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The Reports on the Education of the Lower Orders were published between 1816 and 1819 by a select committee of the house of commons (parliament of the United Kingdom) under the chairmanship of Henry Brougham. It comprehensively investigated the provision of education for poor working class children during the early 19th century. The reports exposed the inadequate provision of schooling and the abuses of charitable funds given for educating the poor. It was eventually used to justify the first state intervention into English and Welsh education in 1833 when the treasury started to help fund the badly needed construction of new school-houses through an annual grant. It also started a parliamentary commission of inquiry into charitable foundations which eventually led to formation of present day charities commission.

Background
In the early 19th century, most poor working class children were expected to work in factories or on farms at a very young age so received little or no education. In this environment, a debate was held in Society on whether the state should intervene and promote universal education, for instance along the lines of the Prussian education system, the case for such state intervention was comprehensively articulated by philosophers-of-the-age in their major works such as Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations), La Chalotais (Essay on National Education) and Tom Paine (Rights of Man). Education for the children of the poor was mainly provided by charities, led by two charitable societies: - the British & Foreign School Society and the Anglican National Society, who both advocated the use of the Monitorial System as a cheap and effective method to teach poor children. Although a degree of state support for education existed in Scotland through the 18th century, there was none in England & Wales, hence Samuel Whitbread, a founder of the British & Foreign School Society submitted to parliament the Parochial Schools Bill in 1807 which tried to extend a similar system to the rest of Great Britain, this was blocked in parliament with the following arguments used to oppose the bill: -

Although these arguments were used to successfully block this bill, it was clear from the parliamentary debate that a general sympathy had emerged in parliament for something to be done to improve education for poor children.
 * Minimal State; - There existed a deep rooted idea that the state should not interfere in peoples live including the provision of education which should be left  to the churches, charities and private schools.
 * Subservience; - It was thought that educating the working class would cause unrest, whereas the uneducated working class were more accepting of their place in society and their poor living and working conditions
 * Taxes; - Landowners and factory owners were against being forced to pay rates (taxes) for education, they argued this should be funded by benevolent voluntary donations
 * Secularisation; - The Anglican church was concerned that the state would eventually introduce secular education, taking away churches sway over education and so undermining the Anglican faith in future generations
 * Non-Conformists; - Non-conformists were concerned that state provided education would become dominated by Anglican denominational teaching, undermining their faiths for future generations

Parliamentary inquiry
After Whitbread’s death by suicide in 1815, Henry Brougham who was also on the Lancastrian committee supporting the British & Foreign School Society, became the new de facto leader of the parliamentary group endeavouring to improve education for poor children. Subsequently in 1816, Brougham secured the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the education of the lower orders of the metropolis (London) under his chairmanship with the following remit: -

"'To consider what may be fit to be done with respect to the children of paupers who shall be found begging in the streets in and near the metropolis, or who shall be carried out by persons asking for charity, and whose parents, or other persons who they accompany, have not sent such children to any of the schools provided for the education of poor children.'"

The committee was renewed on 22 May 1817 but were unable to continue their inquiries and then renewed again on 05 March 1818, when the committee's remit was extended from London to the whole of England & Wales, it was then further extended to include Scotland on 25th May 1818.

Membership of the committee
The membership of the committee expanded considerably over time in line with its expansion of scope, at the end of its tenure in 1818, it consisted of the following: -• # Henry Brougham (Whig MP for Winchelsea)

• # Sir Samuel Romilly (Whig MP for Arundel)

• # Sir James Mackintosh (Whig MP for Nairnshire)

• # Henry Grey Bennett (Whig MP for Shrewsbury)

• # Robert Gordon (Whig MP for Wareham)

• # Thomas Babington (Independent MP for Leicester)

• # Joseph Butterworth (Independent MP for Coventry)

• # John Henry Smyth (Whig MP for Cambridge Univ.)

• # John Smith (Tory MP for Midhurst)

• # William Wilberforce (Independent MP for Bramber)

• # William Lamb (Whig MP for Peterborough)

• # Sir W. Curtis (Tory MP for City of London)

• # Sir James Shaw (Tory MP for City of London),

• # Sir Francis Burdett (Whig MP for Westminster)

• # Charles Calvert (Whig MP for Southwark)

• # Charles Barclay (Tory MP for Southwark)

• # Lord Ossulton (Whig MP for Knareborough)

• # Sir Ronald Fergusson (Whig MP for Dysart Burghs)

• # Sir Henry Parnell (Whig MP for Queens County)

• # Mr. George HoIford (Tory MP for Dungannon)

• # The Marquess of Tavistock (Whig MP for Bedfordshire)

