Educating Ealing I: How Lady Byron Did It
Ealing appears to have originated on a secluded ledge, half-way up a wooded slope, the idea being to persuade avaricious marauders it was not there. Later, when the rule of law was more established in the land and a lot of the trees had been cut down, the village found itself overlooking a basin containing the vast sprawling city of London, needing to be fed. In common with other elevated places around the metropolis, Ealing was to develop a thriving market-garden economy, the main employment of its working population. Natural advantage favoured the location; already in 1698 a semi Public School for the sons of gentlemen had been founded there, pupils writing home from “Gan Ealing,” evidently after the biblical Hebrew “Gan Eden” – Garden of Eden. It is likely then the only mention of a Serpent will have been in readings from the lectern at the Parish Church. Unfortunately, discord was to be introduced from outside when, after the Napoleonic Blockade of Britain was lifted in 1815, British agriculture in general was hit by the return of foreign competition and even, it is said, by the Corn Laws enacted to counter this. The net result on Ealing’s little “Other Eden” was to produce a core of unemployed youngsters with no prospects, means of education, training or guidance. They would earn the name of “vagrant” or “wild” boys, given to rampaging about the district. In the late 1820s, Ealing's delinquent youth came to the notice of Lady Byron, widow of the Poet, who had taken a house nearby. Her reaction was to draw up a plan for solving the problem by bringing education, training and guidance to the boys in question. This was hardly likely to be viewed as a practical measure, not only on account of the depraved behaviour of the boys but also because of opposition expressed at the time to the notion of educating working class people at all. In the words of Davies Giddy M.P., “they would be induced to despise the employments to which their rank in society had destined them, become factious and refractory, being enabled to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books and publications against Christianity.” That is not to mention the horny problem of who would pay for such a measure. Lady Byron’s confidence in being able to bring about a more positive result is illustrated by her background, her competence and resolve, and above all her success at Ealing.
Lady Byron was born Anna Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke, in May 1792, the only child of her parents and an heiress in her own right. That she grew up intellectually gifted is evidenced by her becoming proficient in both mathematics and versification. Examples of her verses were sent to Lord Byron who, as a Poet and Personality, was achieving fame, not a little tinged with infamy. Byron, who had inherited money troubles, would welcome an heiress as wife. Calling Annabella his “Princess Parallelogram,” he proposed marriage in 1814. Miss Milbanke refused him at first, doubtless in consideration of his notoriety, but relented, and they were married in January 1815. However, Byron's domestic conduct was from the first so bizarre that his new wife's family felt impelled to call his very sanity into question. Lady Byron herself was inclined to ascribe her husband’s state of mind to his experiences at Harrow Public School where, at the time, drinking, gambling, brutal bullying and other vices were common behaviour among the pupils. All the same, after having to suffer debt – bailiffs actually took up residence in the marital home (Nov. 1815) – and after the birth of their daughter Ada in the house (Dec. 1815), during which Byron’s conduct made her attendants fear for her personal safety, Lady Byron left “in a spirited manner,” never to see her husband again. The pressure resulting from her involvement in the Byronic orbit notwithstanding, together with the restrictions and obligations imposed by her position in society (not always appreciated by fans of Jane Austen adaptations), Lady Byron was to develop a practical interest in the solution of social problems affecting the mass of the population. Enlightened educational method and its availability was to be her forte. She entered into correspondence with the Swiss educational pioneer de Fellenberg, whose success in the field was becoming internationally known.
In 1825, taking her daughter with her, Lady Byron went to visit cotton mills in the industrialised Midlands, where people formerly in agricultural employment now worked. That the British Industrial Revolution was proceeding like a Juggernaut could hardly be contested, but the effect on Lady Byron of the conditions she saw in the mills appears to be plain. She would declare that where an agricultural community existed, the people employed in it would be better served if it were to remain so, with, however, enhancements in the quality of their lives. In favouring rural life, it is evident Lady Byron was not blind to the conditions in which agricultural labourers of the time could find themselves; in some parts of the country they were virtual starvelings, even when in employment. This, together with dehumanising conditions in the industrial areas, would be seen by government as likely grounds for social unrest, even leading, in the eyes of some, to social revolution. The eventual answer to this possibility would be the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834, which set up the Union Workhouses, popularly called “Bastilles for the poor.” In 1829, Lady Byron travelled to Switzerland to see what de Fellenberg had done in a more humanitarian framework than it appears was to engage governmental thinking in Britain.
