TEANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 753 



elected directly from the respective legislative bodies, whicli should sit continuously 

 in London and report. On the other hand, if it was considered that the question 

 •was not yet ripe for so decisive a step, he suggested whether an impetus might not 

 be given to the development of the germ of federation by summoning to England 

 from the great representative colonies iniluential men who should be consulted 

 by the Colonial Office in matters requiring colonial opinion. As a first step, this 

 would foster and strengthen the undoubted link which bound together in love and 

 unity the English-speaking race, and might, at no distant date, result in the con- 

 summation of a mutual determination to embrace federal government upon that 

 wider and more comprehensive and practical basis upon which they all so much 

 desired to see it established. 



FRTDAT, SEPTEMBER 3. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1, Boardtng-out as a method of Pauper Education and a Check on 

 Hereditary Pauperism.^ By Miss Wilhelmina L. Hall, F.B.Met.Soc. 



The object of this paper is to put forward the claims of boarding-out as the most 

 natural and economical system of pauper education, and the only one by which they 

 are entirely/ severed from pauperising influence. 



Pauper children are of two classes — permanents and casuals. 



The various methods of educating them are — (1) Workhouse Schools; (2) Dis- 

 trict Schools ; (3) Cottage Homes ; (4) By Emigration ; (5) By Boarding-out. 



I. Workhouse Schools. — -Children reared in a workhouse are acknowledged to be 

 below the average of the working-classes both in physical and mental attainments. 

 Educated away from the surroundings of family life, forced to associate with chil- 

 dren of tramps and bad women, they are sent out into the world wholly untrained 

 to resource, thrift, or self-dependence. They are frequently sickly, stunted in 

 growth, and constant victims to ophthalmia and skin disease. Their education even 

 is at a disadvantage owing to their indescribable apathy and dulness, and to the 

 few points of illustration from the outside world available to the teachers. There 

 are 52,000 children (1885) in receipt of indoor relief, •3-3,000 of whom are orphans 

 or relieved without their parents. Some 8,000 of these are educated in district 

 schools, 26,000 in workhouse or union schools, and 3,000 are boarded out ; in 300 

 unions children attend Board Schools. Some 30,000, at the least, are still subjected 

 to the pernicious influence of workhouse life, and ' have a distinct tendency to swell 

 the crowd of pauperism.' Is it not a State duty to set them on new ways, and to 

 take them from an institution rightly described as ' half penal, half charitable, and 

 in its results whoUy demoralising ' ? 



II. District Schools. — -This system, in operation since 1847, though a distinct 

 improvement on workhouse training, has been well described as ' a gigantic mistake.' 

 Apart from the evils of large institutions, its cost is enormous, varying from 26^. to 

 ^0^. per head per annum. 



III. Cottage Homes. — A method used to a limited extent only by Poor Law 

 authorities. The attempt to imitate family life is admirable, though not always 

 successful. The cost, however, is excessive, the Banstead Cottage Homes of the 

 Kensington Union costing 36^. 14s. Qd. per head per annum. 



IV. By Emigration. — Most excellent in its results when care is taken to 

 emigrate suitable children under due supervision. 



V. By Boarding-out. — Boarding-out in England is carried on under two 'orders ' 

 of the Local Government Board : that of 1870, known as ' Boarding-out without 

 the Union,' and that of 1877 — ' Boarding-out luithin the Union.' Compared with 



' Published by R. Clark, Dorking. 

 1886. 3 C 



