No. XIV.

INDUSTRY SCHOOL FOR GIRLS AT CHELTENHAM.

THE Cheltenham School of Industry, for girls, under the patronage of HER MAJESTY, was instituted in 1806. The scholars are divided into three classes. The FIRST consists of twelve girls, who are called Fund Girls; being the children of the most deserving parishioners, from ten years old to twelve, selected on its first institution, from among those who had the best characters in the Sunday schools. Two of them are nominated by the Patroness. They are admitted on the fund every three years, and are clothed.

THE SECOND CLASS consists of girls, that are paid for by their parents, at the rate of twopence a week. This class consists of twelve girls, from eight to nine years old. In respect

*This account has been communicated by Mrs. Williams, of Prestbury, near Cheltenham, the founder of this school, and is now first published by the Society.

of their clothing, they have the same advantages as the Fund Girls. They may remain in this class three years; at the end of which, they have the privivilege of being removed into the first class for three years more; and in case of the death, or the removal of any girl from the first class, from any circumstance which may have occasioned it before the appointed time, her place shall be filled from the second class, by one chosen for merit, and referring to the number of rewards which she may have had in the preceding year.

THE THIRD CLASS consists of girls nominated by subscribers. Every subscriber of a guinea is intitled to send a girl to the school for one year. The girls must be able to read before they are admitted into the school. They are taught knitting,-spinning flax, hemp, and jersey;-platting whole straw for baskets,cutting out and making clothing for the poor; -washing, ironing, baking, milking, and household work; so as to make them not only useful in farm houses, but capable of being under housemaids and kitchen maids in large families, or upper maids in small ones,

Any Fund Girl, who has remained two years in her first place, on a certificate of good beha•

viour, is intitled to a Bible, marked "Reward Bible, Cheltenham School of Industry," and to two shifts, and two pair of stockings.

Girls who have been at the school of industry, and any young woman who may want employment, are supplied with work, and paid for it, by the school; but this is under strict limitations, to prevent their depending on work, when they are capable of going to service. The annual subscriptions defray the current expences of the school: the donations are applied to the benefit of the outworkers, and to the supply of materials for work and clothing. Those who receive parish relief, or neglect attendance on. church, are precluded from the purchase of cheap clothing.

For the public rules of the school, and the private regulations, we must refer the reader to the printed account, which is sold for the benefit of the charity. They are directed with considerable attention and arrangement, to give the girls habits of devotion and cleanliness, and to enforce regularity of attendance, care, and exertion, by frequent examination, rewards, and well grounded hope of future protection. A little library is kept, which the upper girls are allowed to borrow for Sunday evening, but to

be returned the next day. Four girls of the upper class act in rotation every six weeks, as the houshold servants of the house; and three other girls, with the appellations of Work Girl, Book Girl, and Bonnet Girls, take care of the articles to which their titles apply.

The object of this charity is to promote religion and industry among the female poor, by early impressing their minds with a just sense of the importance of both, to their present as well as their future happiness; and to place them more effectually above the necessity of being tempted to swerve from rectitude, by enabling them in various ways to earn an honest livelihood.-Besides baking, milking, washing, ironing, and every kind of houshold work, they are taught to spin, to knit, to sew, to plat whole straw for baskets, to cut out and make clothing, which is afterwards sold to the poor at reduced prices. The school also gives, under certain restrictions, a stated price for work, to any girls or young women who apply for it, and might otherwise, perhaps, for want of employment, fall victims to idleness and vice,

24th Jan. 1809.

No. XV.

SUNDAY SCHOOL AT KIRKSTALL.

ABOUT three miles* and a half from Leeds, near the remains of Kirkstall Abbey, and on the banks of the river Aire, is a small hamlet, consisting of ten or twelve families, all of them having a number of children. The fathers of these children are most of them employed at the forge, a neighbouring manufactory, for cast iron; the mothers in general cannot read. There is no place of divine worship nearer than two miles; and Sunday was generally spent by the inhabitants, in sauntering through the woods, or about the ruins of the abbey. With a view to remedy this neglect of the Sabbath, a small school has been instituted there on Sundays. One of the cottagers, who has himself seven children, and who has a roomy house, has been induced to act as master, for which he is very well qualified. A few benches and books constituted the whole of the

Reports, No. CXI.