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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
Writing in the Cambridge Historical Journal in 1956, G.F.A. Best introduced his article on the religious difficulties of national education in England from 1800 to 1870 with the comment ‘the peculiar problems and difficulties in the way of achieving a national system of elementary education in nineteenth-century England [had] long been so obvious and notorious that a new attempt at an objective and comprehensive view must seem surprising and rash.’ He then justified his own article on the grounds that none of the works available did the subject justice because none told the whole story. In giving only fleeting mention to the educational claims of Roman Catholics, however, even Best omitted an essential of the great educational debate that was waged over England for much of the nineteenth century and that in its earlier phases found some of its more powerful voices in Manchester.
1 Best, G.F.A., ‘The Religious Difficulties of National Education in England, 1800–70’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 12 (1956), p. 155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Will be cited as Best.
2 Simon, B., Studies in the History of Education 1780–1870, 1960, p. 149.Google Scholar Will be cited as Simon.
3 Burnett, J. (ed. and introd.). Destiny Obscure, Autobiographies of Childhood, Education and Family from the 1820s to the 1920s, 1982, pp. 146–147 Google Scholar (will be cited as Burnett); Stephens, W.B., Education, Literacy and Society 1830–70 (Manchester, 1987), p.43 Google Scholar (will be cited as Stephens).
4 Burnett, pp. 147–149.
5 Hurt, J.S., Education in Evolution: Church, State, Society and Popular Education 1800–1870, 1971, pp. 15–17 Google Scholar (will be cited as Hurt, Education in Evolution); Smith, F., History of English Elementary Education 1760–1902, 1931, pp. 170–172 Google Scholar (will be cited as Smith).
6 Stephens, p. 44; Paz, D.G., The Politics of Working-Class Education 1830–50 (Manchester, 1980), pp. 119 and 121 Google Scholar (will be cited as Paz); Sellers, I., Nineteenth-Century Nonconformity, 1977, p. 71;Google Scholar Cruickshank, M.A., ‘Anglican Revival and Education: A Study of School Expansion In the Cotton Manufacturing Areas of North-West England, 1840–50’, Northern History [NH], 15 (1979), p. 184 Google Scholar (will be cited as Cruickshank); Ward, J.T. and Treble, J.H., ‘Religion and Education in 1843: Reaction to the Factory Education Bill’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History [JEH], 20, (1969), pp. 79–81 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (will be cited as Ward and Treble).
7 Cruickshank, p. 184; Hurt, Education in Evolution, pp. 25–26; Smith, p. 173; Stephens, p. 44.
8 Cruickshank, p. 187.
9 Simon, p. 18; Kidd, A.J., ‘Introduction: The Middle Class in Nineteenth Century Manchester’ in Kidd, A. J. and Roberts, K. W. (eds), City, Class and Culture, Studies of cultural production and social policy in Victorian Manchester (Manchester, 1985), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar
10 Simon, pp. 75, 169–171 and 273–274.
11 Kay Shuttleworth, J. P., The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester, 1832 (ed. Chaloner, W. H., 1970).Google Scholar
12 Cruickshank, pp. 183–184 and Hurt, Education in Evolution, p. 25.
13 Hurt, Education in Evolution, p. 112; and by the same author, ‘Drill, discipline and the elementary school ethos’, in McCann, P. (ed.), Popular Education and Socialization in the Nineteenth Century, 1977, pp. 167–168 Google Scholar (will be cited as McCann); Simon, p. 168; Reeder, D. A., ‘Predicaments of City Children: Late Victorian and Edwardian Perspectives on Education and Urban Society’ in Reeder, D. A. (ed.), Urban Education in the Nineteenth Century, 1977 Google Scholar (cited as Reeder), p. 76; Sanderson, M., Education, Economic Change and Society in England 1780–1870, 1983, p. 17;Google Scholar Gilmour, R., ‘The Gradgrind School: Political Economy in the Classroom’, Victorian Studies, 11 (1967–8), pp. 214–215 Google Scholar and 219; Johnson, R., ‘Educational Policy and Social Control in Early Victorian England’, Past and Present, no. 49 (1970), pp. 96–97, 99 and 102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (will be cited as Johnson); Silver, H., ‘Ideology and the factory child: attitudes to half-time education’, in McCann, pp. 145–146.Google Scholar
14 P[ublic] R[ecord] 0[fficel, Kew, ED 8/1, Annual Grants, Disused Forms upto 1st July 1852, letter from Committee of Council on Education, 12 March 1849, regarding the moral character required inpupil-teachers.
