SECOND READING. (Hansard, 7 May 1869)

THE MARQUESS TOWNSHEND

, in moving that his next Bill be now read the second time, said, he must confess, that after the tone in which his former measure had been received by the Government, he did not feel much encouragement to hope better in regard to this one, there being considerable analogy between the two Bills. The Bill was directed towards various points in which the Act of 1866 had proved defective—for instance, some magistrates deemed themselves precluded from sending children to these establishments if they were found in the company of adults, begging or singing in the streets. The 1st clause of the Bill would remove the doubt entertained on this point, and provided that children, found under such circumstances should be brought within the operation of the Industrial Schools Act, unless it was proved that they were receiving instruction for at least twelve hours a week. The principle of compulsory education had been adopted in the case of young persons employed in factories and workshops; surely, then it ought to be extended to children less favourably situated. Otherwise, what possible prospect, except one of vice and degradation, was open to those poor little outcasts, who, almost before they could speak or walk, were driven into the streets of London to contract, while yet infants, all the contamination and vice that could nowhere be so surely learnt as in our great London thoroughfares? Thousands of children, shoeless, ragged, and miserable, were sent about the streets nominally, to sell small articles, but really to beg, and the persons who so sent them would not, unless compelled, give them the opportunity of receiving any instruction, the consequence being that they remained utterly ignorant until, as too often happened, they became inmates of reformatories or prisons. No person of ordinary humanity could pass through the streets without deeply commiserating the fate of hundreds of those infants and children who, in the midst of hunger and dirt and vice were 354 growing up under all the worst influences that could blight human nature. One of the causes of this was that the Government did not sufficiently enforce the law against unlicensed hawking. What must be the future of girls exposed all day and part of the night to the contamination and vice of our great cities? "With boys he did not propose to interfere, since the evil in their case was a much smaller one. He proposed to make it illegal for any girl under fourteen years of ago, on week days, or children of either sex on Sundays, to offer for sale any articles: and to save children apprehended under such circumstances, from the contamination of a police cell or a prison, the Bill provided that they should be detained at the parish workhouse until brought before a magistrate, and if committed to an industrial school to be detained in the workhouse until received into a school. The existing accommodation in these establishments was very insufficient, there being in London accommodation for only 100 Protestant children and a not much larger number of Roman Catholics, so that the decision of a magistrate to send a child to such an institution was often nugatory. This clearly ought to be remedied, for what would be thought if a criminal was discharged on account of the nearest prison being full? He regretted to find that the Bill was opposed by those who had the management of the Act of 1866, but that Act plainly required amendment, and he hoped, therefore, that no objection would be offered to the second reading.

THE EARL OF MORLEY

said, that the Government were of opinion that legislation of this kind was not at the present moment required, and he trusted that the noble Marquess would not press this measure. The Act of 1866 was framed with the utmost care, the categories of children to whom it was to apply being made as wide as seemed desirable; but the Bill proposed to add throe new categories. Children sent into the streets were to be taken to an industrial school unless it could be shown that they had been at school at least twelve hours during the preceding week. Now, this was an extension of the principle of the Factory Acts, and was too large a subject to be dealt with in a Bill of this kind. 355 Then any girl under fourteen was to be forbidden to expose any article for sale, the clause being so worded as to include even girls employed in shops, and any child was to be forbidden to trade or hawk any article on Sundays. He hoped the noble Marquess would excuse his not discussing in detail the provisions of the Bill, the House being anxious to proceed to matters of interest which were on the Paper. He would only say, therefore, that the terms of the Act of 1866, as to children begging in the streets, were sufficiently wide for all practical purposes, and that when the subject of the Factory Acts and of Sunday trading came before the House it would be the proper time to discuss the education and the Sunday employment of children.