Inmates'She said the School Board officer obtained the order in her absence, and she begged the Magistrate not to enforce it, as the boy was within four months of 14 yeas of age, and the boy was the only one of a family of six who could earn anything. His father was ill and unable to work. It was all her fault that the boy did not go to school, and she kept him at home to earn 5s. per week, and to mind the baby.'
A mother whose son was sentenced to the Ship quoted in The Standard, 28 April 1887. Between 1871 and 1897, almost twenty four thousand children were sent to industrial schools from the School Board for London's districts. As a floating industrial school, the Shaftesbury was able to select their inmates a little more carefully. The Captain was even taken to task publicly in 1896 for admitting too many easy cases! We will explore the thorny issues surrounding sentencing below, and how exits were not quite so well managed as entrances. |
As The Standard dryly noted, the School Board for London had a 'high appreciation of its powers and duties under the Industrial Schools Acts'. By pushing through truancy laws which effectively criminalised children and their families for non-attendance, the School Board made itself unpopular with both conservatives and the working class alike. Indeed, almost everything about the 1870 Education Act and the School Board infuriated political and cultural conservatives: it wrested education out of the hands of the state religion, made it compulsory (seen as ‘un-British’), and, to add insult to injury, levied rates to do it. So, who were the Shaftesbury inmates, and what had they done to be placed aboard? And what, if anything, did the opponents of compulsion do to disrupt such sentencing?
Broadly, looking at court cases covered in the press, we can divide inmates into two types: those who were, according to the 1866 Industrial Schools Act, sentenced due to petty criminality and those who are sentenced for being destitute or uncared for. In the first category are boys such as Charles Baker (aged 13) who could not be controlled by his mother; ‘Tinkler’ (aged 12) who had stolen money from his father; William Allen (aged 13), charged with being ‘beyond control of his parents’ (and criminally obsessed with becoming a sailor!?), William Pindar (aged 13), Edward Saunders (aged 13) and Stephen Hewett (aged 13) for attempted burglary (sent to Shaftesbury until 16).
From 1893, however, the punitive, ‘criminal’ feel of the cases altered. The way they were discussed in newspapers – and the details themselves – tended more towards ‘rescue’ narratives. Whether this was reflective of a sea-change in the role and perception of the Shaftesbury, or merely shows a preference for reporting certain kinds of cases in uncertain. They begin with Henry Hedges who, although he stood accused of being beyond parental control by his own mother, faced appalling cruelty from both her and his father (forced to dress in a sack and being regularly beaten). Lloyd’s Weekly reported the case under the headline ‘’Shocking brutality to a boy’, and despite the lack of a charge the boy was taken to the Shaftesbury. Another case is Oscar Gottheil, who, we are pointedly reminded, ‘made allegations against his father’. Thus, even though Gottheil was in court to be charged on remand for being out of parental control, we are perhaps justified in seeing the trip to the Shaftesbury as a journey away from a worse fate. The account of the ‘generally incorrigible’ John Long’s family life, which included being ‘ducked’ in mid-winter as a correctional method, suggests that his sentence to the Shaftesbury was a kindness. By September 1897, we have the Shaftesbury involved in a case of unlawful and wilful neglect against an Edward and Catherine Denny. Prosecuted on behalf of the NSPCC, the judge sent the boy, an Arthur Cornealius, who had been forced to live in rags, to the Shaftesbury as he wished to be a carpenter. Not only had the Shaftesbury become a place of refuge, but also a place that was not simply associated with a harsh mono-culture of the sea. Indeed, there are hints from other NSPCC prosecutions of neglectful parents that the Shaftesbury was an established place of refuge for mistreated or very poor children. The damning evidence in the case of Louisa Evans, accused of neglecting her daughter in 1900, came from her brother ensconced in the relative safety and luxury of the Shaftesbury; the ship a safe heaven when viewed against the harrowing testimony.
