ABSTRACT

Education was for the higher classes, and ‘it was thought sufficient to learn one or two dead languages.’ The rod and scourge used in the schoolroom were ‘a curious illustration of the barbarism of that age’ and the custom of grading children according to ability ‘led to that selfishness which rendered the society of the nineteenth century a scene of continual mutual grinding, sharping and strife.’ The nature of crime and the appropriateness of punishment they disagreed about violently. Everybody knew, said Stook, that capital punishment acted as a deterrent. Gil was scathing. The Journal dealt with all the big issues – poverty, crime, sickness, education, but they also took up the cudgels on behalf of underrepresented and misused sections of the population like shop assistants and governesses and poor girls employed as unpaid drudges and poor men trying to struggle through days of virtual unemployment.