EDUCATION IN LEICESTER 81 
Meanwhile special instruction had been provided for the mentally 
deficient, the blind and the deaf, and a school at Desford opened for 
children committed by the magistrates. 
For many years a Committee working under the influence of the 
Leicester Chamber of Commerce was responsible for technical classes 
in hosiery and boot and shoe manufacture; these were held at the 
Wyggeston Boys’ School (now the Alderman Newton’s) and in the old 
Mercury Office, 21 St. Martin’s. Moreover, since 1870, a private 
society had maintained a School of Art. 
In the early nineties a Technical and Art Schools Committee of the 
Corporation was formed; the first wing of the College of Art and 
Technology was opened in 1897. 
In 1877 the Leicester and Leicestershire School of Cookery was 
established in No. 21 St. Martin’s. From 1890 to 1907, before it was 
taken over by the Education Committee, it was known as the North 
Midland School of Cookery. 
When the Education Act of 1902 came into force there were three 
secondary schools in the borough—the Wyggeston Boys’ and Girls’ 
Schools and the Alderman Newton’s. The former came under the 
Education Authority in 1909, the latter in 1910. In 1908 what had been 
a pupil teachers’ centre was converted into a dual secondary school, the 
Newarke School. 
During the second half of the nineteenth century private effort had 
done much to put the tools of knowledge within reach of the illiterate. 
Mary Royce chose to teach boys when the Sunday school was opened 
in Sanvey Gate in 1868. Soon she was teaching the three R’s, chemistry 
and French to week-night classes, then taking her pupils for holiday 
rambles. Ultimately she built the Royce Institute in South Church 
Gate. 
The Rev. Daniel James Vaughan was Vicar of St. Martin’s. Following 
the example of his friend F. D. Maurice, who founded the London 
Working Men’s College, he opened, in 1862, the Working Men’s 
Institute in Union Street. This institute became known as the Working 
Men’s College, and when Canon Vaughan died in 1905 there were over 
2,000 students on the rolls. In 1908 the Vaughan Working Men’s 
College and Institute in Great Central Street was opened by Sir Oliver 
Lodge. 
In 1822 Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, started an adult school ‘ for 
the poor and utterly uneducated.’ Other schools gradually came into 
being in town and county, and in 1889 the Leicestershire Adult School 
Union was formed. 
In 1908 a branch of the Workers’ Educational Association was formed 
in Leicester. 
The passage of the 1918 Education Act almost coincided with the end 
of the war and the consequent return of teachers from military service. 
All was ready for an advance. The first thing done was to institute a 
-general examination for all children between 11 and 12 who were 
competent to get a fair percentage of marks. This threw on the 
Authority the responsibility of pointing the way to secondary schools to 
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