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to the Society which has placed him out | Fields, was divided into three distinct whether he is going on well. An encou- branches, one for the sons of convicted ragement is thus afforded to the well dis- felons, the second for their daughters, and posed; while the liability to recommittal to the third for criminal boys. It contained prison in case of misbehaviour operates, on workshops for shoemaking, tailoring, ropethe other hand, as a check upon those who making, and similar purposes, and a large are inclined to do wrong. number of children passed through it with benefit. In 1845 some changes were made in the establishment, occasioned partly by the fact that the alteration in the laws for the relief of the poor had rendered it less necessary for the association to provide for the children of convicts, while the demands for admission on the part of juvenile criminals themselves had largely increased. The girls' school, which had long been confined to the daughters of convicts, was given up. The boys' school was differently arranged, and the time during which the boys were to be kept in it was shortened. After these alterations the rate of admissions increased fourfold. In 1846 the Rev. Sydney Turner,* chaplain to the institution, who from the time of his appointment in 1841 had devoted himself to the promotion of its interests, visited Mettray, in company with Mr. Paynter, a police magistrate of Middlesex. Upon their return, these two gentlemen presented an interesting report upon the French establishment, and recommended that various improvements should be introduced into their own. Amongst these were an increased watchfulness over the cells for solitary imprisonment; a more systematic publication of lists of merit; a greater amount of individual superintendence; and the formation of a normal school for the training of masters. A more notable step-the removal of the institution from London into the country-was not decided on for two or three years; but in April, 1849, this important change was made; the estate of Red Hill near Reigate was purchased; and Prince Albert laid the foundations of the present agricultural colony.

Omitting any further notice of foreign institutions (though Ruysselede in Belgium, and several other establishments in France, Holland, and elsewhere, deserve particular description if our space admitted of it), we will come at once to the efforts which have been made, and the success which has been attained, in our own country. We do not propose to enter into any detail as to the origin of the various plans for the reclaiming and training of the young victims of parental_neglect, with which the names of Robert Raikes, of Gloucester (founder of Sunday-schools in 1781), John Pounds, of Portsmouth, and Sheriff Watson, of Aberdeen, are so honourably connected. The Sunday-school, intended at first for the poor abandoned children who swarmed in the streets, was soon appropriated as a valuable educational institution by a higher class; thence arose the necessity for a further provision for the original objects of compassion-and the Sunday-school gave birth to the Ragged, School and the Industrial Feeding School. The Refuge for the Destitute, and the House of Occupations attached to Bridewell and Bethlem Hospitals, are also deserving of notice in connexion with the movement. These institutions, however, though they may have given hints to the promoters of the Reformatory scheme, are in themselves not so much reformatory as preventive. The Reformatory Schools, properly so called, derive their pedigree from three sourcesthe Philanthropic Society, the Juvenile Prison at Parkhurst, and the Children's Friend Society of Capt. Brenton, and the Hon. Miss Murray. It is to these, therefore, that we have now to direct attention. The Philanthropic Society, as we have already said, was founded in the year 1788. Its birth-place was in Hackney, where two or three cottages were hired, in which a dozen boys were collected together, very much on the principle afterwards adopted at the Rauhe Haus. The objects contemplated were the rescue of the children of convicts, and the reformation of such as had been convicted themselves. The school, which soon after its establishment was removed to St. George's

*

Vide Evidence of Rev. Sydney Turner before the House of Commons Committee, 1852.

Red Hill may be described as the English Mettray. It comprises at present about 230 inmates, who are divided into six families, each occupying a separate house. The houses are further apart than at Mettray, which is an advantage, as it enables the family system to be more perfectly preserved. Each house is intended to contain about forty boys, under a separate master, forming a family which should be kept together as much as possible, although in the course of instruction they must necessarily be sometimes separated,

*Mr. Sydney Turner is a son of the well-known Sharon Turner.

*

as when some of them are sent to join the | does not apply to a general system of re-
carpenters' or brickmakers' classes, and wards for industry and good conduct. But
even in some of the labour parties employ- even then we must urge that other incen-
ed upon the land. The highly-wrought tives to exertion ought not to be forgotten;
system of emulation which we noticed as that boys should be taught to work, not
the mainspring at Mettray is less promi- only that they may be paid for what they
nent at Red Hill, where the governing do, but because it is their duty to obey
principle by which the boys are incited those set over them; and that they should
to work appears rather to be the hope of be made to reflect upon the permanent ad-
reward.
vantages they may draw from the educa-
tion they are receiving and the habits they
are acquiring, and not only upon the im-
mediate benefit which they are to derive
from getting through a particular task.
While, however, we address this caution to
those who may be disposed to attribute too
much of the success of Red Hill to the
system of which we have been speaking,
and therefore unduly to exalt the merits of
that system as a mode of reformation, we
are ready to acknowledge that Mr. Turner
himself puts forward as prominently as
any man can do the paramount impor-
tance of personal religious influence over
the boys; and that it is on such influence
that he chiefly relies for success in his
work. His excellent remarks upon the
stamp of man required for a master, show
that it is not to rewards that he looks for
bending the stubborn temper, or softening
the hard heart, however useful he
may find
them as part of the machinery for carrying
on the school :-

