The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-24 00:00:00

THE REFORMATORY MOVEMENT.

AN influential meeting in support of the Reformatory
and Industrial Schools movement was held at the
close of last week at the Town ball, Birmingham,
under the presidency of the Hon. W. F. Cowper,
M.P., Vice-President of the Committee of Council on
Education. About 4,00) persons filled the body of
the hall, and among those on the platform were
Lord Brougham, Lord J. Russell, Lord Stanley, Lord
Calthorpe, Lord Ingestre, Sir J. Pakington. Mr. C.
B. Adderley, M.P., Mr. R. Hanbury, M.P., Mr.
Staney, M.P., Mr. Garnett, M.P., the Recorder of
Birmingham (Mr. M. D. Hill), the Mayor of Bir-
mingham (Mr. J. Ratcliff), the Hon. and Rev. G.
Yorke, and a large number of clergymen and gentle-
men from the neighbourhood.
The CHAIRMAN introduced the subject to the meet-
ng at considerable length. It was interesting, he
said, to investigate the causes and provocation to a
criminal course. The most common was the absence
of care and good influence at home, whether from
the negligence, dissoluteness, and drunkenness, or
wickedness of the parents, or from orphanage and—
a very prolific source of misery to children—a cruel
or hard stepmother who allowed no comfortable
shelter to her children. The want of education bad
been generally considered a principal cause of crime,
but yet the returns showed that of the persons com-
mitted for offences for a long period not more than
one-third were unable to read and write. This might
seem to go against the conclusion that want of educa-
tion led to crime, but it did not. This was strikingly
illustrated by a remarkable paper contributed by Mr.
J. Symons, in which he showed that the amount of
crime in counties and towns was in proportion, not to
the prevalence or deficiency of schooling, but in very
close and direct proportion to the density of the
population in question. After quoting some of the
statistics adduced by Mr. Symons in proof of this
position, the right hon. gentleman referred to the
influence exerted by ragged schools, defending the
course of the Government, however, in not granting
them large amounts of public money. Such assis
tance could only be given by them coupled with con-
ditions. You should ascertain first of all that the
proper class:of children were admitted ; secondly, that

1043

the schools were placed where they were wanted ;
and, thirdly, that the education given in them was
thoroughly effective. With regard to reformatories,
the aid furnished by Parliament to these institutions
was of great importance, but still volunteer efforts in
this direction, made with a heartiness exerting an
influence which did not accompany paid labour,
could not be dispensed with. In this great reforma
tory movement which they were met to discuss he
recognised one of the bright features of our social
condition, and he was thankful to see so large an
audience, and men of such eminence, met to
support it.
Lord Barn GRAN, who, in moving the first resolu-
tion, recognising the value of the reformatory move-
ment, referred to the deterring effect of penal laws,
said that these laws produced much less effect, not
only than might be desired, but even than could
commonly be credited, in the repression of offences :
The reason of this is obvious. I have heard my old
and excellent friend Mr. Bentham repeatedly contend
that if it were perfectly clear to a person who was about to
commit an offence—say a latceny—that he would within
a short time be seized, tried, convicted, and punished,
although the sentence should only condemn him to return
what be bad stolen, he would not, if he were a man of
sound mind, take the trouble to undergo all that process,
and would never attempt to appropriate his neighbour's
possessions. I believe Mr. Bentham was perfectly right
in contending that in such a case you would not require
to threaten a man with the gallows, or transportation, or
whipping ; that the certainty I have mentioned would
have the effect of preventing men from theft. But the
misfortune is that this assumes too much. It assumes
that the man will be caught; that, if caught, he will be
tried is likely enough, and that he will be convicted if
the evidence proves him guilty, to the satisfaction of oar
worthy friend the Recorder and the jury. All this is
more or less, although not quite certain. But it is by no
means certain that he will be detected ; it is by no means
certain that being pursued he will he captured, and then,
with all respect to my excellent and learned friend, it is by
no means certain that he will be able so to try the case
and to instruct the jury as to make conviction certain.
Now, all the chances which a man has of escape naturally
affect his mind when he is meditating whether he shall
commit an offence or not. The man who is desirous of
appropriating his neighbour's goods for purposes of bis
own is so sanguine that he magnifies all the chances of
escape, thinks lightly of the possibility of capture, trial,
and conviction, and finally makes up his mind that he
will run the risk, and commits the theft. What Mr. Ben-
tham always left too much out of sight is, that when a
man is minded to commit an offence he is not in inch a
calm state of mind as to be able to take an accurate view
of his position and the prospect of detection and punish-
ment. All this points to the great object as to the de-
sirability of which there can be no doubt,—namely, to
reform, if possible, the offender and to prevent the desire
of committing an offence by inculcating in his mind pru-
dential as well as honest motives. For I would not trust
to one of these motives only. I would give the greatest
possible weight to good secular and religions education, as
well as to sound moral training, but I would also attach
great weight to prudential considerations—to that instrne-
tion which will teach a man how much better it will be for
him, how much more comfortable for himself, how much
happier a life he will lead if he is honest instead of pur-
suing those vicious courses to which but too many are
prone.
Mr. ADDERLEY said that there were two features

