Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-lrf7s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-30T20:21:31.622Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Education Reforms for the Enlisted Man in the Army of Victorian England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Richard L. Blanco
Richard L. Blanco*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Frostburg State College, Maryland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The british army, one of the most conservative institutions in Victorian England, smugly resisted military reforms after the defeat of Napoleon I by the Duke of Wellington in 1815. Not until the crisis of the Crimean War (1854-1856) did England even consider improving her corroded Army which was now struggling desperately to maintain an invasion foothold at Sebastapol in Russia's Crimean Peninsular. Only then, and under a torrent of public criticism, did the Army initiate improvements that were characteristic of the age of reform. Typical of these reforms were experiments in education that would elevate the status of the lowly enlisted man and raise his degree of literacy.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Summer 1966 , pp. 61 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 History of Education Quarterly 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. The most vivid descriptions of repeated fiascos by the Army in the Crimean campaign are in Report from the Select Committee on the Army Before Sebastopol, with Proceedings, Sessional Papers (House of Commons), IX, Parts I and III (1854-1855).Google Scholar

2. Halévy, Elie, A History of the English People (London: Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1949), I, 84–85.Google Scholar

3. Nightingale, Florence, Army Sanitary Administration and Its Reform Under the Late Lord Herbert (London: M'Corquodale and Company, 1862), p. 3.Google Scholar

4. The London Times, November 28, 1854, p. 6, and General Adye, John Sir, Recollections of a Military Life (London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1895), p. 69.Google Scholar

5. Hansard, T. C., Parliamentary Debates 3d Series, CXXIV, 679–81. As all subsequent references to these debates are to the 3d Series, the citations will refer simply to Hansard, volume number and page. For commentaries on the education level of the Army before 1854, see the Westminster Review, LXIII (1855), 193–208, and the Edinburgh Review, C (1854), 534-62.Google Scholar

6. Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, I (1858), 301.Google Scholar

7. Marshal, Field Wolseley, Viscount, The Story of a Soldier's Life (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903), I, 23.Google Scholar

8. Manchester Guardian, February 15, 1854, p. 4.Google Scholar

9. Cited in Humphrey Ward, Thomas (ed.), The Reign of Victoria (London: John Murray, 1921), I, 161.Google Scholar

10. Manchester Guardian, November 3, 1855, p. 2, and Westminster Review, LXIII (1855), 193.Google Scholar

11. Blackwood's Edinburgh Review, LXXXV (1859), 271.Google Scholar

12. Examiner, December 30, 1854, p. 829; Manchester Guardian, January 6, 1855, p. 6; and Times, January 2, 1855, p. 6.Google Scholar

13. Hansard, CXXXVI, 980–86 and 1172–78.Google Scholar

14. Although the topic of Army reforms and particularly educational reforms for the enlisted man was a topic of intense concern in the 1850's, the only published account on the medical aspect alone is in Cecil Woodham-Smith, Florence Nightingale, 1820–1910 (London: Constable and Company, Ltd., 1950).Google Scholar

15. The London Times, March 8, 1855, p. 6, and Fraser's, LI (1855), 241.Google Scholar

16. Examiner, April 11, 1857, p. 225. See also the Report of the Commission on Education, Sessional Papers (House of Commons), XXI, Part I (1861), 416.Google Scholar

17. Trevelyan, G. M., British History in the Nineteenth Century and After, 1782–1919 (2d ed.; London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937), p. 164.Google Scholar

18. “We are progressing in military matters with the spirit of the age,” said the Duke of Cambridge, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and since “every class of society had advanced in its ideas of comfort and accommodation, it would be monstrous to suppose that the soldier alone should be left in the state in which he formerly was.” Hansard, CXLIX, 798.Google Scholar

19. Woodward, E. L., The Age of Reform, 1815–1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), p. 464.Google Scholar

20. Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Arts, XXI (1866), 287.Google Scholar

21. Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, XXXIII (1955), 7. By 1861 the Duke of York's School for Army Orphans was training over 500 boys as musicians, drummers, fifers, and shoemakers. See the Report of the Commission on Education, op. cit., p. 416.Google Scholar

22. Curtis, Steven J., History of Education in Great Britain (4th ed.; London: University Tutorial Press, 1957), pp. 572–73. The Schoolmasters were trained for two years at Chelsea, attached to regiments, and placed under the supervision of regimental chaplains. See Hawkins, Major T. K. and Brimble, L. F. F., Adult Education, the Record of the British Army (London: The MacMillan Company, Ltd., 1947), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

23. Brimble, Hawkins, and op. cit. p. 30. The Duke of York, writes Curtis, believed that “a barracks library was unnecessary and objectionable.” Curtis, op. cit., p. 573.Google Scholar

24. These Schoolmasters used the famous Monotorial System used in “private” schools. Older students attempted to educate younger students in the Army's “infant schools” (where fundamentals were taught), and “industrial schools” (where girls learned to sew).Google Scholar

25. Curtis, op. cit., pp. 573–75.Google Scholar

26. Cited in Hansard, CXXXV, 1284–85. See also Stanmore, Lord, Sidney Herbert, Lord Herbert of Lea (London: John Murray, 1906), II, 375-76, and Brimble, Hawkins, and op. cit., p. 14.Google Scholar

27. Hansard, CXXIV, 674–75.Google Scholar

28. Hawkins and Brimble, op. cit., p. 14.Google Scholar

29. “It must be well understood,” wrote the Duke of Cambridge, for the benefit of the Army, “that those men who avail themselves most intelligently of the means of improvement within their reach will generally be preferred.” Report of the Commission on Education, op. cit., p. 417.Google Scholar

30. All the Year Round, XIII (1864), 401.Google Scholar

31. Hansard, CXXXVI, 1542–43.Google Scholar

32. For a thorough discussion of Army administrative reforms with particular emphasis on the abolition of the purchase of commissions, see Erickson, Arvel B., Edward T. Cardwell: Peelite (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1959).Google Scholar

33. The Council was composed of one general, two colonels, and one Fellow of the Royal Society. See Hawkins and Brimble, op. cit., p. 424.Google Scholar

34. The Schoolmasters were reclassified into four grades leading to Warrant Officer. See the Report of the Commission on Education, op. cit., p. 424.Google Scholar

35. The Examiner (June 4, 1859) cited Lefroy's system of classification that was later used by the Council of Military Education:Google Scholar

36. Report of the Council of Military Education, Sessional Papers (House of Commons), XXII (1862), 393.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., pp. 394, 405. The Army also had trade schools for boys at the Royal Arsenal and Royal Carriage Department at Woolwich. See the Report of the Commission on Education, op. cit., p. 422.Google Scholar

38. Cited in the Report of the Council of Military Education, op. cit., p. 485.Google Scholar

39. Cited in the Report of the Commission on Education, op. cit., p. 427.Google Scholar

40. All the Year Round, XIII (1864), 401.Google Scholar

41. Manchester Guardian, March 7, 1865, p. 4.Google Scholar

42. Fourth Report of the Council of Military Education, Sessional Papers (House of Commons), XLIV (1866), 146.Google Scholar

43. Third Report on the Council of Military Education, Sessional Papers (House of Commons), XLIV (1865), 39.Google Scholar

44. All the Year Round, XIII (1864), 400.Google Scholar