likely, renders the charity worse than useless, and prevents, instead of promoting, the existence of a good school.
2. There are parishes which possess property to a considerable amount applicable to any purposes for the benefit of the place. In some such parishes excellent free schools are supported out of these funds. Their excellence I attribute to the fact that they are under the control of a small and respectable body of trustees. These cases are comparatively very few.
3. There is a far larger number of schools which are in part supported by endowments varying from £5 to £30 a year. In some a certain number of scholars are admitted free; in others the endowment is paid without any such condition. These small endowments are of great service, particularly when they can be thrown into the school funds without embarrassing the managers with any restrictions in the appointment of the master, or when they are so small, as not to make the disposal of them a matter of patronage worth claiming by ratepayers or others. They are, I think, far more important than larger endowments, and much less liable to abuse. Schools perfectly free are not necessary: part of the funds can always be raised, and with advantage to all parties, by school fees. But the efficiency of many a school is greatly increased by the existence of an endowment of small amount. An endowment of £80 or £100 a year supports one free school; but the same sum divided renders equally efficient four or five schools.
There are very few schools, of a class similar to the National school, kept by persons on their own account. Such schools cannot remunerate a teacher unless the payment is at least 4d or 6d a week, and they cannot compete with schools which are supported in part by private subscriptions. They generally exist only where a National school has not been set on foot. In two or three instances the master of the National school, having quarrelled with the managers, has withdrawn and opened a private school in the place. But I do not think they will find it worthwhile to continue the opposition long. The teaching in private schools is often superior in the subjects of writing and cyphering, but in point of accommodation, discipline, and moral tone these schools are very inferior.
Mr. Coode,* in the Dudley Union and the Potteries, points to Orme's Charity at Newcastle-under-Lyne as a model of the good effects both on parents and children of a school, where "a plain education is soberly but steadily carried out," and devotes some space to the details of its system. But Orme's Charity is "an exception in his districts to the ordinary deficiencies of free schools:"†
Charity or free schools in both my districts are all attended by as many scholars as the schools will admit, and there are also, in every case where I made the inquiry, always more applicants for admission than can be received. But the schools have not the advantage of being under Government inspection, nor any other efficient public inspection. The situations of master, mistress, and teachers are generally disposed of by the trustees by favour, and the persons chosen are commonly old servants of the patrons, or persons who, from bodily infirmity or other incapacity, are unable to obtain a livelihood, and whom it is thought a
*Report, p. 274.
†Report, p. 273.
[page 464]
charity to appoint to these places. There are a few exceptional cases where competent teachers, strangers to the trustees and to the neighbourhood, have been appointed, and in all of these instances the results have been more satisfactory; but still, for want apparently of efficient and permanent superintendence, even in these cases, the schools remain far behind the average of inspected schools. The teaching in most of these schools is conducted without energy or much method; the schools are, with few exceptions, scenes of disorder and indiscipline, the chief quality developed in the children is a habit of servility, enforced under the name of respect for their benefactors and superiors. Still in all cases the benefits of a free education are sufficiently appreciated by parents to fill the schools, but they are rarely sufficiently great to cause the children to be retained at school after the age at which they can earn any wages at all, and there are no schools as a class in my districts in which the attendance is less regular, or, with the exception of dame schools, ceases at so early an age.
In the unions of Weardale, Penrith, and Wigton, included within the district of Mr. Foster, endowed schools form "the leading educational feature." The result of his observations, therefore, is of peculiar importance. The opinion which he has formed is most decided:*
That these institutions were once valuable means of education, is evinced by the fact that there lingers among the most illiterate of the people a traditional feeling of belonging to an educated race, and they treasure in their houses books which their ancestors understood if they do not. But now the halt, the maimed, the drunken, even the idiotic, are promoted to the enjoyment of these funds for education, the tender charity of the trustees deeming it prudent to appoint "lads" of such infirmity that there was no other way of "keeping them off the parish." These seem to have no idea of a schoolmaster's duties except to hear certain lessons, and to beat those who fail either in conduct or proficiency. In almost every case we found more than half the children idle, and all of them dirty, disorderly, and unhappy-looking. After listening awhile to the lessons going on, I wondered whether any children could readily swallow or easily digest such meagre intellectual food, presented in so crude and unpalatable a form, and whether its being urged at the end of a cane, or shaken from a heavy pair of taws, would greatly facilitate its reception. Several of these institutions are designated "Grammar schools," having been originally designed as such; but they have, with scarcely an exception, sunk to the position of mixed elementary ones. The moral infirmities of some of the teachers seem to be much less deplored than the physical and intellectual deficiencies of others. Drunkenness is the prevailing vice. I was credibly informed that in some schools it is quite usual, especially on Monday mornings, for the boys on their arrival to inquire what state the master is in, or to assemble in the school-room, and if he fails presently to appear, they return home throwing up their caps and shouting for joy, "The master is on, and there are holidays for the week!" Parents do but laugh at such an occurrence. It is quite obvious that the sooner the country is rid of such teachers the better. But it seems this cannot be without parliamentary enactments to render them removable by vesting the endowments for the benefit of the school instead of the master. The Bishop of Carlisle did not scruple to say
*Report, p. 335.
[page 465]
that "the endowed schools are the curse of his diocese;" the dean and several other clergymen agreeing.
Mr. Winder found the endowed schools in Rochdale distinguished by no special character.* They "resembled public or national schools of the ordinary type.'' He remarks,† however, that they are made use of to supply gratuitous education not to those unable, but to those able to pay for it. "Two of them (Ogden and Hollingworth) are in remote districts, which without the endowment would hardly be able to support a school, but which do not seem in need of free instruction. In the rest, though the trustees may give preference or priority to such of the applicants as seem most needy, yet the recipients of the charity seemed on the whole to be the children of parents who might have provided education for them without assistance. This is certainly so in the Rochdale free English school, which has by far the largest resources of any."
Mr. Cumin‡ states that, "generally speaking throughout his district (Bristol and Plymouth) the trustees and others display a laudable anxiety in the administration of the funds under their control." He remarks, however, that "almost all the best endowed schools have submitted themselves to Government inspection.''
In the Welsh district Mr. Jenkins§ found some instances in which the trustees of endowed schools had taken advantage of the changes made of late years in the law regulating charities by remodelling the school, so as to enable the poorer classes in the neighbourhood to avail themselves more extensively of the benefit of education. "In all cases," he observes, "this has been done with such marked advantages to the interests of popular education that it is much to be regretted that the example has not been more extensively followed by the authorities connected with endowed schools in a similar position." He cites, among other instances. Alderman Davies's, Gwyn's and Cross's charities at Neath, where the trustees, with the assistance of voluntary contributions and Government aid, have erected capacious school buildings. But, generally speaking, his report of the endowed schools in his district is most unfavourable:
With a very few such exceptions, the endowed schools for the poor in this district are in so inefficient a state, that it is scarcely too strong to apply to it the term disgraceful. They are so many examples of
*Report, p. 186.
†Report, p. 201.
‡Report on Bristol and Plymouth, p. 78.
§Report, p. 539.
[page 466]
neglect of trust, and often of perversion of object. The masters are appointed with no regard to qualifications for the duties they have to render, and, as a general rule, were found to be unfitted in every sense of the term for the situations they held. Among the most incompetent masters, whose schools I had occasion to visit in North Wales, none were more incompetent than some of those I met at the head of endowed schools.
In one school Mr. Jenkins* found the master surrounded by from 15 to 20 boys, in a schoolhouse with an earth floor, and a thatched roof, which in wet weather freely admitted rain. A few benches and a desk comprised the whole of the school furniture. The only lesson book was the Bible, from which the children "read or essayed to read" in English a chapter in Proverbs, but, on being questioned, did not understand one principal word in the several verses which each scholar had read. The master was old, and he informed Mr. Jenkins that, with the aid of the endowment of £10 a year, he could with great difficulty only realize 7s a week by the "pay scholars" and those on the foundation.
Mr. Jenkins also specifies, among other cases,† "Madame Bevan's Charity," for the diffusion of religious instruction on Church principles among the Welsh people, supporting between 30 and 40 schools, and paying their masters from £25 to £35 a year each. The foundation is a peculiar one, the schools being ambulatory from parish to parish, and remaining in a parish only for a period varying, at the discretion of the trustees, from six months to two or three years. Mr. Jenkins was informed, "on the competent authority of a person who had been himself a teacher under this charity, that the masters are often little above the farm labourers in point of attainments;" and that they "are taken direct from their callings, and after spending a few months at the training institution at Newport, in Pembrokeshire, are sent forth to take charge of schools." Mr. Jenkins "heard but one opinion expressed as to this charity, one of the richest, if not the richest, in Wales, by clergymen, as well as others, that it is in every way ineffective in the promotion of education." He found one school only under this charity in his district, and of that school he says that, "if it is to be taken as a specimen of the class," it justified what he had previously heard of the utter worthlessness of Madame Bevan's Charity for all educational purposes. The same opinion was formed of this educational charity by Mr. Lingen, as one of the Commissioners for inquiring into the state of education in Wales in 1846.‡
*Report, p. 540.
†Report, p. 540.
‡Report on Carmarthen, Glamorgan, and Pembroke, p. 19.
[page 467]
Turning from the reports of the Assistant Commissioners to our general evidence as to the present state of these endowments, and their present influence on education, we find it almost without exception, unfavourable, and decidedly pointing to the necessity of remedial measures. The most favourable witness, of those who speak of more than one school, and speak as from their own observation, is the Rev. C. M. Ruck Keene,* resident in Oxfordshire, who says, "My experience of endowed schools, under which denomination I do not now include grammar schools, leads me to think highly of them, and that they only want further development to extend their usefulness." On the other hand, the Rev. G. Marshall, resident in an adjoining district, repeats as, in his opinion, accurate, the statement,† "We hardly ever heard of an instance of an endowed school doing any good. Endowments are the greatest obstacles to advance or improvement in education, deprive the upper classes of interest or power in the schools, and make the teachers independent and lazy." The Hon. and Rev. Samuel Best says,‡ I hardly know any endowed schools that are not more or less abused. They are generally most inefficient, and I entertain a very strong opinion that the Legislature should interfere." The then Bishop of Carlisle, Dr. Villiers,§ speaks as strongly to us as he spoke to our Assistant Commissioner, Mr. Foster. "I refer solely to schools with small endowments, such as abound in the counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland. I believe I state a fact, which admits of no controversy, that as a whole those schools are worse than any others, and that either their endowments should be consolidated, so as to make from the funds of many one good middle-class school, or confiscated as hindrances to the real work which ought to be secured."
The Dean of Carlisle, Dr. Close,|| speaking of the same subject, says, "Endowments, at least in connexion with the schools of " the working classes, are, generally speaking, unmitigated evils. Perhaps I speak too strongly, influenced by a large acquaintance with the parochial schools of this diocese. In most cases the evils of endowments are so great that parishes " would be far better without any such schools at all. The endowment makes the master idle and indolent, and in many cases occasions the exclusion of the clergyman from all influence in the school." The Rev. Derwent Coleridge,¶ Principal of St. Mark's Training College, who has recommended
*Answers, p. 271.
†Answers, p. 313.
‡Answers, p. 80.
§Answers, p. 122.
||Answers, p. 125.
¶Answers, p. 137.
[page 468]
masters to many endowed schools, believes "that they might be rendered extremely useful for the purposes of popular education, but that as now constituted they frequently act as a hindrance." He proceeds to suggest means by which, in his judgment, "instead of being among the worst, these schools might be among the best in the country." The Bishop of St. David's* says, "The result of my observations has not led me to think favourably of endowed schools for elementary popular education. Much, however, must depend on the amount of the endowment, and the nature of the conditions attached to it. When it provides a salary just sufficient for the support of the teachers, and gratuitous instruction for the scholars, I believe it must prevent the possibility of a good school. But there may be cases in which it enables the managers of the school to procure the services of a more efficient master than they could otherwise have engaged, without diminishing his motive to exertion, or the wholesome effect of the school payments on the parents of the children." Mr. Blakesley† thinks "the endowments which exist here and there for the purpose of education might be rendered much more effective if large powers were given to a central board to deal with them." Miss Carpenter‡ notices "the tendency of endowed schools to rise in the class to which they are opened, so that after the lapse of time the objects intended to be relieved are quite cut off from them." Miss Hope mentions a strong instance of the waste of an endowment which has fallen under her personal observation.§
The same is the tendency of the remarks of Mr. Akroyd; Mr. Angel; the Rev. R. Brown; the Rev. John Cundill; Lady Dukinfield; the Rev. T. W. Davids; the Rev. John Freeman; Lord Lyttelton; the Rev. T. T. Penrose; the Rev. W. H. Scott; Mr. H. S. Skeats; Colonel Stobart; the Rev. C. B. Wollaston Mr. W. Walker; and the Rev. F. B. Zincke. On the other hand, we may refer to Mr. Herbert Birley; the Rev. Canon Guthrie; the Rev. G. H. Hamilton; and the Rev. Irvin Eller.
Mr. Cumin, in drawing up his special report on educational charities, was anxious to obtain statistics showing exactly the number of children educated by endowed schools, compared with the number educated at the same cost in the schools under Government inspection; but the Charity Commissioners con-
*Answers, p. 341.
†Answers, p. 88.
‡Answers, p. 114.
§Answers, p. 222.
[page 469]
sidered it impossible to ascertain, with respect to the endowed schools, either the number of scholars, distinguishing the foundation boys, who are free, from the day boys, who pay fees; or the proportion of the revenue spent upon education. Mr. Cumin, however, has furnished us with some striking cases from the Reports of the Inspectors of important Educational Charities producing poor results; but as these cases are complicated by questions respecting the expediency of boarding and clothing pupils, and respecting the subjects of instruction, we shall treat of them more conveniently hereafter.
The necessity of measures for the improvement of the endowed schools, among other charities, led to the publication of a valuable treatise by Mr. Fearon, the Solicitor to the Attorney-General in charity matters, who has given great attention to the subject. The improved administration of charitable trusts, especially those of an educational kind, is also advocated in an important chapter of Sir J. K. Shuttleworth's well-known work on public education. We have to acknowledge our obligations to both these writers in the preparation of this part of our Report.
Endowments, so far as they remove the necessity for self-exertion and the stimulus of competition, have a tendency to render institutions torpid, and cause them to fall behind the age. The evidence above cited is a fresh proof of this well-established fact. At the same time it proves that there are antidotes, by the application of which the tendency may be corrected. In a district where a trustworthy witness regarded the endowed schools as a nuisance, the abolition of which would be a public benefit, the very best school which Mr. Fraser saw, or the best with only three rivals, was an endowed school. There is the more reason for attempting to apply the antidotes, since, as Mr. Fraser's informants observed, an endowed school, when in a bad state, is not merely useless, or worse than useless, in itself, "but by the mere name of an endowment, represses local liberality and energy, and stands in the way of all educational improvement." Such sweeping measures of fusion or confiscation as occur to the minds, of friends of education resident among the worst of the endowed schools, could be justified only on the failure of all milder means. There remains, if these institutions are to be made useful, or prevented from being noxious, the alternative of a cautious and discriminating but effectual reform.
The first measure which we shall recommend, relates to the appointment of schoolmasters. It is obvious that this is a vital question, and that unless proper appointments can be secured, no
[page 470]
other remedial measure can avail. The evidence proves that corrupt appointments are sometimes, and that improper appointments are frequently made; but between an appointment which is palpably improper and one which is really good, there is a wide interval in which personal and party influences, the bane of local patronage, find room to play. We think that no person should be eligible to the mastership of any endowed school who has not taken an academical degree, or received a certificate from some authorized body of his competency as a teacher. For the masterships of schools devoted to popular education, the certificates of the Privy Council will be a proper qualification. But we would by no means confine the power of certificating masters for endowed schools of any class to the Privy Council. It is undesirable in the interest of education, a progressive and experimental subject, that anything like a monopoly or an exclusive system of training should be established. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have lately adopted extensive measures for the improvement of education among those who are not members of the Universities; and it appears to us that they might with advantage institute boards of examiners to grant certificates to masters for middle and perhaps even for elementary schools. Some years ago the University of London applied to the Crown for a Charter enabling it to grant certificates of proficiency in Sciences and in Arts. The Charter was granted, but has remained a dead letter. We trust that this will not continue to be the case, and we venture to suggest to that eminent body that they could not better exercise the powers given them than by granting certificates of proficiency in the art of a schoolmaster. If the University of Durham does not already possess the same power, it might easily acquire it. These certificates would be trusted by the public; and such a connexion with the Universities would, besides the direct security afforded by it for competency and good character, contribute in some degree to elevate the calling of a schoolmaster, and inspire those who pursue it with a sentiment of professional honour.
We think that every appointment of a schoolmaster to an endowed school should take place after a public notice, stating the qualifications required, and inviting candidates to send in their names. We also think that every appointment should require confirmation by a superior authority, which should grant that confirmation only on being satisfied that the legal conditions, in regard to the certificate and otherwise, had been complied with, and which should at the same time hear and decide, in the
[page 471]
manner of a Visitor, any appeal against the election, either on the ground of legal disqualification or improper influence. We think that the electors, on presenting the master for confirmation, should declare under their hands that they believe him to be the best qualified of the candidates. In case of a division of votes, the majority should sign the declaration.
But these precautions, after all, are of a negative character; they will exclude a palpably unfit person, they will not secure the choice of the fittest. This can be secured only by placing the appointment in good hands. On this account, even more perhaps than on the account of the general management, it is of paramount importance to improve the Boards of Trustees, and to vest the trusts, as far as possible, in select bodies of persons qualified by education to discharge their duties well. It scarcely requires to be confirmed by the evidence of Mr. Hare, the Inspector of Charities, that a body of ratepayers or a board of farmers, even if influenced by no party or personal motive, must be incompetent to select a proper master for a school.* There can be no hesitation on the ground of interference with patronage in confining to competent hands the exercise of a power which, if not wisely as well as purely used, is absolutely destructive of the object with which it is given. A vote in the election of a schoolmaster is, or ought to be, not patronage but a trust; and it is a trust the abuse of which not only ruins the school immediately concerned, but tends to lower the character and standard of the schoolmaster's profession. The masterships of endowed schools may be considered as the prizes of the calling; and if these prizes are improperly bestowed, the degradation of the calling itself must be the result.
Next in importance to the power of appointing the schoolmaster is the power of removing him. Hitherto endowed schools have suffered most severely from the tendency of the English law to treat a schoolmaster's office among other offices as a freehold. Schoolmasters have thus, in effect, been made to acquire, under instruments of foundation, an interest subversive of the main object which the founder had in view. The difficulty, the expense, and the liability to defeat on technical grounds, which conscientious trustees encountered in removing an incompetent schoolmaster who had a "freehold" in his office, were such as practically to nullify the condition
*Evidence, 3933, 3940
[page 472]
of good behaviour understood in all cases by the law, and to render the tenure of the office unconditional. The Chief Commissioner, Mr. Erle,* says in reference to the state of things previous to the Act of last session, to which we are about to advert:
In one case which occurs to me the trustees, whose proceedings were in some respects irregular, incurred a personal charge of £1,200 costs, though the insufficiency of the master was ascertained; and in another case, the trustees, though pursuing what appeared to them their course of strict duty, incurred a similar charge of £400. A power of exempting trustees from such responsibility was greatly required, but still the authority with which we can invest them, being permissive only, may be insufficient for the interests of the charity, for the permission may not be used, and the exercise of the power is liable to obstruction. As this matter is important, I beg to mention some particulars of a recent case, in which a large majority of the trustees of a grammar school represented to us that the master was not a fit person to retain his office. We instituted a full inquiry into the matter, and we gave an authority to the trustees to remove the master, which a large majority of their body proceeded to exercise. But one only of their number refused to concur, and the master retained adverse possession of the school buildings, of which there is no summary power to dispossess him. It has become necessary to file an information and bill in the Court of Chancery to give effect to the removal, and even the preliminary expenses are of relatively formidable amount, and the proceedings, if continued, may exhaust the endowment.
After trying palliatives in vain, the Legislature has at length made an attempt to apply the only effectual remedy to this fatal malady of endowed schools. By the 23 & 24 Vict. c. 136. s. 2. (28th August 1860), the Charity Commissioners have the power of the Court of Chancery as to (among other things) the removal of schoolmasters and mistresses. By section 13 there is an easy remedy against a master or mistress wrongfully holding over; and by section 14 any master or mistress appointed after the date of the Act is removable by all or a majority of the trustees, with the approbation of the Charity Commissioners, and of the special visitor, if any. But it is provided that section 14 "shall not apply to any endowed grammar school"; a proviso which, we apprehend, will greatly interfere with the beneficial operation of the Act. The interpretation clause of the 3 & 4 Vict. c. 77, declares that "for the purposes of that Act 'grammar schools' mean all endowed schools, founded, endowed, or maintained for the purpose of teaching Latin or Greek, whether such teaching be described by the word grammar, or in any other description which may be construed as intending Greek or Latin, and whether limited to such languages or extended to any other
*Evidence, 3758.
[page 473]
subject;" and that those words also include "all endowed schools which may be grammar schools by reputation, and all other institutions for the purpose of providing such instruction as aforesaid." Supposing, which we are inclined to think is the case, that this interpretation clause has given a general legal meaning to the words "grammar schools," we fear that the majority in value, perhaps even the majority in number, of the endowed schools are not within the 14th section of the present Act. Even as to those which are, a considerable time must elapse before the existing interests of masters and mistresses saved by the Act will have run out, and before the schools can reap the benefit of the change. In the meantime the institutions must suffer so much where the master is unsuited for his duties, that it may be worth while in some cases to buy off an existing interest by a pension charged on the property of the foundation, provided that the arrangement be made under the sanction of a proper authority.
Even when these offices shall have ceased to be freeholds, it must not be expected that masters and mistresses will be removed except in extreme cases. It is difficult even for the most conscientious trustee to proceed to the dismissal from his office of a person who is generally a neighbour, often an acquaintance, and who will always be able to find intercessors, and sometimes, even in clear cases of inefficiency, interested or perverse partizans. In one of the cases brought under our notice by Mr. Erle, it was the vicar of the parish who encouraged an incompetent schoolmaster to keep possession of the school-house after his removal from office by the votes of all the other trustees. We think that in the paramount interest of the schools, a power should be vested in some superior authority of requiring the trustees to institute an inquiry into the state of the instruction in a school which is found, on inspection, to be inefficient. Such a power placed in proper hands could hardly be abused, while it might sometimes be used to fortify local trustees, especially those of the smaller endowed schools, in the performance of a necessary but invidious duty. The trustees should be required to certify to the superior authority the results of their inquiry; and if their report as to the master's efficiency was unfavourable, they ought to be enabled and required to remove him, or pension him off, and on their failing to do so, the superior authority should do it in their place. An appeal to the superior authority against the report of the trustees should be given to the master whom it is proposed to remove.
