10 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
i 
and, being much more impatient of controul than the 
younger ones, brought with them a necessity for a stronger 
government than they could themselves supply. Even a 
committee of themselves, appointed at a general meeting 
held for the purpose, failed to secure respect. It was not 
until after a very full trial, and until the school was getting 
quite into disorder, that the principle of self-government 
on which it started was superseded, at the earnest request of 
all the best of the elder hoys themselves. Since that time 
the school has been worked entirely by authority, although 
the exercise of this authority is often guided by a general 
vote, as for instance, in all cases of fixing the days and 
hours for schooling. Just now a proposal to attend school 
four nights a week, instead of three, during eight months of 
the year, in order to make holiday the four best summer 
months, has been carried by a majority of five to one. 
“We got into possession of the new room for the purposes 
of the evening school in the winter of 1848. In the 
following summer we availed ourselves of it to remedy an 
evil which we had long felt in the factory to some extent, 
and which, with the increase of the night light trade, and 
consequent increase in the number of young boys employed, 
was now becoming serious. It is better that the night lights 
should be made not long before being sent out; and, as the 
demand for them varies greatly, it is often necessary to take 
on a number of additional boys in a busy time, and then to 
let them go again when the demand slackens. In very 
many cases they were taken away from schools to come into 
the factory, but frequently did not go back to school again 
after once being at work, but idled about and learned bad 
habits in the streets, until we could employ them again. 
The new room enabled us to start a day-school, to which to 
send up young boys when not wanted in the work. There 
is still great difficulty with the elder ones, those who would 
be quite out of place in an ordinary day school, and are of 
an age when they ought to be working, and not schooling, 
in the day time. Many of these have to leave us every 
spring. But with all the younger ones the difficulty has 
been completely got over from the time of starting the day 
school. They pass from factory to school, and from school 
to factory again, at a moment’s notice, according to the 
variations of the work, and are equally well employed, and 
equally forming good habits in each, and are kept in the 
same discipline in the one as in the other. 
“To return to the evening school. In the spring of 
1849, the best of the boys, and those most anxious to learn, 
were hard at work in their new room, but they were a 
minority of the whole number of boys in the factory. The 
success of the school with those who came of themselves, of 
course made us anxious to get into it all tho others, many 
of whom were more in want of the schooling than those who 
came. When you remember that the hour-and-a-half of 
schooling was always after a hard day’s work, you will not 
wonder that the boys did not all offer themselves. Com¬ 
pulsion being out of the question, the course we took was to 
try to join on some harmless pleasure to the school, and 
also to make a marked distinction between those who did, 
and those who did not, belong to it; not by putting disgrace 
upon these last, but by putting honour on the others—so as 
to make those who did not belong to it begin to feel that, 
they were losing something good. With this view, we re¬ 
peatedly, in the spring and summer of 1849, asked all the 
school to a tea party in the new room. The first tea was an 
interesting one, from the fact that very many of the boys 
bad not been at anything of the sort before, and that many 
of thorn not being then in the habit of going to church, had 
never, perhaps, put themselves into decent clothes at all. 
Those who came untidily or dirtily dressed to our first tea, 
feeling themselves out of keeping with the whole thing, 
tried hard to avoid this at the next party. I hope that to 
several our first tea was the occasion of their taking to neat 
dressing for life. I will just mention here, that so far as 
our experience goes, there is not with boys, as there is with 
girls, any danger whatever in leading them to think much of 
their dress, for, the more they attend to it, the nearer they 
get to plain black. Almost all our best boys now come to 
tbe chapel in plain black, though not a word has ever been 
said to them, or required to be said, about their dress. One 
evening last summer a friend who had met a troop of them 
on the way to one of our cricket matches, asked me after- 
Apiul 14. 
wards, whether the boys he had met could be our factory- 
boys, as they were, he said, more neatly dressed than his 
public school-fellows used to be. By tbe help of these tea 
parties, we made the boys who did not belong to the school 
feel awkward and uncomfortable about not doing so—and 
very many joined; several, however, stipulating, that they 
were not to be asked to the next tea, lest that should be 
supposed to be their motive for joining. Tbe total expense 
of the tea parties, from the first to the present time (in¬ 
cluding a Christmas one given each year to the boys of the 
day school, and last year one to the girls also) is £53, a 
very large sum, but I think most profitably expended. We 
have, however, given over anything of the sort for the elder 
boys, having now much better attractions in the prize books, 
cricket matches, and summer excursions. 
“ It was on Easter Monday that our first tea party was held, 
partly in order to try our powers of attraction against those 
of Camberwell and Greenwich fairs, both of which are 
within reach of the factory. Ours were the stronger, both 
then and on the Wliit-Monday following. 
“ In following up our plan of combining as much pleasure , 
as possible with the schools, the next step was to teach the 1 
boys cricket, yet it was anything but a pleasant occasion ! 
which decided the time of beginning this. In the summer 
of 1849 tho cholera came, and it was fearfully severe in ! 
Battersea Fields and tho lower part of Lambeth, where 
numbers of our people live. For a time the first thing 
every morning was to compare notes, as to the relations 
whom the men and boys had left dead or dying on coming 
to work, and in the latter part of the time no doctors were 
to be bad, as they were all knocked up. Before it got very 
bad we got good medical advice, as to whether any precau¬ 
tions against it were possible for our boys, and decided, 
that fresh air and exercise out of the factory were the best 
preventives. We, therefore, closed the school entirely, and 
a gentleman (Mr. Symes) having most kindly let us take 
possession of a field, which was waiting to be occupied by a 
builder, we set to work hard at learning cricket after working 
hours. I say learning, for cricket is not a game of London 
boys of the class of ours, as was proved, by the fact of 
hardly any of, even the elder ones, knowing anything at all 
about it when we began. 
“ I do not like to pass this part of my story without noticing 
how everybody’s heart seems to warm up directly towards 
such an object as ours when applied to for assistance in it. 
Mr. Symes had never seen me, nor I him, when I went into 
his office to ask him for his field; but when the case was stated, 
his answer was, ‘ Certainly, for such an object, I shall be de¬ 
lighted to let you have it until I am obliged to turn you out for 
building;’ so I got the field, and the beginning of a most 
true friendship beside. Afterwards, Mr. Graham, who holds 
a great part of Battersea fields, also an entire stranger to 
me until I called on him on a similar errand, no sooner 
understood it than he told me of all the land he had, and 
the terms on which he held the different pieces, and offered 
to let me pick what I chose out of the whole ; and we have 
had very many minor instances of this readiness to help us. 
“ The cholera seems an odd reason for taking to cricket, 
but I dare say the cricket had a very happy effect on the 
general health of our boys, and so may have strengthened 
them against catching it. We lost only one (an amiable, 
and well-conducted boy of seventeen), although many of 
our boys lost relations living in tbe same bouses with them. 
Always when the game was finished, they collected in a 
corner of the field, and took off their caps for a very short 
prayer for the safety from cholera of themselves and their 
friends; and tho tone in which they said their amen to 
this, has always made me think, that although the school 
was nominally given up for the time, they were really getting 
from the game so concluded, more moral benefit than any 
quantity of ordinary schooling could have given them. They 
also met every morning in the school-room at six o’clock 
before beginning work, just for a few minutes to give thanks 
for having been safely brought to the beginning of the day, 
and to pray to be defended in it. 
I will bring tbe account of tbe cricket down to the present 
time before going on to anything else. In 1850 we played 
on tbe same field three nights a week, working in the 
school on the other three nights. I arranged to take it on a 
ten years lease, but a builder stepped in just before the . 
