660 report — 1878. 



fifteen years ago. In Scotland boarding out has, in one form or another, been 

 practised for a century or more as a mode of relief. In Ireland, as the Poor-law 

 itself is a very modern affair, it is not, in the early stages, to anything done by the 

 authorities, but to the action of voluntary charities, that we have to look for ex- 

 perience. Warned by the errors of the old Charter Schools, which had just been 

 closed, the Protestant Orphan Society from the first eschewed large buildings and 

 mechanical arrangements, and placed the children in families in the country. The 

 success of this institution is beyond dispute, and as it deals with hundreds at a 

 time, the scale is sufficiently large to be an excellent test of efficiency. In a similar 

 manner many Roman Catholic orphanages and institutes — such as those of St. 

 Joseph and St. Bridget — have constantly boarded out the children in their care 

 among farmers and others in the country with the best results. The Presbyterian 

 Orphan Society, with the working of which I am best acquainted, has been about ten 

 years in operation, and it, also, makes the placing of the children in suitable fami- 

 lies its central object. Not till 1862 were Irish guardians empowered to board 

 young children out, and that only up to the age of five years, except in special 

 cases. Power was afterwards obtained to board out the children until ten years of 

 age. At this point it remained until 1876, when a bill was introduced and carried 

 by Mi". O'Shaughnessy, M.P. for Limerick, to extend the age to thirteen; and those 

 unions — decidedly the majority, and also the most important — which had already 

 adopted the system, gladly availed themselves of the permission. It was evident, 

 however, that if boarding out was to be substituted on a large scale for the false 

 system which had grown up care would have to be taken that the supervision by 

 educated people, which was connected with it when set in operation by charitable 

 associations, should be continued in a satisfactory and permanent manner when set 

 in operation by the guardians. It needs sound good sense and experience, as well 

 as good will, to select the right foster-parents in each case and to meet with advice, 

 encouragement, or warning the emergencies which arise from time to time. This 

 is the proper work of the ladies who undertake to assist in boarding out. The 

 State is composed of men and women, and has both masculine and feminine duties. 

 The forgetting of this truth led to hideous results for thousands of unhappy 

 children ; and now that attention is directed to it, it is not a matter of choice 

 whether ladies will offer to help, or guardians accept their offer, but a matter of 

 plain duty. It is a cause of congratulation that such a committee has just been 

 formed in Dublin to look after children boarded out from the metropolitan unions. 

 The boarding-out system rescues children from artificial conditions under which 

 nothing living could thrive, and secures for its clients a home — friends, parents, 

 brothers, and sisters ; school teaching — which becomes a pride and a pleasure, in- 

 stead of a meaningless drudgery — and religious instruction which is blended with 

 tenderness, instead of a dry form which might inspire awe, but could not inspire 

 love. This surely is work in which the place of women is evident and essential. 



