ABSTRACT
In 1876 the Frederiksberg Town Council asked the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs and Public Instruction for permission to set up a room off the school caretaker’s quarters, with windows, tile oven, bed, and so forth, for the “temporary placement of neglected children.” Mass schooling started in Denmark at the end of the eighteenth century, and a royal decree from 1814 is normally considered the constitution of the Danish elementary school system. The establishment of the detention cell in Frederiksberg was a final element in a campaign to reduce absences from school. The maintenance of discipline in school occupied many column inches in the pedagogical periodicals of the time. The boys who came to the detention home had mostly been absent from school because their parents had needed them to perform labor at home, or because they had turned their backs on school after too much caning.