Yet for some, including many magistrates and inmates' parents, the systems that sent boys to institutions such as the Shaftesbury was unjust, particularly when it happened because of school absences. In its simplest and rarest form this was an objection to the Shaftesbury as an instrument of the state’s disruption of working-class family lives and finances. An example being the case of the unnamed mother whose testimony was quoted at the beginning of this page. As the Standard reported, her pleas fell on deaf ears. Although she applied to a Westminster magistrate, Mr. D’Eyncourt, in April 1887 to overturn the order for her son to be sent to an industrial school, the boys was still sent to the Shaftesbury. This, however, was not the usual story in the Shaftesbury’s court coverage. In fact it appears more common for magistrates to refuse to enact industrial school officers’ requests to send boys to the Shaftesbury on anti-interventionist grounds. Thus Mr. Paget, a magistrate famously antagonistic to the School Board, refused to send a boy (John Macksay) caught in possession of stolen goods to the Shaftesbury because 'if he did so he would be saying to men who worked hard, and made all sorts of sacrifices for their families, that the boy would be better educated that their own children'. Macksay got fourteen days hard labour instead, a punishment seen by many as more lenient than years spent away from his home environment on a Ship. The School Board was well aware of this issue and petitioned to Home Office in 1879 for a solution to magistrates who were overruling and countermanding its bye-law enforcement and ignoring the suggestions of its industrial school officers. Reactionary findings continued however, as did the commentary and critique. In 1899, for example, the Thames Police court magistrate announced that
" he often had lads before him charged with stealing, who said
they did so to get on the Shaftesbury training-ship. In this case
he was not going to gratify the boy and save the father’s pockets
at the expense of the ratepayers. He added that if Magistrates
had the power to order the birch there would be very little truancy."
The reactionary magistrates were not lone voices in the wilderness, but represented a popular position that opposed the Shaftesbury extending the kind of education prized by the rate-paying lower middle classes to the ‘unworthy poor’. It was a theme that attracted the support of many within the Court of the Common Council of London, as well as those members of the School Board who seemed intent on destroying it from within. Self-evidently, however, enough cases got through to keep scores of industrial schools busy. Cases such as that of Thomas Seymour, an alcoholic army pensioner, who was sentenced to a month in Holloway prison for avoiding arrears on his son’s Shaftesbury contributions were important PR wins for the School Board. They showed that the industrial schools officers were committed to working with magistrates to get value for money for ratepayers. Meanwhile, behind the scenes repeated attempts were made by the School Board to get the Home Office to agree to ‘the appointment of a special magistrate for School Board cases’. Despite the school boards best efforts, the request fell on deaf ears.
Beyond the Shaftesbury...
Another relatively common category in the trial accounts is the post-Shaftesbury boy in unfortunate circumstances. They offer considerable insight into the ship’s effectiveness and after-care. The former is highlighted in the case of Arthur Cattermole (17) who, after three years on the ship was still suffering such violent rages that he was sent for two months hard labour for savagely beating his younger brother and sister. He ‘spent his time principally out of doors, but every Sunday he created a disturbance in the house and assaulted them all’. The magistrate warned that the next sentence would be longer. It sounds like one was expected. To say the blows that Elizabeth Cattermole received every Sunday violently illustrate failings in the Shaftesbury’s ability to reform its boys’ behaviour would be too strong, but it does show a lack of reach into Old Boys' lives.
Questions similarly remain about the Shaftesbury’s commitment to providing marine roles that were safe and in the inmates' best interests. This issue is most graphically illustrated by the case of James Orton, ‘from the training ship Shaftesbury, at Grays, Essex, a fishing apprentice to the Grimsby and North Sea Steam Trawling Company’ who was in the dock charged with disobeying the order to go to sea. In fact the boy was ‘ruptured’ (had a hernia) and, according to a witness, was in that state when he was indentured out by the Shaftesbury. The officials fortunately showed leniency, although the prosecuting company was reluctant to cancel the indenture on the magistrate’s advice, and suggested the boy be ‘sent to gaol for a short time’.
Alarmingly, the article this Orton case appeared in was titled ‘Another Grimsby apprentice case’. Indeed, a piece on the same page has the Grimsby Board of Guardians suggesting, ominously, that ‘the Board refute all the charges that have been brought against them with respect to fishing apprentices; that the charges have been exaggerated’. The failure of inmates to get into the Navy, and a depressed mercantile marine, had meant that the Shaftesbury was agreeing to whatever positions it could find for its boys. Whether the boy showed symptoms of a hernia before his indenture cannot be known, but the Shaftesbury’s officers certainly could not plead ignorance to the developing scandal in Grimsby, as the news was carried by at least one national paper.
