ON THE ABERDEEN INDUSTRIAL FEEDING SCHOOLS. 45 



Various persons in different parts of the country suggested and tried 

 temporary expedients to remedy the evil, but the first deliberate, consistent, 

 and permanent scheme, combining feeding, teaching, and industrial training, 

 was organized in Aberdeen by Sheriff Watson, and his plan has been found 

 so efficient, that it is now adopted, more or less exactly, in almost every large 

 town in Great Britain. 



The immediate cause of this attempt was the pain felt by Mr. Watson, 

 and by many other criminal judges, in the discharge of their ordinary duties. 

 Day after day children of tender years were brought up for trial and convicted 

 of acts undeniably criminal and deserving of punishment, but with regard to 

 which it was very clear that the moral guilt lay not exclusively on the 

 juvenile culprits. 



They had no doubt done the deed, but who was most to blame for it ? 

 — the actual perpetrator ? or those who had allowed or even led to the com- 

 mission of the offence ? 



On inquiring into their previous history, it soon became evident, that the 

 root of the evil lay in the want of right parental care and training. The 

 parents were themselves either criminals, or at least wholly careless of their 

 offspring, and left them to grow up as they might, without control, without 

 principle: on the parents clearly lay the primary culpability. Next to them, 

 it lay on the clergymen of all denominations, who, occupied in other and, 

 as they thought, more promising fields of labour, gave a very small share of 

 their time to this particular class ; and last, but not least, the blame lay on the 

 professedly christian public of the country, who, as a body, seem to have 

 agreed to regard these outcasts as a Pariah caste beyond the legitimate sphere 

 of christian enterprise; "no man cared for their souls." Noble cases indeed 

 occurred, from time to time, of strenuous and successful exertions on their 

 behalf, but they were isolated, unconnected ; and there was no general, no 

 sustained endeavour to reclaim them. 



What did these children require ? It may be all summed up in three 

 words, " Christian parental care." How was this to be supplied, since the 

 natural parents were unable or unwilling to perform their duties ? 



There are two opposite dangers to be avoided in applying any remedy : 

 thore is the risk on one side of doing too little for the children, so as to fail 

 in training them up aright both bodily and mentally ; and there is the not less 

 serious risk on the other, of doing too much, and thereby giving encourage- 

 ment to listlessness and laziness on the part of the children, and neglect and 

 carelessness on the part of the parents. 



To avoid these difficulties, it is needful to ascertain exactly what the chil- 

 dren want, and how instruction can be best furnished to them. 



For their bodies they need food ; for their minds they need instruction in 

 the elementary branches of knowledge ; for their success in life they need 

 training in industrial habits, and for their never-dying souls they need abun- 

 dant religious instruction. This is what their fellow-men can do for them. 

 The saving inspiration of the Holy Spirit can be given only by God himself; 

 it is not at the disposal of mortal man, but is given freely in answer to be- 

 lieving prayer. 



These various requisites were all kept in view at the first establishment of 

 the Aberdeen Industrial Feeding Schools, and they have never been for one 

 moment abandoned. They are the foundation-stones on which the whole 

 structure rests ; remove any one of them, and the superstructure must fall to 

 the ground ; give any one undue preponderance over the rest, and the whole 

 is rendered unsteady and insecure. 



In the year 1840 the juvenile criminal population of Aberdeen attracted 