Briefly, de Fellenberg (born 1771), while a law student at Tübingen during the French Revolution, felt called to devote his life to humanitarian projects. and changed disciplines to philosophy. He became acquainted with Pestalozzi (born Zürich, 1774), who had conducted a school in the war-destroyed village of Stanz, Switzerland. for orphaned children of the place during a hard winter, at the risk of his own delicate health. Pestalozzi advocated teaching through visual comprehension (Anschauung), touch and so forth, but that the school itself should be run on the lines of a stable family, this being every child's essential point of departure. De Fellenberg added action – and drive. His school for Pestalozzi teachers opened at Hofwyl, near Berne, in 1806. The students rose at 5 a.m., exchanging studies after lunch for work in garden and field in pursuit of making the institution self-supporting. It appears they even built some of the school buildings themselves. His most famous student, Jacob Wehrli, was to make the Industrial School for orphaned children at Hofwyl renowned throughout the world and gave his name to its imitators. Wehrli originated from the North German plain, where they had learned through necessity to raise crops on sand, by the use of artificial manures. and were given to singing as they worked.
When Lady Byron visited the school, she saw children singing at pre-breakfast tasks such as threshing. On learning that the academic side of their instruction included grammar school standard subjects, e.g. Classical Greek, she asked them what they felt about this. They replied: “It helps us to a better understanding of our own language, German.” It can be mentioned that some visitors to Hofwyl found the early start to the day – one of them believing it to be 4 a. m. – as somewhat overrigorous for the children.
Back at home, Lady Byron considered the possibility of instituting a practical measure in the field of education for the children of a threatened agricultural area in Britain. It appears that, about 1830, she took a house at Hanger Hill, above the village of Ealing, the name “Hanger” deriving from the Anglo-Saxon “Hangra,” a wooded slope, recalling the original nature of the place. The house, which will have been a secluded property in those days, possessed a large hall. Hearing of Ealing's deprived children problem, Lady Byron conceived the notion of offering some of these a combination of studies and practical training in her own residence. “Simple cooking, churning, baking and other delightful pursuits” would alternate with reading, writing and arithmetic. In the event, the experiment proved disastrous. It was impossible to keep order; at the slightest excuse, the children “fought among themselves like savages,” wrote Lady Byron. This sort of thing had not been seen at Hofwyl.
Lady Byron is next found taking the house “Fordhook” at Acton, also near Ealing. This house had been occupied by the 18th century author Henry Fielding, who had opposed corruption in the practice of the Law, though he is most famous for having written “The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling.” He had also published “A Proposal for making Effective Provision for the Poor.” Whether or not Lady Byron was influenced by Fielding's work, it was while at “Fordhook” she determined to persevere by drawing up a detailed plan for a modified de Fellenberg/Pestalozzi/Wehrli type school that would serve towards solving the problem of Ealing's delinquent youth, and circulated it among Ealing's elders and worthies. It was received politely but apathetically, the Parish clergy being virtually hostile. Firstly, the plan had its origin in foreign ideas. Then, there was to be no corporal punishment, no keeping of order with the cane, which suggested there would be a concentration of unruly, unmanageable boys right in the centre of the village. Further, neither the Parish clergy nor the ministers of any sect or religious party were to have a say in the religious teaching in the school. Any sort of Christian would be admitted (there were no other religions practised in Ealing at the time) and a pupil could attend any church or chapel he wished, including the Parish Church, although this would not approve of his educational background. In his school he would be taught the Christian catechism, in basic form only, avoiding any form of contention. Such provisions had caused both Pestalozzi and de Fellenberg to be accused of Deism – belief in God but not in any Revelation, and also of Secularism, under which pupils would be led to believe in anything or nothing, as they pleased.
As probably every village in the world is naturally conservative, preferring long-established orthodoxy to unpredictable innovation, it is not surprising that Lady Byron failed to get support at Ealing, especially as money would have to be hazarded on the enterprise. Her response was to show what could be achieved by using her own resources to create the school, finance its running and eventually offer it to the village.
A mansion called “Ealing Grove,” near the Parish Church, had been demolished except for its stables, which were left standing within four acres of walled ground. Lady Byron obtained a leasehold on the property and had the stalls taken out to be replaced by a schoolroom, workshop and accommodation for a schoolmaster. A man was appointed and sent to Hofwyl.
