Report of the Commissioner Appointed Under the Provisions of the ACT 5 & 6 Vict. C. 99 to Inquire Into the State of the Population in the Mining Districts (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857 Excerpt: ...this a far better state of things, and one which similar pains might make more common elsewhere. By tables with which I-was kindly furnished by the proprietors of two large and neighbouring works in Yorkshire, near Barnsley, I find that at the Gawler Hall Colliery, out of 76 " hurriers," (boys and young men chiefly under 20, ) 54 could not write, although 30 out of that number had been at dayschool from one to three and some for four years. Of the 55 men at the same colliery, 23 were unable to write. Of the whole, 33, or one-fourth were unable to read. At the Oaks Colliery, out of 316 men and boys, 152, or nearly one-half were unable either to read or write. The following is the evidence of the schoolmasters at the Middleton Oollieries near Leeds, at the Park Gate Ironworks near Rotherham, and at the Low Moor Ironworks near Bradford; all localities where much interest has been always shown by the employers in the general welfare and the education of the Workpeople. _ Mr. J. Atha, Sclwolmaster, Middleton. I have kept this school four years. The average attendance has been about sixty boys and girls; of these, about forty boys are the sons of colliers. Some leave between eight and nine, others about nine, to go to the mills. The rest stay till about ten, and can then read tolerably well and write simple words from dictationythey write small hand in their copy-books. In cyphering, those in my first class at present are in reduction; they can do the compound rules pretty well. Nearly all these collier boys come to the Sunday school after they leave the day-school. I find they have generally gone back in their reading, some so much so as to read with difliculty, and not to understand what they read. There is no evening-school. I have met with a few in...