Industrial school (Great Britain)

Not to be confused with Manual labor school.
For Industrial schools in Ireland, see Industrial school (Ireland).

Connaught House 1887 – A Church of England Industrial School in Winchester.

Industrial schools were intended to solve problems of juvenile vagrancy in England by removing poor and neglected children from their home environment to a boarding school. The Industrial Schools Act 1857 (20 & 21 Vict. c. 48) allowed magistrates to send disorderly children to a residential industrial school. An 1876 act[which?] led to non-residential day schools of a similar kind.

There were similar arrangements in Scotland, where the Industrial Schools Act came into force in 1866. The schools cared for neglected children and taught them a trade,[1] with an emphasis on preventing crime. Glasgow Industrial School for Girls is an example formed in 1882.

They were distinct from reformatories set up under the Youthful Offenders Act 1854 (and the Reformatory Schools (Scotland) Act 1854) which included an element of punishment. Both agreed in 1927 to call themselves approved schools.

In Ireland, the Industrial Schools Act (Ireland) 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 25) established industrial schools (Irish: scoileanna saothair) to care for "neglected, orphaned and abandoned children". By 1884 there were 5,049 children in such institutions.[2]

  1. ^ Gillian Carol Gear (1999). "Industrial Schools in England, 1857-1933" (PDF). University of London Institute of Education. Retrieved 9 April 2016.
  2. ^ "INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS (IRELAND). HC Deb". Hansard (285 cc1022-4). UK Parliament. 10 March 1884.