Ealing Grove Industrial School for boys, and for youths wishing to train as schoolmasters, opened in 1833, but its first Master did not possess the necessary touch that would have brought it to success within Lady Byron's conception. After two years he gave up, saying that without corporal punishment the running of a school was impossible. Lady Byron needed a “Jacob Wehrli.” It would turn out he was already available in the village. A Mr Atlee who, in an evil-smelling room, had conducted a school in the accepted manner of the time, using the cane, went to “Fordhook” with the proposition that he was prepared to make a completely new start with Ealing Grove, fully according to Lady Byron's plan. Impressed, she accepted and set about training him herself. His cane he would have to throw away. “The school itself must be run on the lines of a happy well-run family in which good behaviour follows from example and discipline of conscience rather than from the imposition of fear. Then, although patient industry at work and its relation to property would be taught, a high standard of intellectual attainment must be also made available, in excess of that which youths of the agricultural class could normally expect to get.” Lady Byron's choice was a happy one; Mr Atlee was the man who took Ealing Grove to fruition and success.
In 1842, Ealing Grove School had 80 boys of whom 40 were day pupils who attended two grades of class. Of these, the youngest were under nine. Their day began at 9 a.m. with Bible Study, but not of the sort practised at the time, where the Bible was used for rote learning, backed by caning. Anything like this was absolutely forbidden at Ealing Grove. At 9.30 they practised Writing, using a board aimed at teaching the prized Copperplate hand, essential for legibility and employers' requirements.
This period was alternatively given to Reading, which was especially thoroughly taught. The master read out a piece which the class repeated all together two or three times. Any difficult word was explained, after which each boy stood up to make his own reading and comment on it “in his own expression.” Afterwards, books were shut and spelling exercises on the piece carried out. The school had already established a lending library. Whatever humdrum life the Ealing Grove boy might be destined to embark on, he would be able to find solace and entertainment in literature. (It can be mentioned here that by 1842, Ealing Grove had also instituted evening courses for adults.)
Another alternative for the period was Arithmetic: Lady Byron held this to be of particular value in everyday life, especially that of agricultural labourers needing to budget carefully. The boys did not have to be pressed in this subject, welcoming inspectors visiting the school who challenged them to do mental arithmetic against a stop-watch.
Singing was taught in the mornings and had been introduced as a result of what Lady Byron had heard at Hofwyl, for she observed it kept the children cheerful.
Pictures and objects were used for Pestalozzi lessons so that boys could properly identify things around them and learn something about what lay beyond their own frontiers. Although from the top of their hill they could see the whole of London laid out before their eyes, many would never go there. The capital city was, as it happened, going to climb up to them.
The full industrial course at Ealing Grove was undertaken by the boarders, who began it at about twelve and a half years. They got up at 6 a.m., the first period at 7 a.m. being taken up with Speaking Practice and Reading out Loud. Breakfast and recreation was from 8 until 9 a.m., when, after half an hour's Bible Study, Arithmetic, Reading, Singing and Drawing were thoroughly taught, especially in the Second class, and a Weekly Test set every Tuesday in these subjects. Visitors reported that rather than resent these, the boys entered on them with enthusiasm and even a competitive spirit.
From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the boys were engaged in practical handwork, doing Carpentry, Glazing, Bricklaying and other handicrafts. Any boy who became proficient enough to work on the maintenance of the school buildings received wages at the standard rate of pay set in the village for such work. After one hour for lunch and recreation, their studies until 3 o’clock included Book-keeping, which Lady Byron held to be as vital in running a home as in a business.
At 3 o’clock followed what was for many of the boys the highlight of the day: Work on Their Own Account. Garden plots of one eighth to one quarter of an acre had been laid out. A boy rented one of these and worked it to harvest fruit, vegetables or flowers which he could take home to his family or sell as a “business man” in the village. Inspectors and visitors expressed astonishment to see the boys singing at work and the older ones offer help to younger ones. Mr Tremenheere of the British Poor Law Commission asked if the boys did not steal from each other's plots. The answer was “no,” because through the work on their own plots the boys automatically learned respect for each other's property. In any case, any boy caught stealing would attract the ultimate punishment of expulsion from the school - and doubtless social ostracism in the village afterwards. Mr Tremenheere was able to inspect the account books each boy had to keep as a condition of working a garden and found that all showed a profit.
At 4.30 p.m. the school assembled to hear a story told by the Master, after which the Day Boys went home. After supper and recreation, the Boarders took further periods in History, Mechanics and Arithmetical Tables, before retiring to bed at 9 p.m. after Prayers.
