Ragged School - Early Days

Early Days

Several different schools claim to have been the first, truly-free school for poor or ragged people. For many of the destitute children of London, going to school each day was not an option. There was no such thing as free education for everyone. From the 18th century onwards, Ragged Schools were few and far between. They had been started in areas where someone had been concerned enough to want to help disadvantaged children towards a better life.

In the late 18th century, Thomas Cranfield offered free education for poor children in London. While he was a tailor by trade, Cranfield's educational background included studies at a Sunday school on Kingsland Road, Hackney. In 1798, he established a free children's day school, located on Kent Street near London Bridge. By the time of his death in 1838, he had established 19 free schools that provided services for children and infants living in the lower income sections of London. These opportunities and services were offered days, nights, and on Sundays, for the destitute children of poor families throughout London.

John Pounds, a Portsmouth shoemaker, provides one of the earliest well-documented examples of the movement. When was 12 years old, Pounds' father arranged for him to be apprenticed as a shipwright. Three years later, he fell into a dry dock and was crippled for life. Unable to work as a shipwright, John became a shoemaker and by 1803 had his own shop in St Mary Street, Portsmouth.

In 1818, John Pounds, known as the crippled cobbler, began teaching poor children without charging fees. He actively recruited children and young people to his school. He spent time on the streets and quays of Portsmouth making contact and even bribing them to come with the offer of baked potatoes. He began teaching local children reading, writing, and arithmetic. His reputation as a teacher grew and he soon had over 40 students attending his lessons. He also gave lessons in cooking, carpentry and shoemaking. Pounds died in 1839.

After Pounds' death, Thomas Guthrie wrote Plea for Ragged Schools and proclaimed John Pounds as the originator of this idea. Thomas Guthrie started a ragged school in Edinburgh and Sheriff Watson established another one in Aberdeen. In 1844, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury formed the Ragged School Union and over the next eight years over 200 free schools for poor children were established in Britain.

In 1841, Sheriff Watson established another school in Aberdeen, Scotland. His methods were different from his colleagues. Unlike the efforts of Pounds, Cranfield, and Guthrie, Watson used compulsion. Watson was frustrated by the number of children who committed a petty crime and faced him in his courtroom. Rather than sending them to prison for vagrancy, Watson established a school for boys. As a law official, the sheriff arrested the vagrant children and enrolled them in school.

The Industrial Feeding School opened to provide reading, writing and arithmetic. Watson believed that gaining these skills would help the boys rise above the lowest level of society. Three meals a day were provided and the boys were taught useful trades such as shoemaking and printing. A school for girls followed in 1843. In 1845, the schools were integrated. From here, the movement spread to Dundee and other parts of Scotland, mostly due to the work of the Rev Thomas Guthrie of Edinburgh.

Thomas Guthrie was an early promoter of free education for working class children. He started what appears to have been the first Scottish free school for the poor. In 1860, he published a volume containing his three pamphlets concerning Ragged Schools entitled Seedtime and Harvest. Thomas Guthrie is often quoted as the founder of the Ragged Schools of Scotland. His first introduction to the idea of Ragged Schools was in 1841, when he was the Parish Minister of St. John’s Church in Edinburgh. On a visit to Anstruther in Fife, he saw a picture of the cobbler’s room of John Pounds in Portsmouth, who had started teaching ragged children free of charge in his shop in 1818. In 1844, the movement spread to England, with the establishment of the London Ragged School Union under the chairmanship of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.