[page 474]
No precautions, however, that can be adopted as to the appointment of masters and mistresses, or as to their removal, will supersede the necessity of the regular stimulus to exertion which is supplied by periodical inspection. At present, endowed schools among other charities are open to inspection by the Charity Commissioners; but the inspections of that body are not periodical, but occasional, and instituted only when called for by special circumstances, so that a great number of the charities have never been inspected by them at all.* Their staff, which consists of only five inspectors for all charities of every description, is obviously insufficient for the purpose of periodical inspection. They are a good deal dependent, in determining what cases it may be necessary to inspect, on voluntary information; and thus not only inefficiency, but possibly even positive abuses, may escape their notice. In some cases one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools has been requested by the Commissioners to report upon some endowed school; in others, the children are never examined. Some of the endowed schools have voluntarily placed themselves under the inspection of Government, and we have above quoted Mr. Cumin's observation, that such was the case with almost all the best endowed schools in his district. We are of opinion that every endowed school included in the jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners should be subject by law to Government inspection; that the middle class and elementary schools should be annually inspected; that the inspection should be accompanied by an effective examination of all the children in the school, or at least of all those on the foundation; and that the result of the inspection and examination should be recorded in a concise form, and annually published. If the classical endowed schools could be induced to place themselves under the regular inspection of the Universities, if the Universities could be induced to undertake that office, and the results of the inspection were made public, we are of opinion that good would result.
Mr. Fearon (p. 74) has observed that "some of the most prominent instances of failure in grammar schools have occurred in cases in which, under the provisions of old charters, the master has been constituted a corporation sole," which is the case in a considerable number of the earlier grammar schools. He states that "some of the worst evils which have happened to such
*Mr. Erle's Evidence, 3736, 3742, 3743.
[page 475]
charities have arisen from the mode in. which masters so situated have leased the charity estate to the detriment of their successors." We concur with him in thinking that power should be given to a superior authority in such cases to interpose a body of trustees or governors to protect the interests of the school.
As the superior authority for the above purposes, and for other and still more important purposes hereafter to be stated, we propose the Privy Council. This appears to us the only body in which authority adequate to the requirements of the case can be vested safely and with general approbation. It already possesses considerable powers in relation to the highest of our endowed places of education, the Universities, their Colleges and the Colleges of Eton and Winchester, the new statutes of which, framed by the Oxford and Cambridge Commissions, were ratified by Her Majesty in Council, and are subject to amendment by consent of the same authority. Our evidence shows, and we fully acknowledge, the good that has been done by the action of the Charity Commissioners within the range of their very limited powers. But the Charity Commission, in the first place, is an authority less recognized and looked up to by the nation, and less powerful in dealing with local interests than the Privy Council. In the second place, it is not, like the Education Committee of the Privy Council, a body constituted with a special view to the management of places of education; and we are persuaded that no body but one so constituted, can do what is requisite in the case of places of education so peculiarly in need of active and experienced supervision as the endowed schools. There is, moreover, an obvious convenience, and there will probably be a saving of expense, in placing our whole system of public education, so far as it is connected with Government, in the same official hands. The Privy Council possesses a completely organized staff of Inspectors, which might easily be made to embrace, and indeed does already to a slight extent embrace, in its action, the endowed schools. Schools possessing endowments of their own are frequently in the receipt of Government assistance. It moreover seems probable, as we shall presently have occasion to show, that considerable advantages may be gained by connecting some of the endowed schools, in a graduated system, with other places of popular education.
We recommend, then, that the legal powers now possessed by the Charity Commissioners, in relation to endowed schools and other educational charities, so far as they will not be merged in
[page 476]
the extended powers hereafter proposed, be transferred to the Privy Council, and that the Privy Council be charged with the duty of annually inspecting and reporting upon the schools, either through their ordinary Inspectors or through special Inspectors appointed for the purpose, as the circumstances of the case may be found to suggest or require.
The estates of the educational charities are intermingled with those of the general charities, the revenues of the same estate being frequently devoted partly to a school, partly to an almshouse, or some other charitable object. We do not apprehend that the difficulty of partitioning the revenues in these cases, and administering them separately, will be found insuperable. But there can be no doubt that great advantages would be gained in this respect, and still greater advantages for purposes hereafter to be described, if the whole of the charities, general as well as educational, instead of being under the jurisdiction of a special Commission, could be brought under that of the Privy Council in the manner which we shall suggest at the conclusion of this part of our report.
The Court of Chancery in framing new schemes for charities, and Parliament in passing schemes laid before it by the Charity Commissioners, exercise a power of modifying the regulations of founders for the advancement of their main design. Such a power is necessary, in order to prevent endowments from becoming, by lapse of time and change of circumstances, obsolete and useless, or even noxious to the interests which it was the object of the donors to promote. The power of posthumous legislation exercised by a founder in framing statutes to be observed after his death, is one which must in reason be limited to the period over which human foresight may be expected to extend. Without such a limitation, foundations would be open to the condemnation passed upon them by Turgot and other economists as creations of a vanity which imagines that it can foresee the requirements of all future ages, and of a credulity which supposes that strangers, administering a founder's charity in distant times, will carry out his favourite system with a zeal equal to his own. By the law of England, and by the law of nature, a man is incapable of making a perpetual disposition of his property. The State suffers him to exercise an indefinite power over the land for the purpose of his foundation; and in so doing, it is not only entitled but bound to secure the interests of future generations, which can be done only by retaining the power of modifying the founder's regulations, when necessary,
[page 477]
to suit the requirements of succeeding times. It seems, indeed, desirable in the interest of charities in general, and of educational chanties in particular, that it should be clearly laid down as a principle, that the power to create permanent institutions is granted, and can be granted, only on the condition implied, if not declared, that they be subject to such modification as every succeeding generation of men shall find requisite. This principle has been acted on ever since the Reformation, but it has never been distinctly expressed. Founders have been misled, and the consciences of timid trustees and administrators have been disturbed by the supposition that, at least for charitable purposes, proprietorship is eternal; that the land on which its rights have once been exercised can never be relieved from any of the rules and restrictions which have been imposed on it; that thenceforth it is subject, and ever will be subject, to the will not of the living, but of the dead.
Neither schemes framed by the Court of Chancery however, nor special Acts of Parliament are suited to the requirements of educational institutions. Education as we have before had occasion to observe, is a progressive and experimental subject; and every place of education requires the powers of constant and regular improvement, and even of experiment, which all places of education carried on by private enterprise enjoy. The action of the Court of Chancery has undoubtedly been very useful, but that Court can interpose only in extreme cases, where, from the failure or disregard of the original object, the great increase of the income, or other causes, a new application of the fund, or of part of it, has become manifestly necessary. Special Acts of Parliament, though unlimited in their legal scope, will in like manner only be resorted to when the evil is extreme. The object should be to prevent the occurrence of extreme cases of evil by the regular action of a competent and vigilant authority, specially bound to devote its attention to the subject, and sufficiently untrammelled by local influences to act solely in the interests of the school.
Of the Court of Chancery, Mr. Hare, the Inspector of Charities, observes,* that "it is a tribunal quite unfitted for the administration of charities, and which is only accidentally entrusted with that administration from its jurisdiction over trusts, but having no means of dealing with it systematically, having no principle to guide it, liable to be altered by the views of every
*Evidence, 3928.
[page 478]
particular judge, and having in fact no eyes or ears to see or hear, except through an affidavit." This unfitness must of course be peculiarly great in the case of charities connected with education, which require to be regulated by an authority having eyes and ears, not only for such facts as are capable of being stated in affidavits, but for the various influences which gradually change the system of education from time to time. "The question," said Lord Chancellor Eldon, when it was proposed to extend the subject of instruction in the Leeds Grammar School,* "is not what are the qualifications most suitable to the rising generation of the place where the charitable foundation subsists, but what are the qualifications intended." The Court cannot move of itself; it requires to be set in motion either by the Attorney-General or by private applicants; the Charity Commission having no power but that of recommending the Attorney-General to proceed, and of encouraging private application. Much, therefore, depends on the existence in each case of a private person sufficiently public spirited or sufficiently litigious to come forward. Moreover, though proceedings have been simplified, and though the cases of small charities are referred to the County Courts, instead of the Court of Chancery, legal expenses, very exhausting to the charity, may still be incurred.† It is, in a word, most undesirable that a school should be dependent for improvement on a series of proceedings, even though they may be amicable proceedings, before a court of law.
In cases where the improvements required are beyond the power of the Court of Chancery, the Charity Commissioners are authorized to lay provisional schemes before Parliament; but these schemes have been so often defeated or suffered to fall to the ground from local opposition, and the want of any responsible minister to take charge of the measure in the House of Commons, that the Commissioners seem to have almost abandoned this method of proceeding in despair. "Our experience," says Mr. Erle, "of the result of proposing schemes to Parliament has been very disappointing. We have repeatedly proposed schemes to Parliament which have not been discussed, or have been rejected apparently without sufficient examination." The only scheme laid before Parliament during the last session was one relating to the school and library of Archbishop Tenison in St. Martin's in the Fields. Thus the Charity Commissioners have, practically speaking, no effective power of initiation.
*Attorney General v. Whiteley, 11 Ves. 241.
†Mr. Erle's Evidence, 3747.
[page 479]
There is a disadvantage also in the division of jurisdictions, the subject being one, and the principles of administration, generally speaking, the same. This is the case even as regards the division of jurisdiction over the charities, by a line which (having reference merely to the amount of the income) is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, between the Court of Chancery and the County Courts. But between Parliament and the Court of Chancery there appears to be a conflict of jurisdiction, or at least an uncertainty as to the limits of their respective action. The House of Commons rejected a Bill embodying a scheme of the Charity Commissioners in relation to a charity at Newcastle, on the ground that it was within the power of the Court of Chancery to effect the same object; though the Commissioners thought it beyond the power of the Court to effect all the objects of the scheme, and were confirmed in their judgment by a decision of the Court itself in a very similar instance.*
Under these circumstances we propose to apply to Endowed Schools permanently a method a improvement similar in principle to that which has been successfully employed for a limited period by the Legislature in adapting to the requirements of the present time the statutes of colleges in the Universities. It is a method combining the action of a central authority, possessing effective powers of initiating useful changes, with that of the local administrators and of Parliament. The central authority in the case of the Universities was a Parliamentary Commission; in this case we propose that it shall be the Privy Council. That the action of a central authority is necessary in this case seems to us past dispute. We have no wish to speak disparagingly of the local trustees, called upon as they are to discharge duties unconnected with their private interest and sometimes onerous, from mere motives of charity and public spirit. Mr. Erle† testifies that within his experience the interest shown by trustees generally in the administration of educational charities has much improved. No doubt they have shared as a body in the increased regard for education and the increased sense of social duty which began to appear when the attention of the nation, which had been engrossed up to 1815 by a great military struggle, was turned to its domestic concerns. But the reports of our Assistant Commissioners, Mr. Fraser, Mr. Jenkins, and Mr. Foster, above quoted, show that this improvement, apparent in districts where public opinion is vigilant and strong, is not so apparent among the local
*Mr. Erle's Evidence, 3820.
†Evidence, 3859.
[page 480]
trustees of remote and rural districts, where there still prevails much neglect of duty and some positive abuse. Even in the metropolis and in great seaports the state of things is not satisfactory. Local self-government, when pure and efficient, is no doubt much to be preferred to the action of a central authority; but the purity and efficiency of local self-government depend for their continuance on the activity and vigilance of private interest, which are wanting in the case of public charities. Had the antidotes to apathy and corruption which have preserved the soundness of other parts of our local administration, been at work in the administration of endowments, there could never have arisen that mass of confusion, misappropriation, and abuse which compelled the Legislature to issue the first Charity Commission.
Even for the purpose of administration, therefore, a central authority possessing the power of initiation seems to be requisite; but it is still more necessary for the purpose of improvement. Supposing local trustees sufficiently intelligent to see the interest of the institution in any proposed improvement, they may yet shrink from the difficulty of departing from routine, and making an important change when not positively called on to do so, and still more from the odium which any attempt to improve the application of local charities almost always entails. Mr. Hare* points to the fear of odium as interfering with judicious action in the case of charities generally. "For instance," he says, "I am told that in parishes, or large towns like Norwich, and other places where a quantity of bread has been given away in the Church at a certain time of the year, if a young clergyman comes into the parish and objects to it, and wishes to introduce an improvement or more useful application of the fund, he has his name chalked upon the wall with 'Who took away the bread of the poor?'" Local feeling would probably oppose any attempt, however wise, to relax restrictions confining charities to the natives or inhabitants of the district. It would probably also oppose any attempt to convert a part of the funds of a school now expended in clothing and feeding a small number of children to the education of a larger number. The vision of local administrators is limited to their own school; it does not extend to any comprehensive scheme of improvement for endowed schools throughout the country, to any reciprocal advantages which under such a scheme might be purchased by mutual con-
*Evidence, 3936.
[page 481]
cessions, or to anything like a graduated connexion of school with school for the purpose of drafting promising pupils from a lower place of education into a higher. The ordinary administration will still remain in the hands of the local trustees: and when a good system has once been instituted, it may be found possible and desirable to transfer to some local authority a portion of the powers which, until a good system shall have been instituted, we think it necessary to vest in the Privy Council.
We propose that the Privy Council be invested with the power, to be exercised through the Education Committee, of framing, from time to time, regulations for the better administration or improvement of any educational charity, with a view to the advancement of the founder's main design, and of laying these regulations before the local trustees of the charity, to whom, in case they object, we would allow a certain period for appealing against the scheme. The appeals should be heard by a Committee of the Privy Council distinct from the Education Committee. If the scheme is not appealed against, or if it is confirmed on appeal, we propose that it should be included in the Schedule of a Bill, similar in form to the Inclosure Acts, to be brought into Parliament by the responsible minister of the department.
These powers will supersede the administrative functions of the Court of Chancery in regard to educational charities, as well as those of the Charity Commissioners. The judicial powers of the Court, in regard to the charities, and the corresponding functions of the Attorney-General, will remain unimpaired. A part of the administrative power of the Court has already been transferred to the Charity Commissioners, who are empowered in certain cases to make orders which were formerly made by Courts of Equity.
We do not propose that the powers of amendment should extend to the regulations of any foundation during the lifetime of the founder, or (except with the unanimous consent of his trustees) within twenty-one years after his decease. Nor do we propose that they should extend to the alteration of any rules laid down by the founder as to the religious denomination of trustees, or teachers, or as to the character of the religious instruction to be given in the school.
We would place no other limitation on the exercise of the amending power. We will mention the principal objects for which it appears to us it might be usefully employed, rather with a view to indicating the line of action than to confining it. We have pointed out, as we think, the best hands to which the
[page 482]
duty of keeping the endowed schools in a state of efficiency can be consigned. In performing that duty, the Privy Council and the Trustees will be guided by a variety of local circumstances which we cannot embrace, and of future circumstances which we cannot foresee.
(1) The first object will be to secure that the nature of the instruction given in each school shall be adapted to the requirements of the class to whom it ought to be given; and, for that purpose, to abolish what has become obsolete, and to introduce, from time to time, what experience may recommend. We have quoted Miss Carpenter's just remark as to the tendency of the endowed schools to rise in the class taking advantage of them till they are placed beyond the reach of those to whom they originally belonged. We have pointed out one source of this misappropriation in the historical error adopted by the Court of Chancery, as to the meaning of the word "grammar," which has led to the conversion of free schools into exclusive places of classical education. The correction of this error, when it has been so long established, would endanger the existence of some eminent classical schools. Its further progress may, however, be arrested; and in the cases (and we believe they are numerous) where a "grammar school" is not in request as a place of classical education, the requirement of classical instruction and the classical qualifications of the teachers may be dispensed with, and the school may be devoted to a more general kind of education.
The expediency of this has indeed been already acknowledged by the Legislature; and the Act for "improving the condition and extending the benefit of grammar schools" (3 & 4 Vict. c. 77.) empowered Courts of Equity, in framing new schemes for endowed schools, to extend the system of education beyond the Latin and Greek languages; a provision which would have been most useful had the powers been vested in an authority competent and bound to take the initiative in the matter, but which, as the powers are vested in an authority requiring to be set in motion from without, has produced a very limited effect. The Act unfortunately recognized the erroneous legal decisions as to the meaning of the term "grammar school," and according to Mr. Fearon (p. 70), "brought within the influence of the decisions a large number of schools which there is reason to believe would otherwise have been open to extension." The power of omitting Greek and Latin as the principal subject of instruction, and altering the qualification of the master accordingly, is moreover limited by the Act to cases where the revenue
[page 483]
is insufficient for a classical school; a limitation evidently based on the erroneous conception that the proper object of the foundation is classical education, and calculated greatly to interfere with the beneficial operation of the Act. Another defect in the Act is, that masters, even appointed after the Act, have an absolute veto on all extension of the instruction, unless proceedings for that purpose be commenced within six months after their appointment. Mr. Fearon mentions instances in which this veto has prohibited all improvement. He tells us of a case in which the master refusing to teach anything but Greek and Latin, and no scholar appearing, the school is closed and becoming ruined, and another in which all that the Court could do was to approve of a scheme, with liberty to the master to accept it if he should think fit so to do. He has dwelt at great length on the evils arising from the present state of things, and the necessity of remedial measures of a more effectual kind. Mr. Cumin* has also collected some strong instances of the waste of power in "grammar schools" in which the system of education has not been extended. He has selected these instances from the manuscript records of special investigations conducted on the spot by the Charity Commission, now preserved in that office. We extract them from his Report, as illustrations of a general fact which we believe to be past dispute, and not as imputations on the conduct of the trustees or schoolmasters of particular foundations, who are not answerable for the deficiencies of a system sanctioned by the law. It should be observed that the inspections, on the records of which Mr. Cumin's accounts are mainly based, are of various dates, ranging over the last six years:
Midhurst At Midhurst, with an income of £30, the school was held until the present year by a master who claimed to hold it as a grammar school, where he was required to teach only Latin and Greek. He actually had no scholars at all. At the same time I find that in this very town the national school received in 1855, £170 from the Parliamentary grant.
Warrington At Warrington, the population of which is 23,651, there is a free grammar school, the income of which is £484. In 1858, the boys educated were 35; but of these there was only one boy in the first and second class. According to the report of the Charity Inspector the master is discouraged, and he adds that here, as in the case of almost all manufacturing towns which he had examined, a school providing a commercial education which should embrace Latin, and nothing higher, would be likely to succeed better. At Warrington it appears that Parliament has contributed largely to no fewer than four schools. The particulars may be seen in the Appendix to the last Report of the Committee of Education.
*Report on Educational Charities, pp, 294, 295, 296, 297.
[page 484]
Milton Abbas At Milton Abbas in Dorsetshire, the income of the free grammar school amounts to £199 10s. The site of the school was removed to Blandford, several miles, by an Act of Parliament, which, I understand, was promoted by Lord Milton. At the time of the inquiry there were 58 private pupils in the school, but no scholars on the foundation, which therefore appears to be useless. The boarders pay £40. The foundation boys, when there are any, pay nothing for education, but £25 on other accounts.
Plympton At Plympton, in Devonshire, there is a grammar school, the income of which is £220; but there is frequently only a single pupil. According to the Inspector's report, the trustees, with the concurrence of the inhabitants of the district, desire a commercial education; at the same time, according to the last Report of the Committee of Council, the national school at Plympton receives aid from Government.
Wotton-under-Edge At Wotton-under-Edge, in Gloucestershire, there is a free grammar school, the income of which is £536 11s 9d. There are 10 foundation boys, each of whom is allowed £6. Their gowns and caps cost £15 a year. The boys are nominated, but the applications do not exceed the vacancies. It appears that the sum spent on rates, taxes, commission for collecting rents, keeping accounts, etc., amounted in one year to £79 18s 11½d. Out of the six trustees one is the master himself, two are absentees, one is dead; so that only two are possibly efficient. The master is incumbent of a parish of 4,000 or 5,000 souls, and takes private pupils. At the same time this parish also is receiving money from the Education grant.
Hingham At Hingham, in Norfolk, there is a free school, the income of which is £210. At the time of the Inspector's inquiry there were 30 boys in the lower school. There was also an upper school, but only eight foundation boys, the late master having had 42 boarders. According to the report, the sort of education supplied by the upper school was not wanted. In Hingham the national school receives both aid from the Government and considerable pecuniary support from the rector. There seems to be no provision for a girls' or infants' school, though it may be mentioned that £35 is distributed yearly in bread. Part of this, if applied to education - a plan which many persons in the parish seemed to approve of - and the better administration of the free school, would amply supply the educational wants of Hingham.
Coventry The city of Coventry is, to use a legal expression, "a leading case" on the question of charities. It has been the subject of a special inquiry by the Charity Commissioners, and the result of their deliberation appears in the Appendix to their third Report. I shall, therefore content myself with some general observations. It will be remarked that the administration of the Coventry charities illustrates not only the point immediately under discussion, but several others which will hereafter be discussed in detail.
In that city the endowed schools are numerous. According to the Digest of the Charity Commissioners' Reports, they are as follows:
| £ |
| A Free Grammar School with an annual income then of | 1,070 |
| Bablacke's Boys' Hospital | 890 |
| Cow-lane Charity School | 400 |
| Southern and Craner's Charity School | 89 |
| Bayly's School | 153 |
| Fairfair's School | 72 |
| Bluecoat School for girls | 134 |
| £2,808 |
[page 485]
These revenues have now considerably increased. According to the Report of the Charity Inspector, the income of Bablacke Hospital was £1,660 instead of £890, and the result is that 52 boys are educated.
Besides these educational endowments there is a loan charity, the mere accumulation of which amounts to some £22,000, and another charity distributed in doles of money amounting to £1,100 a year.
With such funds it is obvious that there ought to be no difficulty in supplying education to the citizens without extraneous aid. I have not been able to obtain the precise number of boys and girls educated by all, but with respect to some I have. In most of the schools the children are clothed and maintained as well as educated, and it is probably correct to say that the number in all of them does not exceed 350.
The free grammar school was in 1852 divided into two schools, an upper or classical, and a lower or commercial school. But the masters of both do parochial duty. In fact, about a century ago, by Act of Parliament, the mastership of the grammar school was joined with the rectory; but the two duties are incompatible. The separating the school into an upper and lower was something, but still the change was not successful. The Charity Inspector reports that in 1852 the free boys in the upper school numbered 22, the non-free boys 4. In this upper school the course of education is the same as at Rugby; but then, whilst the class from which free boys are recruited does not want so high a style of education, the non-free boys, besides being charged too much, are required to associate with an inferior class, to which their parents object. The upper school therefore is comparatively useless,
Again in the lower or commercial school, which is capable of accommodating 100 or 120 boys, there were at the time of the last inquiry only 80. Out of a population of 36,000, the attendance of only 100 boys speaks for itself. But the disproportion becomes still more enormous when we find that in Coventry there are no fewer than eight schools receiving large sums from the Parliamentary grant, the details of which may be seen in the Appendix to the last Report of the Committee of Council. ...
