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1868 · rif. 16085 — 1868. Newton H. Autograph letter signed on a handbill for the Lant Street Ragged Schools for Boys and Girls April 13 1868 documents free education for poor children and adults in Southwark and records substantially higher attendance among girls than boys. Newton identified as Vicar of St. Michael's Mission Schools Lant Street writes to a donor concerning the schools' work while the printed handbill describes an institution located "in the midst of the poorest population in Southwark" and reports approximately 850 attendances daily. The surviving enrollment figures give particular evidence for girls' participation: 243 girls attended the upper school room compared with 167 boys in the lower school room while afternoon attendance numbered 233 girls and 162 boys. Newton H. April 13 1868. Autograph letter signed on verso of a printed handbill for The Lant Street Ragged Schools for Boys and Girls Borough Southwark. The handbill describes the schools as "the largest with about 850 attendances daily and the most important in South London" and supplies separate attendance figures for boys and girls. It also records an evening school of approximately 65 "grown persons of both sexes" who were taught to read and write showing that the institution combined children's schooling with adult literacy instruction. Newton annotated the printed portion in his own hand including the notation "Ragged Schools male & female." His manuscript communication to a donor links the printed statistics and public appeal directly to the school's fundraising activity and administration. Ragged schools developed in nineteenth-century Britain to provide free instruction to children excluded by poverty from other forms of schooling commonly combining elementary education with religious and charitable work. The Lant Street handbill records that work before the Elementary Education Act of 1870 established a national framework for elected school boards in England and Wales. Its sex-specific figures are especially informative for the history of women's education: girls exceeded boys in both reported daytime sessions while the evening school extended literacy instruction to adult women as well as men. The handbill and Newton's signed letter preserve two aspects of the institution on the same sheet-the statistics used to describe its educational work and a clergyman's direct appeal to a supporter. No condition defects are specified in the supplied description. A contemporary record of schooling adult literacy charitable fundraising and female attendance among the poor of Victorian Southwark. unknown books