Chapter 13 - Poor Law Children and Barrack Schools

Meanwhile, the more Henrietta saw of the Poor Law children in District Schools, the more critical she became of these big 'Barrack Schools'. She and her friends had tried to humanise the Forest Gate School by introducing toys, books and personal clothing and by softening the rigid discipline, but she was becoming convinced that these these large institutions were fundamentally flawed. Now she thought that the only way the children could be treated as individuals and given the affection they so much needed was to place them in small homes or better still, with foster parents.

Several tragedies occurred in the Schools which were reported in the Press and shocked the public. The first was a case of cruelty. Ella Gillespie was imprisoned for five years for physical abuse of the infants in the Hackney Pauper Schools. She had beaten them with stinging nettles, made them kneel on hot water pipes, banged their heads against the wall until their ears bled. Her fellow officers knew this was going on, but had kept quiet.

Another tragedy occurred on New Years Eve,1890. The children had been locked up in their night wards and the officers had gone out to celebrate New Years Eve when a fire broke out and 22 children died. Next there was an outbreak of food poisoning in one of the District Schools, 141 children fell ill and 2 died. This might have been passed off as accidental, but the odd-job man spoke out and it was revealed that the soup had been made from fly-blown meat and that the children were often fed on waste meat from the officers' table.

Inquests were held on these deaths and particular officers were blamed or exonerated, but Henrietta saw that the real problem was the inhuman crowding together of masses of children in the Barrack Schools, and she was determined to change the system. Henrietta and Dr Ernest Hart (her brother-in-law) organised a deputation to meet Shaw-Lefevre at the Local Government Board. Marion Paterson says that Henrietta organised the deputation, while Henrietta in her biography Canon Barnett says it was organised by Ernest Hart. Probably Ernest Hart, as a man, was better placed to secure the appointment, but it was Henrietta who gathered such a large number of supporters that they overflowed the rooms into the passages and stairs of the Local Government Board Offices. Sir John Gorst, Ernest Hart and Henrietta made speeches: 'Of my own utterance I cannot report. I only know that I was in a terrible fright, and worn down with the labour of arranging the monster deputation'.

As a result of this lobby, Shaw-Lefevre appointed a Departmental Committee on Poor Law Schools in 1894. Henrietta was a member of the Committee - the first woman ever to be appointed to a Government committee. This committee was fairly congenial to Henrietta's views. Mundella, the Chairman, was Liberal MP for Sheffield and for the last two years had been President of the Board of Trade; previously he had been concerned with education as Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education from 1880 to 1885 and also as President of the British and Foreign School Society. Sir Joshua Fitch had been Principal of a teachers training college, an inspector of schools and a Special Commissioner on Education in the Great Towns. The Rev Brooke Lambert was the vicar of St Marks, Whitechapel, the friend of the Barnetts who had carried out the parish duties at St Jude's when Samuel had taken holidays. Dr Edward Nettleship edited the works of T.H.Green in the late 1880s and was probably sympathetic. Lyulph Stanley was a dinner guest of the Barnetts.

Sir John Gorst (1835-1916) was the most supportive member of the Committee. He was an outstanding and independent minded politician. After a brilliant start at Cambridge he decided to go to New Zealand where he met and married his wife. While there, he became inspector of missionary schools and made friends with the Maoris, however he got involved in their quarrels and had to flee from the area where he was working. Returning to England, he became Conservative MP. for Cambridge. He was asked by Disraeli to reorganise the Conservative Party machinery on a more popular basis, and this brought success to the Party in the 1874 election. He was one of the founders of the Primrose League. From 1885 he held various junior ministerial posts and was a Minister of Education from 1896 to 1905. The health and education of children had become his chief interest and in 1906 he wrote a book on 'The Children of the Nation' which, surprisingly, was dedicated to 'Labour Members of the House of Commons in token of my belief that they are animated by a genuine desire to ameliorate the condition of the people'. He was disillusioned with the Conservative Party and in the 1910 election he stood as a Liberal candidate but was defeated. He was a maverick, too independent to reach the highest political offices.