Ealing Grove School, among the first Industrial Schools in England, was eminently successful in that it combined a high standard of intellectual teaching with skill training of real practical worth. Especially the “Paid Work” not only fired the enthusiasm of the boys but by happy chance fitted them for the future changed employment requirements of Ealing, which in any case was about to expand greatly. As Victorian London sank under a blanket of smog caused by a vast increase in smoking chimneys, Londoners sought houses built on higher ground. As a result of changes in the economic climate, land formerly given over to market gardening was now offered as building sites, though some landowners specified that no houses below a certain value might be built, to avoid Ealing experiencing the creation of slums (Rookeries), as had been the fate of other villages in the London area. Ealing would now require skilled building workers in quantity.
Ealing Grove School enabled poor and orphaned children to avoid the New Poor Law of 1834 under which they would have had to enter the Union Workhouse, where they would have found themselves, together with vagrants and the mentally ill, in prison-like buildings. “1834 was a measure,” declared Lord John Russell, “aimed at forestalling social revolution.” Edwin Chadwick, the prominent architect of the Poor Law reform, had advocated industrial schools for children of the workless. He held strongly, however, that the destitute should be divided into distinct classes and accommodated separately: the aged in almshouses, the insane in asylums with scientific medical care, children in school buildings as stated. He was overruled in favour of the communal Workhouses. When de Fellenberg in Switzerland heard that orphans had to enter these places he tried to influence Queen Victoria through Lady Byron. “1834” was of course a Parliamentary measure and not without popular support among ratepayers: the Poor Rate went down. It appears that Lady Byron did offer Ealing Grove School to the village authority - its running cost was not much over £300 per annum - but it seems this was not taken up. Welfare measures would ever be plagued by lack of financial support.
Unfortunately, in the 1850s judicial industrial schools for young offenders were introduced, so that the very term became synonymous with “penal institution.” As a result it appears that Lady Byron felt constrained to bring Ealing Grove School to a close. Inheriting estates in the Midlands, she did however there create another “Ealing Grove School” for the benefit of the locals.
On the other hand, a child born in 1825 over a butcher's shop within sight of Ealing’s Parish Church would grow up to become Professor T.H. Huxley, destined to play a major role in formulating Britain's first universal Elementary Education Act, 1870. In general, he would advocate Science as the Panacea for the human species, which had first to stop viewing itself as a special creation above nature.
The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, after surviving to a great age, died hard and the Welfare State was born. Now, in the 1990s, education and training have become abundantly available to everyone. However, young people, in numbers beyond anything Lady Byron could have imagined, now face uncertain futures. Science, progenitor of Technology, has proved double-edged in its bounty. The world economic map has changed, other nations having taken up industrial revolution with success. The family is denigrated as inhibiting the individual, parents being viewed as unqualified to teach rules of conduct, seeing that they are essentially “out of date” in “changing times.” The generalisation that only “change” is real, there being nothing constant in nature, is bandied about. Change, however, can only occur relative to a constant. All individuals continue to be born helpless, after having been conceived by a man and a woman, and require many years of nurture in order to become capable adults. A stable environment right from the beginning would appear to be more important than ever, not that uncertainty is a new phenomenon in human affairs.
Pestalozzi called his ideal point of departure for the child a “Wohnstube,” conveying the notion of a “family living room in which emotional security reigns.” Etymologists trace the “Wohn-” (wohnen: to live or dwell) part of the word to an old expression meaning “a place in which to rejoice.” Doubtless, early mankind, in really hostile surroundings, soon learned to appreciate such a place. Through “Selbertun,” another Pestalozzi word: “doing it by him- or herself,” a child should learn the necessary skills, and also “Mitverantwortung,” the notion of sharing responsibility that qualifies for a place in a civilised society.
At Ealing, many a Victorian child had reason to thank Lady Byron, especially those whose circumstances placed them within the shadow of the Union Workhouse. Lady Byron, instead of becoming anti-family because of the unfortunate experience of her own marriage, gave family experience to others through Ealing Grove School, benefiting many besides the pupils themselves.
Norman Maggs, 1996
References:
Central Society for Education, London, 1830s.
Poor Law Commission Papers: “S. Tremenheere's inspection of Ealing Grove School”, March 1843.
Ethel May Colburn, Lady Noel Byron, Constable, 1929.
Kurt Guggisberg, Fellenberg und sein Erziehungsstaat, Lang, Bern, 1953: quotes Lady Byron's letters in French.
Et al.