'A system of small earnings,' says Mr. Turner,* or rewards for labour, varying according to the boy's industrial exertion from one penny to fourpence or fivepence a week, will allow of a system of small fines or penalties for all the lighter classes of misconduct, and make the boy his own regulator, giving him a direct interest in his good or bad behaviour. If it be arranged that sundry little luxuries, such as coffee for breakfast, treacle with his pudding for dinner, sweets, fruit, postage-stamps, knives, neck-handkerchiefs, Sunday caps, the journey home when allowed to go for a holiday to see his friends, &c., be all paid for by the boy himself out of these same earnings, and be diminished and interfered with therefore by the fines which folly, or disobedience, or bad temper involve, the power of the system as an instrument of discipline will soon be felt. It contributes most essentially to the teaching the boy what he most needs to learn, self-control and selfregulation. It has been in full action at Red Hill since we began, six years ago; and I believe it has been a matter of no small surprise to those who watch and inquire into the daily working of the school, that our boys keep within our boundaries, and observe our rules as to work and discipline so steadily, and with so little interference, or direct compulsion. The secret is, that each boy is responsible for himself and feels that he has something at stake; that he is doing his own business in fact, and is a gainer or loser by his own act.'

There is no doubt that this system begets in the boys a large amount of energy, and is a valuable auxiliary to that which must be the mainspring of all sound reformatory action, the personal religious influence which is brought to bear upon each individual. If we were disposed to be hypercritical, we should say that there is a danger in an elaborate system of rewards apportioned to the exact amount of work done by each boy, inasmuch as it leads them to neglect such work as cannot be paid by the piece, and has thus a tendency to unfit them for the common daywork system of English life. As a training for the colonies it is better suited, and Mr. Turner points with just gratification to the vigour which his pupils display in the bush or the backwoods. Our observation

*Letter to Mr. Adderley. 1855.

I

'You want [for master] a religious man. mean a man who takes up his work as a mission, something given him to do by God,-something in which he is responsible, not only for the means he uses or the methods he pursues, but for the results he attains to. Such a man views his work as one which he cannot, dare not leave, just to get more salary, more leisure, less worry, or less confinement. Such a man conducts his the missionary. Not only teaching, but praywork in the spirit, and by the instruments of ing; not only admonishing and advising, but giving the daily example of patience, kindness, industry, endurance, and devotion in his personal life. Before such men the stubborn tempers bend, the hard hearts soften, the idols of vice and crime are cast down. They need not be men of extraordinary talent, but they must be men of earnestness, love, and a sound mind. Earnestness, based on faith in their work, and shown in energy and resolution, is the sine qua non. The vacillating and the timid, the dawdler and the chatterer, have no place in the reformatory enterprise at all. Let the man have something in him to be feared, while he strives wholly to be loved, he will soon prove himself

victorious.'

The Philanthropic Society for many years conducted its operations without any assistance from the Government, beyond such as it received by its incorporation in

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1806. As far as the amount of the subscriptions allowed, boys were admitted into its schools gratuitously; others were received on the application of their friends or of benevolent societies, on payment of a certain annual sum. In the year 1838, however, an Act of Parliament was passed, which had for its principal object the establishment of a separate prison for juvenile offenders (Parkhurst), but which contained a clause enabling the Crown to place young offenders under sentence of transportation or imprisonment at any Charitable Institution for their reformation, on terms which would give the directors a legal control over them. The process was for the Crown to grant the lad a pardon on condition of his conforming to the rules of the place to which he was to be sent. If he ran away, or became unmanageable, the directors might bring him before a single magistrate, who had the power of sending him back to prison, either for a short imprisonment by way of punishment, or, in bad cases, for the remainder of his original sentence. We are not aware that this provision was made much use of at the time it became law. It was probably intended to apply to the benevolent efforts which the Honourable Amelia Murray and Captain E. P. Brenton were then making to rescue children from a life of crime, and, after giving them a sound industrial education, to send them out to the colonies. They had established, in 1830, a Children's Friend Society, for the purpose of reclaiming the neglected and destitute children that infest the streets of the metropolis, and to find employment for them after they had given proof of their reformation.' This society, older than either Mettray or the Rauhe Haus, was conducted upon principles very similar to theirs. In the first seven years of its existence the managers received about 1400 children under their care. Their proceedings had obtained the highest encouragement. Our gracious Queen had, while yet Princess Victoria, accepted the office of Patroness, and her first subscription on coming to the throne was given to the Children's Friends. The Committee had established a school for boys and another for girls, and had found the means of sending a large number of children to the Cape of Good Hope and other dependencies, where they had apprenticed the boys to farmers, when, in 1839, unfriendly, and for the most part unjust, attacks, founded upon the representations of a worthless individual, whose calumnies were disproved too

