ABSTRACT
The child-saving movement was part of a larger programme, if an apparently piecemeal one, to remake delinquent youth into ideal citizens. An adequate understanding of this process, however, means examining how the inmates, staff and volunteers each participated in the process. Scottish child-savers were not united by a single organization or movement, but represented many branches of local government and voluntary initiatives to aid the poor. The interest groups involved in child-rescue can be divided into four general categories: the parish or parochial board, the school boards, charity homes set up by voluntary agencies, such as the Scottish National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the National Vigilance Association, and the certified reformatories and industrial schools themselves. Even where they shared a common ideology, such as the explanation of the cause of juvenile delinquency being an unsatisfactory family, or a vision of the ideal institution, at no time between 1850 and 1932 did they ever make up a unified body of authorities. Nor did they make up a single coherent system, although that was the impression they wanted to give the public.
