This chapter offers an overview of efforts to promote moral education in elementary schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with an emphasis on proposals to introduce moral instruction. The perceived decline in organized Christianity in the late nineteenth century, at least as measured by church attendance and particularly among the working classes in poor urban areas, has been well documented. It considers debates about moral education in this period, with a focus on moral instruction, and examines the place of urban poverty in these debates. The chapter provides a general discussion of moral instruction in elementary schools. Moral education was, to educators in the late nineteenth century, a multi-faceted undertaking. The education department recognized the potential of the elementary school as a moralizing agent and, through educational codes, instructions to inspectors, various statements and regulations for the training and employment of teachers, emphasized the importance of moral training in the school.