{"id":133,"date":"2020-03-26T15:49:11","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T15:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/?page_id=133"},"modified":"2021-07-12T19:30:45","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T19:30:45","slug":"598-household-words-conducted-by","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/household-words-2\/598-household-words-conducted-by\/","title":{"rendered":"Pg. 598"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Household<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

598 HOUSEHOLD WORDS. [Conducted by<\/p>\n\n\n\n

maker.\nThere are helmets, by Foxglove, for the same community. There are also the well\nknown little yellow \u201cshoes and stockings.\u201d There is veronica, there are the\npink blossoms of the wild geranium and the red lychnis blossoms ; there is\nlucerne, and there is an odd orchis here and there. There is agrimony; there\nare ambitious daisies length\u00adening their stalks that they may show their heads\nabove the grass; there are the tiny blue clusters of mouse ear; there is fern\nin abundance; and there are the elegant grass blossoms that would wave were\nthere a breath of wind. They are as still as painted grass blossoms, because\nthere is no<\/em> breath of win\u2019d; the sun shines steadily out of a deep blue\nsky, between the high banks and the hedges, down into the dusty lane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obedient\nto sign-post, which directs us to the right if we desire to find the Philan\u00adthropic\nFarm School, at Bed Hill, we take the appointed turning; thinking, as we go,\nHow beautiful the blessed earth and sky, and Is this really the world so ugly\nto us last night with its courts and alleys, and its vice  and misery, and its ragged scholars, in whose\nminds the wild flowers have been trampled down, and nothing left but baleful\nweeds and  poisons?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is\nmore than seventy years since there was established in this country a society\nwhose object was to divert children from the paths of crime. We all know that\nthe young criminal is bred under the most pitiable circumstances. Of eighty-two\nreceived in. one year at Bed Hill, for example, twenty-seven were orphans,\neither by the death or trans\u00adportation of their parents, or by being born like\nbrutes, and bred in ignorance of any home. Nineteen were fatherless, and of\nthese almost all had step-fathers; twelve were motherless, and most of these\nwere furnished with step-mothers, ignorant, brutal, and jealous. Only\ntwenty-four had both parents living; and of these, who shall say how many had\nreceived parental care?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even\nthe most anxious of poor parents must be absent for some ten hours at their\ndaily work, while the child\u2019s school-time\u2014when he has been sent to school\u2014can\noccupy but six hours in the day. The streets are the child’s playground. If\nthere be so much danger to the best among the children of the very poor, how\nis.it with those bred in squalor, ignorance, and vice? How is it with the\nwretched untaught orphans, forced to calculate for themselves the chances of\nexistence, and to beg, or steal, or die? O honorable friend, member for\nVerbosity, your boy of fourteen\u2014who brought home his prize from school this Midsummer,\nand told you with some glee of his boyish escapades\u2014is a fine fellow; in spite\nof his juvenile offences he will grow up one of these days, to be a noble,\nhonest man. But, had he been deprived of your assistance, O honorable friend,\nof your good thought on his behalf and your wife\u2019s tender solicitude;  had your birthplace been a filthy fever-breeding\nalley; had no voice of teacher ever sounded in your ears; had you been made a\ncallous man by rubbing constantly against the hardest side of society; had your\nwife died of the gin with which she sought to drown the despondent sense of a\nmost wretched existence; had you gone to your daily work, leaving your boy in\nthe pestiferous alley; what would he, what could he, have been! He might be the\nobject of parental care to the whole nation represented by the State; since (to\ntake the very lowest ground), it is expensive to allow swarms of young children\nto grow up yearly into a mass of wild brutes, preying on society. The State\nmight teach and tend neglected children, and compel those parents who are able,\nto pay pence on their behalf. It might make a parent answerable in some\nwholesome mea\u00adsure for the crimes of a neglected child. It might send its\nlifeboats out, to provide for all an opportunity of rescue from the waves of\nignorance and vice before those waves had overwhelmed the shipwrecked. These\nthings might be, but they are not. Your child, had you been so much less\nrespectable than you are, would have been ragged, and would have been\npronounced by sitting, magistrates, a hardened \nlittle fellow; and the times he had been before the sitting magistrates\nwould have been elaborately counted up; and he would have been whipped so many\ntimes, to the great comfort and profit of society, and not at all. to the\nmockery of reason, justice, and humanity. He would have learned to swear, and\nsteal, and lie; he would have felt no sense of obligation to society since\nsociety displayed no sense of obligation towards him. The British nation would\nhave arrayed itself to fight him; to whip him, imprison him, trans\u00adport him,\nand perhaps hang him. He, war being declared, would feel at liberty to strike\nthe British nation where and when he could \u2014and he would most certainly do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seventy\nyears ago, a body of gentlemen under the name of the Philanthropic Society\norganised a method of receiving and assisting criminal  children, on a plan that very much resembled\nthe more recent methods practised at Mettray.\n\n\u201cThe mode of living,\u201d says the old report, for. the children received\ninto the Philan\u00adthropic in 1788-9, \u201cis in distinct houses, as separate\nfamilies. A manufacturer has a house for himself and his wife, if married, and\na certain number of wards, whom they are, to regard as their own children. In\nthese respects the design is to approach as nearly as possible to common life.\u201d\nThe institution indeed began with a single child, who was put out to nurse. It\nwidened, and became eventually incorporated, in the year 1806, by Act of\nParliament, and comprised within the walls of a single building in St. George\u2019s\nFields under the name of the Philanthropic Society.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

598 HOUSEHOLD WORDS. [Conducted by maker. There are helmets, by Foxglove, for the same community. There are also the well known little yellow \u201cshoes and stockings.\u201d There is veronica, there are the pink blossoms of the wild geranium and the red lychnis blossoms ; there is lucerne, and there is an odd orchis here and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":664,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-133","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/133\/revisions\/724"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1853archive.com\/wp_annotation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}