Sadly, many of the trial cases suggest that the inmates were cast from the ship and given little support in the harsh and seedy world of the commercial marine. In July 1895 the Cheshire Observer (alone) carried the case of Frank Hatton (16) formerly of the Shaftesbury who had tried to hang himself after being ‘ill used’ by his shipmates and throttled by his captain on the vessel he was indentured to in Ellesmere Port. In the end Hatton returned to the ship, and no doubt to more trouble. Even after the Shaftesbury had become re-imagined as a place of refuge, the institution was failing a small proportion of its boys dramatically.
Broadly, looking at court cases covered in the press, we can divide inmates into two types: those who were, according to the 1866 Industrial Schools Act, sentenced due to petty criminality and those who are sentenced for being destitute or uncared for. In the first category are boys such as Charles Baker (aged 13) who could not be controlled by his mother; ‘Tinkler’ (aged 12) who had stolen money from his father; William Allen (aged 13), charged with being ‘beyond control of his parents’ (and criminally obsessed with becoming a sailor!?), William Pindar (aged 13), Edward Saunders (aged 13) and Stephen Hewett (aged 13) for attempted burglary (sent to Shaftesbury until 16).
From 1893, however, the punitive, ‘criminal’ feel of the cases altered. The way they were discussed in newspapers – and the details themselves – tended more towards ‘rescue’ narratives. Whether this was reflective of a sea-change in the role and perception of the Shaftesbury, or merely shows a preference for reporting certain kinds of cases in uncertain. They begin with Henry Hedges who, although he stood accused of being beyond parental control by his own mother, faced appalling cruelty from both her and his father (forced to dress in a sack and being regularly beaten). Lloyd’s Weekly reported the case under the headline ‘’Shocking brutality to a boy’, and despite the lack of a charge the boy was taken to the Shaftesbury. Another case is Oscar Gottheil, who, we are pointedly reminded, ‘made allegations against his father’. Thus, even though Gottheil was in court to be charged on remand for being out of parental control, we are perhaps justified in seeing the trip to the Shaftesbury as a journey away from a worse fate. The account of the ‘generally incorrigible’ John Long’s family life, which included being ‘ducked’ in mid-winter as a correctional method, suggests that his sentence to the Shaftesbury was a kindness. By September 1897, we have the Shaftesbury involved in a case of unlawful and wilful neglect against an Edward and Catherine Denny. Prosecuted on behalf of the NSPCC, the judge sent the boy, an Arthur Cornealius, who had been forced to live in rags, to the Shaftesbury as he wished to be a carpenter. Not only had the Shaftesbury become a place of refuge, but also a place that was not simply associated with a harsh mono-culture of the sea. Indeed, there are hints from other NSPCC prosecutions of neglectful parents that the Shaftesbury was an established place of refuge for mistreated or very poor children. The damning evidence in the case of Louisa Evans, accused of neglecting her daughter in 1900, came from her brother ensconced in the relative safety and luxury of the Shaftesbury; the ship a safe heaven when viewed against the harrowing testimony.
Yet for some, including many magistrates and inmates' parents, the systems that sent boys to institutions such as the Shaftesbury was unjust, particularly when it happened because of school absences. In its simplest and rarest form this was an objection to the Shaftesbury as an instrument of the state’s disruption of working-class family lives and finances. An example being the case of the unnamed mother whose testimony was quoted at the beginning of this page. As the Standard reported, her pleas fell on deaf ears. Although she applied to a Westminster magistrate, Mr. D’Eyncourt, in April 1887 to overturn the order for her son to be sent to an industrial school, the boys was still sent to the Shaftesbury. This, however, was not the usual story in the Shaftesbury’s court coverage. In fact it appears more common for magistrates to refuse to enact industrial school officers’ requests to send boys to the Shaftesbury on anti-interventionist grounds. Thus Mr. Paget, a magistrate famously antagonistic to the School Board, refused to send a boy (John Macksay) caught in possession of stolen goods to the Shaftesbury because 'if he did so he would be saying to men who worked hard, and made all sorts of sacrifices for their families, that the boy would be better educated that their own children'. Macksay got fourteen days hard labour instead, a punishment seen by many as more lenient than years spent away from his home environment on a Ship. The School Board was well aware of this issue and petitioned to Home Office in 1879 for a solution to magistrates who were overruling and countermanding its bye-law enforcement and ignoring the suggestions of its industrial school officers. Reactionary findings continued however, as did the commentary and critique. In 1899, for example, the Thames Police court magistrate announced that
" he often had lads before him charged with stealing, who said
they did so to get on the Shaftesbury training-ship. In this case
he was not going to gratify the boy and save the father’s pockets
at the expense of the ratepayers. He added that if Magistrates
had the power to order the birch there would be very little truancy."