Warwick As it is at Coventry so it is at Warwick. In 1851 the population was 10,973, consisting of professional men, tradespeople, artificers, and workmen. According to Mr. Heath, the Treasurer of the Charities, £1,000 might be obtained for education out of those not directly founded for that purpose, and according to the Inspector the funds for education are ample. In fact, he says, that of personalty there is a sum of £12,369, besides an annual income of £1,594 derived from realty, which might be applied to education. Add to these funds £217 7s 5d for exhibitions, and £269 13s 1d for apprenticeship. But the King's school, which I observe was declared to be inefficient at the time of the former inquiry, for there were then only three foundation boys and two pay scholars, is inefficient still. Shortly before the inspector's visit there had been only three or four boys in the grammar school, and 100 in the commercial school. The truth is, that the education supplied is not the education wanted. In proof of this it is stated that during 10 years not a single son of a tradesman or professional man has expressed a desire to proceed to the University; and the exhibitions, of which there appear to be four to confer, are never full. The same is the case at Coventry. But whilst these large funds devoted to education are comparatively wasted, at least three parochial schools in Warwick receive contributions from the Parliamentary grant.
[page 486]
Ludlow Again, at Ludlow Grammar School, with an income of £540, the exhibitions to the University are in abeyance, and the boys number 50.
It may be interesting to recall the state of some of the grammar schools, as disclosed in the Digest of the late Commissioners. Various causes may have contributed to these results, but probably the chief was that the education supplied was not the education wanted. At Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, there was a free grammar school, with an income of the value of £467 7s, the result of which was six boys learning grammar. I am told that for many years there was no scholar. The master, says my informant, whom I remember to have heard of, lived as a lauded gentleman on his own estate. At Stratford-on-Avon the income of the school was £130; the result was 15 free scholars. At Mancetter, in the same county, the income of the grammar school was £288 11s 7d without any scholar. This, however, arose from the inefficiency of the master. At Coleshill, in the same county, there was a grammar school with an income of £175, in which the head master taught five boys the classics free. At Thetford, in the county of Norfolk, there was a grammar school with an income of £258 a year, the result of which was that the number of foundation boys was never kept up to eight. At the time of the inquiry one of this description was being taught by the head master, who had also seven boarders. At Little Walsingham the income of the school was £110 without a single scholar, because no one wanted to learn Latin. In Northamptonshire there was a grammar school at Daventry, the income of which was £77 9s 9d. The instruction was in the learned languages only, but there was no application for any such instruction, and no free scholars attending. At Guilsborough, in the same county, the income was £80, but no boys were being educated as free scholars, "there being no demand by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood for grammatical learning."
Mr. Cumin* proceeds to illustrate the advantage of adapting the education given in grammar schools to the requirements of the neighbourhood at the present time:
Cromer In order to show the advantage which may result by supplying such education as the inhabitants want, I mention these cases. At Cromer there is a free grammar school, the master of which was to be "skilful in grammar.'' The endowment is only £10, but it is made up to £25. At the time of the inquiry there were 76 scholars taught reading, writing, and accounts. For many years before the change there had been no application for classical education.
Audlem The case of the Free Grammar School at Audlem, Cheshire, which was founded in 1642, is so singular that I shall give it in detail. The master, besides the school and dwelling-house, has £20 a year. The facts connected with this school prove not only that a good master is of the first importance, but that the prosperity or decay of a school depends greatly upon whether the educational wants of the people in the neighbourhood are regarded or ignored.
In 1796 the brother of the Dean of Hereford was master, and the number of boarders was considerable, some of them the sons of gentlemen of the county. Besides, the school was open to all classes, and all were taught in the same room. There was then no other school in Audlem.
*Report on Educational Charities, pp. 298, 299.
[page 487]
1800-1829 there was another master who still had boarders, but the school declined.
1829-1836 the free boys continue to diminish in number.
1836-1839 an Irishman of "dissipated habits and in embarrassed circumstances succeeded." In his time there were some boarders, 14 free scholars, and 15 or 16 at half a guinea a quarter.
1839-1841 the next master had no boarders. The day boys who paid were so few that he could not make a living. There were 9 or 10 in the Latin class; about 20 or 30 gentlemen's sons, and 10 or 12 free boys.
1842-1850 there was a slight improvement.
1850-1853 the master had 6 or 7 boarders; about 22 boys including boarders in 1850, but the attendance had diminished in 1853.
1853-1856 the next master brought two boarders, and he had about 3 or 4 others, but at last he had none.
1856 there was an entire change. A certificated master was appointed.
The clergyman states that, when he entered the parish, he found it destitute of all means of education for the children of the poor, the small tradesmen, and small farmers. The existence of the endowed school prevented the establishment of an independent National school. The effect of the alteration has been to increase the number of scholars to 75 boys on the books, consisting of all classes in the parish, from the wealthier farmers down to the smaller cottagers. The subjects of instruction are reading, spelling, English composition, writing, arithmetic, mensuration, geography, sacred history, and general information. The cottagers' children are taught chiefly reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic, and all equally receive religious instruction.
It seems that some complaints were made to the Inspector of Charities, that the master could not teach Latin, but having promised that he should qualify himself to teach the elements of Latin, he is to remain for the present, and the complainants are satisfied.
Here then is an endowment of no great amount, sufficient, nevertheless, when fairly used, to furnish considerable assistance to education. Moreover, this great advantage has been gained, of mixing the children of the small farmers and the small tradesmen with those of the mechanic and the labourer in a common school-room.
Bath At Bath, there is a free grammar school, the history of which during the last few years illustrates the importance of charging fees, as well as the necessity of providing such an education as the population requires. When the scheme was before the Court of Chancery, the trustees proposed that a fee of two or four guineas a year should be charged. This the Court refused. The consequence is that a low class of boys was introduced into the school by the nomination of the municipal trustees, although it is asserted that even their parents could certainly afford to pay 10s or 15s a quarter. Thus the tone of the school was lowered, and considerable pecuniary resources were sacrificed. But this was not the only mistake. The late master, an eminent scholar, desired to make it a first-rate grammar school, and sunk a considerable sum of money on improvements. But the free boys prevented the sons of the upper classes coming, and, in fact, the school was a failure. The system has now been changed. A good English education, including modern languages, mathematics, and drawing, is supplied. All the boys are required to learn Latin; but those who do not learn Greek are in nowise hindered thereby from moving up. It is to be observed that the necessity of learning Latin is maintained both at Bath and at Manchester and elsewhere, not so much, I believe,
[page 488]
for the purpose of teaching the boys that language, but rather for the purpose of excluding those who do not really mean to learn at all. It is in fact a test of the desire to be instructed. But to return to the effect of the new system - it appears that whereas in the half year ending Christmas 1858, the numbers were only 65, on the 8th of February 1860, they were 103.
In some cases the increased value of the property will permit a partition of the fund between different grades of education. King Edward's school, at Birmingham, as re-organized under an Act of Parliament obtained in 1831, and two subsequent Acts, affords an admirable instance of classical, English or middle, and elementary schools, supported by the same foundation, and placed under the same general government, to the great benefit, probably, of the lower departments, which thus come under the supervision of a head master, who is sure, if well chosen, to be a superior and liberal-minded man.* The free schools at Loughborough, as reorganized under a decree of the Court of Chancery, are another successful instance of classical, English, and elementary schools, supported by the same foundation.
In such cases a drafting system should be instituted, for the purpose of raising the most promising pupils from the elementary to the English, and from the English to the classical school. If the amount of the fund permits, a part of it may be employed in providing small exhibitions to be held in the middle and classical parts of the school, by pupils advanced from the lower department. In King Edward's school at Birmingham the head master is authorized by the governors to promote to the grammar school, without a new nomination, a limited number of boys who have distinguished themselves in the elementary schools, and in the same way to transfer promising boys from the English to the classical school. If the upper part of the school is a free boarding school, the places on its foundation may be made prizes for industry and good conduct for the boys in the lower department. In Christ's Hospital, at Ipswich, as we learn from a passage of Mr. Hare's report, already quoted, the free boarding school, under the improved system, is filled by the most deserving boys drafted from the day school, which is no longer free. A way will be thus be made for merit to rise. Nor can the establishment of such a connexion between the schools of different classes fail in some degree
*A full account of King Edward's school at Birmingham, with which we have been favoured by the Rev. E. H. Gifford, the head master, is appended to this part of our Report. We refer to it as a good general type of combined schools with a drafting system. There are points of detail, such as the provision of an entirely gratuitous education to the sons of the inhabitants of Birmingham, which are more open to question.
[page 489]
to soften the sharp lines of educational and social demarcation. In a society constituted like that of the United States, all classes may resort to the common school. In a society constituted like that of England, the places of education for different classes must be distinct; but they need not be unconnected in towns where it is possible to effect the arrangement here suggested, either by extending to all classes the benefits of the same educational charity, or by any other means.
It is unnecessary to impress upon those who are conversant with the subject of education, the propriety of avoiding inflexible rules in settling any future schemes of instruction, and of leaving the hands of the schoolmaster as free as possible within the range of subjects appropriate to the particular class of school.
(2) We think that the guarantees which we have suggested for purity of election in the appointment of schoolmasters, and for their removal under certain circumstances, should be at once enjoined by law; but on the Privy Council will devolve the supplementary duty of framing regulations as to the class of certificate to be required of the master or mistress of each school, according to the kind of instruction given.
(3) An improved distribution of the income of the endowments is another object to which we think the amending power should extend. The Bishop of St. David's, in a passage of his evidence already quoted, says: "Where it (the endowment) provides a salary just sufficient for the support of the teachers and gratuitous instruction for the scholars, I believe it must prevent the possibility of a good school." Mr. Hare, the Inspector of charities, has made some remarks to the same effect. In such cases it will obviously be advisable to redistribute the income, reducing the master's salary so as to make him more dependent upon fees, and giving to a larger number of scholars an education better than they could provide for themselves, but still partly supported by their own contributions, instead of giving to a few a gratuitous education, which experience has condemned. It might, perhaps, be also desirable to apply apart of the income to the providing of proper teaching apparatus, in which many of the endowed schools appear to be miserably deficient. The institution of prizes for the scholars might be another useful object. In some cases, probably, the amount of the endowment would permit the foundation of exhibitions to be competed for in the school, and held either as means of support at a higher place of education, or as an assistance in the commencement of a trade. All these are
[page 490]
legitimate aids to a master, whose income, when he is thus aided, should be left, as much as possible, to depend on his success.
(4) It would also be desirable that the power should extend to the employment of a part of the capital fund of the charity in the improvement and enlargement of the school premises, which, as our evidence proves, are often in a miserable state. For this purpose we think the Privy Council might be safely empowered to direct the sale or mortgage of a portion of the landed estate of any endowed school, for a purpose which, in the cases referred to, will obviously be the best investment of the fund.
(5) Among the cases in which a redistribution of the revenues seems worthy of consideration, are those in which a large portion of the revenues of an elementary school resorted to only by children whose parents are resident on the spot is expended, not in educating the scholars, but in maintaining or clothing them. Mr. Cumin* has furnished us with some instances of questionable expenditure of this kind. They are derived from the same official source as his instances of the inefficiency of Grammar Schools, and we quote them with the same qualification. In reading the extract from his report which follows, and estimating the educational results of charity schools which it exhibits, it should be borne in mind that the direct annual cost of educating a child in a school under the present Government system is between 28s and 30s a year.†
Worrall's School This school is situate in Cherrytree-alley, Baltiestreet, and was founded in 1689. The total annual income is £443 4s, and the master is said to be competent. The number of boys educated and clothed is 50. The subjects of instruction are reading, writing, and geography. The boys seem to be admitted as probationers, and then by the election of the trustees. The freedom is to poor boys born in the lordship of the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate. The master has £100; the clothing costs £100; after other expenses there is a surplus of £190 a year. The costume is absurd; the coat is still red. The orange breeches, shoes, and hose of orange - a dress which procured the boys the soubriquet of "yellow hammers" - have been discontinued. Almost the only individual who considers the maintenance of this peculiarity important is the rector. According to the Charity Inspector's Report, he thinks that any objection to this dress is overweighed "by its picturesque appearance in church, and by the fact that it is a visible commemoration of a great event in national history." On the other hand, the better opinion seems to be that "the dress is obtrusive, that its adoption does violence to the feelings
*Report on Educational Charities, pp. 286, 287.
†See the Report of the Committee of Council on Education, 1859-60, p. 17.
[page 491]
of the boys and their parents, and is only forced upon them by necessity, that it exposes the boys to the unnecessary humiliation of insult and ridicule, that it injures their sense of self-respect, and that it is therefore not morally beneficial, but rather the reverse." Again the school-room is very confined, and cannot contain a large number of children. "I am told also," says Mr. Hare, who inspected it, "that it is so near to the dwellings of disreputable persons that disgusting language is frequently heard through the party-wall which divides the school from the next house."
If there were no want of educational funds these educational eccentricities might be pardonable. But the population of the three districts of St. Luke's amounted in 1851 to about 60,000. The incumbents of the district churches within the parish are without the pecuniary means effectively to arrest the progress of ignorance and vice. They are compelled to have recourse to the private benevolence of strangers to the parish, and to the Parliamentary grant. At the same time, in this very parish there is not only an actual surplus of money given specially for the promotion of education, lying absolutely idle, but the portion of the funds employed in education is clogged with absurd conditions. No boy can take advantage of the school without making himself ridiculous, and even if he brave the ridicule, his ears are contaminated during school hours by ribaldry and obscenity.
I myself visited this school, and I found it within a few yards of the St. Thomas Charterhouse schools, which have been built at a great expense by money supplied in large measure out of the Parliamentary grant, notwithstanding local means, which ought to have been ample. Nor is this all. It appeared that the children who were clothed and educated gratuitously were the children of persons earning from £1 to 30s a week, and that most of them had in fact attended the St. Thomas Charterhouse schools, and had paid 4d or 6d a week for schooling. It seems strange policy to withdraw children from excellent schools towards which they contribute, and to employ a valuable endowment in giving these very children a free education in a bad building and an absurd costume.
Grey Coat or Parochial School Again, take the case of the Grey Coat or Parochial School in the same parish, which was founded in the year 1698.
The income seems to be £650 or £700 a year, of which £200 are annual subscriptions. There are 100 boys and 100 girls, exclusive of those on Fuller's foundation.
They are clothed and educated, although it does not appear that there is anything about clothing in the original deed. The master has £100 a year; the mistress £55. The boys and girls are nominated by life governors and subscribers. The clothing costs 25s for each child; the whole sum being £262 1s 2d.
A sum of £36 is paid for an anniversary dinner for schools.
The Inspector of Charities says: "I have had some conversation with the treasurer and others, being active trustees of the charity, and they are sensible that much more good might be effected by this school and the other endowed schools if there could be a combination of the endowments for the purpose of distributing this benefit over the whole of the elementary schools of the parish, either in the shape of exhibitions or prizes or otherwise, as may after sufficient consideration be determined upon."
[page 492]
Fuller's Charity To this I may add the case of Fuller's charity, in the same parish. The trusts of this charity are for the use of the children of the lordship part of the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate (now St. Luke's parish), which then were or thereafter should be brought up and educated in one of the public charity schools in the lordship in the principles of the Church of England, "in such manner as the executors of the founder should direct or appoint." In the year 1854, when Mr, Hare, the Inspector, made his report, from which I have derived these facts, the net income of this charity was £112 12s 8d, and the result of this was that 24 boys were taught at the parochial school, which has just been described. The books and stationery cost £10 5s, the clothing of the boys costs £53 7s 4d, and there is a surplus of £25 or £30 a year.
The aggregate income of the endowed schools in St. Luke's parish is stated by Mr. Cumin to be £1,365, and the number of boys and girls educated 840. He afterwards describes the extraordinary efforts which have been made, and the large sums which have been granted by Parliament to supply schools to the destitute population of the same parish.
Exeter Let us now proceed to Exeter. At the Blue School, which has an income of £500, there are 25 boarders on the foundation; but whilst the usher gets only £50 a year, the clothing of the boys costs £57. Again, at the Episcopal Schools, the income of which appears to be £694 (including subscriptions), 160 boys and 120 girls are educated and clothed, but out of this a sum of not less than £320 is spent in clothing the children in blue of the old manufacture of Exeter.
The education is entirely free. The attendance at the time of Mr. Hare's report was irregular, but now, according to the returns of the Privy Council, under whose inspection the school has been placed, appears to be good. Among Mr. Hare's remarks I find the following. The late clerical superintendent communicated to the trustees his deliberate opinion that gratuitous education and the clothing of the children operated prejudicially, and would go far to account for the low moral tone which he had observed to prevail generally in the school under his charge. The parents came chiefly for the clothing, and so did the boys. The clothing consumes nearly half the income, is not enjoined by the original foundation, and leads to pauperizing the inhabitants. And some of the trustees, consisting of the parochial incumbents, declare that the rules of the institution require complete revision.
Bristol In Queen Elizabeth's Hospital at Bristol, which has an income of some £6,000 a year, and where 163 boys are clothed, educated, and maintained, I was told that the class of parents was not inferior to those who sent their children to parochial schools. In fact the parents are small tradesmen, mechanics, and labouring men, and there can be no doubt that the great majority of such parents could both clothe their children and pay something towards their education. Moreover, it is to be remembered that in the last 26 years Bristol has received between £20,000 and £30,000 from the Parliamentary grant, and that the number of schools now receiving aid amounts to 33.
Spalding Again, at Spalding, in Lincolnshire, where there is an
[page 493]
evident demand for education, for there are two schools, one a National the other a British school, receiving Government aid, - the Blue-coat school, with an income in 1853 of £251 11s 7d, educated only 40 boys and four girls, the master receiving £45, the schoolmistress £33, whilst the clothing cost no less than £116 8s. Probably many of these very children so clothed had attended the National or British school. In the same town, at the Petit school, out of an income of £185, a sum of £35 is spent on clothing.
Plymouth At Plymouth Grey school, which is attended by the same class of boys who attend the National school, only 89 boys and girls are educated with an income of £299, of which £164 are derived from endowment, and £112 from the Parliamentary grant. The endowment and school-pence should be more than sufficient to educate the day scholars.
Nottingham At Nottingham, the revenue of the Blue-coat school amounts to about £400 a year. The scholars consist of 60 boys and 20 girls, and the course of instruction is the same as in the National school. The salaries of both master and mistress amount to £105, but the clothing cost £202.
All Hallows, Staining In the parish of All Hallows, Staining, there is a school charity, the funds of which were originally £1,000, which have since been nearly doubled. The income amounts to £64 10s, which is employed in educating eight boys, and clothing them. As I am informed, nothing is said of clothing in the original foundation deed. The boys are elected by the vestry, and are chiefly of the class of small tradesmen and office-keepers, - certainly above the rank of those who attend National or British schools. More than £30 is consumed in clothing, and £24 in hiring a private schoolmaster to teach the eight boys. If the boys remain till 14, they are apprenticed at a premium of £10.
Canterbury At Canterbury the Blue-coat school, with an income of £385 8s, educates and maintains 16 boys. ...
At the same time four National schools and one British school receive aid from the Parliamentary grant.* ...
Reading At Reading, the income of the Blue-coat school is £1,081 14s 9d. Mr. Martin says the regular number of scholars is 43, who are boarded, clothed, educated, and most of them apprenticed. They wear the same dress as the boys at Christ's Hospital. The intention of the founder, that 30 other boys should be taught besides those who are clothed and fed, is altogether neglected. He adds, that the school might be made much more useful. It may be observed that in Reading no fewer than six schools (one of which is a British school) receive aid from Parliament. ...
Wakefield At Wakefield, the charities of which amount to £3,206 per annum, the charity school obtains £150, with which 156 children
*An account of the Canterbury charities and their distribution will be found appended to Mr. Martin's evidence, p. 515.
[page 494]
are educated and wholly or partly clothed. But it is admitted that the school is in an unsatisfactory state, and complaints are made that the dress is ridiculous.
Twickenham At Twickenham, where the clothes are conspicuous and grotesque, the boys who have them are the least regular and attentive. The trustees, it is said, are anxious to discontinue them.
Norwich At Norwich, there is a boys' hospital which was founded for bringing up and teaching very poor children of Norwich. The net income amounts to £1,121 7s 3d. The results of this are that 68 boys who are nominated, are educated. Instead of the boys being maintained in the hospital, a sum of £10 is paid to the parents, which in 1856 amounted to £677 10s. The clothing costs £54. The apprenticeship fees cost £110, together with other items. But the master is supported by fees from the children.
Effect of Nomination The boys are admitted at nine, and it is a most remarkable fact, that many of them on being admitted are unable to read; and this result is often caused by the expectation of admission into the hospital. It seems, therefore, that this system of nominating children to be educated and clothed gratuitously not only withdraws a large sum of money which might be employed more usefully, but positively discourages education. The parents naturally say, my boy will be taken care of when he enters the hospital, and therefore I will do nothing for him now. In the girls' hospital at Norwich, the net income of which is £687, the sum of £582 was in 1856 paid to the parents, and £93 were spent in clothing.
Wells At the Blue-coat School, Wells, out of £420 applicable to education, as much as £200 is spent in apprenticeship and clothing. The clothing is not specially needed by the parents of the children to whom it is supplied, and it is the general opinion, even of those who are in favour of apprenticeship fees in other places, that the system does not work in that city. Nevertheless, this very Blue-coat School seems to receive Government aid.
Mr. Cumin* proceeds to mention instances of the good effect of a different employment of the endowment:
Hereford In contrast to this state of things, I may mention the Blue-coat School at Hereford. The endowment is only £103, the voluntary subscriptions amount to £80. But out of this, education is provided for 124 boys and 110 girls. The report from which I extract these facts thus proceeds:
"The children used to be clothed, but the numbers were much fewer. The gentlemen connected with the school all agree that the school flourishes much better since the clothing has been abolished than it did before, - a matter, says Mr. Hare, which I think is well worthy of consideration with reference to many of the parish and ward schools in the city of London."
Buxton Again, at Buxton, Derbyshire, the school income is £90 8s. The salary of the master is £80. In 1857 the average attendance was 116. Mr. Martin says, the scholars all pay, and the school has risen since this system was adopted. The children are well taught, and the numbers are increasing.
*Report on Educational Charities, p. 291.
[page 495]
Mr. Cumin has taken pains to ascertain the class of parents whose children receive the benefits of charity schools. He has questioned many schoolmasters, who have furnished him with lists of the occupations of the parents of their pupils, he has questioned trustees, he has made personal inspection of the children, and he is satisfied that as a general rule there is no difference whatever between the circumstances of the parents of children at these schools and those at other schools.