• # Sir Thomas Dyke-Acland (Independent MP for Devon)

• # John Atkins (Tory MP for City of London)

• # Henry Wrottesley (Tory MP for Brackley)

• # Abel Smith (Whig MP for Wendover)

• # Robert Abercromby (Independent MP for Banffshire)

• # John Warre (Independent MP for Lostwithiel)

• # Frederick Douglas (Independent MP for Banbury)

• # Ralph Sheldon (Independent MP for Wilton)

• # Thomas Baring (Tory MP for Wycombe)

• # Matthew Wood (Whig MP for City of London)

• # John Lambton (Radical Whig MP for Durham)

• # Charles Grant (Tory MP for Inverness-shire)

• # William Douglas (Independent MP for Dumfries Burghs)

• # Lord Advocate of Scotland (Independent MP for Anstruther Easter Burghs)

• # Alexander Boswell (Independent MP for Plympton Erle)

• # James Hunter Blair (Independent MP for Wigtownshire)

• # Lord Binning (Tory MP for Rochester)

• # Sir James Graham (Whig MP for Kingston upon Hull)After the full impact of the select committee had become apparent, government accusations were made in parliament by Robert Peel in 1819, that the committee had been packed by opposition Whigs and Independents, whereas MPs who normally voted with the Tory government had been under represented. The Whig members were indeed of high calibre as many went onto higher ministerial offices when a Whig government eventually replaced the Tories in 1830, those members were: - Henry Brougham, William Lamb, John Lambton Henry Parnell, The Marquess of Tavistock, and Sir James Graham. The Tories on the other hand had no ministers, senior figures or other notable representatives who would attain high office except Lord Binning who only joined the committee at a very late stage.

Sources for the inquiries


The committee gathered information from the following sources: -

Responses to questionnaires from the committee Charitable income assessment Results from previous surveys and field studies
 * In 1816, questionnaires were sent out through a circular letter to a sample of charity schools in London.
 * In 1818, a refined questionnaire was sent out to the clergy of the 12,000 parishes in England & Wales, with replies received from 11,800. The returns were compiled into the fifteen hundred page, digest of parochial returns with the help of two Barristers of the Court of Chancery, this has become a major historical source today,  the extract for the county of Rutland exemplifies their level of detail.
 * The Return of Charitable Donations Act of 1786 obliged parishes to provide accurate figures on both poor law expenditure and charitable payments to the poor during the previous three years, these were known as the Gilbert Returns. On 17th June 1816, the poor return office in Whitehall responded to a request by the committee by providing the annual donations made to each school charity in the London area, consisting of the counties of Middlesex and Surrey, plus a summary for the surrounding home counties of Bedford, Kent and Berkshire.
 * The inquiries also obtained information on the levels of charitable donations and presence of endowments from the returns to the questionnaires.

Interviews
 * Door to door inquiries had been carried out by various organisations in certain poor districts, these were used to estimate the number of poor children who received no education, the largest surveys were by: - the Soup Institute in Spitalfields, the West London Lancastrian Society in Covent Garden, the Southwark School Auxiliary Society in Southwark, and the East London Auxiliary Sunday School Union Society in East London.


 * The main source of information for the reports was interviews with a wide variety of individuals involved in the provision of education for poor children, such as schoolmasters and treasurers of the charitable societies providing education.  In particular, Brougham already had an association with the West London Lancastrian Association and the British & Foreign School Society through his work on the Lancastrian Committee and their representatives were interviewed extensively.  These interviews were documented in the minutes of evidence of the inquiry.

Unsolicited approaches

Documentation
 * The inquiry generated a great a deal of public awareness as the committee and its members publicised the abuses at charities, this publicity in itself resulted in a large number of unsolicited letters and petitions from the public informing the committee of further abuses.


 * Educational charities supplied example statutes, deeds of gifts and charters to the committee, of particular note was the statutes of Eton and both the college's of St. Johns and Trinity of Cambridge University.
 * As another example, the Bull Unigenitus was supplied as evidence of the sensitivity of the Roman Catholic church to the religious education of their children.

Reports
The following reports were submitted to the House of Commons by the select committee then subsequently published: - The key findings were documented in the third and final report of the 1818 committee. In addition, in order to publicise the charitable abuses which the select committee had discovered, Brougham wrote an open public letter with an appendix to Romilly on 20th August 1818 prior to the printing & distribution of the 1818 reports.