* 1 and 2 Vic., c. 82.

late, were made upon their system of apprenticeship in the colonies; motives of the basest kind were imputed to them; they were accused of attempting to introduce a covert form of slavery; and though supported by the highest personages of the realm, and by the consciousness of having taken the most anxious pains to guard against the possible abuse of the system, they succumbed to the popular clamour. Severe comments were made upon them in an influential public organ; and Captain Brenton's sensitive nature was so keenly affected by the circumstance, that it is generally supposed to have hastened his death, which took place very suddenly within a few days after the attack had been made, and before there was any time to expose its injustice. In him the Children's Friend Society lost its founder and its mainspring, and soon afterwards fell, to revive again, under happier auspices, on the estate of his friend and follower, Mr. Barwick Baker, of Gloucestershire.

The Act of 1838, as we have said, had for its principal object, the establishment of the juvenile prison at Parkhurst, which was opened accordingly in the year 1839, and has since been in constant operation. The Act speaks of the proposed prison as one for the reception of young offenders sentenced either to transportation or imprisonment; but in point of fact Parkhurst has only received those of the former class. It contains accommodation for 580 inmates, and is usually, we believe, nearly full. The lads who are sent to it receive an industrial as well as a common school education, and, after a certain period of probation, were formerly for the most part sent out to the colonies, which being now unfortunately no longer open to them, they are exposed to the risks of a return to English life. The system pursued there differs from that of the reformatory establishments of which we have hitherto spoken, in that the institution has more of the air of a prison than of a school, and prison discipline is necessarily enforced there, though not to the same extent as at first. This circumstance has caused many unfavourable comparisons to be drawn between Parkhurst and the private reformatory schools; and the advocates of the latter have not shrunk from utterly condemning the principles upon which the former is conducted. It cannot be doubted that they are right in saying that the prison system is imperfect as a means, and unsatisfactory as a test, of reformation. The moral atmosphere of a gaol is as artificial as the ventilation of its cells, and

done less than justice to that great establishment. It ought to be remembered that Parkhurst takes all the worst cases-the often-convicted criminals, of whom nothing can be made in this country, and who are therefore condemned to leave it. When Mr. Hall visited the French State Reformatory at Gaillon, and put questions as to its results as compared with those at Mettray, the managers very frankly told him that they did not profess to place their work on a level with that institution, and assigned the following reasons:

though both may be shown on paper to be | authors, however, have in some respects excellent, we believe most people would echo the sentiments of the Judge who requested that his court might be favoured with a little more of God's air, and a little less of Dr. Reid's. A prison is a place of punishment. It ought to be so; for it is intended to deter those outside its walls from committing crime, for fear of getting into it. It ought to be so; for the offender against society and against the laws of God requires to be taught that his crimes will bring down upon him the recompense of suffering. But in proportion as it is an effectual place of punishment, it is likely to be an ineffectual place of reformation. The work of reformation is one in which the person to be reformed must himself take part. This he will do if he believes that the efforts of those set over him are made for his own good, and for that alone; but if he suspects that they are part of a system of discipline and of punishment, he will oppose to them a passive resistance which it will be very difficult to over

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But this repugnance to labour is overcome by the spirit of self-helpfulness to which the tone of the school gives rise; while in the prison the distasteful labour is only regarded as another form of punishment, to be evaded if possible, to be endured if evasion is out of the question, but seldom indeed to be embraced with cheerfulness. We have heard of cases in which the lads at Parkhurst have deliberately taken poisonous substances in order to avoid the field-work. In like manner the conduct of a lad under prison discipline furnishes but an imperfect test of his improvement. The best, that is the most docile, prisoners, are often those who have the smallest strength of character, and are the readiest to yield to the influence of those around them. While that influence is on the side of virtue, the boy's conduct may be irreproachable; but it may happen notwithstanding that, at the very first moment of his falling within the range of corrupting attractions, he will be led away, and all his virtuous lessons be forgotten.