The reactionary magistrates were not lone voices in the wilderness, but represented a popular position that opposed the Shaftesbury extending the kind of education prized by the rate-paying lower middle classes to the ‘unworthy poor’. It was a theme that attracted the support of many within the Court of the Common Council of London, as well as those members of the School Board who seemed intent on destroying it from within. Self-evidently, however, enough cases got through to keep scores of industrial schools busy. Cases such as that of Thomas Seymour, an alcoholic army pensioner, who was sentenced to a month in Holloway prison for avoiding arrears on his son’s Shaftesbury contributions were important PR wins for the School Board. They showed that the industrial schools officers were committed to working with magistrates to get value for money for ratepayers. Meanwhile, behind the scenes repeated attempts were made by the School Board to get the Home Office to agree to ‘the appointment of a special magistrate for School Board cases’. Despite the school boards best efforts, the request fell on deaf ears.
Beyond the Shaftesbury...
Another relatively common category in the trial accounts is the post-Shaftesbury boy in unfortunate circumstances. They offer considerable insight into the ship’s effectiveness and after-care. The former is highlighted in the case of Arthur Cattermole (17) who, after three years on the ship was still suffering such violent rages that he was sent for two months hard labour for savagely beating his younger brother and sister. He ‘spent his time principally out of doors, but every Sunday he created a disturbance in the house and assaulted them all’. The magistrate warned that the next sentence would be longer. It sounds like one was expected. To say the blows that Elizabeth Cattermole received every Sunday violently illustrate failings in the Shaftesbury’s ability to reform its boys’ behaviour would be too strong, but it does show a lack of reach into Old Boys' lives.
Questions similarly remain about the Shaftesbury’s commitment to providing marine roles that were safe and in the inmates' best interests. This issue is most graphically illustrated by the case of James Orton, ‘from the training ship Shaftesbury, at Grays, Essex, a fishing apprentice to the Grimsby and North Sea Steam Trawling Company’ who was in the dock charged with disobeying the order to go to sea. In fact the boy was ‘ruptured’ (had a hernia) and, according to a witness, was in that state when he was indentured out by the Shaftesbury. The officials fortunately showed leniency, although the prosecuting company was reluctant to cancel the indenture on the magistrate’s advice, and suggested the boy be ‘sent to gaol for a short time’.
Alarmingly, the article this Orton case appeared in was titled ‘Another Grimsby apprentice case’. Indeed, a piece on the same page has the Grimsby Board of Guardians suggesting, ominously, that ‘the Board refute all the charges that have been brought against them with respect to fishing apprentices; that the charges have been exaggerated’. The failure of inmates to get into the Navy, and a depressed mercantile marine, had meant that the Shaftesbury was agreeing to whatever positions it could find for its boys. Whether the boy showed symptoms of a hernia before his indenture cannot be known, but the Shaftesbury’s officers certainly could not plead ignorance to the developing scandal in Grimsby, as the news was carried by at least one national paper.
Sadly, many of the trial cases suggest that the inmates were cast from the ship and given little support in the harsh and seedy world of the commercial marine. In July 1895 the Cheshire Observer (alone) carried the case of Frank Hatton (16) formerly of the Shaftesbury who had tried to hang himself after being ‘ill used’ by his shipmates and throttled by his captain on the vessel he was indentured to in Ellesmere Port. In the end Hatton returned to the ship, and no doubt to more trouble. Even after the Shaftesbury had become re-imagined as a place of refuge, the institution was failing a small proportion of its boys dramatically.