Charities
Education for poor children was mostly funded by charitable trusts, unfortunately the committee found high levels of abuse and maladministration in those charities, in particular in managing valuable endowments bequeathed by benevolent donors to fund the charity schools, this took many forms: -
 * Neglect; - Trustees were often negligent or careless in their management of charitable estates, for instance in failing to increase rents, this was partly explained by the fact they normally acted on a voluntary basis and were unpaid.
 * Limited Powers; - Trustees often had not been granted powers by the trust deed to manage estates efficiently, for instance to sell under-developed land for building purposes then use the proceeds to buy higher yielding alternative property.
 * Surplus; - Often the income from an estate would expand well beyond the amounts needed for its charitable purpose resulting in large unutilised surplus funds, the trustees had not the powers to expand the original charitable purpose.
 * No Trustees; - Some trust deeds had no clauses for appointment of new trustees so on the last trustees death the endowment trust would become unmanaged whilst others fell into the same situation accidentally when the last trustee did not appoint a successor before their death.
 * Diversion; - The clergy who were often the trustees sometimes diverted funds earmarked for the poor to teaching middle-class ecclesiastical subjects such as Latin & Greek needed for future clergymen
 * Under-funding; - Trustees sometimes under-funded their charity schools by hiring unqualified teachers, allowing schools to fall into disrepair or taking on very few scholars then embezzling the majority of the endowment income for themselves.
 * Nepotism; - Trustees sometimes rented estates out to family or friends at much reduced rents or vastly extended leases hence dispossessing  the charity of income
 * Fraud; - Endowed assets were sometimes stolen through outright fraud.
 * Teachers;- Schoolmasters sometimes took funding including board and lodgings but taught no poor children in return.
 * Audits; - Charity auditors who were known as visitors were supposed to check that charitable trusts were acting appropriately, but some deeds never appointed visitors whilst in others, the visitors failed to carry out their duties.

These abuses were most prominently publicised through speeches in parliament, the reports of the inquiries and the public letter from Brougham to Romilly of 20th August 1818, where examples of charitable abuses were given for the following schools: - St. Bees, Winchester, Highgate, Pocklington, Brentwood, Mere, Spital, Yeovil, Huntingdon and Eton College. The 1818 committee further discovered that these abuses did not simply apply to charities for the education of the poor but extended to all educational charitable trusts including to those of the great public schools like Eton and the leading universities like Cambridge, furthermore the committee found anecdotal evidence that the abuses extended to all charities.

The basis for educating poor children
The very basic tenets for educating the poor had yet to become established in society so the committee presented the reasoning with evidence: -


 * 1) Poor parents universally desired and sought to educate their children, dispelling any misconceptions which may have suggested otherwise
 * 2) There was deemed to be a great public benefit to educating the poor, in particular to improve their morals through reading of scriptures & prayer books and to reduce crime.
 * 3) Charity schools were applauded for the education they provided poor children, and by using the efficient Monitorial System, testaments estimated that £400,000 per annum would be sufficient to educate all the poor children in England.
 * 4) Unfortunately, there was a substantive shortage of free or subsidised school places to educate poor children at charity schools.

Shortage of school-places
The committee endeavoured to quantify the shortage of both schools and school-places. The 1818 select committee had expanded its remit to include rural parishes, whereupon they discovered 3,500 of the 12,000 parishes with no school whatsoever. In addition, the extensive returns in the digest of parochial returns showed 650,000 children were educated, $\frac{1}{14}th $ to $\frac{1}{15}th $  of the total population of England. Edmund Halley's seminal demographic analysis of Breslau had suggested that the number of children of school-going age should be $\frac{1}{9}th $ of the population, meanwhile the digest of parochial returns suggested that in England this ratio should be closer to $\frac{1}{10}th $  of the population, making between $\frac{1}{9}th $  to $\frac{1}{10}th $  of the population (approx. one million) being children who required education, this meant that about 350,000 children were receiving no education.

Religious constraints
The majority of charitable schools were parochial schools including the largest charitable society, the Anglican National School Society, these schools would often only take children whose parents were members of the local church's congregation. In addition, these parochial schools had denominated religious teaching within their curriculum including the catechism of their theology which parents and clergy of other theologies would object to and refuse to send their children, so for instance Roman Catholics, Protestant Dissenters & Jews may refuse to send their children to an Anglican school which taught the Anglican catechism. This was not necessarily a problem in urban areas where the large populations could support many schools of different faiths but in small rural parishes where it was only economical for a single school to exist, this prevented children of some faiths from receiving an education.