A copy of this essay is held in the British Library, shelfmark YK. 1998.a.2528
Ealing appears to have originated on a secluded ledge, half-way up a wooded slope, the idea being to persuade avaricious marauders it was not there. Later, when the rule of law was more established in the land and a lot of the trees had been cut down, the village found itself overlooking a basin containing the vast sprawling city of London, needing to be fed. In common with other elevated places around the metropolis, Ealing was to develop a thriving market-garden economy, the main employment of its working population. Natural advantage favoured the location; already in 1698 a semi Public School for the sons of gentlemen had been founded there, pupils writing home from “Gan Ealing,” evidently after the biblical Hebrew “Gan Eden” – Garden of Eden. It is likely then the only mention of a Serpent will have been in readings from the lectern at the Parish Church. Unfortunately, discord was to be introduced from outside when, after the Napoleonic Blockade of Britain was lifted in 1815, British agriculture in general was hit by the return of foreign competition and even, it is said, by the Corn Laws enacted to counter this. The net result on Ealing’s little “Other Eden” was to produce a core of unemployed youngsters with no prospects, means of education, training or guidance. They would earn the name of “vagrant” or “wild” boys, given to rampaging about the district. In the late 1820s, Ealing's delinquent youth came to the notice of Lady Byron, widow of the Poet, who had taken a house nearby. Her reaction was to draw up a plan for solving the problem by bringing education, training and guidance to the boys in question. This was hardly likely to be viewed as a practical measure, not only on account of the depraved behaviour of the boys but also because of opposition expressed at the time to the notion of educating working class people at all. In the words of Davies Giddy M.P., “they would be induced to despise the employments to which their rank in society had destined them, become factious and refractory, being enabled to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books and publications against Christianity.” That is not to mention the horny problem of who would pay for such a measure. Lady Byron’s confidence in being able to bring about a more positive result is illustrated by her background, her competence and resolve, and above all her success at Ealing.
Lady Byron was born Anna Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke, in May 1792, the only child of her parents and an heiress in her own right. That she grew up intellectually gifted is evidenced by her becoming proficient in both mathematics and versification. Examples of her verses were sent to Lord Byron who, as a Poet and Personality, was achieving fame, not a little tinged with infamy. Byron, who had inherited money troubles, would welcome an heiress as wife. Calling Annabella his “Princess Parallelogram,” he proposed marriage in 1814. Miss Milbanke refused him at first, doubtless in consideration of his notoriety, but relented, and they were married in January 1815. However, Byron's domestic conduct was from the first so bizarre that his new wife's family felt impelled to call his very sanity into question. Lady Byron herself was inclined to ascribe her husband’s state of mind to his experiences at Harrow Public School where, at the time, drinking, gambling, brutal bullying and other vices were common behaviour among the pupils. All the same, after having to suffer debt – bailiffs actually took up residence in the marital home (Nov. 1815) – and after the birth of their daughter Ada in the house (Dec. 1815), during which Byron’s conduct made her attendants fear for her personal safety, Lady Byron left “in a spirited manner,” never to see her husband again. The pressure resulting from her involvement in the Byronic orbit notwithstanding, together with the restrictions and obligations imposed by her position in society (not always appreciated by fans of Jane Austen adaptations), Lady Byron was to develop a practical interest in the solution of social problems affecting the mass of the population. Enlightened educational method and its availability was to be her forte. She entered into correspondence with the Swiss educational pioneer de Fellenberg, whose success in the field was becoming internationally known.
In 1825, taking her daughter with her, Lady Byron went to visit cotton mills in the industrialised Midlands, where people formerly in agricultural employment now worked. That the British Industrial Revolution was proceeding like a Juggernaut could hardly be contested, but the effect on Lady Byron of the conditions she saw in the mills appears to be plain. She would declare that where an agricultural community existed, the people employed in it would be better served if it were to remain so, with, however, enhancements in the quality of their lives. In favouring rural life, it is evident Lady Byron was not blind to the conditions in which agricultural labourers of the time could find themselves; in some parts of the country they were virtual starvelings, even when in employment. This, together with dehumanising conditions in the industrial areas, would be seen by government as likely grounds for social unrest, even leading, in the eyes of some, to social revolution. The eventual answer to this possibility would be the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834, which set up the Union Workhouses, popularly called “Bastilles for the poor.” In 1829, Lady Byron travelled to Switzerland to see what de Fellenberg had done in a more humanitarian framework than it appears was to engage governmental thinking in Britain.