The Committee on Poor law Schools worked for nearly 2 years, sat fifty times, saw 73 witnesses, and asked 17,566 questions. Besides hearing evidence, each of the members inspected some schools, workhouses or village communities, and probably Henrietta was the most conscientious. Samuel went with her to visit the institutions outside London, while in the London area Sir John Gorst accompanied her. Indeed Sir John Gorst seems to have come under Henrietta's spell. He was now sixty years old and a well known and experienced politician, but for the next two years he devoted much of his time to helping Henrietta. He lived mainly at Toynbee Hall, coming to stay on Mondays, attending the Committee meeting on Tuesday, inspecting schools with Henrietta all day on Wednesday, then on Thursday Henrietta went to the Forest Gate board meeting and on Friday the Committee met again. Henrietta found Sir John lacked will and perseverance, and perhaps he was exhausted by her energy and drive. There is no doubt that Henrietta was the driving force on the committee. Samuel commented:
'She has done most of the work, thought out the recommendations, executed the form, and then, more than all, by a mixture of tact and temper, has made the men sign. If one thinks of the opinions with which some started, the change is wonderful.'
Evidently Henrietta had difficulties in persuading the men, despite her unrivalled knowledge of the the problems. Gorst was on her side, but she had difficulties with Mundella, the Chairman. In 1895 Samuel wrote:
'Yetta has had a very trying week on her Commission. Mundella is so ignorant and such a bully. Gorst is so able & is so busy that the elements soon make a blaze. They parted hotly on Wednesday but I hope they may still so far come together as to get out a good report.'

The Committee reported in 1896 and unanimously condemned the barrack schools both on account of the dangers of disease, especially opthalmia and skin infections, where so many children were crowded together, and on account of the emotional results of isolating children from the community and depriving them of individual care and affection. The alternatives of Village Communities, Scattered Homes and Boarding Out with families were all recommended as preferable. The Committee criticised the organisation by the separate Boards of Guardians and unanimously recommended that a central authority should be given the organisation of all pauper children. The majority of the Committee wanted this central authority to be drawn from the Boards of Guardians. But Henrietta and Sir John Gorst recommended that the Guardians and Local Government Board should have no control of children: in their opinion the new authority should be the Education Department.

The Report was a 'press sensation'. The Times gave a full summary, spreading over three columns, and the Leader reiterated the condemnation of barrack schools and advocated the boarding out system. On central control, the Times leader commented that 'a central authority entirely disconnected with the Poor Law system is advocated on the ground that the children will be thus separated from the associations and traditions of pauperism. This aim may or may not be realised, but it must be kept in view, if we are not to train up a whole class of hereditary and professional paupers.' This endorsement of her recommendation delighted Henrietta who would have been accustomed to the rather aloof and guarded style of Times leader writers. Samuel wrote to his brother:
'Once more the wife's thoroughness told, and as a reward she got the first-rate article in The Times. Did you read it? The thing is really good. All yesterday she was in ecstacies.'

Well aware that Reports were often shelved and forgotten, in 1896 Henrietta, Dr Ernest Hart and Sir John Gorst founded the State Children's Association 'to obtain individual treatment for children under the Guardianship of the State'. This was a pressure group which aimed at persuading Government and Parliament to adopt the recommendations of the Report. Henrietta was the Hon. Secretary of the SCA and spoke to numerous public meetings about the work of the Association. They had three very specific aims:
1. To obtain the dissolution of large aggregated schools, so that the children may be brought up when possible in families, or in small groups, where they will be in daily touch with the various interests and activities of social life;
2. To dissociate the children from all connection with the Workhouse and the officials who have to deal with a pauper class;
3. To obtain for the State further powers of control over neglected children.