15 Paz, pp. 27–30.
16 Barnes, A. S., The Catholic Schools of England, 1926;Google Scholar Black, J. and Bellenger OSB, A., ‘The Foreign Education of British Catholics in the Eighteenth Century’, Downside Review, 105 (1987), pp. 310–316;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rowlands, M., ‘The Education and Piety of Catholics in Staffordshire in the Eighteenth Century’, Recusant History [RH], 10 (1969–70), pp. 72–74.Google Scholar
17 Fitzgerald, M. E. W. (Sister Agatha IBVM), ‘Catholic Elementary Schools in the Manchester Area during the Nineteenth Century’, unpublished M.Ed, thesis, University of Manchester, 1975, pp. 32–41.Google Scholar Will be cited as Fitzgerald.
18 The Catholic Poor School Committee, The Catholic School, 1848–1856, October 1848, p. 21, Archives of the Archdiocse of Westminster. Will be cited as Catholic School.
19 PRO ED 17/13, Minutes of the Council on Education, Correspondence, Reports etc., vol. I, 1850–51, p. xxxi,Google Scholar letter of C. Langdale on behalf of the Catholic Poor School Committee to the Committee of the Privy Council on Education.
20 An Address of the Vicars-Apostolic, Reports of the Catholic Poor School Committee, 1848, p. 29, Archives of the Catholic Education Council. Will be cited as CPSC Reports.
21 CPSC Reports, 1848, pp. 13–14.
22 CPSC Reports, 1848, title-page.
23 The Committee also had subordinate branches over the country. The Manchester Local Committeeconsisted of the Catholic clergy of Manchester and Salford; and Messrs Lee, D.; Leeming, W.; Richardson, G.; Cope, C. H.; Taylor, F.; Boothman, I.; Davis, J.; Markland, J.; Divosge, C. Z.; Leeming, T.; Furniss, J.; and Delauney, L. B., listed in CPSC Reports, 1849, p. 106.Google Scholar
24 Marmion, J. P., ‘The Beginnings of the Catholic Poor Schools in England’, RH, 17 (1984–5), pp. 70–71.Google Scholar
25 CPSC Reports, 1848, pp. 10–15; Catholic School, 1848, pp. 7–8. PRO ED 17/14, Committee of the Privy Council on Education: Minutes and Reports, General Report, for the Year 1850, by Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, T. W. M. Marshall, Esq., on the Roman Catholic Schools inspected by him in Great Britain, 1850, p. 660. The Christian Brothers wanted to be in complete control of their own system of education and distrusted the government because of their experiences in Ireland. See Coldrey, B., Faith and Fatherland: The Christian Brothers and the Development of Irish Nationalism 1838–1921 (Dublin, 1988), pp. 27–30;Google Scholar Gillespie, W. L., The Christian Brother in England 1825–1880 (Bristol, 1975), p. 142;Google Scholar Goldstrom, J. M., The Social Content of Education 1808–1870 (Shannon, 1972), p. 118.Google Scholar For contemporary comments on their position, see [Britjish [Parliamentary Papers, Reports from Committees, 1852 (499), XI. 1, Manchester and Salford Education, 1852, pp. 129–30 (will be citedas Select Committee Report); Tablet, 5 Jan. 1850.
26 Brit. Parl. Papers, Population, 1851, vol. 6, p. 322: population of Manchester: 303, 382; Tablet, 27 Nov. 1852: 90,000 Catholics in Manchester; Catholic School, 1853, p. 350, Catholic population of Manchester and Salford: 80,000.
27 B. Disraeli, 3 Oct. 1844; J. Bright, 23 Oct. 1845, Manchester Athenaeum Addresses 1843–1848 (Manchester, 1875), pp. 20 Google Scholar and 41 respectively. Will be cited as Athenaeum Addresses.
28 C. Dickens, 5 Oct. 1843, Athenaeum Addresses, p. 2.
29 Bright, Athenaeum Addresses, pp. 41–42.
30 Smith, p. 207; Fraser, D., ‘Education and Urban Politics c. 1832–1885’ in Reeder, p. 20;Google Scholar Jones, D. K., ‘Lancashire, the American Common School and the Religious Problem in British Education in the Nineteenth Century’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 15 (1967), pp. 292–293 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (will be cited as Jones, ‘Religious Problem’); and the same author's, ‘Socialization and Social Science: Manchester Model Secular School 1854–61’ in McCann, p. 113 (will be cited as Jones, ‘Socialization’).
