years only, in habits of order, cleanliness, application, and usefulness, it will confer on this country one of the most important advantages it has ever received.

No. XIII.

INDUSTRY SCHOOL AT BIRMINGHAM.

THE expediency of separating the children of the poor, from those depraved and incorrigible persons who too frequently form the population of a parish workhouse, had induced the overseers and guardians of the poor at Birmingham, to place such as were from four to ten years of age, with nurses in the neighbouring villages. This however was attended with some inconveniences. The attention of the overseers and guardians was then directed to another object. A large building, about a mile from the town, was vacant. This suggested the formation of a separate establishment; and an offer having been made by some of the guardians to conduct it, the new establishment commenced in July 1797.

A matron was appointed; who, with a school master and mistress and one female servant, formed the household. The elder girls have assisted in cleaning the rooms, making Reports No. CXXIII.

Industry School at Birmingham. 209

the beds, &c. a kind of employment, which, while it ministers to general economy, improves them all in a most useful branch of domestic education. The girls have been taught to read; and have been employed in knitting, needlework, &c. for the asylum and the work house, and for respectable families; and such credit have they had for the manner in which their work has been done, that more has been sent them than they have been able to execute.

In summer, the boys have been occasionally sent to labour in the farms and gardens, in the vicinity of the Asylum, and to weed and pick stones. The produce of this, with the work of the girls, has formed a little fund, which has enabled the Committee to build a shop; where forty boys are employed by a pin-maker to head the pins, and stick them in papers in rows. By the further increase of this source of labour, they have also built another room, where forty girls are employed by a respectable draper, in platting straw for ladies' hats. and bonnets. The overseers and guardians are

* The profit of these children's work, from January, 1800, to July, 1804, has been 5761. 4s. 4d.;-the expenditure in building, repairs, &c. 3481. 10s. 7d.;-leaving a balance in the Treasurer's hands, in July, 1804, of 235l. 10s. 9d.

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now going to enlarge the pin shop, so as to include forty boys more in that manufactory,

Besides the produce of their labour, these children do now acquire early habits of industry and subordination, to which they were before entire strangers; for, previously to this attempt to civilize these forlorn and unhappy creatures (most of whom had never known the reciprocal endearments and powerful operation of parental and filial affection) their rude and savage manners, and disregard of authority, had produced habits so untractable and turbulent, as for some time to baffle every effort of the Committee to correct them.

The first expedient, which contributed at all to this object, was the placing of them in classes, and conducting them in order round the governor in the play ground, several times a day; when he had an opportunity of marking their individual conduct, of correcting the disorderly, and of applauding the tractable. This has been followed by placing them in order at meals; and by every other measure that occurred, for impressing upon them ideas and habits of order and regularity. The good effects of these measures were daily more and

more apparent; and these children are now

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become as orderly and as decent, as such a number of children, under one roof, can ever be expected to become.

They have also a Sunday service regularly and decently performed by a respectable young man, a clerk in the workhouse, who concludes with reading a sermon. On this service the whole family attends with much order and propriety.

The children have meat three times a week. They have also soup, puddings, rice, milk, bread, cheese, and beer; and these the best of their kind. The medical gentlemen, who are employed for the workhouse, attend weekly in succession, and two physicians of the town have benevolently given their services when called upon.

The Committee, five in number, meet once a week at the Asylum, for the regulation of the accounts, and for the general superintendance of the whole. Each takes a department in providing the various supplies; making himself responsible for the quality, quantity, and terms, on which the articles are purchased. Thus the children are better kept, and with more economy, than by any preceding plan.

The great object of this institution is even