ABSTRACT
This vision of Sir Charles Reed, who was later to become Chairman of the London School Board, was offered in a speech to the Commons as part of the debate over the 1870 Act. Reed was clearly piqued at the subsequent attribution of the ladder metaphor to Thomas Huxley.2 As we have seen (Chapter 2), the London School Board refused to restrict its role to merely filling in the gaps in voluntary provision. From the first, Huxley sought a much wider responsibility.