31 Maltby, S. E., Manchester and the Movement for National Elementary Education 1800–1870 (Manchester, 1918), p. 74.Google Scholar Will be cited as Maltby.
32 Cf. MUN. A.7.41, Education (39817), Progress of Plan of Manchester and Salford Education Bill, 1848–52, Scrapbook of Printed and Manuscript Material Including Letters, a broadsheet: The Abandonment of Voluntary Aid in Support of National Education, 1 Feb. 1848, Chetham's Library, Manchester. Will be cited as MUN. A.7.41.
33 MUN. A.7.41, A Proposal Sheet of the NPSA, 1851.
34 Carpenter, K. E. (ed.), Conditions of Work and Living: The Reawakening of the English Conscience, Five Pamphlets 1838–1844 (New York, 1972), no. 2(2), pp. 24–27;Google Scholar Gaskell, P., The Manufacturing Population of England, 1833, p. 270.Google Scholar Cf. Rambler, 6 (1850), pp. 91–109.
35 Cf. MUN. A.7.41, A Notice from an Employer looking for workers who could read and write.
36 Richson, Cf. C., ‘On the Agencies and Organization Required in a National System of Education’, Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society [TMSS], 1855, p. 2 Google Scholar (will be cited as Richson). See also Best, pp. 155–170.
37 Jones, ‘Socialization’, p. 118.
38 See A Plan for the Establishment of a General System of Secular Education in the County of Lancaster (Manchester, 1847),Google Scholar a pamphlet stating the principles of the Association and the plan to be presented to the House of Commons as a bill. Will be cited as LPSA, Plan. Cf. Protestant Witness (Manchester, 1849–51), p. 324; Tablet, 23 Mar. 1850. See also Maltby, p. 75; Stewart, W. A. C. and McCann, W.P., The Educational Innovators 1750–1880, 1967, pp. 275–276 Google Scholar (will be cited as Stewart and McCann).
39 National Public Schools Association for Promoting the Establishment of a General System of Secular Education in England and Wales (Manchester, 1850),Google Scholar an explanatory pamphlet; Explanatory Statement of the Objects of the National Public Schools Association (Manchester, 1850), a pamphlet.
40 Punch, pp. 18–19 (1850), 193.
41 CPSC Report, 1849, Appendix N. pp. 142–146. Cf. Select Committee Report, p. 101; Brit. Parl Papers, Reports of the Inspectors of Factories to her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, 1850 [1141], XXIII, pt 2.181, Report of Leonard Horner, Inspector of Factories, 31 Oct. 1849, p. 19; Manton, J., Mary Carpenter and the Children of the Streets, 1976, p. 94.Google Scholar
42 CPSC Report, 1849, Appendix N.
43 Kitson Clark, Cf. G., Churchmen and the Condition of England 1832–1885, 1973, p. 139.Google Scholar
44 CPSC Reports, 1851, p. 88; PRO ED 7/64/41, Preliminary Statements for Building Grants, St. Chad's, Manchester; PRO ED 17/20, Minutes of Committee of Council etc., 1854–5, p. 189; PRO ED 103/54, Treasury and Committee of Council on Education: Building Grant Applications, pp. 837–839; Tablet, 17 and 24 Jan. 1852; For the biography of Elizabeth Prout see E. Hamer (Sr Dominic Savio CP), Elizabeth Prout, 1820–1864: A Religious Life for Industrial England (Downside Abbey Publications, Bath, 1994), which will be cited as Hamer, Elizabeth Prout; and ‘Elizabeth Prout and Education in the North West, 1849–1864’, North West Catholic History, 20 (1993), pp. 31–36.Google Scholar
45 Protestant Witness, p. 672.
46 Maltby, pp. 82–84; Smith, p. 217. The laymen were O. Hey wood, W. R. Callender, E. R. Le Mare, J. Mayson and W. Entwistle.
47 Catholic School, Feb. 1853, ‘Manchester and Salford Education: Report of Parliamentary Committee’, p. 352.
48 Catholic School, Feb. 1853, pp. 351–353. For Catholic Ragged Schools see Catholic School, Sept. 1849, pp. 167–168. Carpenter, Cf. M., Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes and for Juvenile Offenders, 1851, new impression 1968, p. 70 Google Scholar for her comment on the Irish children's ‘jealous and blind attachment to their Catholic religion’.