The question for those who exercise the power of amendment to consider in all these cases will be, what good object is gained by maintaining or clothing the scholars or by taking them from their homes. Are the places in these foundations given to a class of persons specially in need of them and specially deserving of them, or are they given to persons of the same class in all respects, as those who, with benefit to themselves as well as justice towards the community, pay the whole expense of maintaining their own children, and a part at least of the expense of educating them at the National and other schools? Can it be expected that trustees and governors acting gratuitously, will spare from their private concerns the time and attention necessary to investigate each applicant's case, and to distinguish need from importunity, or even from imposture? Is not the surest test of destitution in ordinary cases that which has been provided by the Legislature under the Poor Law, and ought not the union schools to be made satisfactory places of education for all who are designated as destitute by that test? Supposing it desirable to have a certain number of places on the foundation for special cases of indigence and merit, might not a great part of the fund be more usefully employed in assisting the education of a large number of children, than in maintaining or clothing a few? These are questions, in the determination of which we would by no means have local circumstances disregarded, or any inflexible rule adopted; but which we think ought to be determined with the assistance of an authority superior to mere local feelings, and capable of acting on an enlarged view of the subject for the highest interest of the class to which these foundations belong. The case of orphans is one obviously deserving special consideration, particularly in districts such as the mining districts, where accidental deaths are common. In some cases it may be desirable to adopt the system of the Christ's Hospital at Ipswich, already mentioned, where the free boarding school has been connected with a day school, and the most deserving boys are drawn
[page 496]
from the one into the other. Under this system the places in the boarding school cease to be indiscriminate charities, conferring only a private benefit, and become prizes securing the public object of encouraging industry among the boys in the elementary school, and of raising the more meritorious of them into callings suited to their merits.
(6) Christ's Hospital, the wealthiest and most famous of all our free boarding schools, will naturally attract the special attention of the Privy Council, should the powers which we propose be placed in their hands.
The Governing Body of the Hospital, though they doubted whether it came within the scope of our inquiry, have, as a matter of courtesy, furnished us with the fullest information through their treasurer, Mr. Gilpin, whose evidence will be found in our Appendix. In addition to this information, we have had before us the very full account of the charity given by the Commissioners for Inquiring concerning Charities,* on which that of our Assistant Commissioner, Mr. Cumin, is mainly based.
The revenues of the hospital in the year ending 31st December 1859 were £63,930 7s 10d. Of this sum £6,000 was derived from the "benevolences," or donations of £500 each, paid by 12 gentlemen on being appointed governors. The remainder arises from the property of the hospital, which has been enriched since the time of its foundation by a long series of benefactors. The number of children in the hospital varies from 1,100 to 1,200. Of these 800 are in London, the rest are in the preparatory school at Hertford, whence they are drafted, when sufficiently advanced, into the London school.
There can be no doubt that this institution was originally intended for the poor. The charter (which relates equally to Christ's Hospital, St. Thomas', and Bridewell), contains the expressions "our said Sovereign Lord the King, of his mere mercy, having pity and compassion on the miserable estate of the poor fatherless and motherless children, and sick, sore and impotent people, &c.," "for and towards the relief of the said poor:"† while a multitude of successive benefactors use such phrases as "the poor of Christ's Hospital," "the poor people in the two hospitals of Christ's and St. Thomas;" "towards the relief, aid, and comfort of the poor children;" "for the use of the
*Report, vol. 32, part 6, (dated) 1837.
†Report of the Commissioners for Inquiring concerning Charities, vol. 32, part 6, pp. 76, 79.
[page 497]
poor orphans;" "for the better maintenance and relief of the poor children of Christ's Hospital;" "the said poor infants and children;" "the relief of the said poor children." The character of some of the benefactions also is such as to denote poverty in the children who are their objects. Thus, Wood's gift to the hospital (1625) was to be bestowed on good and wholesome flesh to be roasted for the poor children of Christ's Hospital. William Maskell (1608) gave an annual dinner or supper of roast beef or mutton. There were various other bequests of the same kind which have now been superseded by the alteration of the children's diet. From the language of some of the documents above quoted, especially that of the charter, it seems that the relief of poor orphans was principally contemplated; but no positive limitation of that kind appears ever to have been imposed.
This foundation has, however, shared the tendency of endowed schools generally to rise in the class taking advantage of it: and in the words of a sub-committee appointed by the governing body of the hospital to consider and report on the then existing system of education, "the tendency of the regulations has been to assimilate the general system of education to that in the ancient public schools."* Regard is still had to the circumstances of the parents in every case, each case being decided on its own merits, and the nature, whether certain or precarious, as well as the amount of the income being taken into consideration. In the words of the treasurer, Mr. Gilpin,† "the amount of income
" which disqualifies a child for admission is not and never has been defined. The regulations provide that no child be admitted who has any adequate means of being maintained and educated. The practice of the Committee formerly was either to reject, absolutely, every child whose parents had an income exceeding £300 a year, or to refer the case, if there were any special circumstances in it, to the consideration of the General Court. Formerly the special cases were of comparatively rare occurrence; and in scarcely any, if in any, was the child admitted if the parents' income exceeded £400 a year; but within the last 20 or 25 years they have considerably increased in number, and in some few instances the income of the parents has exceeded £500 a year."
*Report of the Sub-committee of Education, Christ's Hospital, embodied in Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, 4767.
†Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, 4687.
[page 498]
Some of the children are presented, not by governors, but by certain parishes under special instruments of benefaction. These boys are generally of a lower class than the rest, and though less suited to the school as at present constituted, represent more exactly the original objects of the foundation. The eleemosynary [charitable] origin of the hospital is also still denoted by the peculiar dress.
The Treasurer states that the most marked alteration in the character of the children, as regards the means of their parents, took place on the passing of the original Poor Law (1601), when the monthly contributions of the citizens of London, by which the hospital had up to that time been supported, ceased; while other provision was made by that law for the poorest class of the children who had previously been received into the hospital, including exposed and deserted children and foundlings. He observes that the rule excluding foundlings and paupers dates from that time. It is probable, however, that the classical character of the education and other general causes have contributed to raise the class of the scholars in this as in other ancient schools.
In pursuance of the report of the Sub-committee of Education above mentioned, the system of education in the hospital has recently undergone changes, the object of which is to secure to the great mass of the boys, who leave at fifteen years old, a good general education.* Up to the time of the report "the study of the Greek language had been extended throughout the school in London, and also to the preparatory school at Hertford, whilst at the same time in the writing and arithmetic school scarcely less labour had been employed upon ornamental penmanship than formerly, when so much value was attached to this accomplishment." The committee recommended that the Greek language should not be taught below the two upper forms of the lower grammar school; and that from the upper form of the lower grammar school the boys should pass into two separate schools, to pursue either a classical or a general education. This recommendation has been adopted, together with others, carrying it out in detail; a measure both wise in itself and in accordance with the spirit of the original foundation.
An alteration has, however, taken place in the constitution of Christ's Hospital, since the time of its foundation, of a more peculiar kind, and one which, though it originated in a desire to
*See Report of the Sub-committee of Education, embodied in Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, p. 583.
[page 499]
increase the funds and promote the interests of the hospital, has produced questionable results, and, deeply affecting as it does the public utility of the whole of these endowments, will call for serious consideration. We cannot trace, nor can the Treasurer of the Hospital enable us to trace, farther back than the middle of the last century the practice of appointing persons governors in consideration of their having made a donation to the hospital. Previous to that time the governors (other than the mayor and aldermen, who are governors in right of their office, and twelve common councilmen appointed by their own body) appear to have been appointed, ostensibly at least, on the ground of personal distinction or qualification. At present, however, of the whole number of governors, which is 485, and which was recently, till reduced by a number of deaths, 500,* all, with the exception of the official governors above mentioned, are "Donation Governors," and have, in effect, purchased their appointments and the right of presenting children to the hospital for a certain sum, which was at first only £100, but has been gradually raised to £500. The rights of presentation hereby purchased extend to all the places in the hospital, except about 100 presentations under special gifts and those belonging to the official governors. They are so absolute, that it is doubtful whether the hospital has legal power to refuse any child presented by a governor,† however unqualified for admission in point of knowledge the child maybe. "We have been inundated," says Mr. Gilpin,‡ the treasurer, "with children who did not know their letters, the result of which has been that it has been very detrimental to the school." "We have had children," he adds, "who after they have been at Hertford for two years have hardly been able to spell." To obviate this evil the governors last year came to a resolution that no child shall be admitted after next Easter unless he can read fluently the four gospels. But even on this resolution a strong discussion arose,§ and the members of the court were divided in opinion, one member arguing, "I have made myself a governor here, and if I choose to send my boy to this, which is a large charitable school, it is your duty to teach him." The solicitor to the charity, on the point being referred to him, thought the matter doubtful.
The Commissioners for Inquiring concerning Charities have entered into an elaborate calculation founded on the value of
*Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, 4681.
†Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, 4726.
‡Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, 4719.
§Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, 4735.
[page 500]
annuities to prove that the hospital is the loser by this mode of disposing of the governorships, against which they decidedly pronounce.* But such a calculation is scarcely needed to show the improvidence of subjecting the revenues of a public institution amounting to £57,000 to an absolute right of private patronage for the sake of an additional sum of £6,000.
While the presentations are thus disposed of, the hospital can scarcely exert a beneficial influence proportioned to its wealth and fame on national education. "We had hoped," says the Treasurer,† when asked whether children were to be henceforth required to be able to read on their admission, "that every parent would see the necessity of that; but we positively were met upon one occasion, when a child came for admission, by the fact that he really did not know his letters. I asked the mother what she could be about; she was the mistress of a National school, and I said, 'What can be the reason of this?' The reply was, 'We knew he was to have this presentation, and therefore we did not take the trouble to educate him at all.'" The same witness states‡ that the gift boys from different parishes come better educated than those who have been put in by the donation governors. This is remarkable, because the gift boys come, as was before observed, generally speaking, from a lower class. The Treasurer's account of the bad effects of the prospect of a presentation on the child's early education coincides with the remark of Mr. Cumin, before quoted, as to the effect of a similar system of nomination in the case of the Boys' Hospital at Norwich.
We are of opinion that it is desirable to discontinue the system of donation governors, and to return to that of governors appointed for personal qualifications; the official governors, the lord mayor, aldermen, and twelve common councilmen continuing as at present. This change will of course be made with due regard for the pecuniary interests of the hospital for the time being and for the vested interests of those who have already purchased their governorships and their rights of presentation. A considerable reduction in the number of the governors was recommended by the Commissioners of Inquiry, and we concur in their recommendation.
The hospital will fall with the other educational charities under the periodical inspection of the Privy Council. At present, though the different departments of the school are examined by
*Report, vol. 32, part 6, pp. 241-3.
†Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, 4720.
‡Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, 4735.
[page 501]
persons of eminence appointed by the authorities of the hospital, there is no inspection by any superior authority. The Charity Commissioners gave notice to the hospital of their intention to inspect it some years ago, but they subsequently wrote to say that the notice had been premature, nor have they yet visited the hospital.* So important and powerful an institution can scarcely be placed under the supervision of any authority less than that of a great department of the State.
We see no reason for interfering with the system of education which has been established in the London school; since the wise measure of improvement to which we have before adverted, or with the present constitution of that department of the charity as a great boarding school, providing the children with food and clothing as well as with instruction. The accounts of the expenditure have been laid before us by the courtesy of the governors, and considering the kind of education given, the outlay, which last year was about £40 per boy, does not seem to us by any means excessive. With regard to this part of the charity, we have only to recommend that its benefits should be bestowed, not by patronage, but as far as possible by merit, in order that parents who bring up their children well, and children who are well-conducted and industrious, may look to a place on this great foundation as a reward to be won by them independently of interest or connexion, and as an honour no less than as a pecuniary advantage.
There are numerous exhibitions to both Universities now distributed by seniority to the boys of the highest form. We are of opinion that these exhibitions should be given strictly by merit, like those of Rugby, Harrow, and other great public schools.
There is a fund for apprenticing youths to trades. This mode of assistance is not now so much in request as it was at the time when the fund was given. We are of opinion that this fund should be converted into exhibitions for the middle part of the school, tenable in any calling, or at places of professional education, and distributed by merit. A part of the fund might perhaps be usefully laid out in substantial prizes, such as cases of instruments or other outfit necessary in the commencement of a profession.
With regard to the lower or preparatory department of the Hospital at Hertford, into which boys are now admitted at the age of seven, the question will arise, as in similar cases, whether the assistance afforded by superior day schools, partly
*Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, 4750.
[page 502]
free, is not a more effective mode of promoting education than a free boarding school for a smaller number; and whether children who have a respectable home are likely to benefit by being removed from it before they are ten years of age. It was for "fatherless and motherless children" as we have before pointed out, that the original foundation, according to the charter, was especially intended. The benefit of the day schools would necessarily be confined to London; but there can be little doubt that the benefit of London was the primary object of the founder, and of a long series of civic benefactors. Indeed, the Hospital was for some time supported entirely by the contributions of the citizens. We do not wish to give a final opinion on this matter, in the case of Christ's Hospital any more than in similar cases, or to exclude from consideration the difficulty of introducing organic change into a great institution provided with buildings adapted to its present organization. We feel it our duty to raise the question, and we leave its decision to what we are persuaded will be a competent and considerate tribunal.
The nominations appropriated under special instruments of benefaction to certain parishes would form an incongruous element in the foundation when thrown open generally to merit and definitively devoted to a superior kind of education. It may be a question whether it would not be worthwhile to compound with the favoured parishes by giving them an equitable sum out of the funds of the hospital in aid of their parochial schools, and admitting a certain number of boys annually by examination out of the collective schools. With regard to presentations possessed by certain companies, if the company has a school, the presentation may be bestowed by competition among the boys of the school. If the company has no school, and no other mode of substituting competition for nomination can be devised, a high standard of qualification ought at least to be required.
By such improvements as we have suggested, Christ's Hospital might not only be made an admirable place of education itself, but it might act indirectly as a great encouragement and stimulus to education among all classes of the people. It would at the same time, in common with other free boarding schools open to merit, be instrumental in continually drafting from the lower ranks of society, and educating for superior callings, boys whose talents would enable them to maintain themselves afterwards at the level of their education. To give a high education to boys whose talents will not enable them afterwards to maintain themselves at that level, is merely to send them
[page 503]
into life with expectations doomed to be disappointed, and with sensibilities which will make disappointment bitter. The open scholarships at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the number and value of which have been greatly increased by recent legislation, would in their turn receive the best scholars from Christ's Hospital, and form the highest part of a graduated system of educational charity, through which remarkable merit might ascend from the lowest to the highest grade.
In connexion with this subject, we recommend the discontinuance in charity schools of grotesque peculiarities of costume. The argument commonly alleged in favour of the retention of these peculiarities is, that they confine the charity to its proper objects by repelling the self-respect of those in independent circumstances. But even supposing that covetousness would not frequently prevail over self-respect, we are of opinion that the charity should be confined to its proper objects by more direct means, and means which do not, by degrading the charity, lower the value of the fund. The treasurer of Christ's Hospital suggests as reasons for retaining the costume, that it identifies the boys, and that it ensures them protection in the streets.* But these are arguments for a distinguishing dress, not for a grotesque one.
(7) The attention of the Privy Council should also be directed to the abolition or relaxation of injurious restrictions, and the extension of the benefits of educational charities to adjoining districts. We agree with Mr. Hare,† that "the more you can expand every institution, and every restriction you can take away, there is so much gain," and that "if every school in the country was open to every child it would be beneficial." Mr. Hare, however, has naturally found it very difficult to persuade parishes that it would be of advantage to them rather than otherwise, to admit to their schools the children of neighbouring parishes, and if this improvement is to be secured, it must be partly through the action of a higher authority, such as we propose to institute. Mr. Cumin‡ has collected various instances of the injurious character of restrictions, and of the benefit which might arise from their abolition or relaxation:
Norwich At Norman's school at Norwich the benefit is restricted to the relations of the donor or the sons of inhabitants of a certain district. The income is stated to be £652; this serves to educate only
*Mr. Gilpin's Evidence, 4814.
†Evidence, 3948, 3949.
‡Report on Educational Charities, pp. 308, 309, 310.
[page 504]
37 boys, £10 being paid by the parents to the master for their maintenance.
In the parish of St. Botolph, Aldgate, there is a school founded by Sir John Cass.
Sir John Cass's School The total income for 1854 was £2,880 6s 8d. The scheme for the school was settled in 1840 by the Court of Chancery. According to it, 60 boys are to be instructed in the said school in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and such other branches of instruction as shall be thought proper by the said trustees to fit and qualify the said boys according to their station in life to earn and gain their own subsistence and livelihood. Fifty girls are to be instructed in knowledge to fit them for household service. Six of the senior girls are to be boarded and lodged, and to be employed under the schoolmistress in the household, so that they may be better qualified for household service.
The children to be admitted shall be the children of resident inhabitants of the freedom part of the said parish of St. Botolph, Aldgate, being members of the Church of England, but the age of each child must be seven.
The boys and girls are to be clothed and fed. and the books and stationery, &c. are provided.
The master's salary is fixed at £80, the mistress's salary at £45; both have board and lodging.
Clothes are provided for children leaving the school, and sums of £10 a head are provided for apprenticeship fees and prizes for good conduct.
The school is in Church Row, Aldgate, and is rented from Christ's Hospital.
In the last year (prior to the Inspector's report) there were 12 vacancies for girls and only 10 applications.
The parents of the boys must have resided three years in the ward, in order to prevent the benefit of the charity being a temptation to bring persons into the parish. This rule is sufficient to show the evils incident to a restricted area.
In 1854 the expenditure on housekeeping, and providing children with dinners, was £450 13s 6d. Clothing £335 7s 4d. The salary of the master (uncertificated) £70; Allowance £20; Salary of mistress £45; Allowance £5. Additions make up the £140 £199; Registrar, solicitor, and surveyor £250.
It is to be remarked, that more money is spent, and perhaps properly, in registrars, solicitors, and surveyors, than upon education.
The whole expenses seem to amount to £1,382, the remainder of the income being spent upon improving the estate.
The balance of cash at Christmas 1853 was £495. Thus the education of 110 boys and girls is the whole result of an expenditure of nearly £3,000 a year.
Connexion with Hackney. - A very large portion of the income of this charity is derived from an estate at Hackney. On the occasion of Mr. Hare's visit to that estate, his attention was called to the great need in which the parochial schools there stood of additional support,
[page 505]
having regard to the numerous, and by no means wealthy population of the district. The sums received from the Parliamentary grant for Hackney amount to £4,095. An application for money had been made to the trustees of Sir John Cass's estate, as the proprietors of so large a portion of the property in the parish. The trustees had granted a lease of a small plot of land at a nominal rent for a school. A subscription of 30 guineas a year had been suggested, which Mr. Hare observed would not be an extravagant sum.
It may be observed that the owners of private estates consider it their duty to subscribe largely towards the education of the poor who live upon their property. It should seem that according to the same principle, the rents which go to St. Botolph's might fairly be required to contribute towards the educational wants of Hackney.
Aldenham School At Aldenham in Hertfordshire, there is a free grammar school, founded in 1596. It was intended for the instruction of poor men's children of the parish of Aldenham, and for relief and maintenance of poor aged and impotent people. It is provided that a Master of Arts of St. John's, Cambridge, shall be master; and if there are not threescore from the district, the neighbouring parishes are to furnish scholars. There are six almspeople.
It may be useful to trace the history of this foundation; for it would be difficult to select a case in which the state of things had so completely altered. At the time of the foundation, out of an income of £49, no less than £42 was devoted to the school, of which the master had £20, the usher had £13 6s 8d. In 1768, the rent of the estate amounted to £140, the master receiving £40, and the usher £25 annually. In 1811, the St. Pancras estate began to be let on lease. In 1814, the master's salary was raised to £120. In 1824, there was a new master, and two new schools were established.
There being no demand for the higher sort of education, the governors determined to build a new school capable of holding 50 boarders, sons of freemen of the Brewers' Company or inhabitants of Aldenham, who should pay £20 a year.
In the lower school from 80 to 100 have received a common English education.
THE UPPER SCHOOL
| In 1858 there were 40 boys, for whom the master had £20 each | £800 0s |
| 8 exhibitions of £40 per annum, not always full | £320 0s |
| Other expenses | £26 16s |
| £1,146 16s |
LOWER SCHOOL
| Master's salary | £100 0s |
| 3 monitors | £13 0s |
| Rewards, stationery, &c. | £41 3s |
| £154 3s |
The income, after the deductions, is £2,725. Besides there is a sum of £4,238 0s 11d invested. Charges not less than £250 are made out of the funds for the purposes considered questionable by the Charity Commissioners.
[page 506]
It seems that Mr. Hare visited Aldenham to make a local inquiry into the charity. He observes that the general purpose of the charity is "to educate poor men's children." This purpose is said to be carried into effect by the lower school. But as to the grammar or upper school, it does not seem that the present application of £800 a year to board 40 boys is within the spirit, if it is even within the terms of the foundation deed. There is not a syllable about hoarding in that document. The present plan is to admit parents to the freedom of the company, in order that they may take advantage of the Aldenham school.
Mr. Hare recommends the establishment of another lower school. One of these new schools would accommodate scholars coming from 15 small places which cannot afford schools of their own. At the time of the inquiry there were no fewer than 44 boys from some one of these 15 places.
It should be observed that this foundation, which was created for the purpose of educating poor men's children, is in fact employed to educate the children of those who are rich, or, at all events, perfectly well able to contribute towards the instruction of their offspring. And the fact that Mr. Hare recommends the establishment of another lower school, and points out that the charity possesses ample funds for the purpose, shows that the endowment might be employed in a manner much more analogous to the original foundation than that in which it is employed now; whilst the Parliamentary grant would be proportionably relieved.
Connexion with St. Pancras But there is a peculiarity about this case of Aldenham which deserves notice. The income is derived from St. Pancras. With regard to the schools on that estate for the children of the tenants of the property, Mr. Hare says:
"I am anxious to bring before the Board the condition of the charity in relation to the St. Pancras estate, and the obligations which seem to attach to the governors in this respect, whether we consider the duties which attach to the possession of a large revenue derived from that estate, or the spirit which, as far as we can judge from his acts, animated the mind of the founder in his desire to promote and extend education.
