No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
‘The glory of the age we live in’: Christian Education and Philanthropy in Eighteenth-Century London Charity Schools
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2019
Abstract
This article discusses the Church of England's initiative in providing education for the children of the poor during the long eighteenth century with particular reference to London. Briefly it considers the religious, economic and social context and motives for this largely lay-led and lay-supported initiative in the 1690s and early 1700s to establish catechetical day elementary schools, which also taught reading and writing, for poor boys and girls. It focuses particularly on the extensive evidence available from schools in the growing suburbs of Westminster and Holborn and discusses the personnel involved with charity schools, as trustees, benefactors and teachers; how funds were raised and schools managed; and how children were managed, including the arrangement and oversight of apprenticeships. It demonstrates that the schools continued to be well supported, including financially, throughout the changing, economic, social, religious and political circumstances of the century, until most of them became associated with the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, founded in 1811.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2019
References
1 A Dissenting charity school was established in Gravel Lane, Southwark, in the 1680s. Initially Dissenters supported charity schools, but, following the Sacheverell riots, they set up schools in Ratcliffe Highway in 1712, and in Horsely Down in Southwark, and Isaac Watts set up a charity school in Spitalfields. Jones, M. G. noted five Dissenting charity schools in London: The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth Century Puritanism in Action (Cambridge, 1938)Google Scholar, 131, 361.
2 That is, parishes in the cities of London and Westminster, Middlesex and Surrey making weekly returns of burials.
3 The Guardian, ed. J. C. Stephens (Lexington, KY, 1982), 366 (no. 105, 11 July 1713).
4 Craig Mark Rose, ‘Politics, Religion and Charity in Augustan London c.1680–c.1720’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1988), 104.
5 For the political and religious context, see Rose, Craig, England in the 1690s: Revolution, Religion and War (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.
6 Mason, M. G., ‘John Locke's Proposals on Work-House Schools’, Durham Research Review 13 (1962), 8–14Google Scholar.
7 Slack, Paul, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), 87Google Scholar.
8 Ibid. 104–12; Fitzgerald, Michael, Ragged London: The Life of London's Poor (Stroud, 2011), 140–1Google Scholar.
9 McClure, Edmund, ed., A Chapter in English Church History: Being the Minutes of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 1698–1704, together with Abstracts of Correspondence, Letters, etc (London, 1888), 10Google Scholar.
10 Ibid. 18. For the SPCK's involvement with charity schools, see Jones, Charity School Movement; Owen, David, English Philanthropy 1660–1960 (London, 1965), 23–33Google Scholar; Unwin, Robert, ‘The Established Church and the Schooling of the Poor: The Role of the S.P.C.K., 1699–1720’, in McClelland, Vincent Allen, ed., The Churches and Education: Proceedings of the 1983 Conference of the History of Education Society of Great Britain (Leicester, 1983), 24–32Google Scholar; Rose, ‘Politics, Religion and Charity’; idem, ‘Providence, Protestant Union and Godly Reformation in the 1690s’, TRHS 6th ser. 3 (1993), 151–70; idem, ‘The Origins and Ideals of the SPCK 1699–1716’, in Walsh, John, Haydon, Colin and Taylor, Stephen, eds, The Church of England c.1689–c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge, 1993), 172–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Roberts, Michael J. D., ‘Head versus Heart: Voluntary Association and Charity Organizations in England c.1700–1850’, in Cunningham, Hugh and Innes, Joanna, eds, Philanthropy and Reform: From the 1690s to 1850 (Basingstoke, 1998), 66–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Willis, Richard, A Sermon preach'd in the Parish Church of St Andrew's Holborn, June 8th 1704 … at the first Meeting of the Gentlemen concerned in promoting the Charity Schools in and about the Cities of London and Westminster (London, 1704)Google Scholar. For ‘household religion’, see Jacob, W. M., ‘“Conscientious attention to publick and family worship of God”: Religious Practice in Eighteenth-Century English Households’, in Doran, John, Methuen, Charlotte and Walsham, Alexandra, eds, Religion and the Household, SCH 50 (Woodbridge, 2014), 307–17Google Scholar.
13 Cowie, Leonard W., Henry Newman: An American in London 1708–1743 (London, 1956), 74Google Scholar. For mothers teaching children to read, see Spufford, Margaret, ‘Women teaching Reading to poor Children in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in eadem, Figures in the Landscape: Rural Society in England 1500–1700 (Aldershot, 2001), XI, 47–62Google Scholar.