49 Catholic School, Dec. 1851, ‘The Manchester Education Scheme, Declaration of the Roman Catholic Clergy of Manchester and Salford on the Proposed Instructions for the Draft of a Bill for Local Education in the Municipal Boroughs of Manchester and Salford’, pp. 209–211. Cf. Select Committee Report, pp. 163–164.
50 Fitzgerald, p. 70. Beales, Cf. A. C. F., ‘The Struggle for the Schools’, in Beck, G. A., The English Catholics 1850–1950 1950, p. 368 Google Scholar for the remark, ‘Although the surface problem was financial in the Catholics’ struggle for schools, the real issue was religious freedom’.
51 Catholic School, Dec. 1851, ‘Minute of the Manchester and Salford (Executive) Committee on Education in Reference to the Declaration of the Roman Catholic Clergy’, pp. 211–214; Select Committee Report, pp. 164–166.
52 PRO ED 17/14, p. 660.
53 Catholic School, Dec. 1851, p. 212. Cf. Select Committee Report, p. 128; PRO ED 9/12, Grants under Minutes, 1846: Copies of Letters Selected from Old Letter Books 1847–1858, pp. 171, 179 and 194 for correspondence, July—Nov. 1849, between the Catholic Poor School Committee and the Committee of Council on the employment of Religious in schools and on schools attached to monasteries or convents; and Brit. Parl. Papers, Accounts and Papers, 13 pt. 1 1851 (103) XLIII, pt. 1, Parliamentary Grants for Education, p. 154 for a letter from Stokes to the Committee of Council in 1850 regarding its threatened ‘domiciliary visitation’ to see if teachers lived in convents.
54 Catholic Directory 1851, p. 59; 1853, pp. 63–64; CPSC Reports, 1852, p. 85.
55 Catholic School, Dec. 1851, p. 214; Select Committee Report, pp. 164–6. For the difficulties Catholic clergy experienced about Catholic children in Poor Law care, see Tablet, 5 Jan. 1850. Cf. Ward and Treble, p. 95. Singleton, J., ‘The Virgin Mary and Religious Conflict in Victorian Britain’, JEH, 43 (1992), p. 27;Google Scholar Steele, E. D., ‘The Irish Presence in the North of England 1850–1914’, NH, 12 (1976), p. 228.Google Scholar
56 National Public Schools Association Report of the First Annual Meeting, 22 January 1851 (Manchester, 1851), p. 3;Google Scholar Maltby, p. 85.
57 Select Committee Report, pp. 28–29.
58 Select Committee Report, pp. 41–42.
59 CPSC Reports, 1852, p. 85.
60 Ibidem.
61 Catholic School, Feb. 1853, pp. 349–350. Cf. Tablet, 27 Nov. 1852 for the estimate, made by Fr. M. Formby of St. Mary's, Deansgate, of 90,000 Catholics in Manchester.
62 Select Committee Report, p. 53.
63 Select Committee Report, pp. 53 and 56.
64 Select Committee Report, p. 78.
65 Select Committee Report, pp. 73, 75 and 78–79.
66 A Tropp, Cf., The School Teachers, 1957, pp. 3 and 19 Google Scholar (will be cited as Tropp, School Teachers); and, by the same author, ‘The Changing Status of the Teacher in England and Wales’ in Musgrave, P. W., Sociology, History and Education, 1970, p. 197 Google Scholar (will be cited as Tropp, ‘Changing Status’).
67 Select Committee Report, pp. 131 and 146. Cf. Catholic School, Feb. 1853, p. 351.
68 Select Committee Report, p. 135.
69 Select Committee Report, p. 145.
70 Select Committee Report, p. 407; Tablet, 5 Mar. 1853. The laymen were Daniel Lee, Thomas Boothman, John Markland and George Richardson.
71 Select Committee Report, p. 129; National Public Schools Association report of the Proceedings, 8 February 1851 (Manchester, 1851), p. 6; Hodgson, W. B., On the Characteristics of the Two Schemes for Public Instruction, Respectively Proposed by the National Public Schools Association and the Manchester and Salford Committee on Education (Manchester, 1851), p. 6;Google Scholar Robinson, S., ‘The Education of the Lower Classes of the People: With Some Remarks on the Measure Proposed for Manchester and Salford in 1851’, TMSS, 1866, p. 61;Google Scholar Williams, B., The Making of Manchester Jewry 1740–1875 (Manchester, 1976), p. 207.Google Scholar
72 Select Committee Report, p. 90.
73 Select Committee Report, p. 129.
74 PRO ED 8/1, Form XXI, Report on the Qualifications of Candidates for Certificates of Merit.
75 Cf. Catholic School, Nov. 1849, pp. 190–195 and Feb. 1850, pp. 222–231; Cf. Johnson, p. 119; Stewart and McCann, p. 184.