"At the time of the foundation, the Aldenham portion of the endowment produced a rental of £27 a year, and evidently formed, in the estimation of the founder, from the precedence which he gives it in his enumeration, the most important part of the property. The St. Pancras estate was meadow land let for 21 years at £22 a year (which would have extended down to the middle of the reign of James I), the tenant having covenanted for good husbandry, not to break or plough up the land, and the lessor having reserved the right of fishing. If the founder had been told that his Hertfordshire estate would at a future day produce an annual income of nearly seven times what it then did, he would probably have been astonished; but taking into consideration the increased cost of the necessaries of life, he might still have dedicated that estate to the objects for which he gave it. If he had, at the same time, foreseen that the St. Pancras estate would, two centuries afterwards, be covered with habitations, and produce a revenue more than 14 times as great as the Hertfordshire estate, even at its augmented and highest value, I confess it appears to me an absurdity to suppose that he would have directed its income to be wholly employed in teaching the children of Aldenham and the neighbourhood. It is rational to suppose that he considered the situation of his property and his duties, the state of the population and its wants; and not to conceive
[page 507]
that any fanciful attachment to place overcame his regard for his fellow-creatures. And if the cy pres doctrine were held to lead to a contrary result, and to the sacrifice of the sense and substance of things to mere words, it would be a doctrine offensive to the understanding."
The income of the St. Pancras estate is £2,551 10s, consisting of ground rents derived from houses near the Great Northern Railway Station. The greater number of the houses are of the third class; small two-storied dwellings. Taking the census of 1851 throughout the parish of St. Pancras, there are about two and a quarter families or nine persons to each house, and Mr. Hare calculates that this property contains a population of 6,556, of which about 800 are children - "perhaps," he adds, "as much in need of assistance in the way of education, from the limited means of their parents, as any population in the kingdom." It should be observed, however, that the governors have not been wholly unmindful of the claim upon the funds of this vast population consisting of their tenantry. In the year 1854 they subscribed £100 to the building fund of the Somers Town British Schools, which were erected on the north side of the St. Pancras estate, and in the same year they subscribed £50 to the Old St. Pancras Church National Schools.
This St. Pancras estate is the more worth noticing, because every year adds to its value, and probably to the density of its population.
Mr. Cumin afterwards* dwells at great length on the cases of St. Thomas, Charterhouse, St. Matthew's, City Road, and St. Mark's, Old Street, districts of the parish of St. Luke, which contains large educational charities, such as Worrall's School, the Grey-coat or Parochial School, Trotman's School, and Fuller's Charity. An account of these charities has been given in a previous extract from Mr. Cumin's report. The districts at present derive scarcely any benefit from the educational charities of the parish, though St. Thomas, Charterhouse, contains 9,500 of the poorest inhabitants, who were in the most ignorant condition till education was introduced by private efforts and by Parliamentary assistance, which has been given on a very large scale. The restriction is in this case a practical one, arising from the nature of the charities, which are for free education and clothing, not from any statute or regulation. The evil would be obviated by a scheme altering the specific application of the charities, so as to extend their benefits to the whole parish.
In some cases the restrictions, by rendering it difficult to find a sufficient number of objects, lead to the diversion of the charity from its original purposes:
It will be observed that in the cases in which it has become difficult purpose, to find objects of the charity, in consequence of the restrictions imposed by the terms of the endowment, the general result is that the charity is, in fact, applied to purposes never contemplated by the
*Report on Educational Charities, p. 316, 317.
[page 508]
founder - perhaps, it may be said, perverted. In the united parishes of St. Laurence Jewry and St. Mary Magdalene there is a charity founded by Mrs. Smith. According to her will, dated the 13th April 1693, she bequeathed certain property, the income of which was to be applied "for the teaching, att some creditable Latin schoole, or writeing schoole, or either of them, or parte at one and parte at the other, of six boyes, children of the poorest inhabitants of the said parish of St. Laurence Jewry, at the rate of forty shillings per annum a-piece for each boy for the respective time of his schooleing, not exceeding six years in the whole for any one boy;" the overplus of the rents to be laid out in providing the necessary books for the boys. Then there was a trust for such greater number of boys of the parish as should be proportionable to the increase of the rents.
In 1835 a scheme was settled by the Master in Chancery, according to which £80 was set aside out of the surplus rents for the purpose of providing four exhibitions to the schools attached to King's College and the London University, and to such other eminent schools as the vestry of the united parishes should from time to time appoint, to which the sons of the poorest inhabitants paying parochial rates of St. Laurence Jewry should be eligible. Other £40 were provided for two other exhibitions for the parish of St. Mary Magdalene.
I have reason to believe that, although the exhibitioners may be most deserving persons, they do not come within the class of what can properly be termed the poorest inhabitants of the parish, and that, in fact, there is not now any object of the charity within the parishes in question. Such being the case, there seems no reason why the gift of Mrs. Smith should not be applied to educate the really poor, even although they may reside beyond the parish boundaries. It would be no more a violation of her will to educate such children than to educate the sons of persons who can afford to pay for the education of their children.
The moral question as to the lawfulness of abolishing or relaxing restrictions on the beneficial action of endowments, where those restrictions are found to interfere with the main object of the founder, has already been considered and decided by the Legislature in framing the Oxford and Cambridge University Acts, by which many restrictions on admission to foundations in respect of birth-place, kinship, destination in life, the condition or profession of parents, and other circumstances, have been abolished or relaxed with great benefit to the foundations, and (as the continuance of benefactions since the passing of the Acts has proved) without discouragement to rational munificence. In regard to many of these restrictions, indeed, time, by its lapse, has made innovations which call for and justify counter-innovations at the hand of the Legislature. A limitation to the children born in a particular parish, or whose parents had resided in it a certain time, might exclude few or none at a time when population was fixed and locomotion difficult. Now, when by the increase of traffic and of the means of locomotion, population has become more migratory,
[page 509]
the same limitation may exclude many; and it is obviously undesirable that the children of a newcomer, brought to a parish in quest of a market for his labour, should be shut out from the parish school. Restrictions to the relatives of the founder, also, in the case of old foundations, have frequently exceeded the limits of relationship recognized by nature. Relaxations short of the positive abolition of restrictions would frequently suffice; the benefit of a school now limited to one parish might be extended to adjacent parishes, portions of which, from the irregular arrangement of parishes, will frequently be nearer to the school than the outlying parts of the privileged parish. A higher class of teachers and a better school would thus be obtained for the privileged parish as well as for the rest. We are of opinion that this power of abolishing or relaxing injurious restrictions should extend to the exhibitions attached to any school. In any changes of this kind which may be made, existing interests will of course be respected, as they were in the Oxford and Cambridge Acts.
(8) Much waste of charitable funds might also be saved, and much good done, by consolidating small endowments, or annexing of small them to good schools. How numerous the very small endowments are will appear from the following table, classifying the charities according to their value, which is given by Sir J. K. Shuttleworth:*
Most of these small endowments may have been sufficient for the independent maintenance of the charities, or for rendering them substantial assistance, at the date of their foundation. But being rentcharges, or other fixed payments, they have dwindled, through the change in the value of money, down to trifles, the separate administration of which would
*On Public Education, p. 170.
[page 510]
swallow up the whole fund, and which can be made useful only in combination with other charities, or with public schools possessing school buildings, with which many of the small endowments are unconnected. The advantages of such combination, and the waste arising from the absence of it, are illustrated by Mr. Cumin:*
Combination of Small Endowments Allusion has already been made to the small charities which are very generally devoted to education; and Mr. Fearon's list has been referred to. It appears from the Digest, that the annual sum of £19,112 is given for or applied to education, without being connected with any school buildings. In reference to this subject Sir James Kaye Shuttleworth says: "The bequests for education are frequently so meagre, that they are insufficient for the support of even a small school; yet they are not seldom bequeathed in terms, so limiting their application that they cannot be employed in aid of the parochial or other local schools. A charity of this kind may be applicable only to instruction in the Catechism, or to the preparation of a limited number of children for confirmation, or to teaching to read in the Holy Scriptures. Often the subjects are much more peculiar; as, for example, that the scholars learn 'plain song,' and to read." A cursory perusal of the Digest amply confirms this description.
Again, he says: "In some parishes many small rentcharges of from £2 to £10 exist under limited trusts of this description, and even under different sets of trustees, which might be employed to increase the efficiency of the local schools. In other cases a house and garden for a master have been left to one set of trustees; another may possess a dilapidated school-house, or an oratory, or a disused pesthouse or hospital; a third a small field; besides which, such rentcharges as I have described above may exist; yet from various causes the trustees may be unwilling to co-operate, or may want the power. Consequently, while the parish possesses in these separate endowments resources equal to the support of a sufficient elementary school, no such institution may exist, or it may languish in merited contempt and neglect."
I understand that applications are constantly made to the Charity Commissioners by clergymen, who find that small endowments separately do little good, but that if they were combined they might produce some tangible results. But the Charity Commissioners can only recommend an application to the Court of Chancery or to the County Court after approving of a scheme; and it seems that rather than incur the trouble of going to either of these tribunals, the applicants forego the advantage of the gift. There seems to be no good reason why the Charity Commissioners should not exercise a direct summary process in unopposed applications for the rectification of charities.
Bovey Tracey As an instance of the advantage of combining gifts, there is the case of Bovey Tracey, in Devonshire: With an income of £85, education is provided for 24 boys. In the same parish is a National school, educating 80 children, but supported by voluntary subscriptions and the Parliamentary grant. Here there is said to be a general desire on the part of the parish that the various gifts should be amalgamated and made more useful.
*Report on Educational Charities, pp. 300, 301.
[page 511]
Corhampton At Corhampton, in Hampshire, there is an endowment for the education of the poor, amounting to about £40. Though the population entitled to take advantage of this endowment is about 4,000, there are almost no boys who do so. It had been suggested that the money should be paid over to the National school, but the expenses and trouble of a scheme seemed to deter those interested from proceeding.
Keynsham At Keynsham, in Somersetshire, there is a small endowment of £20, but no school. But there is also a sum of £81 from one endowment, distributable in sums varying from 5s to 20s. The recipients are about 100 in number. According to the Charity Inspector's report, he suggested that part of this £81 ought to be applied to education. It should be observed that the parish now receives aid from Parliament.
We think that the Privy Council should be empowered to frame regulations in the manner which we have specified, for the consolidation of any two or more of these small endowments, or for the annexation of any one or more of them to a
National or other public school; and to regulate the future application and administration of the consolidated or annexed fund either in the hands of the existing boards of trustees, combined together for the purpose, or of a modified board, or, in the case of annexation, in the hands of the trustees of the school to which the endowments may be annexed. In annexing an endowment to any school the Privy Council will, of course, require it to remain subject to Government inspection. They will observe in this, as in other exercises of their power, the limitation which we think it necessary to recommend with regard to the rules laid down by founders as to the religious denomination of trustees and teachers, and as to the character of the religious instruction to be given in the school.
(9) It may be desirable to change the site of a school in cases where, owing to an alteration in the course of trade or other circumstances, the population which took advantage of it has ebbed from the present site and flowed towards some other place in the neighbourhood; or where the site has become so valuable for commercial and manufacturing purposes, and so choked up by neighbouring houses and works, that it might be advantageously exchanged for better buildings in a more healthy situation.
(10) The power should also, we think, extend to the re-organization of the boards of trustees. The statement made by Mr. Hedley, and quoted above, in regard to his district, is, no doubt, true of the whole country. The usefulness of the educational charities depends, in a great degree, on the constitution of the administrative boards. That, in a great number of instances, they are ill-constituted is sufficiently proved by the state into which the charities
[page 512]
generally had fallen before the issuing of the first Charity Commission. A body of ratepayers is obviously not a proper authority to elect a schoolmaster, or to act in the administration of an educational institution. Mr. Erle* speaks of the difficulties attending improvement in agricultural places, "where the administration of charities has devolved on trustees of insufficient personal qualification, and where a low disposition to apply the funds to parochial purposes has prevailed." The only satisfactory way of contending with such cases is, to place the trust in more competent hands. It will be desirable to include in the boards a fair proportion of trustees qualified as holders of some office which implies intelligence and education. We must repeat that there can be no question of patronage in this matter. The office in question is purely a trust, and a trust the right administration of which is essential to the usefulness of a school. A register of the attendance of trustees at their board meetings would be useful as a criterion to enable the Privy Council to judge of the necessity of modifying the composition of the board.
(11) We are not of opinion that exhibitions belonging to schools, though attached to colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, should be exempted from the jurisdiction of the Privy Council, as they are from the jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners. To a certain extent, indeed, these exhibitions, in most colleges, are already under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council, it being with the consent of Her Majesty in Council that colleges are empowered to amend the ordinances made in relation to them by the late Parliamentary Commissions. There is one class of cases, especially, connected with these exhibitions, in which the authority of the Privy Council might be usefully interposed to settle rationally and amicably questions which could otherwise only be settled, on not very rational principles, in a court of law. The great case of the Nowell exhibitions, belonging to Middleton school, and attached to Brasenose College, is one instance, among many, in which a technical, though perhaps necessary construction of law has excluded the exhibitioners from all interest in the increasing value of the property belonging to their foundation, and confined them to their fixed stipend, which originally was a competent one, but, from the change in the value of money, has long ceased to be so. When brought into a court of law, these cases turn upon verbal questions, having a very slight relation to the equity of the matter, as a reference to the reported case of the Nowell
*Evidence, 3752.
[page 513]
exhibitions above alluded to will show* We have reason to believe that there exists, in some quarters at least, a disposition to make a fairer division of the fund than that prescribed by the letter of the law, if it could be done by an arrangement of an amicable and binding kind; such an arrangement might be made, if a power were given to the Privy Council of sanctioning an equitable re-partition proposed by the College, both as against the trustees of the school and as against the future Head and Fellows of the College.
(12) We are of opinion that any instrument of foundation or benefaction now existing or hereafter to be executed, together with the records of all legal proceedings affecting any educational charity, and all regulations made in the exercise of the powers we now propose to confer on the Privy Council, should be registered in the Council Office, and that the register should be open to public inspection upon payment of a small fee. It is at present a part of the duties of the Charity Commissioners to provide a depository wherein trustees may place muniments of which they have the custody, while in the Privy Council Office there already exists a depository and registry of deeds for all schools built, enlarged, or repaired with aid from the Parliamentary grant, though the copies thus preserved have no authority in the Courts of Law.
(13) We have adverted to Mr. Erle's statement as to the difficulty experienced in obtaining the annual accounts of the income and expenditure of each charity, which the Commissioners are legally empowered to require. We cannot be surprised that the local trustees should be unwilling to take this additional trouble in affairs which are not their own. To secure the object in view, we propose that the accounts of each educational charity should be annually audited on the spot by the inspectors of the Privy Council, that the balance-sheets should be transmitted to the Council Office, and that a summary of the whole should be annually laid before Parliament. The part of this summary affecting the educational charities of each county will, no doubt, be published in the local newspapers.
(14) Among the legal powers which, if our proposal be adopted, will pass from the Charity Commissioners to the Privy Council, is a power of inquiry into the suspected abuses or defects of any charity, which, according to Mr. Erle,† has been found by experience to be effectual, except in one respect. The Commissioners are not allowed to ask questions of any person who claims
*Lord Suffield and Brasenose College, House of Lords' Report, 1834.
†Evidence, 3781-4.
[page 514]
property adversely to the charity. This, Mr. Erle thinks, is wrong in principle, and objectionable, because sometimes a person who should pay funds to a charity has in his own possession the only evidence of the trust, and may plead an adverse claim as a reason for refusing to produce it. The most common case which occurs, according to Mr. Erle, is that of lands being subject to rentcharges in favour of charities. The evidence of the creation of these rentcharges is possibly to be found only in the title deeds of the landowner, who can securely challenge the Commissioners to show what part of his estate is subject to the charge, they having no power to call for the production of the deed. In these cases, the endowments being generally very small, the expense of recovering the payments by litigation would greatly exceed their value, and therefore, if resisted, they are irrecoverable. We are of opinion that the power of inquiry should be extended to title deeds by which an endowment has been created, in whatever hands they may be, and that it should be such as is now exercised by the Courts of Law and Equity in adverse suits.
While proposing to create such a power of modifying the regulations of founders, as a regard for their own main design and justice to the community alike require, we would also extend the facilities already accorded by the Legislature for educational foundations. We propose to do this both as regards the grantors and as regards the grantees.
(a) As regards the grantors (including all persons specially enabled by the School Site Acts to grant sites for schools), we propose that grants, whether of sites or endowments, shall be made by an instrument of the simplest form, to be prepared by the Committee of Privy Council, and registered in their office, and that the signatures of reversioners or encumbrancers to this instrument shall be a valid release of their interests.
We do not propose to give any further power of granting land in mortmain, more especially as a small piece of land in the hands of a board of trustees is an endowment which can scarcely be well administered. It seems reasonable, however, if the State desires to encourage these foundations, that the decisions which extend the provisions of devises in mortmain to mortgage money and to the price of lands ordered by the will to be sold should be repealed. The same observation may be made with regard to the rule of the Courts of Equity that as to charitable legacies the assets shall not be marshalled; that is to say, that the charitable legatee shall be deprived of the privilege given to every other legatee of taking his legacy from the fund legally subject to it.
[page 515]
A power of sanctioning the redemption of rentcharges belonging to charities by the owners of the land on which the rents are charged will pass from the Charity Commissioners to the Privy Council, and it is most desirable that this arrangement should be promoted as much as possible.
(b) As regards grantees, we propose to empower the vestry of any parish to accept a school site and buildings for the use of the parish, with or without further endowments, and to bind themselves and their successors, as a consideration, to keep the school buildings in repair. It will be requisite to make the vestry a corporation for the purpose. In case of neglect to repair, we propose that upon the certificate of the Privy Council to the Court of Queen's Bench a mandamus should issue at once to the overseers to levy the necessary rate.
Among our higher educational endowments may be reckoned, in some sense, Cathedral Institutions, one of the main objects of which was religious education, and the educational functions of which it has been proposed in some quarters to extend in relation to their respective dioceses. But these bodies, with the schools and exhibitions attached to them, are, like the Universities, exempted from the jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners, nor do we propose that they should be subjected in any respect to that of the Privy Council, unless they voluntarily think fit to place any schools connected with them under its inspection.
II
CHARITIES WHICH ARE NOT AT PRESENT APPLICABLE TO EDUCATION
We proceed to consider the charities for the poor which are not at present applicable to education, and to direct attention to the recommendation of the Commissioners for Inquiring concerning Charities (1837) respecting a part of these endowments.
The aggregate income of the charities "for the poor" in 1818-1837 was £167,908 0s 1d. Besides the educational charities and the charities "for the poor," there are many charities for specific objects of other kinds, such as hospitals and dispensaries, the maintenance of sick and maimed soldiers and mariners, the repairs of bridges, ports, havens, causeways, churches, seabanks and highways, houses of correction, the marriages of poor maids, relief and redemption of prisoners and captives, aid in payment of "fifteenths," and "setting out of
[page 516]
soldiers and other taxes."* The aggregate income of all the charities of England and Wales, educational, "for the poor," and for specific objects of other kinds, was in 1818-1837 £1,209,395. To this is to be added about one-fifth for subsequent increase of value. The Charity Commissioners had also, up to 1856, ascertained and registered the particulars of more than 3,000 charities of all descriptions, which had either been founded since the Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry or had escaped their notice.†
The charities "for the poor" are divided in the digest of the Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into three classes:
| For the poor generally | £101,113 9s 3d |
| For the poor not receiving parish relief | £11,661 0s 7d |
| For the poor specifically | £55,133 10s 3d |
The charities "for the poor generally" may be taken as including all those charities which are distributed either in the form of money or of bread, clothes, blankets, or other articles, to the poor of any parish or district, the recipients being selected entirely at the discretion of the trustees. Charities "for the poor specifically," on the other hand, are those which are confined to the aged, the sick, orphans, widows, or some other particular description of poor.
With reference to the charities "for the poor generally," the Commissioners for Inquiring concerning Charities say (Report, Vol. 32, part 1, p. 5), "We have frequently had occasion in our reports to make remarks on the indiscriminate distribution of charities in sums too small to confer any real benefit, and without any care in the selection of proper objects. These remarks have been usually called for with regard to charities left for the poor of any particular district in general terms, no specific application being pointed out by the donor. We have found that the distributors of many of these charities have acted, either under the notion that the term poor must necessarily mean every poor person, or from fear of giving offence by exclusion, and have carried these views to such an extent that charities of large amount are sometimes given away in sums of less than 6d. These indiscriminate distributions occasionally create considerable riot and disturbance, and the money received is often expended at public houses in the neighbourhood. It would be of great advantage if there were some competent
*See the Statute of Charitable Uses, 43 Eliz. cap. 4.
†Third Report of the Chanty Commissioners (1856), p. 4.
[page 517]
authority to direct the application of chanties of this description to the purposes of education, or to some other substantial benefit of the poor, and, if such charities are disposed of in money or clothing or other articles, that such poor as maintain themselves without assistance from the parish rates should be principally selected."
Experience has proved that no "benefit" which charity can bestow upon the poor is so "substantial", so little subversive of independence of character and self-reliance, or capable of doing good to so many persons in proportion to the sum expended, as a moderate assistance towards the expenses of education.
The intelligent self-interest and the habits of foresight which education has a direct tendency to produce, will to a great extent prevent the distress which the annual distribution of alms often not only fails to relieve, but actually increases. "In some cases," say the Poor Law Commissioners, in their Report of February 1834, "charitable foundations have a quality of evil peculiar to themselves. The majority of them are distributed among the poor inhabitants of particular parishes or towns. The places intended to be favoured by large charities attract, therefore, an undue proportion of the poorer classes, who, in the hope of trifling benefits to be obtained without labour, often linger on in spots most unfavourable to the exercise of their industry. Poverty is thus not only collected, but created, in the very neighbourhood whence the benevolent founders have manifestly expected to make it disappear."
By thus crowding into the favoured neighbourhoods the poor raise house rent and the price of lodgings on themselves, so as in great measure to nullify the relief which the charity affords. "In the Parish of St. Nicholas (Bristol)," says the Rev. T. C. Price,* "lodgings were at a premium, on account of the money doles, and the people were thereby both demoralized and pauperized."
The physical evil thus produced is at least equalled by the moral mischief which these charities commonly do by degrading the character the character of the independent poor. Mr. Miller, secretary to the Charity Trustees at Bristol, says, in reference to the money gifts to the poor of that city:†
It is not because undeserving people obtain the gifts, or even because the gifts may be abused, that I principally object to small money doles. It is rather the ill effects which such charities produce on the recipients
*Appendix to Mr. Cumin's Report on Bristol and Plymouth, p. 179.
Ibid., p. 194.
[page 518]
themselves. This giving what is not earned is the very root from which many evils spring.
1. It destroys the pride of independence and a proper reliance on one's own exertions. I have found that when once the objection to seeking charity (natural, more or less, to all) is overcome by success, shame is soon lost, and repeated applications follow. It is not long before the gift is looked upon almost as a right, and it often happens that a withholding of it for a few years is regarded as something like injustice.
2. It engenders habits of deceit; the strongest and most pitiable case must be made out; and the applicants seldom hesitate in making any statements that may suit their purpose. I have witnessed the very careful endeavours of the dispensers of public charities; two of those are particularly in my mind, who use extraordinary exertions to ascertain the truth of the statements made to them, and even they confess that at times they are deceived.
