Читать книгу I've been a Gipsying. Rambles among our Gipsies and their children in their tents and vans онлайн

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About a century ago, an institution was set on foot in the Borough of Southwark called the Philanthropic Society, date 1780, which provided a home for the children of prisoners, who would otherwise have been thrown upon the world to beg or steal as best they could. For a period of more than half a century, the benevolent character of the society secured for it a fair share of voluntary support from the public. For many years it gathered together and educated both boys and girls—some of whom were gipsy children. The former were taught trades, such as tailoring, shoe-making, and rope-making. The girls were taught laundry work and the duties of domestic life. It was found, however, by much experience, sometimes painful, that the presence of both sexes, although kept as separate as possible, was not advantageous, and therefore, early in the present century, boys only were received. These were non-criminals themselves—only the offspring of that class, and destitute.

When separate prisons were found necessary for the more successful reclaiming, as it was hoped, of juvenile offenders, Parkhurst prison in the Isle of Wight was used for that class. The experiment of keeping young criminals together and away from older ones was considered so far satisfactory that, in the year 1846, Sir George Grey, as Home Secretary, resolved—no doubt at the instigation of Mary Carpenter, and as the result of her agitation in this direction—on trying the experiment of relieving the pressure arising from increased numbers by drafting those who had the most reliable characters into an institution from which they might hope to have more liberty, and ultimately, by continued good conduct, be placed out in service, and so obtain their freedom. All the inmates of Parkhurst prison were under sentence of seven or ten years’ transportation. The Home Secretary had twenty-five of those young persons selected, and a conditional pardon from the Queen was obtained for each, that they might be placed in circumstances to work their way speedily to freedom. The buildings of the Philanthropic Society in Southwark were selected for the experiment, and those juvenile criminals were introduced to their new liberty, and associated with the non-criminal boys then in the Institution. By that action the society changed its character, and henceforth it became a Reformatory School, still retaining its original name.