Startling Revelations.

Hastings Standard, Issue 179, 24 November 1896, Page 4

Startling Revelations.

A niiiiv damaging report than that of the Committee on the Pool- Law Schools (says London Truth) was newr is-aied. The indict of Humble is complete. The children entrusted to the lender parental can- of the State are found to be sent out into the world scarcely provided with the rudiments of education, ignorant of any trade, sullen and vicious in temper, and physically incapable. The net result of a barrackschool training, in fact, seems to lit- the transformation of the pauper child into an incipient criminal. Nor does the responsibility for tbrs slate of things rest solely with one body. The guardians, the district managers, and the Local Government J>oard share equally in bringing about this result. Jt has not been sullieient that the child pauper is a pariah ; he has been drilled into an abject mechanism conscious of his own degradation, sooner or later certain to become a perpetual burden to the State. How lamer tably the whole system has broken down is visible in every page of the report. There is only one remedy—the total abolition of the barrack-school system, with a substitution of either the boarding-out system or the cottage; home system, as developed by the Shoreditch Guardians, in spite of the obstacles laid in their way by the red-tapeism of the Local Government Hoard. Probably in a- union of these two latter systems a real solution of the difficulty will be found. Incidentally (says the same paper) the report throws a lurid light upon 'fiie treatment meted out to the youngsters who are sent to the workhouse preparatory to being drafted off to an industrial school. Some of the members visited some children so detained. They found six boys in a room lift .square, and Kft or Oft high, the door opening into a narrow area, and railed in with iron bars. These boys were kept locked up day and night without table or chair, the only furniture being the six beds, which were turned up during the day. They were eating their dinners on the floor, and for washing purposes a pail was brought in. Some had been living in this state for upwards of three weeks without any employment. In future I am not so sure that I shall not consider the magistrate, who consigns a youthful delinquent to a fortnight's imprisonment in preference to remanding him to the workhouse, is a kindly philanthropist, anxious to save the lad from suc-h abominable cruelty.