Environment and efficiency : a study in the records of industrial schools and orphanages / by Mary Horner Thomson ; with a preface by J. Rendel Harris.

  • Thomson, Mary Horner.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Environment and efficiency : a study in the records of industrial schools and orphanages / by Mary Horner Thomson ; with a preface by J. Rendel Harris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    These were all the local records I was able to obtain. In the case of II., which is a small home, the records were given me from memory by the lady superintendent, and I took them down at her dictation. Besides these local records I obtained others from the following sources:— IV. A Girls' Industrial School in the South of England, from a case-book lent to me by the lady super- intendent. V. A Boys’ Industrial School in the North. VI. Records of twenty children boarded-out by the Glasgow Parish Council; for which I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Leslie Mackenzie. Besides these records, 295 in all—which, with the exception of the 20 procured for me by Dr. Mackenzie, were the result of my own personal investigation—I received a certain amount of information, more or less relevant to my subject, from the secretaries of 20 Poor Law Schools, Voluntary Homes, and Certified Industrial Schools, in different parts of the country, of whom I made inquiries. I quote from the information sent me by nine of these in Appendix A. My method of collecting the records was as follows : When the books had been placed at my disposal, I opened the Admission Book (in which each child’s history is entered) at a date sufficiently remote to allow of a record of available length. I did not, for instance, start from the year 1907, be- cause I knew that by 1912 the child would barely have left the institution, and could not possibly possess any record worthy of the name. An exception to this rule was necessarily made in the case of the Emigration Homes, where the child is sent out either in the same year or the year following its admission ; and I have therefore taken the record from that time onwards. Having found a suitable starting-place, I proceeded to take the names in consecutive order. I mention this to show that