Briefly, de Fellenberg (born 1771), while a law student at Tübingen during the French Revolution, felt called to devote his life to humanitarian projects. and changed disciplines to philosophy. He became acquainted with Pestalozzi (born Zürich, 1774), who had conducted a school in the war-destroyed village of Stanz, Switzerland. for orphaned children of the place during a hard winter, at the risk of his own delicate health. Pestalozzi advocated teaching through visual comprehension (Anschauung), touch and so forth, but that the school itself should be run on the lines of a stable family, this being every child's essential point of departure. De Fellenberg added action – and drive. His school for Pestalozzi teachers opened at Hofwyl, near Berne, in 1806. The students rose at 5 a.m., exchanging studies after lunch for work in garden and field in pursuit of making the institution self-supporting. It appears they even built some of the school buildings themselves. His most famous student, Jacob Wehrli, was to make the Industrial School for orphaned children at Hofwyl renowned throughout the world and gave his name to its imitators. Wehrli originated from the North German plain, where they had learned through necessity to raise crops on sand, by the use of artificial manures. and were given to singing as they worked.
When Lady Byron visited the school, she saw children singing at pre-breakfast tasks such as threshing. On learning that the academic side of their instruction included grammar school standard subjects, e.g. Classical Greek, she asked them what they felt about this. They replied: “It helps us to a better understanding of our own language, German.” It can be mentioned that some visitors to Hofwyl found the early start to the day – one of them believing it to be 4 a. m. – as somewhat overrigorous for the children.
Back at home, Lady Byron considered the possibility of instituting a practical measure in the field of education for the children of a threatened agricultural area in Britain. It appears that, about 1830, she took a house at Hanger Hill, above the village of Ealing, the name “Hanger” deriving from the Anglo-Saxon “Hangra,” a wooded slope, recalling the original nature of the place. The house, which will have been a secluded property in those days, possessed a large hall. Hearing of Ealing's deprived children problem, Lady Byron conceived the notion of offering some of these a combination of studies and practical training in her own residence. “Simple cooking, churning, baking and other delightful pursuits” would alternate with reading, writing and arithmetic. In the event, the experiment proved disastrous. It was impossible to keep order; at the slightest excuse, the children “fought among themselves like savages,” wrote Lady Byron. This sort of thing had not been seen at Hofwyl.
Lady Byron is next found taking the house “Fordhook” at Acton, also near Ealing. This house had been occupied by the 18th century author Henry Fielding, who had opposed corruption in the practice of the Law, though he is most famous for having written “The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling.” He had also published “A Proposal for making Effective Provision for the Poor.” Whether or not Lady Byron was influenced by Fielding's work, it was while at “Fordhook” she determined to persevere by drawing up a detailed plan for a modified de Fellenberg/Pestalozzi/Wehrli type school that would serve towards solving the problem of Ealing's delinquent youth, and circulated it among Ealing's elders and worthies. It was received politely but apathetically, the Parish clergy being virtually hostile. Firstly, the plan had its origin in foreign ideas. Then, there was to be no corporal punishment, no keeping of order with the cane, which suggested there would be a concentration of unruly, unmanageable boys right in the centre of the village. Further, neither the Parish clergy nor the ministers of any sect or religious party were to have a say in the religious teaching in the school. Any sort of Christian would be admitted (there were no other religions practised in Ealing at the time) and a pupil could attend any church or chapel he wished, including the Parish Church, although this would not approve of his educational background. In his school he would be taught the Christian catechism, in basic form only, avoiding any form of contention. Such provisions had caused both Pestalozzi and de Fellenberg to be accused of Deism – belief in God but not in any Revelation, and also of Secularism, under which pupils would be led to believe in anything or nothing, as they pleased.
As probably every village in the world is naturally conservative, preferring long-established orthodoxy to unpredictable innovation, it is not surprising that Lady Byron failed to get support at Ealing, especially as money would have to be hazarded on the enterprise. Her response was to show what could be achieved by using her own resources to create the school, finance its running and eventually offer it to the village.
A mansion called “Ealing Grove,” near the Parish Church, had been demolished except for its stables, which were left standing within four acres of walled ground. Lady Byron obtained a leasehold on the property and had the stalls taken out to be replaced by a schoolroom, workshop and accommodation for a schoolmaster. A man was appointed and sent to Hofwyl.