Such views as these have been ably, and we think convincingly, put forward against the Parkhurst system. Their

The

'The refuse rejected by the private colonies as being incurable is necessarily sent to the Central Prison, which has no such means of purification master;, he may spend his money as he likes, or punishment: M. de Metz, too, is absolute and may make any changes in his system, and try any experiments that occur to him according to his own judgment and good pleasure. director of a maison centrale, on the contrary, has a limited sum placed at his disposal, for every sou of which he has to give a minute account, and both in expenditure and general management he is tied down to a strict routine, in which the Minister of the Interior has alone the power to make the slightest variation.**

Precisely the same line of argument is adopted by Captain O'Brien † in his comparison of Parkhurst and Red Hill

'Parkhurst deals with all descriptions of juvenile offenders, and with all descriptions of the utterly bad and unruly. They cannot do so temper and of guiltiness, and there we can control at the Philanthropic. Several lads who were at the Philanthropic, and were sent away, have been transferred to Parkhurst for us to bring into order. I think, again, that Parkhurst is regulated upon a system in which ordinary persons placed in authority will produce good results; but it appears to me that the success of the Phiforbearance, firmness, and tact of the individual lanthropic depends entirely upon the wisdom, at its head. If the Philanthropic were taken as a model, the copies would be found generally to be failures, through the incapacity of the governors. It is not every day that you can find a man like Mr. Turner to take charge of such an institution.'

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A

ment may avail itself of the services of such persons when they find them, they would do wrong to risk the success of an important cause upon the chances of being at all times able to find Turners or De Metzes.

The system of Parkhurst appears to have been much improved of late years, in consequence, no doubt, of the experience acquired at Red Hill, and elsewhere, as well as of that furnished within its own walls. The characteristics of the prison have been made less prominent, and those of the Industrial School brought out into stronger relief. More field-work is done, and less time spent upon school-room instruction, which was formerly carried to an absurd length. These changes are said to have produced a good effect upon the tone of the school. The chaplains and officers report a marked diminution in the number of offences committed, and state that they never saw the boys so cheerful and contented. We cannot but think that too much has been made of some instances of insubordination and mischief, of which we should have heard little had they occurred in a private establishment. Much was said before the Committee of the House of Com

mons as to the attempts at escape, and great stress was laid upon the unfortunate occurrence of an attempt on the part of some of the boys to set the prison on fire. But unsatisfactory, as it undoubtedly is, that they should have been ready to adopt so unscrupulous a method of getting out of gaol (for that was their sole object), a far worse instance of attempted arson is on record at the Rauhe House, where M. Wichern mentions that several of the boys had on one occasion laid a plan to burn the whole buildings when his wife should be confined, and when they expected that his attention would be engrossed by her. With regard to simply running away, it is absurd to lay any stress on its occurrence at Parkhurst, when we find from the last report of the Philanthropic Society, that in the year 1854 thirteen desertions took place from Red Hill, and that in addition to these there were thirty-six (we should rather say forty-seven, for eleven boys ran away twice) unsuccessful attempts at escape; and we believe that at every private reformatory the experience is similar. In one of our most successful schools, the manager has occasionally had recourse to the device of attaching a runaway's spade to his hand by means of a handcuff

*See Combe's Principles of Criminal Legislation,

p. 73.

f

round his wrist and its handle. In his case
the expedient is applauded, but we cannot
help suspecting that had it first been ad-
opted at Parkhurst, we should have had a
burst of indignation at so coercive a pro-
ceeding. Nor is running away any proof
of a peculiarly untractable character. It
is often the result of a sudden impulse,
sometimes of mere playfulness. There was
a case in which five boys, working in a
party, with a single superintendent, went
off, as they afterwards admitted, as a prac-
tical demonstration of the theorem, that
if five people run five different ways, the
keeper can only catch one of them. Boys
will be boys; and when they get together
there is no limit to the mischief they will
do. The farmer's Rule of Boy in the West
of England lays down the following scale
for the value of their labour :—
1 boy is a boy;

2 boys are half a boy;
3 boys are no boy at all.

We believe this is about the truth of the matter, and that the managers of schools must be prepared to treat their pupils on this understanding.

We must now recall the attention of our

readers to the clause in the Parkhurst Act, which we have already mentioned, as applying to private institutions. Two years before the Philanthropic Society began its establishment at Red Hill, Captain Williams, then one of the inspectors of Millbank Prison, was struck with the diminutive appearance of some of the boys under sentence, who seemed to him too small for the discipline of Parkhurst, as it was then managed. He accordingly suggested to the Secretary of State that advantage should be taken of the provision in the law to send the boys, by way of experiment, to the Philanthropic Society. The boys for the most part turned out well, which led to an extension of the practice, and in the course of the succeeding years a good many subjects were selected from various prisons, who should go to Red Hill, and afterwards to one of our colonies. In order to this, it was at first considered necessary that the boy should have been sentenced to transportation, or at all events to a long period of imprisonment; and courts of justice soon began to present the anomalous spectacle of children sentenced for slight offences to much longer terms of punishment than would have been awarded to adults, for the avowed purpose of getting them into this charitable institution. The practice might in time have grown into a well defined legal fiction, and have taken its place

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