3. It produces a reliance on adventitious aid, which naturally begets idleness and all its attendant evils; and, indeed, it is very often the case that the gift bestowed does not anything like equal the value of the time lost in seeking it.
4. It tends to the increase of poverty, and such is the natural result of making (which is the real state of the case) a provision for idleness. I might name a parish which has been, to a great extent, pauperized by the very great abundance of its charities.
These observations are intended to apply with fullest force with regard to the young and middle aged. But it will comparatively rarely happen that one who has not sought this kind of charity in early life will do so in old age.
Mr. Miller's description is confirmed by Mr. John Cousins,* formerly vestryman of St. Paul's, who has had an experience of 40 years in Bristol. "Small charities," he says, "of from £1 to £6 pauperize the people; they destroy the sense of shame, and the deserving people do not get them. The poor people," he adds, "spend more time in looking after such gifts than would suffice to gain the same sums by industry." "There are numbers among the poor," says the Rev. T. C. Price, Vicar of St. Augustine the Less,† in the same city, "who have made themselves acquainted with the terms, requirements, &c, of the various gifts in the hands of the charity trustees and vestries; and these, though not always the most deserving, by dint of unceasing importunities and other contrivances, are wonderfully successful." These charities then, by their operation, are teaching indolence, mendicancy, servility, and falsehood to the poor of Bristol, almost as effectually as industry, the love of independence and veracity can be taught by means of the funds which the State supplies in aid of the Bristol schools. The State, if it desires to promote the education of the people, has a double
*Appendix to Mr. Cumin's Report on Bristol and Plymouth, p. 180.
†Ibid., p. 179.
[page 519]
interest in the better application of these charitable funds, both because they may be in part applied to the promotion of education, and because, as at present applied, they defeat the moral improvement which it is the special object of legislators in promoting education to produce.
There is a great difference between the effects of charity from the living and those which attend the periodical distribution of alms under the will of a dead founder. The hand of living charity is held out only to present need; it promises no periodical alms to indolence and importunity; and if it necessarily somewhat impairs the spirit of independence, it produces good will and gratitude. The "dead hand" of the founder of an annual dole does not distinguish between the years of prosperity among the labouring classes and years of distress; in prosperous years it leads those who are not in need to represent themselves to be so; it holds out annual hopes to improvidence; it more frequently excites jealousy and ill feeling than good will both on the part of the recipients towards the distributors of the charity and among the recipients themselves. For one person who receives substantial benefit from these doles, many feel their demoralizing effect. At Salisbury,* for five vacancies in the list of pensioners on one charity there were sixty-two applicants, all of whom had probably nursed expectations more or less subversive of their industry, and used importunities more or less subversive of their self-respect.
Some of the charities are confined, as we have seen, to the poor not receiving parish relief; and the Commissioners for inquiring concerning Charities suggested this test as one deserving general adoption. It appears to be adopted in the case of the Booth charities at Salford, of which Mr. Cumin heard a favourable account.† At St. Mary Ottery there is a fund of £600 so vested, the recipients being usually old parishioners or small decayed tradesmen. In these cases the charity relieves some to whose feelings parish relief would be repugnant; but it probably overcomes in many the repugnance to receive relief. Such a list, moreover, must exclude many cases of accidental and unmerited distress. Mr. Hare says:
I feel a strong objection to any test, which in the distribution of these charities draws a line between those who have, and those who have not, received parish relief. Since the Poor Law Amendment has made legal relief properly dependent on destitution, such a distinction is
*Letter appended to Mr. Hare's Evidence, p. 481.
†Report on Educational Charities, p. 332.
[page 520]
neither just nor merciful. Administrators commonly like it, because it substitutes an easy inquiry for a laborious and painful scrutiny. Such arbitrary and mechanical rules are coverts for the indolence with which most minds approach the performance of duties towards masses of persons with whom they are not connected by individual sympathy or attachment.*
On the other hand, to apply the charities in aid of the parish poor rate is a diversion of them from the poor to the ratepayers. The Commissioners of Inquiry pointed out in their Report† the prevalence of this misappropriation, and in some instances where the funds were large, certified cases to the Attorney-General for the opinion of a court of equity; but in a great number of instances, where the income was small, they thought themselves precluded from doing more than recommending a more proper application. When the present Charity Commissioners proposed a scheme for the application of the doles at Coventry to popular education and other useful objects, they received a representation "that the distribution of these doles has the effect of diminishing the claims on the poor-rates." The Commissioners did not find in that statement an objection to their scheme.‡
If the doles are not distributed with an exact regard to need and merit, the effect is obvious. And to expect that the trustees will distribute them with an exact regard to need and merit is to expect that men will take great trouble, and withdraw their time from their own affairs, to execute the will of a stranger.
"I believe," says Mr. Miller,
That in almost every parish of our large city (Bristol) very many poor objects may be found to whom a small donation would be of the utmost utility, and by whom it would be properly expended; but to find them the greatest care is necessary, deceit, and even fraud, in obtaining charity are so common and so cunningly practised. Poverty begotten of idleness, improvidence, and intemperance is so clamourous and shameless, whilst poverty from misfortune is generally so retiring and long-suffering, that the most wise and painful administrator of charity is often deceived. Innumerable instances of the utter throwing away of the gifts have come before me, whilst I admit, on the other hand, I have often seen the beneficial results of alms in season.§
"No one," says Mr. John Cousins,|| "is in favour of these charities. It is impossible, even with the utmost care, to be certain that you are right in the application of them." He adds that "powers of application are signed without any due
*Mr. Cumin's Report on Educational Charities, p. 333.
†Vol. 32, part 1. p. 5.
‡Third Report (1856), p. 8.
§Appendix to Mr. Cumin's Report on Bristol and Plymouth, p. 174.
||lb. p. 180.
[page 521]
consideration;" and that one woman used to take apartments in two or three parishes, in order to entitle herself to these gifts.
The following passage from a paper put in evidence by Mr. Hare,* illustrates the extreme difficulty which besets even the most conscientious efforts to select proper objects and to repel the importunities and the established claims of those who are not in need of assistance:
Thomas Goman, in 1612, gave his lands to the churchwardens of St, Martin's, Salisbury, to and for the use of the poor people of that parish. The income, amounting now to about £10 a year, forms part of a fund which is distributed in bread in the parish of St. Martin in the winter. In the winter of 1854-5, some attempt was made to ascertain the really necessitous poor of the parish, and a number of ladies visiting in districts furnished the clergy and churchwardens with a list of the families who they thought were in necessitous circumstances. This list contained the names of about 280 families, exclusive of those inhabiting the almshouses; but the distribution was not confined to this list, a great number of other persons claimed to participate on the ground, not of their poverty, but that they had formerly received a portion of the dole. Amongst the claims thus made and yielded to were those of the families of men in constant employment under public bodies and private persons, and in the receipt of wages sufficient to render them wholly independent of alms. The number of persons who ultimately participated was supposed to be not less than 1,500 or little less than two-thirds of the entire population of the parish.
In ancient commercial cities, where the merchants and those in their employment have ceased to reside in the city itself, charities are apt to become excessive, through the diminution of the population. "The population of some parishes in the centre of the city," (Bristol), says the Rev. T. Price, "has materially diminished by the conversion of dwelling houses into warehouses, offices, and other places of business; and the number and value of the gifts are beyond all proportion to their real requirements."† This is of course still more the case in the city of London, where the charities are very large and numerous, while the population has migrated westward, and left its former habitations to become warehouses and offices.
We do not wish to make a harsh application of economical principles to funds devoted to the relief of the poor. Nor would we recommend the disturbance of a charitable foundation because it is not entirely fulfilling the sanguine expectations of its founder, or because the good which it does is partly countervailed by some attendant evils. Almshouses, for instance, may be in some cases "visible invitations to improvi-
*Letter appended to Mr. Hare's Evidence, p. 479.
†Appendix to Mr. Cumin's Report on Bristol and Plymouth, p. 179.
[page 522]
dence," the nominations to them may be abused for political purposes, they may unnecessarily and undesirably separate the inmates from their friends, and money may be wasted by careless or jobbing trustees on their repairs* The two last-mentioned objections, and perhaps the first, may render the course which Mr. Martin says has been adopted with good results at Stafford, of converting the fund into pensions, expedient elsewhere. This is an alteration of detail. We see no good reason for diverting these charities from the main object to which they are now applied, the relief of the aged and infirm poor. Neither do we see any good reason for diverting from their present object, charities devoted to the relief of widows or orphans. The utmost we would suggest in regard to foundations of this description, is that in presenting to almshouses and assigning pensions to aged persons or widows, some regard should be had among other things to the manner in which their children, if they have had any, have been brought up. In these cases there are determinate objects, pretty certain to be more or less in need, even though they may not always be deserving; and though the most importunate or those who have most interest, not those who are best entitled, may sometimes be preferred. But if doles of money or of necessaries to the poor generally are proved by experience to injure the class which they were intended to benefit, besides increasing pauperism to the detriment of the community, there seems to be every reason for proceeding, though with due caution and regard for the fair expectations of existing claimants, to a better application of these funds. There would be no hesitation in discarding from a medical foundation, a remedy prescribed by the founder which had been proved by experience not to cure and extinguish, but to aggravate and propagate the disease. If the remedy which the founders of annual doles devised for destitution has aggravated and propagated that social malady, there can be as little hesitation in setting it aside and substituting the best mode of treatment, which we now know to be early education.
For actual cases of destitution among the poor generally the State makes a regular provision - a provision much larger, more regular, and better administered in every respect than it was at the poor laws, the period when many of these charities were founded.
The following account of the Jarvis' charity in Herefordshire, which Mr. Cumin† derived from Mr. Hare, Inspector of the
*Mr. Cumin's Report on Educational Charities, p. 320.
†Report on Educational Charities, p. 326.
[page 523]
Charity Commission, is an illustration on a great scale of the mischief frequently done by these foundations:
George Jarvis, who died in 1793, bequeathed the bulk of his property, which ultimately amounted to nearly £100,000, to the Bishop of Hereford and the two Members of Parliament for the county, upon trust, to apply the income amongst poor inhabitants of Stanton-upon-Wye, Bredwardine, and Letton, in money, provisions, physic, or clothes, and he directed that no part should be employed in building. The trust came before Lord Eldon in July 1802, in a suit by the bishop and the trustees, who proposed to distribute about 5-100th of the income in physic and attendance; 33-100th in clothing, bedding, and bedclothes; 14-100th in fuel, and 28-100th in food. Of the remaining 20-100th they proposed that 6-100th should be applied in schooling; 6-100th in apprenticing, and 6-100th in gratuities to servants and apprentices. Sir Samuel Romilly, and other counsel, argued that "the court would not establish so mistaken a charity, which was in effect a premium to idleness; that it appeared, by the proposals of the trustees, that they could not dispose of it according to any intention of the testator, and that they, therefore, introduced other objects which he had not contemplated - instruction, apprenticing, and rewards of virtue." The court, however, adopted the scheme, holding, with regard to schooling and apprenticing, that, as the trustees might give money to the poor, so they might employ the money for them in objects in which it was proper that it should be employed. "As to the plan of the trustees," said Lord Eldon, "I have nothing to do with arguments of policy. If the Legislature thinks proper to give the power of leaving property to charitable purposes, recognized by the law as such, however prejudicial, the court must administer it. If it is right to put bequests of personal property to charity under the same fetters as real estate, that is for the Legislature; and courts of justice must act without regard to the impolicy of the law."
The anticipations of the evils which were likely to follow from these gifts were more than realized. The amount to be distributed was almost equal to that of the wages of the labouring population in the three parishes. The attraction was irresistible. The following table exhibits the progressive increase of inhabitants:
| 1801 | 1811 | 1821 | 1831 | 1841 | 1851 |
| Stanton-upon-Wye | 430 | 512 | 514 | 544 | 548 | 586 |
| Bredwardine | 306 | 327 | 379 | 436 | 409 | 422 |
| Letton | 124 | 150 | 163 | 200 | 224 | 214 |
Mr. Cumin states in a note that the population of the parishes immediately adjacent - Winferton, Dorstone, Monnington-on-Wye, and Brobury - have, during the same time, diminished. In those parishes, including also Willersley, there were at the last census about 60 persons in number less than in 1801.
In 1801, 151 persons in Stanton-upon-Wye, 89 in Bredwardine, and 80 in Letton, in all 320, appear, by the evidence in the cause, not to
[page 524]
have been of the class of poor, and this number of the wealthier classes may be taken to remain nearly the same, in a district in which no commercial or manufacturing causes have arisen to increase the amount of employment, and no circumstances have occurred to render it in any greater degree the residence of persons at leisure or in retirement. The number of farms, as far as I can ascertain, is now rather less than it was. The pauper population had thus increased, in 10 years, upwards of 20 per cent; in 20 years, almost 40 per cent; and in 30 years, 60 per cent. The distribution of £2,300 a year in alms brought into the parishes, not labourers seeking employment where it was likely to be found, but persons naturally desirous of participation in gifts which could be obtained without labour. The landowners, or wealthy inhabitants, were not likely to make any provision for the residence of increased numbers, whose immigration they did not invite; but as habitations were necessary, the cottages became more crowded; houses not more than sufficient for one family were divided into two or more; and other dwellings were built, not the production of capital directed to the supply of a social necessity, or in situations adapted for the convenience of the employer and the employed, but built by the poor themselves, or those little above them, some on waste, and others in remote spots, with regard to little else than mere shelter. I will not venture to repeat the traditions which are current of the evils which this state of things created; but the inhabitants of the country round these parishes, who remember their state some years ago, are uniform in their testimony of the demoralization of which the poor were by this means made the victims. Their mode of existence is said in some respects to have resembled that alternation of want and repletion which is characteristic of the savage state. The absence of regular employment for so many persons often occasioned at times want and suffering, whilst the large quantities of food distributed at other times led to great excesses. No habits of care or providence taught them to husband that which had caused them no labour to obtain; and where poverty was the title to participation, there was little encouragement to that steady industry which could alone avert it. Idleness, discontent, and improvidence were found to be the fruits of this ill-conceived and ill-judged gift, to which must be added an immorality of life, the results of which are yet distinctly felt.
The trustees at the end of about thirty years altered their system of distribution, and ultimately an information was filed. The then Bishop of Hereford, Sir J. G. Cotterell, and Mr. Tomkyns Dew, by their answer in this suit, say, "that in their opinion the charity has in effect been injurious to the parishes in which it is established, but such injurious effects are rather owing, as they believe, to the largeness of the income arising from the charity as compared with the small population among which the same was to be distributed, than to the mode now pursued in applying the same."
The Court of Chancery, being unable to depart from the terms of the will, application was made to Parliament, and an Act was obtained in 1852.
The Inspector of Charities, after a personal examination, gave the following account of the condition to which the inhabitants of Stanton-upon-Wye had been reduced by the Jarvis charity:
In that parish almost the whole of one, and not the least populous part of the parish, called "Little London," owes its construction, it is believed, entirely to this charity. A number of wretched huts, built of
[page 525]
timber and such other material as the place afforded, arose upon a spot of waste land, and received the significant name which it bears. I understand that these tenements are now let by the lord of the manor to the occupants at rents varying from about three pounds a year upwards. These hovels are closely intersected by open ditches of stagnant water, into which the drains, if there be anything deserving that name, flow. They are approached by pathways, which cannot be properly called roads. My visit happened to occur after an unusually long period of dry weather, but the paths or lanes leading to these dwellings were even then almost impassable. The internal accommodation is what might be expected from the cause which led to the buildings, and the condition of the builders. The sleeping places are generally upon an upper floor, the ascent being by a ladder, with little, if any, separation between the places appropriated to the parents, children, or different sexes. In one cottage I found a kind of rough boarding fixed across the middle of the room, with an aperture of about two feet square in the centre, which might be crept through by persons passing to the inner division of the room, and to which I could see no other access. In another part of the same parish an old farmhouse has been divided into dwelling rooms, as far as I could gather, for no less than five different families, in which the conditions of a healthy physical or moral existence are not less disregarded.*
By the scheme sanctioned by Parliament in 1852, a large portion of the fund has been converted to the purposes of popular education. Another portion is devoted to apprenticing and advancing in life the children from the schools. The gifts in food, clothing, and fuel are reduced to 16 per cent of the income. Of the portion converted to popular education, part is applied to day schools, part, with more questionable wisdom, to charity boarding schools. It appears that some £30,000 is now being spent upon charity boarding houses for the children of 1,200 people living in the state of physical degradation described by the Inspector of Charities in the extract above quoted. This outlay in building appears to involve as complete a departure from the testator's will as the boldest scheme of improvement could require. "The testator," says the Dean of Hereford, "expressly directs in his will that nothing shall be spent on brick and mortar, yet the present trustees are spending in building alone, under the authority of the Court of Chancery, sanctioned by Parliament, not less than £25,000 or £30,000; but, at the same time, the new scheme limits the charity to the population of three small parishes, so small, that so large a charity can scarcely be otherwise than mischievous, interfering with the wages of labour, as it does in this case, they being about 2s a week below those of the neighbouring parishes, and making the charity supply the place of a poor rate." "Surely,"
*Report on Educational Charities, pp. 328, 329.
[page 526]
he adds, "the prospect of doing good, instead of harm, would have equally justified an extended application of the funds of this charity, in part, at all events, in supplementing the wants of education in the parishes in the county, although not expressly mentioned in the will of the testator, as in spending so much in bricks and mortar, which is expressly forbidden."* The aggregate amount of Parliamentary aid received by Herefordshire towards education during 26 years (1833-59) was £17,337. The aggregate annual income of the Jarvis' charity during the same period was more than four times that amount.
Our Assistant Commissioner, Mr. Cumin,† had particular facilities afforded him for inquiring into the operation of a large charity called the Mayor's charity, or the late Clarke and Marshall's charities, at Manchester. He says:
It happened, fortunately, that at the very time when I was prosecuting my inquiries a dispute had arisen with respect to a great endowment at Manchester, the Mayor's, or the late Clarke and Marshall's charities. The town clerk had been in correspondence with the Charity Commissioners in regard to a scheme which had been propounded by the Mayor of Manchester for the purpose of appropriating a certain portion of the charity income to the support of a ragged school. After a vigorous debate in the Town Council, the Mayor's proposition was approved by a small majority. I do not propose to enter upon the question whether the scheme of the Mayor was good or bad; I simply propose to show the manner in which the charity is at present administered, so that the Commissioners may form an opinion whether the intentions of the founder are in any respect carried into effect.
The charity in question consists of an annual sum of £2,260 to be distributed "to poor, aged, and needy or impotent people, at the discretion of the borough-reeve, constables, and churchwardens." Since the date of the inquiry made by the late Commissioners the income has increased by about £400 a year, and on the 29th of September 1859 there was a balance at the banker's of £3,771. The area within which the charity is to be distributed is the township of Manchester, which I was informed by the Poor Law officers contains 200,000 persons.
For the purpose of investigating this charity, I had every facility through the kindness of Mr. Heron, the town clerk, and Mr. Rickards, the chairman of the board of guardians; I took the opportunity of personally visiting the houses of some of the recipients of the charity. Besides, I procured a very considerable number of papers, being the forms of application, and containing the particulars filled up. With these papers before me, I questioned the relieving officers whose duty it is to ascertain (so far as they are able) whether the applicants are fit persons to be relieved. These papers are distributed among the ratepayers, who fill up the blanks. It must be confessed, however, that even if the papers were filled up correctly they would not furnish such information as would exclude all but fit recipients. The earnings neither of father, mother, nor children are stated, and, therefore, even
*Report on Educational Charities, p. 358.
†Ibid., pp. 337, 338, 339.
[page 527]
upon the face of the paper, it is quite possible the applicant may not be in want of charity. It is true that the relieving officers revise the list of applicants, but, in the first place, it is impossible for these officials to make a satisfactory report in the time allowed. How can seven persons examine accurately into 9,000 or 10,000 in four weeks? In the ordinary discharge of their duties the relieving officers are often obliged to watch night and day in order to detect imposition. In the second place, even those applications which have been pronounced by them unfit, are notwithstanding constantly entertained. The person upon whom reliance is placed in the distribution of this charity is the recommender. If he makes no inquiry into the character of the person recommended, or if he does not exercise an honest judgment, the charity must get into the hands of the undeserving. Now, I was told that the practice is defective in both respects. On the one hand, the recommender generally does not visit or even know the person recommended; on the other hand he or she knowingly recommends the wrong person. Thus, out of 400 nominees visited by one officer, only a third was found to live in the place of residence indicated. Out of 13 visited in one street only three were found. Out of 400 visited by another officer only two-thirds were found. Indeed, it is by no means uncommon to find that the person recommended has been dead for years. In some cases I observe that the very name of the nominee is not stated. The practice seems to be to leave a certain number of tickets with some of the chief manufacturers, superior shopkeepers, or bankers, who distribute them amongst their men, to be filled up. Again, it must be observed that all ratepayers are entitled to tickets, and amongst them there are a considerable number of petty landlords, small tradesmen, and beer-house keepers. Such persons distribute the tickets amongst their customers or tenants, without any reference whatever to their merits.
I examined 105 of the nomination papers in presence of the relieving officers, and I found that in some cases the names were fictitious; in others relations had recommended their relations; in others the persons recommended were drunkards or of bad character; in others they were in receipt of considerable wages and unfit objects of charity. To come to particulars, it appeared that 30 cases out of 105 were able-bodied men and women under the age of 46, many of them between 17 and 30. As a further illustration of the want of proper inquiry, I may mention this case. A woman in the receipt of 6s per week from the Poor Law Board, but living by selling oranges, nuts, shell-fish, &c. at dram-shops and public-houses, obtained three different recommendations under three different names from three different persons. None of the recommenders knew the woman, but they kept the public-house vaults where the woman sold her oranges. Another officer reports that he has lately thrown out a recommendation made by a son for his father whom he was liable to maintain, although the son is the proprietor of works, and employs various hands.
But probably the most singular thing is, that there is no proof whatever that the article ever reaches the hands of the person recommended. The relieving officers whom I examined say: "Persons recommend themselves or they recommend others without consulting them, and have the charity left at their own homes to be conveyed from thence to the persons named in the form, but who never get them. The middlemen among the handloom weavers do this, sending in the names of individuals who are lodging and working in their houses, and whose beds they then supply with blankets, counterpanes, and sheets. It is not intended that any person should have more than one recommenda-
[page 528]
tion per year, but some are thus recommended for all the classes of articles distributed, and get them."