14 Prayers for the Use of the Charity Schools (London, 1734).
15 Prayers for the Use of those who go from Charity Schools to an Apprenticeship or other Service (London, 1715).
16 See Clarke, W. K. Lowther, Eighteenth-Century Piety (London, 1944), 17–22Google Scholar.
17 Hitchcock, Tim, ‘Paupers and Preachers: SPCK and the Parochial Work-House Movement’, in Davison, Lee et al. , eds, Stilling the Grumbling Hive: Response to Social and Economic Problems in England, 1689–1750 (Stroud, 1992), 145–66Google Scholar; Clarke, Eighteenth-Century Piety, 78–9. Payne, Dianne, ‘London's Charity School Children: the “Scum of the Parish”?’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 29 (2006), 382–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, focuses mainly on the early years of London charity schools. The same author's ‘Children of the Poor in London 1700–1780’ (PhD thesis, University of Hertfordshire, 2008) shows how charity schools were part of wider provision of education for poor children in London.
18 See Payne, ‘London's Charity School Children’.
19 Bill, E. G. W., ed., The Queen Anne Churches: A Catalogue of the Papers in Lambeth Palace Library of the Commission for building Fifty New Churches in London and Westminster 1711–1759 (London, 1979), 59Google Scholar.
20 McClure, ed., A Chapter in English Church History, 11, 40, 44, 59. See also An Account of the Methods whereby the Charity Schools have been erected and managed and of the Encouragement given to them (London, 1705), 8, which noted that the school had fifty girls and forty subscribers, with twenty girls already put out to apprenticeships.
21 London, LMA 4542/E/01/001, St Giles-in-the-Fields Parochial Schools Trustees’ Minutes 1705–1712, 18 April 1705, 23 June 1709.
22 ‘Narcissus Luttrell 1657–1732’, in Cruickshanks, Eveline, Handley, Stuart and Hayton, David, eds, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1690–1715, 5 vols (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar. He was also MP for Bossiney 1679–81 and Saltash 1691–5 in Cornwall, an active JP for Middlesex, a vestryman of St Giles, a book collector, diarist and commentator on his times.
23 Trustees’ Minutes 1705–1712; An Account of the Methods whereby the Charity Schools have been erected and managed and the Encouragement given to them (London, 1710), 10. Subscribers included Lord Chancellor Cowper, the duke of Newcastle, Dr Hans Sloane, and fifteen women. £140 was contributed in collections.
24 Trustees’ Minutes 1705–1712, 23 June 1709.
25 For the London Charity Schools Trustees Society, see Rose, ‘Politics, Religion and Charity’, 104; Lloyd, Sarah, ‘“Pleasing Spectacles and Elegant Dinners”: Conviviality, Benevolence, and Charity Anniversaries in Eighteenth-Century London’, JBS 41 (2002), 23–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Trustees’ Minutes 1705–1712, 23 June 1709; LMA 4542/E/01/006, Trustees’ Minutes 1762–1785, 16 June 1763; compare also Payne, ‘London's Charity School Children’, 399.
27 LMA 4542/E/01/002, Trustees’ Minutes 1712–1725, 15 October 1718.
28 LMA 4542/E/01/004, Trustees’ Minutes 1737–1747, 23 September 1740.
29 Trustees’ Minutes 1762–1785, January 1782 – August 1783.
30 LMA 4542/E/01/007, Trustees’ Minutes 1785–1807, 19 April 1806 – 27 May 1807.
31 Ibid., 25 October 1785.
32 For charity school sermons, see Tate, W. E., ‘Church School Finance in the Reign of Queen Anne’, CQR 159 (1958), 59–77Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Charity Sermons 1701–1732, as a Source for the History of Education’, JEH 9 (1958), 54–73Google Scholar; Andrew, Donna T., ‘On reading Charity Sermons: Eighteenth-Century Anglican Solicitation and Exhortation’, JEH 43 (1992), 581–91Google Scholar; Sarah Lloyd, ‘“Pleasing Spectacles and Elegant Dinners”’.
33 Trustees’ Minutes 1785–1807, 19 December 1787.
34 Trustees’ Minutes 1712–1725, 12 December 1716: ‘no names be inserted but of such only who have given five pounds or more’.
35 This had been written at the request of the SPCK, the author having reviewed thirty existing expositions; it was published in 1701 and sold at 3s a dozen.