The SCA was chaired by an impressive series of Lords - Lord Peel, Lord Herschell, Lord Grey, Lord Crewe, Lord Burghclere, Lord Lytton. These were men from the very top of the political establishment. Lord Crewe, a coal owner of immense wealth, had to resign from the chairmanship of the SCA in 1905 when he became a Minister in the Liberal Government. Lord Grey was the Liberal Foreign Secretary from 1905 to 1916. Lord Herschell had been Lord Chancellor. Lord Lytton was to be Viceroy of India. Later Henrietta used these aristocratic contacts to form the Hampstead Garden Suburb: Lord Grey, Lord Crewe and Lord Lytton were chairmen of the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust.

The Society issued pamphlets, drafted Bills and held many public meetings. Throughout all this, Henrietta was the mainspring of the Society. In a footnote in her biography Canon Barnett she quotes a clerk of a Board of Guardians being overheard in the National Liberal Club to say:
'We could of course crowd the children, but one can't put two in a bed without Mrs Barnett and her Society coming down on us with a question in the House, or a note to the Local Government Board.'

Henrietta lobbied Parliament where she gained the support of a group of MPs. The Parliamentary Committee of the SCA was very strong and engineered debates in the Commons every year when the Local Government Board estimates were considered. They amended legislation and drafted bills, despite being strongly opposed by thousands of Guardians of the Poor and the Local Government Board who had their entrenched interests. Henrietta claimed that in the first year, by constant pressure, no less than thirteen of the recommendations of the Departmental Committee were adopted by the Local Government Board. Henrietta wrote an impressive letter to The Times in 1897 which showed her extraordinary grasp of the administrative confusion of the control of children in care.The Home Office, the Education Department and the Local Government Board were responsible at the centre, supervising four local authorities - the London School Board, the Metropolitan Asylums Board, the Guardians and various committees controlling homes and reformatories. Henrietta recommended that all the children's homes, hospitals and schools should be controlled by the Education Department. Anyone reading the Times that day would have been impressed by that long letter. Henrietta now had a national reputation for her work for child welfare.

In 1897 the SCA obtained an amendment to the Infant Life Protection Act - which had abolished baby farming, a cloak for infanticide. Ernest Hart played an important part in this reform, which is not surprising as he had instigated the original Act. Unfortunately he died in the same year and so Henrietta could no longer turn to him for advice and support. However Sidney Webb was an active member of the SCA Committee. In March, 1898, Samuel Barnett mentioned in a letter:
'At this moment my wife, under the leadership of Sidney Webb, is attacking the Asylum Board. Her Bill was introduced yesterday, and is down for second reading on Thursday. It looks as if it would pass.'
A common interest in Poor Law reform brought the Barnetts and Webbs together. Writing to his nephew in January 1899, Samuel said Henrietta was much occupied with Dolloms (Dorothy) who had a high temperature, 'but yesterday got away for a few hours to a SCA meeting where a lot of Guardians blessed the plan of scattered homes. This afternoon we expect the Webbs to lunch'.

Henrietta had made a lasting friendship with Gorst. When he was piloting the great Education Act of 1902 through Parliament, he came under attack and confided:
'When the Bds. of Guardians abused you and me for the Poor law Children Report, we were not hurt: why should we be hurt because the S.B.s (School Boards) abuse me under circumstances very similar---But all the abuse in the world will not divert me from my purpose'.
He signed this letter with his initials - very informal at that time. He continued to look to Henrietta and the SCA for help. In a letter to Samuel he wrote:
'Give my kindest love to Mrs Barnett & say that I expect Sca to brief me for a speech on P.L. Children next session on the address'. (One of the most important parliamentary speeches of the year.) He continued to visit the Barnetts: 'Will you have me for Sunday?' he wrote, 'The 3rd class bedroom will do. I would cycle up on Sat. morning.' Perhaps he was going to join them at St. Jude's Cottage in Hampstead.