76 PRO ED 17/22, p. 42, a letter from the Committee of Council, 1857, regarding middle-class schools. Allsobrook, Cf. D. I., Schools for the Shires, The Reform of Middle-Class Education in Mid-Victorian England (Manchester, 1986), pp. 8 and 14 Google Scholar (will be cited as Allsobrook); Heeney, B., Mission to the Middle Classes, The Woodard Schools 1848–1891, 1969, pp. 8 and 119.Google Scholar
77 Kay Shuttleworth, J., ‘Middle-Class Education: What Central and Local Bodies are Best Qualified to Take Charge of and Administer Existing Endowments for Education, and What Powers and Facilities should be given to Such Bodies?’, Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1866, p. 340.Google Scholar
78 Flaxman SHCJ, R., A Woman Styled Bold, The Life of Cornelia Connelly J809–1979, 1991, p. 115;Google Scholar Marmion, J. P., ‘Cornelia Connelly's Work in Education 1848–1879’, an unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1984, 2 vols, 1, pp. 81 and 388–389.Google Scholar
79 Catholic School, Oct. 1852, p. 302; Acta Primi Episcopi Salfordensis, Printed Documents of Bishop W. Turner 1851–1872 [Pastoral Letters and Ad Clera] with a brief summary of their contents prepared by Rev. D. Lannon, 1987, Pastoral Letters, p. 2.
80 Hamer, Elizabeth Prout, pp. 112–115 and 116–118; The Foundations of the Sisters of Notre Dame in England and Scotland from 1848–1895 (Anonymous, Liverpool, 1895), p. 65;Google Scholar Lannon, D., ‘Bishop Turner and Educational Provsion within the Salford Diocesan Area 1840–1870’, unpublished M.Phil, thesis, University of Hull, 1994–5, pp. 96–97 and 148–50Google Scholar (will be cited as Lannon, thesis).
81 Lannon, thesis, pp. 150–151.
82 Catholic School, Nov. 1849, p. 194; Browning, T., ‘Middle-Class Education’, TMSS, 1862, pp. 93–94 Google Scholar and 104–105. Will be cited as Browning. Cf. Stewart and McCann, pp. 276–279; Tropp, School Teachers, pp. 59 and 65–66 and Tropp, ‘Changing Status’, p. 200.
83 PRO ED 17/22, p. 42.
84 It is not possible to give a precise figure for the number of Irish children who were refugees but sources suggest they were substantial. Worrall, E. S. (transcribed), Returns of Papists, 1767, Diocese of Chester (Catholic Record Society, 1980), pp. 34–36 Google Scholar indicates a Catholic population in Manchester in 1767 of 287 English Catholic tradesmen, servants and labourers. The baptismal registers show an increasing Catholic population of both English and Irish during the first half of the nineteenth century. According to ‘Rate Books for Relief of the Poor: vol. 1: Cheetham Overseers, Towship of Cheetham 1848–52’, entry 928, Archives of the Corporation of the City of Manchester, Local Studies Unit, Manchester Central Library, between the outbreak of the great famine in 1845 and the end of 1847, 300,000 Irish refugees arrived in Manchester. According to Werly, J., ‘Irish in Manchester 1832–49;, Irish Historical Studies, 18 (1973), p. 351,Google Scholar Manchester spent £22,390 on their relief in 1847 alone. Brit. Parl. Papers, Reports from Committees, vol. 7, pt. 1, 1854–5 [308], XIII,Google Scholar pt. 1, Report on Poor Removal, p. 245 estimated there were then, according to information received from the priests, 46,000 Irish labouring Catholics and commented that there were other Catholics from Lancashire and Yorkshire who ‘could not be classed with the Irish population’. The continuing educational problem is illustrated by E. Brotherton, Newspaper Cuttings, 1847–1870, Manchester and Salford Education Aid Society, Local Studies Unit, Manchester Central Library, no. 37, referring to a St. Patrick's school at Blackfriars about 1864 for 500 Catholic children, most of them Irish, run by Protestants and offering secular education only. The cutting also refers to St. Ann's Catholic School as having to close because of competition from a free Protestant school.
85 Select Committee Report, p. 129.
86 Bright, Athenaeum Addresses, p. 42.
87 LPSA: Plan, p. 2.
88 Select Committee Report, p. 129.
