Pre-19th Century
| Timeline of pre-19th century events related to Children's Rights in the UK in chronological order | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Parties | Event | Image | ||
| Pre-16th century | The care of orphans was particularly commended to bishops and monasteries during the Middle Ages. Many orphanages practised some form of "binding-out" in which children, as soon as they were old enough, were given as apprentices to households to ensure their support and their learning an occupation. Common law maintaining the King's peace was administered by the Court of Common Pleas (England) dealing with civil cases between parties by ordering the fine of debts and seizure of the goods of outlaws. Following the Peasants' Revolt, British constables were authorised under a 1383 statute to collar vagabonds and force them to show their means of support; if they could not, the penalty was gaol. Under a 1494 statute, vagabonds could be sentenced to the stocks for three days and nights; in 1530, whipping was added. The assumption was that vagabonds were unlicenced beggars. | ||||
| January 1561 | Scotland | The national Church of Scotland set out a programme for spiritual reform, setting the principle of a school teacher for every parish church and free education. This was provided for by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland, passed in 1633, which introduced a tax to pay for this programme. | |||
| 1367–1607 | Ireland | Suppression of the Brehon Laws which enumerated the rights and responsibilities of fostered children, their birth-parents and foster-parents. The Brehon Law concept of family was eroded and the Gaelic tradition of fosterage lost. It was ultimately replaced by the State controlled Poor Law system. | |||
| 1601 | Elizabethan Poor Law | The Poor Law was the social security system operating in England and Wales from the 16th century until the establishment of the Welfare State in the 20th century. The Impotent poor was a classification of poverty used to refer to those poor considered deserving of poor relief; a vagrant was a person who could work, but preferred not to. The law did not distinguish between the impotent poor and the criminal, so both received the same punishments. The law provided for "the putting out of children to be apprentices". | |||
| 17th Century | Where an unmarried mother concealed the death of her baby, she was presumed guilty of infanticide unless she could prove that the baby was born dead (this requirement that the defendant prove her innocence was a reversal of the normal practice of requiring the prosecution to prove the defendant's guilt). Women were acquitted of this charge if they could demonstrate that they had prepared for the birth of the baby, for example by acquiring some kind of bedding. In 1678 children aged 10 were deemed able to engage in consensual sex. | ||||
| 1732–1744 | Bastardy | In 1732, a woman pregnant with a "bastard" was required to declare the fact and to name the father.
In 1733, the putative father became responsible for maintaining his illegitimate child; failing to do so could result in gaol. The parish would then support the mother and child, until the father agreed to do so, whereupon he would reimburse the parish — although this rarely happened. In 1744, a bastard took the 'settlement' of its mother (under the Poor Law, a person's place of origin or later established residence, being the Parish responsible for the person if destitute) regardless of where the child was actually born. Previously, a bastard took settlement from its place of birth. The mother was to be publicly whipped. |
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| 1739 | The Foundling Hospital | Established in London by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram as a home for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children." Children were seldom taken after they were twelve months old. On reception they were sent to wet nurses in the countryside, where they stayed until they were about four or five years old. At sixteen girls were generally apprenticed as servants for four years; at fourteen, boys became apprentices in varying occupations for seven years. | |||
| 1779 | The Penitentiary Act | Drafted by Prison reformer John Howard, the Act introduced state prisons as an alternative to the death penalty or transportation. The prison population had risen after the US Declaration of Independence, because the American Colonies had been used as the destination for transported criminals. Howard's 1777 report had identified appalling conditions in most of the prisons he inspected. The Howard League for Penal Reform emerged as a result, publishing in 2006 the findings of an independent inquiry by Lord Carlile of Berriew QC into physical restraint, solitary confinement and forcible strip searching of children in prisons, secure training centres and local authority secure children's homes. | |||
| 1795 | Speenhamland system | An amendment to the Poor Law, named after a meeting at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland, Berkshire, where the local magistrates or squirearchy devised the system as a means to alleviate hardship caused by a spike in grain prices. Families were paid extra to top up wages to a set level, which varied according to the number of children and the price of bread. For example if bread was 1s 2d a loaf, the wages of a family with two children was topped up to 8s 6d. If bread rose to 1s 8d the wages were topped up to 11s 0d. The system aggravated the underlying causes of poverty, allowing employers (often farmers) to pay below subsistence wages, because the parish made up the difference to keep their workers alive. Low incomes remained unchanged and the poor rate contributors subsidised the farmers, so that landowners sought other means of dealing with the poor e.g. the workhouse. The Poor Law Commissioners' Report of 1834 called the Speenhamland System a "universal system of pauperism." | |||
| 1796 | Thomas Spence | Publication of The Rights of Infants by the revolutionary philosopher. | |||
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of Young People's Rights In The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the word century:
“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)