ABSTRACT
The thesis in this second part of the book is that social policy moved from a concern with the rescue, reclamation and reform of children, mainly through philanthropic and Poor Law action, to the involvement of children in a consciously designed pursuit of the national interest, which included all-round efficiency, public health, education, racial hygiene, responsible parenthood, and social purity. These children were given a new social and political identity as belonging to ‘the nation’. This is not to say that there had been no self-evident national interest governing the campaigns of Mary Carpenter and other penal reformers in their reconception of juvenile delinquency in the mid-nineteenth century, or that Dr Barnardo was motivated merely by an evangelical desire to save souls. Such figures obviously’ strove to accomplish goals of national importance with respect to incorporating the ‘dangerous classes’ within the boundaries of civil society. Similarly, the NSPCC did not confine its objectives to punishing and preventing parental cruelty; it repeatedly claimed to be primarily concerned with improving standards of parental care among the poor in order to make their behaviour more ‘respectable’. However, it is argued here that the policies and interests of politicians, social reformers, and what would later be termed the caring professions, in the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods, were more comprehensive, more universal and more specific in their perception of all working-class children as members of the population.
