CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
A 'VILLAGE HOME.'
THE LAST OF THE HADDONS.
TORPEDOES AND INFERNAL MACHINES.
CROSS-PURPOSES.
NOTES FROM CHINA.
UNSUSPECTED WAYS OF EARNING A LIVELIHOOD.
FROTH.
A CITY WEED.
| No. 707. | SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1877. | Price 1½d. |
A 'VILLAGE HOME.'
Industrial schools, in which poor children, thewaifs of the streets, are fed, lodged, and taughtsome useful employment, have been in existencefor more than thirty years, and are on all handsacknowledged to have been successful as a meansof preventing—or lessening the amount of—juvenilecrime and vagrancy. The weak point in theorganisation of these schools is that they rely forsupport on the voluntary contributions of benevolentindividuals, instead of forming part of thepoor-law system, and being thereby maintainedby the whole taxable community. Some willthink there is a more serious drawback in theirconstitution. By whatever name these schoolsare known, they are in effect asylums for thegrouping of children to the number of severalhundreds in a large establishment; and so farare a repetition of the old species of hospitals,which are now generally condemned. On a lateoccasion we brought under the notice of ourreaders a method of boarding-out pauper childrenamong the families of rural labourers and smalltradesmen in country towns, which has provedeminently successful wherever it has been triedin Scotland. As this method of boarding-out isunder the administration of parochial boards relyingon rates, it has, with other merits, that ofnot specially taxing the benevolence of particularindividuals.
What we peculiarly admired in the boarding-outsystem was its conservation of the family-homeas a means of juvenile nurture and intellectualand moral culture. We now propose to givesome account of a family-home system which hasbeen established in England. It differs materiallyfrom that prevalent in Scotland, and furtherlabours under the objection of being a voluntarycharity similar to that of the Industrial schools.Though not quite to our mind, it is much betterthan nothing, and we bespeak for it the kindlyattention of the public.
This English 'Village Home' system originatedin the efforts of Dr Bernardo, who began with a'Home' for Arab and gutter boys in London. Nosooner was this Home in operation than he setabout founding a similar establishment for girls,in which good