The SCA promoted other legislation dealing with children. They secured the passing of a Vagrant Act in 1903 which gave better protection to vagrant children. Samuel wrote that while Yetta was working on raising money to extend Hampstead Heath, 'She is also concerned in getting a Vagrant Bill thro the House. Gorst is bringing it in, perh[sic] the Govt will support it.' Henrietta was very concerned with the treatment of juvenile offenders. Back in 1895 she had written a letter to the Times about the treatment of children on remand who were kept in the workhouse. At the Islington workhouse she had seen six boys kept in one small room:
'There were no tables, no chairs,and they were eating their dinners on the floor. There were no books, pictures or playthings; only six beds which during the day were turned up on end. ----In this room the boys live, wash, eat, sleep, sometimes for three weeks, sometimes longer. Last week there were 15 lads there, and then, the matron told us, they slept three in a bed.'
In the same workhouse three girls aged 12, 9, and 10 were sharing a very small room with a prostitute and a 'half-wit'. These children had been arrested for begging, truancy or other minor offences. Henrietta asked that their cases should be heard in a special court and that 'they should be treated when under remand as naughty children, and not subjected to degrading and contaminating associations'.

When the Conservative Government was replaced by the great reforming Liberal Government, the probation system was initiated by the Probation of Offenders Act 1907 and juvenile courts started with the Children Act 1908. Lord Lytton who was chairman of the SCA claimed that both these important reforms were due to the Association's work. Lord Lytton said he owed much of his knowledge of the 'child question' to Henrietta. This was indeed an important pressure group and it is a pity that their records cannot be found.

Despite some reforms, a great deal remained to be done for poor law children. The Royal Commission on the Poor Law reported in 1908, revealing that there were few improvements in the care of children. This was one of the great reports of the previous century but it was very lengthy and too detailed to be widely read.

Henrietta made a summary of the parts concerning children in simple and readable English which was published in The Cornhill Magazine. According to the Report, there were still 22,000 children in workhouses and 12,000 in the hateful barrack schools compared with only 8,600 boarded out in families and 17,000 in village communities or scattered homes. Details of the care given in workhouses make horrific reading:-
'The whole nursery has often been found under the charge of a person actually certified as of unsound mind, the bottles sour, the babies wet, cold and dirty. ..... one feeble-minded woman was set to wash a baby; she did so in boiling water, and it died.'
In some workhouses the babies were never taken out of doors. In one, the babies unable to feed themselves were placed in a row and all fed from one plate of rice pudding with one spoon! It is not surprising that the mortality rate was very high.

Despite the protests of the SCA the Local Government Board was still the department responsible for most of these children. Though John Burns was now the President of the Board, it had so many duties that the welfare of children was neglected. In the Minority Report of the 1896 Departmental Committee she had recommended that the Board of Education should be in control and now she strongly reiterated this opinion for, as she said, 'This Board's one concern is children'.

The State Children's Association was wound up in 1937 following Henrietta's death. At that time Lord Stanmore was the Chairman and Marion Paterson was the Hon. Treasurer. The Association was short of funds and the main objectives had been achieved as the barrack schools had been abolished and children were not kept in workhouses. 'State children' are now called 'children in care', but this may be a misleading term as shown by revelations of child abuse by foster parents and in children's homes. It seems a pity that the SCA did not continue.

Writing of her work for the SCA, Henrietta said;
'In all this work my husband did his share by counsel and comfort, the latter of which was often wanted, for I am one of the women who are not fit for public work, and dislike and distrust all forms of conflict.'
The first part of this quotation seems an indirect way of claiming that though Samuel gave his support, the work was all her own, which indeed it was. But to claim she was not fit for public work seems false modesty. By the turn of the century Henrietta was a skilful lobbyist. Samuel mentions in a letter; 'Yesterday she was at the H.of C. preparing her committee wh. meets there on Tuesday to plan a campaign agst. Chaplin.' Evidently she knew the scheming, preparatory work and influence needed. It is true that she had always remained aloof from party politics, but she was a most effective campaigner and certainly able to 'handbag' anyone in her way.