THE EARLY 1880s: CALLS FOR REFORM

Calls for reform came in the early 1880s from a number of sources. Even the architect of the original reformatory legislation, Lord Norton, formerly Viscount Adderley, questioned the role of reformatory and industrial schools: in 1881 he was advocating that they should be replaced by ‘schools for neglected and destitute children.’¹²⁰

A Report in 1881 on the state of the law relating to juvenile offenders revealed that sheriffs had concerns. In particular they were critical of the statutory provision requiring prior imprisonment of juvenile offenders before admission to a reformatory.¹²¹ This concern was said in the Report to be shared by Scottish reformatory managers and more generally by

‘enlightened public opinion’ which ‘condemned’ the provision contained in section 14 of the Reformatory Schools Act 1866 requiring a period of ten days prior imprisonment.¹²² Objections were also raised that in some cases children were sentenced to detention in reformatories after being convicted of very minor offences which were not even offences under general statutes or common law, but simply trivial transgressions under local statutes, such as stone throwing or vagrancy. Questions were raised as to the competence of this procedure under section 14.¹²³ This issue was subsequently dealt with in the case of Maguire v Fairbairn where the High Court of Justiciary held that section 14 was not applicable to cases where children had committed police offences.¹²⁴ This case was discussed by Sheriff Substitute Spens of Lanarkshire.¹²⁵ He recounted the number of children who had been sent to reformatories in Scotland for police offences in the years leading up to this decision: 72 in 1879 for vagrancy; 8 in 1880 for breach of the peace, and 51 for vagrancy; in 1881 57 were sent for vagrancy and 2 children were sent for sleeping in

119 Day Industrial Schools (Scotland) Act 1893( 56 Vict., cap.12)

120 See Carlebach (1970), 75; See also an article entitled ‘Schools as prisons and prisons as schools’ in which Norton argued that the schools should be primarily about education and they should be viewed in that way and not as prisons Nineteenth Century ( 1887) Vol 21, p. 119.

121 Reports to the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the state of the law relating to the treatment and punishment of juvenile offenders. 1881, p.210

122 ibid.

123 ibid at p.212. A Glasgow Sheriff questioned whether the 14^th section of the Reformatory Act 1866 on prior imprisonment to a reformatory was intended to apply to offences under local statutes

124 See Maguire v Fairbairn 1881 4 Couper 536; For an example where the High Court of Justiciary limited the operation of the Industrial Schools Act 1866 see Wilson v Stirling 1884 2 Couper 518. These cases are discussed further in Section 4.6.

125 In evidence to the Royal Commission in 1884, page 432.

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a close. The Maguire case involved a fifteen year old boy who was sentenced to ten days imprisonment followed by five years in a reformatory for breach of the peace. The High Court passed a bill of suspension and liberation, suspending the order to send him to the reformatory and granting liberation. The Lord Justice Clerk said: ‘I do not think that clause fourteen was ever intended to apply to the minor grades of crime, but only to those of graver complexion , such as theft or similar offences.’¹²⁶

In 1882 a Royal Commission was issued to investigate all aspects of the operation and management of reformatory and industrial schools.¹²⁷ Taking two years to amass and consider evidence the Commission reported in 1884. For critics of the system the report was disappointing. Although it recommended an end to the practice of imprisonment prior to admission to a reformatory, the alternatives it suggested were harsh. It recommended that instead magistrates should be empowered to order that boys should be whipped.¹²⁸ For girls it recommended the alternative of solitary confinement, the length of which was to vary according to age: a maximum of seven days for under those under twelve and not more than fourteen days for older girls. Its suggestions to improve education were more enlightened:

for example that the prospects of teachers at the schools should be placed on an equal footing with teachers in public elementary schools. In relation to inspections it recommended that the educational aspect of the schools should be inspected by the Education Department but that all other aspects should remain under Home Office direction.

It advised that children should not be detained beyond the age of sixteen and proposed that licensing out for children should be used more often.¹²⁹ However the Commission singularly failed to address fundamental questions about the nature of the system. This was despite hearing evidence extremely critical of the system from, for example, William Watson.

Giving remarkably lucid evidence even in his late eighties, William Watson was characteristically forthright. He strongly advocated returning to the original principle upon which his early schools in Aberdeen had been founded, that of the day industrial school.

Questioned about the potentially adverse influence that parents could have on children, he responded that this was of small concern when children were returning home at seven o’

clock in the evening tired out after being occupied all day at the day industrial school. In his

126 See Maguire v Fairbairn 1881 4 Couper 536, page 541

127 1884 Report of the Commissioners on Reformatories and Industrial Schools.

128 ibid at page lxiv for summary of recommendations.

129 Other recommendations included proposals to limit punishment in reformatories and to establish new insitutions to cater for ‘refractory cases.’ Carlebach (1970), 77.

