The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
The Connexion of the Ragged Schools with the Operations of the London City Mission.
The intimate connexion of the one effort with the other will appear from the following extract of the Annual Report of the for :- | |
" The number of children sent by the missionaries to schools during the past year is 5,986, being an increase of 327. A large proportion of these have been sent to . In the . movement this Committee has always taken, and still takes, the deepest interest . To the Union they also feel they owe a debt of gratitude, for the grants which its Committee have made to the numerous . called into existence by the efforts of the missionaries, and still replenished with scholars to a consider- able extent by their exertions. How intimately the Ragged School movement has been connected with the working of the Mission appears from a return made by the missionaries, at the desire of the Committee, of the number of . in their respective districts. They amount to 93; a number which leaves but a mere fractional remainder of the total number of for that half of the metropolis which is yet not under the visitation of the Mission, although in that half are comprised districts of especial poverty and destitution. The total number of reported by the , as existing in connexion with themselves, in their last Report, was 102, to which must be added now any addition made during the present year, as well as those schools, very few in number, which are not connected with the Union." A further illustration of the dependance of the one move- ment on the other is given in the following extract, taken | |
21 | from the evidence of , the honorary but active , before the Committee of the House of Commons, on Criminal and Destitute Juveniles :- |
" How are the children [of Ragged Schools] admitted ?- The children are admitted in many cases by personal appli- cation; they are admitted in many other cases by the teachers going round and seeking for them, | |
"Be good enough to describe shortly the duties and character of the Institution to which you have just referred; that term has occurred in the course of the evidence several times ?-It is a Society, consisting of 275 missionaries, who visit from house to house daily for six hours a-day. Their business is to read the Scriptures to the poor, to engage in prayer with them, and to have stated meetings on certain days in the week for the purpose of expounding the Scrip- tures to all whom they can get to assemble-to visit the poor, especially in sickness; and it has occurred, that thou- sands who have died in London in the low neighbourhoods have had no one to visit them or attend them on their death- beds except the City missionary. | |
"Are they members of the exclu- sively?-No, not exclusively; they consist of members of both and Dissenting congregations; the Committee, likewise, I may as well observe, is, like our own Committee, on quite an unsectarian basis,-Dissenters and Churchmen working together harmoniously in carrying the Gospel into the lowest parts of London. | |
"Can you inform the Committee how long that Society | |
22 | has existed ?-About 17 years, during which time it has done more for the poor of London than any other Society I know." |