in small groups, small enough for each to be cared for as individuals. As we survey the sixty years, it is a glorious advance that has been made, but this glad Jubilee year would become a year of mourning if the survey led us to rest on our oars and say 'It is enough.' There is yet more to do. At this very day there are 3,000 children in the London workhouses, still for the most part mixing with the adult paupers and learning their evil ways. To-day there are 972 children suffering from ophthalmia which they need not have had. There are still only 1,802 children boarded out, or about 5 per cent. of the child-dependent population. To-day there are little ones massed in such numbers together that their names are not known. Last night it is computed that 30,000 children slept somewhere, anywhere, being homeless. The 'children's cry' still goes up, and in our pride and our gladness that so much has been done, we must perhaps pray still more earnestly the Rudyard Kipling hymn prayer: Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget. HENRIETTA BARNETT. Miss Education in Poor Law Schools WE are told that if we really understand the simplest flower, the commonest stone by the roadside, we have the key to the making of all visible things. So, too, if we really understand the Poor Law child, we ought to understand the complicated society that has helped to produce him. We cannot admit with some that the subject of his present training, of his past or of his future, has worn threadbare with discussion. As to his past, if we were asked 'Who did sin, this child or his parents, that he was cast upon the world?' we should promptly answer, Certainly not the child. At his age he could not help himself.' The disgrace, such as it is, of his state of orphanage or worse, must lie entirely with parents who have failed in their duty to him, to each other and to all the world. It is the duty of the relieving officer, through whom the Poor Law first takes knowledge of the child, to trace out the antecedents of his parents and all their way of life, and to keep watch on their movements. It is his business to be on the look-out for a deserting father, to be aware of any change in the position of a widowed mother, and to recall her to duty if he finds her married again or living in comparative ease, and yet continuing to burden the parish with her children. It is his business, too, to report as to the kind of home she can provide, if, after the guardians have maintained and partially trained them, she claims to have them returned to her care. It is no light duty, especially in a large city, for an officer to search out the truth, to keep the facts clearly in mind, to record them accurately and still to watch for what may happen. It is only by strictness and activity in this work that parental neglect can be kept within bounds. Again, it is mainly on his report that the guardians put in force the Act of 1889, which empowers them to take under their protection the children of deserting parents and to refuse all communication between them until the boys are sixteen and the girls eighteen years of age. It would be most unjust to speak of all destitute parents as vicious and neglectful. For there must naturally be many widows who cannot support more than part of their family, and who are unable to control and train children while going out to work. The parents, good, bad, or indifferent, must all be kept in mind by those who take care of the children. The words of Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, written in 1840, are still, generally speaking, true, and must always remain so: The children placed under the guardianship of the public have descended to a lower moral and social condition than would have been their lot if the parents had performed their natural duties.' It would certainly be discouraging to a struggling, selfdenying father if he had reason to think that no effort or self-denial on his part would enable him to start his children in life on a higher level than the children of idle and drunken parents abandoned to the care of the public. But when parents have failed to perform their natural duties, and the children have come under the guardianship of the public, how shall they be treated? They have been and they are in a lower social and moral condition than the children of good parents. Now under proper care they must begin, and they do begin, to rise again. First, they are received into the workhouse and placed under trained attendants. They must be cleansed and brought into a condition of health, to be medically certified as fit to take part in the educational work of the school. I do not here speak of children under two years of age, or of children afflicted with chronic ailments, who must be nursed in an infirmary. Whether they are sick or healthy, it would be a mean and false economy that would grudge any care or expense necessary to make amends for past deficiencies. It would not be out of place to go back for a few minutes to another time, when the public took a different view of their duties, to the years just before and after the Queen came to the throne. Three years before her accession-in February 1834-the Poor Law Commissioners presented their great report,' and during the first ten years of her reign they were still suggesting and guiding reforms carried out by overseers and guardians of the poor, chiefly as to outdoor relief, but also in the better order of workhouses and the classification of their inmates. There are many passages in their report showing the condition of workhouses over sixty years ago, where the inmates mixed indiscriminately in idleness and vice, and in whose midst the parish children grew up to follow in their ways. One of the most unwelcome and the most salutary reforms immediately ordered by the Poor Law Commissioners was the separation of the sexes, and the separation of children from adult paupers. It is really refreshing to look through the Poor Law Report of 1840 and to see how, under the new impulse, parishes were waking up to their duty, how teachers then appointed entered upon their work, with what enthusiasm they spoke of the arrangements of their school-rooms, of getting a decent supply of schoolbooks, of teaching singing or drawing, or of adopting the Pestalozzi system. They tell too of the good results that followed, of the children's response to their efforts. But this was a time of transition. Improved ideas demanded better buildings and better surroundings. The Poor Law Commissioners of 1834 had recommended the grouping of certain parishes into unions large enough to bear the expense of schools complete 'See p. 35. in themselves, entirely separate from the workhouse, and built on a scale that commended itself to most people at that time. Anyone who reads a book called 'The Lord's Dealings with George Müller' will learn what were his thoughts when he founded his Barrack Orphanage on Ashley Down, Bristol, and what were the thoughts of benevolent people who, without advertisement or appeal, poured in their gifts to the aid of his enterprise. It was about the same time that Dr. Reed founded his orphan asylums round about London with the sympathy and support of the philanthropic world. At that time a large training school for 1,000 children was opened as a private venture at Norwood, and another at Tooting. They received children from Metropolitan guardians at so much per head. Their work was much commended in the early reports. But an outbreak of cholera at the Tooting school in 1849 revealed a state of neglect which brought these proprietary schools to an end in London. No one could complain that the Poor Law authorities pushed forward their building schemes with undue haste. There is not time to speak of the large schools away from London, such as Swinton and Kirkdale. The subject will come out clearly enough if we consider the Metropolitan Poor Law schools. The North Surrey Guardians were the first to form. themselves into a union for school purposes. In 1849 they bought their site of about sixty acres at Anerley to accommodate 900 children. The South Metropolitan Boards followed on a still larger scale when they provided for 1,543 children at Sutton on ninety-two acres of land. In 1856 the Central London Schools were built at Hanwell for 1,148 children (but now certified E |