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view there was little opportunity for parents to exercise a bad influence in these circumstances and he had come across many cases where the children had been able to exert

‘a great change in the character of the parents’ as a result of the good influence of the school. He vehemently denounced the residential industrial schools for destroying familial affection, leaving children with no home to return to when they were eventually discharged from the schools:

‘they must have a home, and that is the great objection to those sleeping places where children are kept all night. You break up at once the tie between parent and child. The parent sometimes is very glad to get quit of it; but at the same time when a child is kept for two or three or four or five years locked up in an industrial school it loses all natural affection, and his parent forgets it, and does not care about it, and the consequence is that when it comes out it really has no home to go to. Therefore, I think that these day and night schools ought to be utterly abolished. I never found that any evil whatever resulted from children going to their parents’ home.’¹³⁰

Referring to the period when Dunlop’s Act came into effect Watson explained that in Aberdeen there was discussion about whether committed cases should be kept overnight but the schools adhered to their principle of day attendance for both voluntary and committed cases. In cases where children had no homes they usually had no difficulty in finding homes for them, particularly for the girls, though there were sometimes problems finding people willing to take the boys in; it was this he believed that led some institutions to house homeless boys overnight but he deplored the fact that ‘now they all sleep there, I believe in many schools.’¹³¹ Watson advocated that all certified industrial schools should be converted into day schools, and that government aid should be withdrawn from those that refused to comply. He also argued that managers of schools should be given discretion to discharge pupils when they considered they were ready rather than be restricted by a definite period of detention; this would mean that the children leaving the schools could take advantage of employment opportunities when they arose.

Asked if his opinion that the existing industrial schools system should be abolished also applied to reformatories, Watson replied that reformatories were a different matter. He was of the view that they should be retained for older children who had become ‘delinquent’ and

130 ibid., page 442.

131 ibid., page 413.

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were beyond the age when they could be sent to an industrial school, for those beyond thirteen or fourteen. There was a need for them in such cases as otherwise magistrates would not know what to do with the children but he argued that prior imprisonment should be abolished as it was ‘a great mistake.’¹³² For Watson the central focus was not on the reformatories, which he viewed as an adjunct to the main enterprise of prevention to be carried on in the day industrial schools.

Watson was pressed on his views about the clause in the Industrial Schools Act 1866

‘which deals with children who might be convicted of crime but against whom no conviction is made or recorded in order that they may be sent to an industrial school.’¹³³ Asked if he regarded a day industrial school as appropriate for these children who had offended, he replied that children’s offences were usually very minor matters and that the day industrial school should include children brought before the court on offending grounds.

In answer to a further question on the issue of whether all children under twelve should be excluded from reformatories, Watson commented on his practice as a Sheriff dealing with children’s cases and also on the impression that his many visits to institutions had made upon him:

‘Yes, I think that every child under twelve might be sent to an industrial school, and that reformatories might in general be found for the delinquent children. I look upon children’s offences in general as comparatively trifling. I never had a case in which I though it necessary to send a child to reformatory, or at least very few instances, as far as I recollect, but my recollection is not quite as good as it was some years ago. I visited the schools over and over again and was very much interested with what I saw in most of them; but I was very sorry to see a child taken away from its parents, and kept in a certified industrial school, and who perhaps for three years never saw its parents. I think it was very cruel, and I was very unwilling to break up the family connection.’¹³⁴

This passage clearly conveys Watson’s distress and disappointment with the way the industrial schools system had departed from his original project. From the very outset he had been motivated by the best of humanitarian ideals and had devoted much of his life to the cause of assisting children in trouble. As the passage suggests, he spent much time visiting

132 ibid. page 413.

133 Section 15. ibid, page 413.

134 ibid.

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institutions, always interested in how they were developing. He also attended many conferences of the Social Science Congress, the sounding board of those interested in reform in this area, often delivering papers expounding his ideas. A key element of his philosophy had always been supporting not just the children but also trying to improve the lot of whole families: by elevating the condition of children he sought to use them to raise the values and expectations of parents too. This core idea had been undermined by the development of a system removing children from their homes, breaking up family ties to such an extent that children leaving institutions after several years separation from their families were effectively estranged with no real homes to return to. From Watson’s viewpoint this was a completed reversal of what he had set out to do.

This appearance at the Royal Commission was to be his last major contribution in the public arena. Even in the very twilight of his life he was fighting the corner for the destitute and disadvantaged, promoting the value of compassion. He was clearly bewildered by the continuing concentration on pursuing parental contributions for the upkeep of children.

Responding to a question on this issue he commented that he had never found any parents he thought were in a position to pay. He also stressed the point which seemed to have long been lost sight of by everyone else in the endless arguments over funding, that the children attending these schools applied themselves diligently to industrial work which was of economic benefit and their efforts should be appreciated and valued:

‘I always understood that in an industrial school the children paid for their education, and that the parents did not require to pay for them. I knew very well that they did not, but at the same time I was anxious to impress upon the minds of the children that they paid for what they got. They gave five hours to labour very willingly, and in many cases their earnings amounted to a considerable sum.’¹³⁵ This was an important point of principle for Watson, that the dignity of children should be respected by ensuring that they were not made to feel like charity cases. Unfortunately this core idea was far from uppermost in the minds of those running the schools in the 1880s.

135 ibid. page 413

159 3.9 CONCLUSION

By the early 1880s the statutory system had followed an interesting trajectory which in many respects had veered in a quite different direction from the original route planned by the early reformers. In the early 1860s there was still considerable scope for local variation in the operation of industrial schools. The later years of the decade witnessed the consolidation of the statutory system as the influence of a national inspectorate, consolidating legislation and national policy decisions regarding funding created pressures for increasing uniformity within the system. Although there was still evidence of some diversity in the late 1860s the next few years saw the demise of the day scholar. The transformation taking place in the 1860s continued, and in the 1870s most Scottish industrial schools were single sex residential boarding establishments where the majority were detained under court order. The main theme which emerged from the 1870s was one of reclamation as the original reformers attempted to restore the essential elements of the original project with a campaign proclaiming the centrality of day industrial schools. Calls for reappraisal and re-evaluation continued into the 1880s and were met with no more than token changes and lack of official willingness to address fundamental issues. Radical re-assessment had to wait for the next decade.

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