Ragged school

Ragged schools

Ragged School and Working Girls Home doorway, Dantzic Street, Manchester
Formation	1844
Type	Nonprofit
Purpose	Social and educational reform
Headquarters	London, England
Location	Great Britain
Region served	England, Scotland, and Wales
Remarks	Ragged Schools became the Shaftesbury Society, which merged with John Grooms in 2007 and adopted the name Livability.

Ragged schools were charitable organisations dedicated to the free education of destitute children in 19th-century Britain. The schools were developed in working-class districts of the rapidly expanding industrial towns. In 1844, the Ragged Schools Union was established to combine resources throughout the country, providing free education, food, clothing, lodging and other home missionary services for these children.

The ragged school movement grew out of recognition that charitable and denominational schools were not beneficial for children in inner-city areas. Working in the poorest districts, teachers (who were often local working people) initially utilised stables, lofts, and railway arches for their classes. There was an emphasis on reading, writing, arithmetic, and study of the Bible. The curriculum expanded into industrial and commercial subjects in many schools. It is estimated that about 300,000 children went through the London ragged schools alone between 1844 and 1881.

There is a Ragged School Museum in the East End of London showing how a ragged school would have looked; it is housed in buildings previously occupied by Dr Thomas Barnardo.

Several different schools claim to have pioneered truly free education for poor or ragged people. For many of the destitute children of London, going to school each day was not an option. At that time, there was no such thing as free education for everyone. From the 18th century onwards, schools for poor children 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 on Kent Street near London Bridge. By the time of his death in 1838, he had established 19 free schools providing services for children and infants living in the lower-income areas 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, provided important inspiration for the movement. At the age of twelve 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 after damaging his thigh. Unable to work as a shipwright, John became a shoemaker and, by 1803, had his own shop in St Mary Street, Portsmouth. In 1818, 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 more than 40 students attending his lessons. He also gave lessons in cooking, carpentry and shoemaking. Pounds died in 1839. Pounds quickly became a figurehead for the schools; his ethos was used as an inspiration for the later movement.