36 James Talbot's The Christian Schoolmaster, published under the auspices of the SPCK in 1707, for which see Unwin, R. W., Charity Schools and the Defence of Anglicanism (York, 1984), 25–30Google Scholar; Clarke, Eighteenth-Century Piety, 73–6. For catechetical teaching, see Green, Ian, The Christian's ABC: Catechisms and Catechizing in England c.1530–1740 (Oxford, 1996), 170–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 249, 263.
37 At Greycoat Hospital in nearby Westminster the trustees recommended the master to ‘win the love and affection of the children, and thereby invite and encourage them, rather than by correction to force them to learn’: Payne, ‘Children of the Poor’, 103.
38 It is unclear whether much paid employment was available for children in London: see Crawford, Patricia, Parents of Poor Children in England 1500–1800 (Oxford, 2010), 180CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Trustees’ Minutes 1705–1712, 1 August 1705.
40 Ibid., 17 April 1706.
41 Trustees’ Minutes 1785–1807, 10 August 1785, 12 March 1800.
42 Trustees’ Minutes 1705–1712, 17 May 1710.
43 Rose, Craig, ‘“Seminaries of Faction and Rebellion”: Jacobites, Whigs and the London Charity Schools’, HistJ 34 (1991), 831–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cowie, Henry Newman, 87–9; Maplestone, Peter, St Clement Danes School: 300 Years of History (London, 2000), 10Google Scholar.
44 Trustees’ Minutes 1712–1725, 31 May 1716.
45 Directions given by Edmund Lord Bishop of London to the Masters and Mistresses of the Charity Schools within the Bills of Mortality and the Diocese of London, assembled for that Purpose in the Chapter House of St Paul's, November the 14th 1724 (London, 1724), 4–5.
46 Payne, ‘London's Charity School Children’, 391. For a discussion of the provision of work as part of schools’ curriculum, see Hugh Cunningham, The Children of the Poor: Representations of Childhood since the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1993), 25–35.
47 Trustees’ Minutes 1737–1747, 20 October 1740, 11 December 1744.
48 LMA 4542/E/01/005, Trustees’ Minutes 1747–1762, July 1750, 6 August 1751, 28 May 1752, 12, 25 August 1752, 3 October 1752.
49 A Short State of the Charity Schools of St Giles in the Fields and St George Bloomsbury, with an Account of the Benefactions and Legacies and also a List of the Subscribers, July 1809 (London, 1809), 4.
50 Jones, Charity School Movement, 93.
51 On apprenticeships, see Brooks, Christopher, ‘Apprenticeship, Social Mobility and the Middling Sort 1550–1800’, in Barry, Jonathan and Brooks, Christopher, eds, The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550–1800 (Basingstoke, 1994), 55–73Google Scholar, Lane, Joan, Apprenticeship in England (London, 1996)Google Scholar; Tomkins, Alannah, The Experience of Urban Poverty 1723–1782: Parish Charity and Credit (Manchester, 2006), 179–87Google Scholar.
52 Circular Letter of the SPCK to its Clergy and Correspondents (London, 1714), quoted in Jones, Charity School Movement, 49–50.
53 For a comparison with the apprenticeship of workhouse school children, see Lane, Apprenticeship in England, 85–90; Payne, ‘Children of the Poor in London’, 177–216.
54 Trustees’ Minutes 1737–1747, 19 June 1737.
55 Trustees’ Minutes 1762–1785, 17 June 1784.
56 Trustees’ Minutes 1705–1712, 18 September 1706.
57 Trustees’ Minutes 1762–1785, 12, 26 January 1780.
58 Trustees’ Minutes 1705–1712, 4 September 1706.
59 Ibid., 19 March, 14 December 1707.
60 Ibid., 14 December 1709.
61 Ibid., 19 March 1707.
62 Trustees’ Minutes 1737–1747, 29 July 1740.
63 Trustees’ Minutes 1712–1725, 12 July 1712.
64 Ibid., 14 August 1717.
65 LMA 4542/E/01/003, Trustees’ Minutes 1726–1737, 14 March 1733.
66 Short State of the Charity Schools of St Giles, 4–5, 8–9.
67 Trustees’ Minutes 1762–1785, 26 April 1775.
68 See Burgess, Henry James, Enterprise in Education: The Story of the Established Church in the Education of the People prior to 1870 (London, 1958), 14–24Google Scholar.