Ealing Grove Industrial School for boys, and for youths wishing to train as schoolmasters, opened in 1833, but its first Master did not possess the necessary touch that would have brought it to success within Lady Byron's conception. After two years he gave up, saying that without corporal punishment the running of a school was impossible. Lady Byron needed a “Jacob Wehrli.” It would turn out he was already available in the village. A Mr Atlee who, in an evil-smelling room, had conducted a school in the accepted manner of the time, using the cane, went to “Fordhook” with the proposition that he was prepared to make a completely new start with Ealing Grove, fully according to Lady Byron's plan. Impressed, she accepted and set about training him herself. His cane he would have to throw away. “The school itself must be run on the lines of a happy well-run family in which good behaviour follows from example and discipline of conscience rather than from the imposition of fear. Then, although patient industry at work and its relation to property would be taught, a high standard of intellectual attainment must be also made available, in excess of that which youths of the agricultural class could normally expect to get.” Lady Byron's choice was a happy one; Mr Atlee was the man who took Ealing Grove to fruition and success.
In 1842, Ealing Grove School had 80 boys of whom 40 were day pupils who attended two grades of class. Of these, the youngest were under nine. Their day began at 9 a.m. with Bible Study, but not of the sort practised at the time, where the Bible was used for rote learning, backed by caning. Anything like this was absolutely forbidden at Ealing Grove. At 9.30 they practised Writing, using a board aimed at teaching the prized Copperplate hand, essential for legibility and employers' requirements.
This period was alternatively given to Reading, which was especially thoroughly taught. The master read out a piece which the class repeated all together two or three times. Any difficult word was explained, after which each boy stood up to make his own reading and comment on it “in his own expression.” Afterwards, books were shut and spelling exercises on the piece carried out. The school had already established a lending library. Whatever humdrum life the Ealing Grove boy might be destined to embark on, he would be able to find solace and entertainment in literature. (It can be mentioned here that by 1842, Ealing Grove had also instituted evening courses for adults.)
Another alternative for the period was Arithmetic: Lady Byron held this to be of particular value in everyday life, especially that of agricultural labourers needing to budget carefully. The boys did not have to be pressed in this subject, welcoming inspectors visiting the school who challenged them to do mental arithmetic against a stop-watch.
Singing was taught in the mornings and had been introduced as a result of what Lady Byron had heard at Hofwyl, for she observed it kept the children cheerful.
Pictures and objects were used for Pestalozzi lessons so that boys could properly identify things around them and learn something about what lay beyond their own frontiers. Although from the top of their hill they could see the whole of London laid out before their eyes, many would never go there. The capital city was, as it happened, going to climb up to them.
The full industrial course at Ealing Grove was undertaken by the boarders, who began it at about twelve and a half years. They got up at 6 a.m., the first period at 7 a.m. being taken up with Speaking Practice and Reading out Loud. Breakfast and recreation was from 8 until 9 a.m., when, after half an hour's Bible Study, Arithmetic, Reading, Singing and Drawing were thoroughly taught, especially in the Second class, and a Weekly Test set every Tuesday in these subjects. Visitors reported that rather than resent these, the boys entered on them with enthusiasm and even a competitive spirit.
From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the boys were engaged in practical handwork, doing Carpentry, Glazing, Bricklaying and other handicrafts. Any boy who became proficient enough to work on the maintenance of the school buildings received wages at the standard rate of pay set in the village for such work. After one hour for lunch and recreation, their studies until 3 o’clock included Book-keeping, which Lady Byron held to be as vital in running a home as in a business.
At 3 o’clock followed what was for many of the boys the highlight of the day: Work on Their Own Account. Garden plots of one eighth to one quarter of an acre had been laid out. A boy rented one of these and worked it to harvest fruit, vegetables or flowers which he could take home to his family or sell as a “business man” in the village. Inspectors and visitors expressed astonishment to see the boys singing at work and the older ones offer help to younger ones. Mr Tremenheere of the British Poor Law Commission asked if the boys did not steal from each other's plots. The answer was “no,” because through the work on their own plots the boys automatically learned respect for each other's property. In any case, any boy caught stealing would attract the ultimate punishment of expulsion from the school - and doubtless social ostracism in the village afterwards. Mr Tremenheere was able to inspect the account books each boy had to keep as a condition of working a garden and found that all showed a profit.
At 4.30 p.m. the school assembled to hear a story told by the Master, after which the Day Boys went home. After supper and recreation, the Boarders took further periods in History, Mechanics and Arithmetical Tables, before retiring to bed at 9 p.m. after Prayers.
