ABSTRACT
In 1803 it was stated that three-fifths of all beggars in London were children, and that Irish children formed a third of all child beggars. Young children were useful begging earners for under the age of seven they were not criminally liable under the vagrancy laws. The Shoe-Black Society was born, and by 1852 employed 120 boys. The 1889 Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act enabled the newly-formed National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) to move in, and its reports indeed bear out the claim that parents rather than padroni were figuring as the villains by the early 1890s. In 1877 the Charity Organisation Society, having conducted its own inquiry into the problem, presented its findings to the Home Secretary, who instructed the Metropolitan Police to enforce the Vagrancy Act, and the Industrial Schools Act more strictly. The Italian Benevolent Society approached the London School Board and asked that the act be applied to Italian children.