Mr. C. H. Rickards, the chairman of the Manchester board of guardians, gives, in a published letter, an account of the distribution of the charity, and the evils arising from it, which corroborates that of Mr. Cumin.*
Mr. Hare says of the charities which have accumulated in the course of the last three centuries in Salisbury, that, "notwithstanding all these charities, the great mass of the poor in Salisbury are not in a better condition, either physically or morally, than in other places, where the charities, if any such exist, are insignificant in amount."† He states that, as far as he can ascertain, there are few places where the poor-rate is higher, in proportion to the population; that there is no place in which there are smaller indications of any improvement in this respect; that the number of paupers has for several years past (up to 1856) steadily increased; that there has been a gradual immigration of poor into the place; and that this, though perhaps partly due to other causes, may, from experience, be attributed to the temptation of the numerous pensions and doles "of which the poor have heard, but in which it is probably not often their lot to participate." Mr. Hare quotes, as apposite to this case, the words of Dr. Chalmers, "There must be a mockery in the magnificence of these public charities, which have not, to all appearances, bettered the circumstances or advanced the comforts of the people among whom they are instituted, beyond those of a people where they are utterly unknown;" and the opinion of the same divine and economist that these charities "form an adhesive nucleus around which the poor accumulate and settle, misled by vague hopes of benefit from the charities which they fail to confer;" and that they "occasion a relaxation of economy and of the relative duties of parents, children, and relations, which is in the ratio of the hope that is felt, and not of the hope that is realized."
No place is more abundantly provided with charities, or has more steadily resisted any change of their objects, than Coventry,‡ the poor of which are at the present moment, plunged in the greatest distress. It is true that this distress arises from a fluctuation in trade. But it is for distress arising from such accidents that charity, if wise and discriminating, provides;
*Mr. Cumin's Report on Educational Charities, pp. .339, 340.
†Letter appended to Mr. Hare's Evidence, p. 479.
‡See the Third Report of the Charity Commissioners (1856), p. 8.
[page 529]
while to produce and aggravate it, by engendering habits improvidence, is the peculiar tendency of periodical distributions of alms by the trustees of charitable foundations.
The Coventry charities are believed to be very useful in elections.* This is probably not a singular case. There is reason to believe that charities are sometimes not only distributed without care in the selection of the object, but abused for the purposes of political corruption. The records of the Charity Commission furnish the following account of the distribution of a large charity at Canterbury, where, from the importance of the city, it must be comparatively easy to find good trustees:†
In Canterbury, there is Lovejoy's charity, part of which is to be applied to "poor, ancient, and sick people not receiving relief." The following list of recipients will show the mode in which the founder's intentions are carried into effect:
| Convicted felon |
1 | |
| Brothel keepers |
4 | |
| Drunkards |
18 | |
| Other bad characters |
17 | |
|
|
40 |
| Paupers |
36 | |
| Occasional paupers |
18 | |
|
|
54 |
| In good employment, or not needy |
51 | |
| Total improper objects |
145 | |
Inmates of hospitals, pensioners, &c. |
8 | |
| Mechanics, labourers, tradesmen |
124 | |
| Persons who may be proper objects |
132 | |
| Respectable poor and deserving persons |
110 | |
| No information respecting |
113 | |
| | 500 |
Mr. Martin‡ was informed that Lovejoy's charity was very much applied to political purposes.
It might be supposed that these doles when distributed by the clergyman of the parish, with regard to the religious habits of the recipients, would do good by encouraging religion. The Dean of Hereford, however, communicated to Mr. Cumin a letter on this subject from the Rev. W. Poole,§ who says:
You asked me about bread charities. There were some at St. Leonard's, and a great many at Lugwardine, which I could observe during the nine years I was in those parishes.
At St. Leonard's the distribution came only twice or three times in the year; when every one came to church who could be considered
*Mr Erle's Evidence, 3826.
†Mr. Cumin's Report on Educational Charities, p. 335.
‡Evidence, 4097.
§Mr. Cumin's Report on Educational Charities, p. 330.
[page 530]
poor, and who, not being poor, wished to "keep up a right" to receive gifts. A large portion came at no other time, or very rarely, and the result was, that the 50 or 60 loaves did not suffice, and if the clergyman did not add loaves enough to satisfy the claimants, ill-will to him, and jealousy towards the recipients, flourished for some time in great vigour; this I have often noticed.
At Lugwardine it was worse - for there every Sunday in the month had its special "charity," and a certain number of labourers were appointed to receive on each Sunday; so many, whose turn came on the first Sunday of the month, so many on the second Sunday, and so on. If there came a fifth Sunday in the month, no bread was given. I could always tell when I went into church by a look at the "open seats" whose turn it was to receive the loaves. As a rule the recipients seldom came except one Sunday in the month, their own gift-day. And on the fifth Sunday of a month, I have sometimes seen the seats altogether or very nearly empty. Of course I don't accuse the bread of all this; but it certainly did not remedy it. My own impression was that the more independent labourers were repelled from attending church by the sight of this interested church-going; and I am convinced that by lowering the tone of feeling among the poor it is doing great mischief, far more than the good which the gift of bread can confer. In those two parishes, I should have no hesitation in saying that unpopular as the step would be, it would be a positive benefit to be rid of those charities altogether. Here (Hentland), on one Sunday in the year, buns and beer are left to be distributed in church after sermon on Palm Sunday. The beer is stopped; but the buns still make a joke for ill-behaved children.
Among the charities which are not for "the poor" generally, but devoted to specific objects, there are some the original objects of which have failed. Mr. Martin speaks of charities towards the payment of the extinct tax of "fifteenths," as existing in considerable numbers.* The trustees of the society for the discharge and relief of persons imprisoned for small debts, have in their hands more than £100,000.† As the cases of cruel and irrational imprisonment for debt, for the relief of which this fund was subscribed, do not occur under the present law, there is a large surplus income, which Parliament has enabled the trustees to apply to various benevolent purposes, having no relation to the relief of debtors. Among other objects, a small contribution is made to ragged schools. Some discussion appears to have arisen respecting the administration of this charity, into which we need not enter. In such cases of lapsed charities, when a new appropriation of the fund is to be made, we submit that the proved advantages of popular education entitle it to a considerable share.
With charities, the specific objects of which have failed, may fairly be classed those intended for the kindred of the founder, when, by lapse of time, the pedigree has been so spun
*Evidence, 4092.
†Mr. Cumin's Report on Educational Charities, p. 365.
[page 531]
out that real relationship can no longer be said to exist. There are large provisions of this kind, for the families of Guy and Smith.* The property of the Smith's charity, founded about the time of the Restoration, is in land round the Kensington Museum, Thurlow Square, Onslow Square, Pelham Crescent, and the Consumptive Hospital, which, it is calculated, will in time produce £50,000 a year. Mr. Hare's evidence on these charities is to the effect that they produce a good deal of fictitious pauperism in the favoured families.
Other charities have outgrown in amount their original object, so that a large surplus fund has accumulated, and awaits appropriation. At Newbury, the inspector reported on two charities, one with a surplus of £139, the other with a surplus of £222. At St. Dunstan's in the East, in London, the inspector states that the unappropriated charities will soon amount to £3,000 a year.†
The object of some charities is to furnish loans. "I have inquired," says the inspector, "in this town (Hereford) and other towns, whether this (Sir Thomas White's) loan charity is really of any practical advantage to those who obtain the money, and I find the general opinion to be that the loans are not productive of any good. In most cases, the persons who are so unfortunate as to be induced to become the sureties, are the persons ultimately obliged to pay the debt, and there does not appear any recorded or known instance of a borrower who has really benefited by the loan. Amongst the obligors in the eleven bonds, I was told by a gentleman, who knew the whole of them, that only one of them had risen in the world."‡ The present Charity Commissioners also state in their Third Report,§ that "loan charities, in spite of every precaution on the part of the administrators, are found to be liable to great abuse, and, when carried to a great extent, they must be attended with very doubtful advantage." "It is difficult," says Mr. Miller,|| in reference to the Bristol loan charities, "to say whether the system of lending these loans is, on the whole, beneficial to the borrower or not. It is very often far otherwise to the sureties."
The charities for apprenticing the children of the poor are calculated to amount to £50,000 a year. The Commissioners of Inquiry returned £31,670 exclusively applicable to this pur-
*Mr. Hare's Evidence, 3919-3926.
†Mr. Cumin's Report on Educational Charities, p. 321.
‡Ibid., p. 317.
§Appendix, p. 133.
||Appendix to Mr. Cumin's Report on Bristol and Plymouth, p. 177.
[page 532]
pose; besides which the sum of £69,200 a year is applicable partly to this, and partly to other purposes. "The amount of the fee varies greatly, ranging from £5 to £25 for each child. Some of the charities are administered by existing corporate bodies; some by the municipal trustees of corporate towns, who have succeeded the old corporations; some by the minister and churchwardens and other parochial authorities. A large number of trustees are appointed from time to time, and have not of necessity any public capacity."* Apprenticeship is, in effect, industrial education; but it is the industrial education of a past rather than of the present age. The subdivision of labour and the introduction of machinery, rendering crafts which were once a mystery easy of acquirement, have conspired with the general ascendancy of free trade principles to break up the system against which Adam Smith wrote. In our greatest seats of industry apprenticeship has almost ceased to exist. Apprenticeship fees consequently seem at present to be comparatively little in request. The reports of the Charity Inspectors frequently contain cases in which the fund for apprenticeship fees had accumulated because no application had been made for years. In St. Dunstan's-in-the-West only three applications for apprenticeship fees had been made in six years. At St. Antholin's, in the City of London, there is an apprenticeship fund called Coventry's Charity, but there has been no apprentice for many years, and the fund has accumulated so that a scheme is wanted for its application. In Ravenstone, Bucks, the income of a charity consisting of £5,546 5s 10d is devoted to clothing and apprenticing, but there is no demand for apprenticeship fees. There were only twelve applications in seven years. On the other hand there appears reason to believe that thriving and respectable masters look only to the boy's character and education, and disregard the fee. When the fee is taken, it is believed by the Charity Inspectors, whose opinion Mr. Cumin† had an opportunity of ascertaining, that "it is divided, by an underhand arrangement, between the parent and the master to whom the boy is apprenticed" - a system which involves malversation [corruption], as well as waste. It is a question whether the funds now devoted to apprenticeship might not in many instances be applied with advantage, and with full regard for the founder's main design, either to the foundation of small exhibitions tenable in any trade
*Mr. Cumin's Report on Educational Charities, p. 318.
†Ibid., p. 319.
[page 533]
or calling without restriction, and open as prizes of diligence and good conduct to the children of the local schools, or to the promotion of industrial education in the most improved form.
In the parish of St. Nicholas with St. Leonard's, at Bristol, the example has already been set, under the auspices of the Rev. Canon Girdlestone, of diverting large charitable funds from the objectionable purposes previously described, to that of supporting new parochial schools lately built, at a cost of £2,500, under Government inspection, and with teachers holding first-class certificates. "This has been done," says Canon Girdlestone, "with the cordial approval of all classes in the parish except the vicious." The change was effected by means of an Act of Parliament. The state of things arising from the operation of the charities, as originally applied, and the results of the change, are thus described by Canon Girdlestone:
When about three years ago I became vicar of the parish, I found it greatly demoralised and pauperised by the annual distribution in money doles of very large charitable bequests which could not, except by Act of Parliament, be diverted from that object. At a date not very remote from this these funds were used almost entirely for electioneering purposes. For some years past all such application of these funds has ceased, and much care has been bestowed upon a proper distribution of them. Nevertheless, it was impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact, that, after all, a large portion of the sum distributed found its way into the public-houses, and that the tendency of the whole system was to demoralise and pauperise. Lodgings in the parish of St. Nicholas were at a premium, on account of the money gifts. Under these circumstances, after ventilating the project whenever opportunity offered, both in public and private, for a year or more, I at last succeeded, with the full consent and active co-operation of the vestry, and without any opposition from any one, in concerting a scheme with the Charity Commissioners, which has passed both Houses of Parliament, and just received the royal assent. By this Act, which has cost the parish nothing, the money doles are for ever abolished; £200 per annum of the sum heretofore distributed in doles is applied to the endowment of the parochial almshouses for aged widows; and the remainder, at present amounting to about £240, and in the course of a few years likely to amount to not less than £450 per annum, is set apart for the support of the above-mentioned schools. Thus these bequests are still administered to the same class of population for which they were originally left. Only, instead of being used, as heretofore, for the demoralization of the able-bodied, they are applied, partly to the securing a comfortable maintenance for the aged and widowed, and partly for the efficient education of the young. With regard to this latter object, there will be ample funds, when the contributions of those receiving education are also taken into account, not merely to maintain the boys', girls', and infant schools in their present efficient condition, but to provide at a small cost one good meal a day for each child attending the schools; to give the elder girls so much industrial training as consists in learning to cook this dinner from materials and with appliances such as they will be
[page 534]
likely to have afterwards in their own homes; and to set up adult night schools for both sexes, under trained and well-paid teachers.
In the same manner, at Loughborough, a large fund given by Thomas Burton, in 1495, on charitable trusts, of which no record has been found, the bulk of which was formerly applied in aid of the poor-rates, has now, in consequence of this misappropriation having been certified by the Commissioners of Inquiry to the Attorney-General, been better appropriated; and the whole amount is applied to the maintenance of the excellent free grammar, commercial, and elementary schools, to which we have before alluded.
The example of St. Nicholas parish, Bristol, appears to us to be in every respect worthy of consideration. The conversion has not in this case been harsh or sweeping. £200 per annum of the sum heretofore distributed in doles has been applied to the endowment of the parochial almshouses for aged widows, while the residue is devoted to the education of the parish. Such divisions of the fund may frequently be found wise and just. Nor do we propose to disturb any charity which is pronounced by those qualified to judge to be really doing good, as at present applied, or which could be made to do so by mere alterations of detail. The Rev. T. C. Price,* whose description of the ill effects of some of the Bristol charities we have extracted, adds, "that others have afforded him means which he could not otherwise have obtained for relieving urgent cases of distress."
We agree wit.h the Rev. H. Fearon, that "before any endowment is handed over to a purpose different from what the testator intended, some competent authority ought to be consulted on the individual case." The authority mentioned by Mr. Fearon is the Charity Commission. We have before had occasion to acknowledge the good which the Commission has done within the range of its powers. But how inadequate its powers are to effect even the most reasonable change may be inferred from the following outline of the Coventry case, given before us by the Chief Commissioner, Mr. Erle:†
3824. (Mr. Senior.) Will you give an outline of the Coventry case? - The Coventry case was of this character: There are very large endowments applicable to the distribution of loans and pecuniary doles at Coventry. The loan charities greatly exceed even any demand on them, and the unemployed surplus amounted to upwards of £20,000, and was rapidly increasing. Of the charities distributed in pecuniary
*Appendix to Mr. Cumin's Report on Bristol and Plymouth, p. 179.
†Evidence, 3824.
[page 535]
doles, one alone produced a very improving income of £1,100, and there were many others. The mastership of the grammar school was attached by an old Act of Parliament to the rectory of a large parish, offices which cannot be effectively discharged together.
The principal objects of the scheme were to sever the rectory referred to from the mastership of the school, though at the cost of transferring unavoidably a part of the proper school endowments to the rectory.
To reconstitute the school on an improved and very comprehensive scale; to reserve an ample loan fund, but to apply its surplus and the dole funds, after aiding the grammar school, to the foundation and maintenance of an industrial girls' school on a large scale; to provide instruction to evening classes and by lectures; to build and endow a wing in the county hospital for the freemen; to aid the dispensary; still leaving a considerable yearly amount for distributions of articles in kind and of pensions among the poor. All these objects were attainable with so large funds, though it was not proposed to affect any parochial charities or other large funds which were enjoyed by the freemen.
I believe that every branch of the charity, as proposed by us, and the principal objects of which had been strongly recommended to us by persons much interested in the town, would have conferred very great benefit on Coventry; but it encountered much local opposition, and no bill was ever introduced into Parliament for giving effect to the scheme.
3825. (Rev. W. Rogers.) What is the condition of the Coventry charities now? - I think that some proceedings have been pending in the Court of Chancery for a long time for applying the loan fund, but I do not know that any result has been yet obtained. The dole charities remain as before.
3826. (Mr. Senior.) They are very useful in the elections, I suppose? - I believe that they are very useful in the elections.
The defeat of a scheme proposed by the Commissioners for a charity at Newcastle is mentioned by Mr. Erle* as an instance of the manner in which schemes have been rejected by Parliament without sufficient examination. It is particularly remarkable on account of the obvious usefulness and lawfulness of the change proposed:
I may refer to a scheme for a charity at Newcastle as an example of the latter class. The endowments of an ancient hospital there were found to produce £1,500 a year, capable of considerable improvement when its leases fall in. That charity is applied in this manner: There is a church or chapel, the incumbent of which received from this income a maximum stipend of £300 per annum, fixed by the Municipal Corporation; of the remaining income, the master of the hospital receives a moiety, and the other moiety is divided among three brethren. But the hospital itself does not exist. There is no building, and the master and brethren receive its income as sinecure pensions. We found reason for concluding that the original foundation was for the relief of leprosy, and it was considered in the result of a very extended inquiry by our inspector, that the most beneficial application of this fund would be to establish a seaside branch of the infir-
*Evidence, 3820.
[page 536]
mary for the relief of persons suffering particularly from scrofula, a disease very prevalent in the locality. We proposed a scheme to Parliament for that purpose, which was passed by the House of Lords after examination, and without any alteration; but the House of Commons, without any communication with us, rejected that scheme on the ground that it was within the power of the Court of Chancery to effect the same object. We certainly considered that it was beyond the power of the Court of Chancery to effect all the objects of the scheme, and were confirmed in that opinion by the knowledge that another charity at Newcastle had under very similar circumstances been reformed under the order of the Court of Chancery, which directed that a private Act of Parliament should be obtained for giving effect to its scheme.
These instances, which might be greatly multiplied, appear to us to suggest the need, not only of extended legal powers, but a responsible of the constitutional authority which is possessed by the great departments of the State, and with which it is difficult to invest a special commission; as well as of a responsible minister, a member of the Government, to take charge of measures in the House of Commons. The intervention of the highest authority is even more necessary for the conversion of charitable funds from the purposes of indiscriminate almsgiving or political corruption to that of education, than for the improvement and opening of endowed schools, because local interests are likely to be more unreasonable and tenacious in their opposition. To expect that local trustees, generally speaking, will spontaneously encounter the odium of initiating reforms of this kind is to expect more than reason or experience permits.
For this purpose, therefore, as well as for the more convenient administration of mixed estates of educational and other charities above mentioned, it appears to us desirable that all the charities now within the jurisdiction of the Charity Commission should be brought under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council; and that the Privy Council should be empowered to proceed to the better application of charitable funds and their conversion, where it may be right and expedient, to the purposes of education, by the method which we have proposed for the improvement of endowed schools. That method is, to lay a scheme before the local trustees, who, if they object, will have an appeal to a Committee of the Privy Council distinct from the Committee by which the scheme is framed; and, in case the scheme is not appealed against, or is confirmed on appeal, to include it in the schedule of an Act similar in form to the Inclosure Acts, to be brought into Parliament by the responsible minister of the department. Charitable funds, which, by this legislative process, shall have been converted to education, will become subject to the same provisions
[page 537]
and powers which we have proposed in regard to funds already so applied.
If our suggestion is adopted, the Committee of the Privy Council on Education will become the Committee of the Privy Council on Education and Charities. The Charity Commission will cease to exist as a separate legal body, and become a department of the Privy Council under the Education and Charities Committee in close connexion with the existing Department of Education, and subject to the same control.
The measure here suggested no doubt is extensive, but the objects to be gained are also great, both as regards the promotion of what is good and the suppression of what is evil. Nor is any innovation in point of principle involved in the suggestion. The authority conferred by the Legislature on the Charity Commission is feeble and ineffectual in its operation, but in its scope it extends as far as the utmost changes we have here suggested. We merely desire to carry out by a more effectual method, and through a more influential organ, and one better known to the constitution, improvements which Parliament has already in principle sanctioned.
ACCOUNT OF KING EDWARD'S FREE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, BIRMINGHAM, as reconstituted and extended. Furnished by the Rev. E. H. GiFFORD, Head Master.
The classical school, containing 250 boys, and the English school, Organisation of containing 215 boys, occupy separate rooms in the same building.
The boys have a common playground, and meet together in the classical school in the morning and evening for prayers.
The classical school is divided into twelve classes, ten of which occupy the principal school-room, in which the head master presides and teaches the senior classes.
The other masters of this department are a composition master, four classical assistant masters, a mathematical master, a French master, two writing masters, and a German master, who is also employed in the English school.
The two lowest classes occupy a separate room under the care of one of the classical masters and one of the writing masters. There are also two class-rooms and a gallery attached to the classical school and used for the separate instruction of classes.
The English school is divided into ten classes, which occupy one principal room, two galleries, and two class rooms.
By a recent statute the second master has been transferred to the English school, in which he directs the system of instruction and discipline under the general supervision of the head master.
There are in this department four assistant masters, two writing masters, and a French master; the German master is partly employed in this school.
The subjects of instruction common to both schools are English history, grammar, geography, writing, and arithmetic, with the addition
[page 538]
of mathematics, French, and German in the higher classes. In the English school, German is taught in addition to French, in the classical school as an alternative to it.
In the classical school, Latin is begun in the lowest class, Greek in the ninth. In the English school, Latin is begun in the eighth class; Greek is not taught at all.
The first class of the English school consists of two divisions, in the upper of which the study of Latin is discontinued, and the higher mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry are made chief subjects of instruction.
The boys of both schools learn drawing at the Government School of Art, forming a special class, the expenses of which are paid by the governors of King Edward's School.
The head and second masters are required by Act of Parliament to be Masters of Arts of Oxford or Cambridge and in Holy Orders, and the assistant masters are required to be members of the Church of England.
The prayers used are selected from the Liturgy.
All the pupils are instructed in the Scriptures, except that Jews are not expected to attend lessons on the New Testament.
Any pupil is exempted from learning the Church Catechism and other formularies, if a conscientious objection is made by his parent.
Religious instruction is conducted upon the same principles in the elementary schools.
As vacancies occur from time to time in the Grammar School they are reported by the head master, and candidates for admission are nominated by the governors and examined by the head master.
No boy is admissible until he is eight years old, and can write and read English.
Sons of inhabitants of the town, parish, or manor of Birmingham, or of any parish touching thereon, receive their entire education free of charge.
The number of boarders is limited to thirty, eighteen to be received by the head master, and twelve by the second master.
Other boys, not sons of inhabitants, are required to pay £20 a year to the governors; but no such boys can be admitted to the exclusion of sons of inhabitants of the town, parish, or manor of Birmingham, and there are none such at present in the school.
The elementary schools occupy four buildings situated in different parts of the town. Each building contains a school for boys and one for girls. The number of pupils is 125 in each school, or 1,000 in all.
In each school there is one master (or mistress), one assistant, and from two to four paid monitors.