Ealing Grove School, among the first Industrial Schools in England, was eminently successful in that it combined a high standard of intellectual teaching with skill training of real practical worth. Especially the “Paid Work” not only fired the enthusiasm of the boys but by happy chance fitted them for the future changed employment requirements of Ealing, which in any case was about to expand greatly. As Victorian London sank under a blanket of smog caused by a vast increase in smoking chimneys, Londoners sought houses built on higher ground. As a result of changes in the economic climate, land formerly given over to market gardening was now offered as building sites, though some landowners specified that no houses below a certain value might be built, to avoid Ealing experiencing the creation of slums (Rookeries), as had been the fate of other villages in the London area. Ealing would now require skilled building workers in quantity.
Ealing Grove School enabled poor and orphaned children to avoid the New Poor Law of 1834 under which they would have had to enter the Union Workhouse, where they would have found themselves, together with vagrants and the mentally ill, in prison-like buildings. “1834 was a measure,” declared Lord John Russell, “aimed at forestalling social revolution.” Edwin Chadwick, the prominent architect of the Poor Law reform, had advocated industrial schools for children of the workless. He held strongly, however, that the destitute should be divided into distinct classes and accommodated separately: the aged in almshouses, the insane in asylums with scientific medical care, children in school buildings as stated. He was overruled in favour of the communal Workhouses. When de Fellenberg in Switzerland heard that orphans had to enter these places he tried to influence Queen Victoria through Lady Byron. “1834” was of course a Parliamentary measure and not without popular support among ratepayers: the Poor Rate went down. It appears that Lady Byron did offer Ealing Grove School to the village authority - its running cost was not much over £300 per annum - but it seems this was not taken up. Welfare measures would ever be plagued by lack of financial support.
Unfortunately, in the 1850s judicial industrial schools for young offenders were introduced, so that the very term became synonymous with “penal institution.” As a result it appears that Lady Byron felt constrained to bring Ealing Grove School to a close. Inheriting estates in the Midlands, she did however there create another “Ealing Grove School” for the benefit of the locals.
On the other hand, a child born in 1825 over a butcher's shop within sight of Ealing’s Parish Church would grow up to become Professor T.H. Huxley, destined to play a major role in formulating Britain's first universal Elementary Education Act, 1870. In general, he would advocate Science as the Panacea for the human species, which had first to stop viewing itself as a special creation above nature.
The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, after surviving to a great age, died hard and the Welfare State was born. Now, in the 1990s, education and training have become abundantly available to everyone. However, young people, in numbers beyond anything Lady Byron could have imagined, now face uncertain futures. Science, progenitor of Technology, has proved double-edged in its bounty. The world economic map has changed, other nations having taken up industrial revolution with success. The family is denigrated as inhibiting the individual, parents being viewed as unqualified to teach rules of conduct, seeing that they are essentially “out of date” in “changing times.” The generalisation that only “change” is real, there being nothing constant in nature, is bandied about. Change, however, can only occur relative to a constant. All individuals continue to be born helpless, after having been conceived by a man and a woman, and require many years of nurture in order to become capable adults. A stable environment right from the beginning would appear to be more important than ever, not that uncertainty is a new phenomenon in human affairs.
Pestalozzi called his ideal point of departure for the child a “Wohnstube,” conveying the notion of a “family living room in which emotional security reigns.” Etymologists trace the “Wohn-” (wohnen: to live or dwell) part of the word to an old expression meaning “a place in which to rejoice.” Doubtless, early mankind, in really hostile surroundings, soon learned to appreciate such a place. Through “Selbertun,” another Pestalozzi word: “doing it by him- or herself,” a child should learn the necessary skills, and also “Mitverantwortung,” the notion of sharing responsibility that qualifies for a place in a civilised society.
At Ealing, many a Victorian child had reason to thank Lady Byron, especially those whose circumstances placed them within the shadow of the Union Workhouse. Lady Byron, instead of becoming anti-family because of the unfortunate experience of her own marriage, gave family experience to others through Ealing Grove School, benefiting many besides the pupils themselves.
Norman Maggs, 1996
References:
Central Society for Education, London, 1830s.
Poor Law Commission Papers: “S. Tremenheere's inspection of Ealing Grove School”, March 1843.
Ethel May Colburn, Lady Noel Byron, Constable, 1929.
Kurt Guggisberg, Fellenberg und sein Erziehungsstaat, Lang, Bern, 1953: quotes Lady Byron's letters in French.
Et al.
A copy of this essay is held in the British Library, shelfmark YK. 1998.a.2528