in-
the programme of the Conference on Social
Science. one of which had given him the greatest
pleasure, and the other of which he as heartily con.
demned. The first was the distinct separation in
the sections of education and punishment. The
second, which he condemned, was that the subject
of reformatories had been referred to the department
of punishment instead of that of education :
Now, be humbly conceived that in the conhision of
these two ideas, which were most distinct, of education
and of punishment, bad arisen most of the difficulties
which had occurred in the way of legislation on this sub-
ject. We had sometimes sought to punish by education,
and at other times to educate by punishments, and such a
confusion was not more false in theory than mischievous
to this country in practice. Many men of the highest
eminenee had hoped to meet the exigencies of punish-
meat by educating the criminal. Now, he was not one of
those who failed to appreciate the necessity that none of
our punishments should in any way tend to corrupt the
persons punished. It was most essential that the rumbles
process should tend to reform, and not to corrupt. At ths
same time, he believed that if the State undertook to
reform its criminals altogether whenever they came under
punitive treatment, the attempt would only end in failure
and disappointment most detrimental to the whole cause
of morality throughout the country. The usual subjects of
punishment were adults, and adults were generally be-
yc nd the process of education. If they were to be educated
it was by raising the standard of society, and not by the
artificial process of a prison school. On the other hand,
until the establishment of reformatories within the last
few years, the State laid hold of children presented to it
as outcasts driven into crime by parental negligence or
training, or (worse still) by compulsion, and these chil-
dren, possessing no education, were treated by punish-
ment suited only to adults. In these two processes we
punished children who wanted education; we attempted
to educate adults who wanted punishment. Now, this error
could not be considered as eradicated, when, even among
the social doctors, reformatories were considered in a
section which had for its great subject that of secondary
punishments. lie conceived that the State, in introduc-

1044

ng and recognising reformatories, acknowledged that
children before they were made amenable to punishment,
hould at least have the advantage of education ; that they
should bate warning before the blow descended. Such a
principle had only recently been recognised; hut it re-
solved itself into the simple maxim that children needed
training. Here was the sum and bubstauce of all the
wisdom which all the conferences on reformatories

throughout the country could possibly arrive at—a maxim
which every mother and nurse throughout the country had
already got by heart.
-flaying reduced reformatories to this nursery rule, he
contended that they should form the primary care of
the Minister of Education, for they formed a part,
and a very important part, iu the great scheme of
national education :

lie would even go further, and say that the whole
system of national education in, England would have
mainly to rest upon the experience of these, the lowest part
of the structure, and that the experience acquired from
them would solve many problems in the question. It lie
was not much mistaken, the whole system of national
education, if ever successful here, would borrow more
from this system of reformatories than from any other
class of schools throughout the country In the first
place reformatories hail solved the great religious p►oblem.
In the second place, whether for good or for evil, they had
given us the first practical experiment of a rate•snpported
system of national education. But, above all, they had
dissipated for the first time the phantoms caused by
fanciful theories thrown in the path of the education of
the poor by a refined and philosophic patronage. They
bad for the first time introduced a plain industrial system
of education for the poor ; and, if they succeeded in
training those children to honest industrial pursuits
adapted to their station in life, they would have done more
fir the cause of education here than the national system
even of a country like Prussia had ever proposed to itself
as the climax of its utmost possible success.
In conclusion, Mr. Adderley enforced his demand
that reformatories should be introduced into the
category of national schools throughout the country—
" they were within that province, and did not belong
to penal legislation,"—and that they should be ex-
tended in three different ways—in number, especi-
ally in large towns; in size, but, above all, in the
way of provision for children leaving reformatories
and entering into life. "There bad been legislation
enough in regard to the establishment and improve-
ment of reformatories, but this last point—care
that these children persevered in good—which
required no legislation, had not been carefully at-
tended to."

Lord STANLEY, M.P., thought that reformatories
bad become, as it were, an institution of the country.
The question now was, not "whether," nor even
" bow" reformatories should be established, but

what are the checks, the conditions, and the limita-
tions within which the establishment of these
schools can be of use ? Now, there were some
rocks upon which the founders and promoters of such
institutions were likely to strike. The first danger
whim such institutions incur is the risk of their ex
eit.ng a feeling of envy in the minds of the honest
poor

That is a danger which is perhaps not sufficiently con-
al lered. and of which I confess the magnitude seems to
me to increase the more I consider the subject. But if the
danger is real the remedy is obvious. Do not set up mag-
nificent establishments. Do not make them show places.
Let everything be as cheap and rough and simple as is
consistent with decency and health, and, in reasonable
limits, with the comfort of the inmates. 1)u not aim at
any great ,intellectual attainment on the part of the boys
whom you take in. Hard work, both as a moral and as a
physical remedy, may best be applied in such a case. Let
your reformatory schools bs open to all who choose to see
them, and if any labourer or small farmer, or any man
living honestly by the sweat of his brow, chooses to look
in, let him go home and be able to say, " Well, thank
Gut, my children have no occasion to envy these."

The next point was, that proper care and discrimi-
nation should be used in the selection of the class of
boys sent to reformatory schools
I do not think as a general rule, unless there is some-
thing very aggravated in the offence, and unless the habits
of the boys are such as to indicate habitual criminality—l
do not think first offences, when of a trifling nature, ought
to justify detention in a reformatory. I know that boys
have frequently been sent for very slight offences, not by
way of punishment, but partly with the idea of inflicting
a punishment on the parent, and much more with the
idea of doing the boy himself a kindness by removing him
from vicious associates, and probably from vicious rela-
tives. That is a well-understood proceeding, and in some
respects it may be a successful one, Ido not venture to
dispute its propriety, but I do say that, draw what distinc-
tion you will between reformatory and pknil treatment,
still a certain degree of stigma will always attach to boys
who have been placed nude' reformatory treatment. I do
not say that Buell a stigma will be equal in degree to that
which adheres to the lad who comes from a gaol. Hit were,
the utility of reformatory schools might indeed be doubted.
The disgrace and reproach in 'future life are far less, but
still to a certain extent it is a cause of reproach. I confess
I have read with pain paragraphs in the reports of more
than one reformatory school, in which it has been said of
this or that boy, " We have discharged him from the
school, but we have no right to take credit for his reforma-
tion; for the fact is, he did not require reformation—he