The subjects of instruction are, the Scriptures, English history, grammar, geography, writing, arithmetic; in the boys' schools, the elements of geography and book-keeping, and in the girls' schools, sewing and knitting.
Masters from the Government School of Art attend the schools to teach elementary drawing, and the more advanced students have the privilege of attending at the Central School of Art.
Applicants for admission, after having obtained a nomination from one of the governors, are examined by the head master in writing and reading English.
Boys are admissible from eight years of age to fourteen, and girls from seven to thirteen.
[page 539]
Monthly examinations for the purpose of admitting new pupils are held at the grammar school; the masters, mistresses, and assistants attend on these occasions, and also meet once a month to report to the head master on the various matters concerning their schools.
The head master arranges the system of instruction in the elementary schools, and from time to time inspects and examines them.
Once a year there is an oral examination of all the classes in each school, and a competitive examination, by written papers, of the senior pupils and monitors of all the schools.
The monitors are selected from the most competent of the senior pupils.
At the close of each half year the pupils of all the elementary schools, boys and girls, assemble at the grammar school, for the distribution of prizes.
The head master is authorized by the governors to promote to the grammar school, without a new nomination, a limited number of boys who have distinguished themselves in the elementary school, and in the same way to transfer promising boys from the English to the classical school.
Independently of this arrangement, boys admitted to one school can be transferred to another by obtaining a new nomination.
No pupil is admitted to any of the schools, transferred from one to another, or dismissed, except by the head master, to whom all questions of discipline are ultimately referred, and who conducts the school in accordance with the statutes and orders made from time to time by the governors.
No mention is made of exhibitions in the Letters Patent.
The first exhibitioners occur in 1677, when two were elected.
The statutes of 1753 established seven exhibitions of £20 per annum, tenable for seven years at Oxford or Cambridge. In 1796 there were ten exhibitions of £35 tenable for seven years.
At present, under the scheme confirmed by the Act 1 & 2 Will. 4. c. 17., there are ten exhibitions of £50 per annum, tenable for four years at any college in Oxford or Cambridge.
They are awarded at the annual visitation of the school according to the result of an examination conducted by three resident Masters of Arts of Oxford or Cambridge. The candidates who are found by the examiners to be qualified to receive exhibitions are arranged in order according to their excellence in classical learning, and the governors according to this order award the exhibitions, first to sons of inhabitants of the town, parish, or manor of Birmingham, and in default of such candidates duly qualified in classical learning to other boys who have been educated in the school for three years.
There are also two scholarships, founded by Mr. John Milward in 1654, of £50 per annum, tenable for four years at Brasenose College, Oxford, by sons of inhabitants of Birmingham or any contiguous parish.
III
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Our principal conclusions in this part of our Report are:
1. That the educational charities are capable of being turned to better account.
[page 540]
2. That of the charities not at present applicable to education, some might, under proper authority, be lawfully and advantageously applied to that purpose.
Our principal recommendations are -
(1) That with a view to both the objects above mentioned, and to placing all the educational functions of Government under the same control, the Charity Commission be converted into a department of the Privy Council; that the Committee of Council on Education become the Committee of Council on Education and Charities; and that the Privy Council be invested with the power, to be exercised through the Committee, of making ordinances for the improvement of educational charities, and for the conversion to the purposes of education, wholly or in part, of charities which are noxious or useless as at present applied. These ordinances to be laid before the trustees of the respective charities, who may appeal to a Committee of the Privy Council distinct from the Education Committee, and afterwards to be laid before Parliament, in the schedule of a bill similar in form to the Inclosure Acts. The power not to extend to any foundation during the lifetime of the founder, nor (except with the unanimous consent of his trustees) within twenty-one years after his decease.
We recommend that the Privy Council in the exercise of this power, as regards educational charities, shall direct its attention to -
(a) The adaptation of the instruction given in endowed schools to the requirements of the class to whom it ought to be given.
(b) An improved distribution of the income of endowed schools between the several objects of the foundation.
(c) The employment of a part of a capital fund, where necessary, in the improvement of the school premises.
(d) The extension, where it may seem just and desirable, of the benefits conferred on popular education by free boarding or clothing schools, either by opening the places in them to industry and merit, or by converting them into ordinary day schools, furnishing an education partly gratuitous to a larger number of children.
(e) Extending the benefits of Christ's Hospital.
(f) The abolition or relaxation of injurious restrictions, and the extension of the benefits of educational endowments to adjoining districts; provided that this power shall not affect any restrictions imposed by the founder in regard to the religious
[page 541]
denomination of trustees or teachers, or in regard to the kind of religious instruction to be given in the school.
(g) The combination of small endowments.
(h) The changing where it is desirable the sites of endowed schools.
(j) The re-organization of the boards of trustees.
(2) That all endowed schools now subject to inspection by the Charity Commission become subject to inspection by the Privy Council, and that the middle and elementary schools be annually visited and examined by the Privy Council Inspectors, and their accounts audited on the spot.
(3) That no person shall be appointed to the mastership of an endowed school who shall not have either taken an academical degree or obtained a certificate of competency from some authorized body, and that every appointment shall be certified to, and if duly made, confirmed by the Privy Council.
(4) That the Privy Council be empowered in case of need to call upon trustees to institute an inquiry into the state of any endowed school, and in case the master be found inefficient, to empower the trustees to remove him or pension him off; and in the last resort to remove him or pension him off themselves.
(5) That every appointment of a master to an endowed school be made after public notice, stating the qualifications required, and inviting candidates to send in their names.
(6) That instruments of foundation, and other instruments regulating charities be registered in the office of the Privy Council.
(7) In order to facilitate the foundation and endowment of schools for the poor, we recommend -
(a) That a very simple form of instrument for those purposes be prepared by the Privy Council, and that conveyances made in this form be valid when registered in the Privy Council Office.
(b) That the vestry of any parish be empowered to accept a school site and buildings for the use of the parish, and to bind themselves and their successors to keep the buildings in repair.
[page 542]
Summary of Recommendations
We have now discharged the duty imposed upon us, have examined the condition of education among the poorer classes of Your Majesty's subjects, and have suggested means for its improvement in all its principal branches. We have given an account of the leading institutions, whether in connexion with the Government or with the great charitable societies of the country, by which the education of the poor is superintended and assisted, and have described the different classes of elementary schools. We have endeavoured to ascertain the general character and the ability of the teachers both in public and private schools and have particularly inquired into the education given to the pupils of the training colleges, who may justly be supposed to become the highest class of elementary teachers. We have followed these teachers, both public and private, to their schools, have tested the merits of their instruction and have inquired into the regularity of the attendance of the scholars. We have carried our inquiry beyond the limits of the schools for the independent poor into the schools for pauper children; into the factory and print-works schools; into the ragged, industrial, and reformatory schools; and into the schools maintained by the State both for children and adults in the Army and Navy. We have also caused a full Statistical Report to be prepared, containing details with regard to the numbers of children now under instruction, the sums expended on education, and other collateral subjects.
Our attention, however, has principally been devoted to the system of aid and inspection established by Your Majesty's Government, which has now for twenty years given a powerful stimulus to the building of schools, and has created a class of schoolmasters and pupil-teachers of a superior character to any previously known in this country. We have dwelt fully both on the merits and the defects of this system. We have found it stimulating voluntary subscriptions, offering many excellent models of teaching, and adapting itself to the character of the people by leaving both the general management of the schools and their religious teaching free. On the other hand we have
[page 543]
exposed great and growing defects in its tendency to indefinite expense, in its inability to assist the poorer districts, in the partial inadequacy of its teaching, and in the complicated business which encumbers the central office of the Committee of Council; and these defects have led us to believe that any attempt to extend it unaltered into a national system would fail. We have therefore proposed, while retaining the leading principles of the present system and simplifying its working, to combine with it a supplementary and local system which may diffuse a wider interest in education, may distribute its burdens more equally, and may enable every school in the country to participate in its benefits.
In close connexion with the education of the independent poor, we have proposed in another part of our Report a scheme by which the charities which have been given for purposes of education, and others which appear justly available for that object, may be employed in a more advantageous manner than is possible at present under the limited powers of the Charity Commissioners.
Turning to the education of the children of other classes of the poor, we have shown with regard to the children of the indoor paupers, that while the intellectual teaching of many workhouse schools is good, great moral evil has resulted from educating children in close contact with adults many of whom are of a corrupted character; and we have at the same time pointed out the peculiar facilities for giving to such children a sound education, both moral and intellectual, which arise from the fact that their whole time and management are at the disposition of the guardians of the poor. We have also shown that a control of a beneficial kind may be exercised by the guardians over the children of parents in receipt of outdoor relief
With regard to vagrant and criminal children, we have been led to think that, however desirable it may be that charitable persons should try every means for forcing education upon neglected and ignorant classes, ragged schools, unless affording industrial occupation, cannot be properly distinguished as objects for public assistance from other humble classes of schools for elementary instruction. We are of opinion that the education of
[page 544]
children who are peculiarly in danger of becoming criminals would be most fitly conducted in district or separate pauper schools; but we recommend the continuance for the present of certified industrial schools, which have been attended with great success. Lastly, the success of the reformatory schools appears to us to indicate that schools of this description are best entrusted to the control of Government. In the State schools for the Military Service, we find a good system in operation. In the Naval Schools we find defects, remedies for which are recommended.
We now proceed to enumerate our principal recommendations.
I. PLAN FOR GIVING ASSISTANCE TO THE SCHOOLS OF THE INDEPENDENT POOR
1. That all assistance given to the annual maintenance of schools shall be simplified and reduced to grants of two kinds.
The first of these grants shall be paid out of the general taxation of the country, in consideration of the fulfilment of certain conditions by the managers of the schools. Compliance with these conditions is to be ascertained by the Inspectors.
The second shall be paid out of the county rates, in consideration of the attainment of a certain degree of knowledge by the children in the school during the year preceding the payment. The existence of this degree of knowledge shall be ascertained by examiners appointed by County and Borough Boards of Education herein-after described.
2. That no school shall be entitled to these grants which shall not fulfil the following general conditions.
The school shall have been registered at the office of the Privy Council, on the report of the Inspector, as an elementary school for the education of the poor.
The School shall be certified by the Inspector to be healthy and properly drained and ventilated, and supplied with offices; and the principal school-room shall contain at least eight square feet of superficial area for each child in average daily attendance.
3. That there shall be paid upon the average daily attendance of the children during the year preceding the inspector's visit as the Committee of Council shall fix from time to time, the sums specified in Part I, Chapter 6, for each child, according to the opinion formed by the Inspectors of the discipline, efficiency, and general character of the school.
[page 545]
4. That there shall also be paid an additional grant of 2s 6d a child on so many of the average number of children in attendance throughout the year as have been under the instruction of properly qualified pupil-teachers, or assistant teachers, allowing 30 children for each pupil-teacher, or 60 for each assistant teacher.
5. That every school which applies for aid out of the county rate shall be examined by a county examiner within 12 months after the application, in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and that any one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools under whose inspection the school will fall shall be entitled to be present at the examination.
6. That, subject to recommendation 7, the managers of all schools fulfilling the conditions specified in Rule 3, shall be entitled to be paid out of the county rate a sum varying from 22s 6d to 21s. for every child who has attended the school during 140 days in the year preceding the day of examination, and who passes an examination before the examiner in reading, writing, arithmetic, and who, if a girl, also passes an examination in plain work. That scholars under 7 years of age shall not be examined, but the amount of the grant shall be determined by the average number of children in daily attendance, 20s being paid on account of each child.
7. That the combined grants from the Central Fund and the County Board shall never exceed the fees and subscriptions, or 15s per child on the average attendance.
II. COUNTY AND BOROUGH BOARDS OF EDUCATION
8. That in every county or division of a county having a separate county rate there shall be a County Board of Education appointed in the following manner: The Court of Quarter Sessions shall elect any number of members, not exceeding six, being in the Commission of the Peace, or being Chairmen or Vice-Chairmen of Boards of Guardians; and the members so elected shall elect any other persons not exceeding six. The number of ministers of religion on any County Board of Education shall not exceed one-third of the whole number.
9. That in corporate towns, which at the census last preceding contained more than 40,000 inhabitants, the town council may appoint a Borough Board of Education, to consist of any number of persons not exceeding six, of which not more than two shall be ministers of religion. This Board shall within the limits of the borough have the powers of a County Board of Education.
[page 546]
10. That where there is a Borough Board of Education the grant which would have been paid out of the county rate shall be paid out of the borough rate, or other municipal funds.
11. That the election of County and Borough Boards of Education shall be for three years, but at the end of each year one-third of the Board shall retire, but be capable of re-election. At the end of the first and second years, the members to retire shall be determined by lot. The Court of Quarter Sessions, at the next succeeding quarter sessions after the vacancies made in the County Board, shall fill up the places, but so as always to preserve as near as may be the proportion between the number chosen from the Commission of the Peace, and from the Chairmen and Vice-Chairmen of the Boards of Guardians and the other members. The vacancy in the Borough Boards of Education shall be filled up by the Town Council, at a meeting to be held one calendar month from the day of the vacancies made.
12. That an Inspector of schools to be appointed by the Committee of Council, shall be a member of each County and Borough Board.
13. That the Boards of Education shall appoint examiners, being certificated masters of at least seven years standing, and receive communications and decide upon complaints as to their proceedings.
III. TRAINING COLLEGES FOR MASTERS AND MISTRESSES
14. That the grants now made by the Government to the training colleges be continued.
15. That the sums paid to Queen's Scholars in the training colleges be for the present continued.
16. That the attention of the Committee of Privy Council be drawn to the possibility of shortening the hours of study, both for male and female students, in the training colleges.
17. That their attention be also drawn to the importance of giving such a training to all schoolmistresses as shall enable them to give proper instruction to infants.
18. That certain alterations be made in the present syllabus of studies, and, in particular, that more attention be given to political economy, and other subjects of practical utility.
19. That the method of giving certificates of proficiency to teachers be altered as follows:
(a) That there be an annual examination at the training colleges, open to all the students and to all teachers actually
[page 547]
engaged in schools, public or private, and properly recommended as to moral character.
(b) That the names of those who have passed this examination be arranged in four classes, of which the first three shall, as at present, be each arranged in three divisions.
(c) That any person who, having passed this examination, has for two years subsequently been employed in an elementary school which has, during that time, been twice inspected, shall receive a certificate corresponding to his place in the examination.
(d) That the Inspector have the right of reducing the rank of the certificate to any extent if the state of the school at the time of inspection appear to him to require it; and that he also have the right of raising the rank of the certificate by one division if the state of the school appear to him to warrant it.
(e) That the certificates, when issued, be subject to revision at the expiration of every period of five years from their original date, spent in any inspected school or schools, and that the Inspector may then alter the certificate according to the state of the school; and that in each of the five years an endorsement as to the state of the school be made by the Inspector on the certificate.
(f) Certificates bear no pecuniary but only an honorary value.
IV. EVENING SCHOOLS
20. That, inasmuch as evening schools appear to be a most effective and popular means of education, the attention of the Committee of Council be directed to the importance of organizing them more perfectly, and extending them more widely, than at present.
21. That for this purpose a special grant be made in schools where an organizing master is employed.
V. BETTER APPLICATION OF EDUCATIONAL AND OTHER CHARITIES
22. That steps be taken to turn the educational charities to better account, and to apply to the purpose of education some of the other charities which are not at present applicable to that purpose.
23. That with a view to both the above objects, and to placing all the educational functions of Government under the same control, the Charity Commission be converted into a department
[page 548]
of the Privy Council; that the Committee of Council on Education become the Committee of Council on Education and Charities; and that the Privy Council be invested with the power, to be exercised through the Committee, of making ordinances for the improvement of educational charities, and for the conversion to the purposes of education, wholly or in part, of charities which are mischievous or useless as at present applied. These ordinances to be laid before the trustees of the respective charities, who may appeal to a Committee of the Privy Council distinct from the Education Committee, and afterwards to be laid before Parliament, in the schedule of a bill similar in form to the Inclosure Acts. The power not to extend to any foundation during the lifetime of the founder, nor (except with the unanimous consent of his trustees) within twenty-one years after his decease.
24. That the Privy Council in the exercise of this power, as regards educational charities, shall direct its attention to -
The adaptation of the instruction given in endowed schools to the requirements of the class to which it ought to be given.
An improved distribution of the income of endowed schools between the several objects of the foundation.
The employment of a part of the capital fund, where necessary, in the improvement of the school premises.
The extension, where it may seem just and desirable, of the benefits conferred on popular education by free boarding or clothing schools, either by opening the places in them to industry and merit, or by converting them into ordinary day schools, furnishing an education partly gratuitous to a larger number of children.
Extending the benefits of Christ's Hospital.
The abolition or relaxation of injurious restrictions, and the extension of the benefits of educational endowments to adjoining districts; provided that this power shall not affect any restrictions imposed by the founder in regard to the religious denomination of trustees or teachers, or in regard to the kind of religious instruction to be given in the school.
The combination of small endowments.
The changing where it is desirable the sites of endowed schools.
The re-organization of the boards of trustees.
25. That all endowed schools now subject to inspection by the Charity Commission become subject to inspection by the Privy Council, and that the middle and elementary schools be annually
[page 549]
visited and examined by the Privy Council Inspectors, and their accounts audited on the spot.
26. That no person shall be appointed to the mastership of an endowed school who shall not have either taken an academical degree or obtained a certificate of competency from some authorized body, and that every appointment shall be certified to, and if duly made, confirmed by the Privy Council.
27. That the Privy Council be empowered in case of need to call upon trustees to institute an inquiry into the state of any endowed school, and in case the master be found inefficient, to empower the trustees to remove him or pension him off; and in the last resort to remove him or pension him off themselves.
28. That every appointment of a master to an endowed school be made after public notice, stating the qualifications required and inviting candidates to send in their names.
29. That instruments of foundation, and other instruments regulating charities be registered in the office of the Privy Council.
30. In order to facilitate the foundation and endowment of schools for the poor,
That a very simple form of instrument for those purposes be prepared by the Privy Council, and that conveyances made in this form be valid when registered in the Privy Council Office.
That the vestry of any parish be empowered to accept a school site and buildings for the use of the parish, and to bind themselves and their successors to keep the buildings in repair.
VI. EDUCATION OF CHILDREN EMPLOYED IN FACTORIES, PRINTWORKS, MINES, AND COLLIERIES
31. That with a view to prevent the present evasions of the education clauses of the Factory Acts, no certificate of school attendance be considered valid unless the school from which it is issued shall have been declared by an Inspector "to be excellent," "good," or "fair," for that purpose: that this declaration be valid for one year, and that lists of the schools, so declared fit to grant certificates, be published in the local papers.
32. That, the education clauses in the Act of 8 & 9 Vict. c. 28, with respect to printworks being ineffectual, attention be drawn to the joint report of all the Inspectors of factories on the subject
[page 550]
(in October 1855), and to the following methods for remedying the defects complained of, namely, the extending the half-time system to printworks; or restricting the children to alternate days of work, the intermediate days being devoted to school.
33. That, the legal provisions with regard to the education of boys employed in mines and collieries, being inadequate, inasmuch as they allow the certificates of incompetent masters and provide no tests of competency; the children be compelled to attend at school during the full time specified in the Act (23 & 24 Vict. c. 151); and that (as in the case of factories) no certificate of school attendance be valid, unless the school from which it issued has been declared by the Inspector to be excellent, good, or fair for that purpose.
VII. EDUCATION OF PAUPER CHILDREN
34;. That the influences of workhouses on the children educated within their walls being pernicious, the separation of children from adult paupers be enforced.
35. That as the best means for effecting this, the Poor Law Board be empowered to order the hiring or building of district schools. But that in case of any union undertaking to provide a separate school, at a distance of not less than three miles from the workhouse; the order be suspended, and be revoked; if the separate school be established and certified by the Inspector of pauper schools to be sufficient.
36. That the Poor Law Board be empowered to order the establishment of a separate school by any union which they do not think fit to incorporate in a district.
37. That in the case of outdoor paupers, the guardians be obliged to make the education of the child a condition of the outdoor relief of the parent, and to pay the necessary school fees out of the rates.
VIII. EDUCATION OF VAGRANTS AND CRIMINALS
38. That ragged schools be regarded, as at present, "as provisional institutions constantly tending to become elementary schools;" and that public assistance be continued to those which are also industrial schools.
39. That the English Act for industrial schools being too
[page 551]
limited, the Scotch Act (Mr. Dunlop's, 17 & 18 Vict. c. 74.), be extended to England.
40. That though certified industrial schools are at present very effective, they should be regarded as provisional institutions; and that children who are peculiarly in danger of being criminal be educated in the district or separate schools for pauper children.
41. That district and separate schools for pauper children be declared to be ipso facto industrial schools.
42. That the education of children in reformatories being satisfactorily conducted, the aid given to them be continued.
IX. EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IN STATE SCHOOLS
44. That an Annual Report upon the Army Schools be issued and forwarded to the commanding officer of every regiment.
45. That a normal school be established at Greenwich for the Navy, similar to the one at Chelsea for the Army; and that the students at the close of their career be examined and receive a certificate of qualification.
46. That the pupil-teacher system be introduced into schools under the Admiralty.
47. That a class of assistant schoolmasters and three classes of Royal Navy Schoolmasters be established.
48. That ship schools be inspected and reports be made to the Committee of Council.
49. That evening schools be held on board Her Majesty's ships.
50. That the Admiralty do turn its special attention to the dockyard schools, and institute an inquiry into their condition.
51. That the Royal Marine Schools be placed upon the same footing as the Army schools.
These recommendations we have now the honour of submitting to Your Majesty. They differ in their importance, are many of them independent of one another, and might either be adopted completely and immediately, or partially and gradually. We will only add that, next to the extensive alterations which have been recommended for the assistance of elementary schools, no question has so much occupied our attention as that which relates to the best means of turning to account the charities already
[page 552]
devoted to education, and of applying a large portion of other charities to the same purpose. We have shown how large a sum is annually expended under this head, and how large a portion of it is either wasted or mischievously employed. Forty years have passed since Lord Brougham first drew public attention to the subject; and thirty years ago the Poor Law Commission, in a paragraph written by its Chairman, the late Bishop of London, pointed out the immense services which the charities might render to popular education. But up to the present time they may be said to have escaped nearly all the attempts which have been made to render them efficient for public purposes. We desire to record our conviction that no scheme for popular education can be complete which does not provide means for adapting a large portion of these charities to its service.
All which we humbly submit to Your Majesty's most gracious consideration.
Witness our hands and seals this Eighteenth day of March 1861.
NEWCASTLE. (L.S.)
JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE, (L.S.)
WILLIAM CHARLES LAKE. (L.S.)
WILLIAM ROGERS. (L.S.)
GOLDWIN SMITH. (L.S.)
NASSAU W. SENIOR. (L.S.)
EDWARD MIALL. (L.S.)
