ABSTRACT
‘IN 1816, says Sir E. du Cane, ‘when the population of London was under a million and a half, there were in London prisons above JL 3,000 inmates under 20 years of age—half of these were under 17, somewere 9 or 10, and 1,000 of these children were convicted of felony.’ 1 What these prisons were like, and what must have been their effect on these young people, we have sufficiently considered. Nor did the otherarms of the penal law make any concession to youth: many of the 1,000convicted of felony would without doubt be hanged or transported. These conditions, however, were sufficiently known and abhorred toexcite active and practical interest among people of good will from theearliest years of the century—indeed from the eighteenth century suchinterest had been moved to action at least of a preventive kind. In 1756 the Marine Society had established a school for waifs and strays and thechildren of convicts,, to clothe and feed them and eventually send them to sea, and in 1788 the Philanthropic Society had established in London another school for the children of convicts.