The committee further noted that in Scotland there was a greater degree of homogeneity between the faiths than in England, people being predominantly Calvinist and Presbyterian, especially in the rural parishes. This meant that the parish schools inclusively allowed all children to attend and parents were happy to learn the catechisms taught in their local school as they would differ little to those of their own churches. England though had a wider diversity with Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Dissenting Protestants and Jews differing to an extent where children were not sent across the faith divide to be educated. The unfortunate consequence was that the much admired Scottish Parish school system which provided universal education, could not be easily copied to England & Wales as Whitbread had discovered with the failure of the Parochial Bill in 1807.

Main plan of persuasion
The committee needed to get about 350,000 poor children in England & Wales off the streets and into charity schools, which did not have sufficient school-places. They aimed to achieve this by better using the existing resources in the charity school system rather than by introducing a new public school system which had been opposed previously because of resistance to new taxes and the desire to have a minimal state. Two elements were needed to better exploit the resources in the charity school system, firstly the income from charitable sources could be increased by ending the endemic neglect & abuses at charitable trusts, and secondly charity schools could more efficiently provision extra school-places by increasing the use of the Monitorial system, the mantra being quantity over quality.

To achieve this plan, the committee were inclined to persuade charitable trustees and school masters to act differently by inculcating new ideas to them, the committee had proven through their own inquiries how the mere act of inquiry had changed the way charitable trustees and schools operated, hence the committee proposed two separate parliamentary commissions to continue the process of engaging charitable trustees and schools throughout the country. One commission was to look into the workings of the charities and the other the workings of the schools, as the commission for charities has to tackle corruption, Brougham proposed a stronger commission of remunerated full time itinerant commissioners with the powers to subpoena witnesses, take evidence under oath and demand documents under penalty of fine or imprisonment.

Erection of schoolhouses
For charity schools, their main cost was the salaries of schoolmasters but by persuading more schools to adopt the Monitorial system of Andrew Bell & Joseph Lancaster, a much larger number of poor children could be educated for the same cost, the main drawback was the need for schoolhouses with hall sized classrooms needed for the large classes of the Monitorial system. Notwithstanding the need to re-model school buildings, there was a chronic shortage of schoolhouses and although charitable income was deemed sufficient for the ongoing expenses of charity schools, it was recognised that it was insufficient for the capital outlays needed to build new schoolhouses. The committee hence recommended that parliament should contribute to the construction of new school-houses. The committee left open two options for parliament on how these funds could be spent. Firstly, the monies could simply be spent with the two preeminent educational societies promoting the Monitorial system: - British & Foreign School Society and the Anglican National Society. Alternatively, the monies could additionally be directed to the mass of smaller, mainly parochial school societies but this would need Commissioners to agree terms, which invariably would have been to adopt the Monitorial system and to allow children of all denominations & faiths.

Removal of religious constraints
The other major act of persuasion needed was to coax all parochial schools to accept poor children of other faiths & denominations and to exempt such children from learning denominated catechisms and reading from the scriptures if it was religiously sensitive. This was only imperative in parishes which could only support a single school so children of all denominations needed to be able to attend that single school. This task of persuasion was to fall on the proposed parliamentary commission for the workings of the schools.

Rural parishes without schools
Unfortunately the committee also had to accept that this broad plan would not work in some rural parishes where there was no school, and the small populations meant charitable contributions were meagre and the economies of scale in the Monitorial system were unrealizable. The result was insufficient funds to educate the children of such rural parishes. So as an exception, the committee proposed to emulate the Scottish Parochial School system in these places by legislation so schools for rural parishes would be funded by taxation on the local landowners. As with Whitbread's Parochial Bill of 1807, the main issue once again was how to find a compromise acceptable to both the Anglican & Dissenting Protestant churches who were both strongly represented in parliament.

Charities
In March 1818, even as the 1818 committee continued its inquiries, Brougham moved the House of Commons for a Bill to appoint commissioners to inquire into the abuses in charities connected with the education of the poor in England & Wales. As the Bill made its passage through parliament, it was emasculated by amendments in the House of Lords which exempted universities, public schools and all charities with special visitors (charity auditors), in addition the proposed powers of the commissioners were curbed, but it was passed on 10th June 1818 (58 Geo. III). Through this period and afterwards, Brougham continued to petition for the strengthening of the commission and directed the 1818 committee to make controversial inquiries into the charitable foundations of Eton & Winchester public schools, and two colleges of Cambridge university, then the committee used the findings to argue for the commission to be strengthened. Brougham continued to use publicity through speeches in parliament, the publication of the reports and a public letter from Brougham to Romilly, to widely publicise the problems present in charities. The government bowed to this public pressure and both emancipated and expanded the remit of the Commission, starting in 1819 and continuing as the Commission was regularly revived.

The resulting commission became known as the Brougham Commission but neither Brougham or any member of the committee were originally appointed as commissioners by the Tory government, it was not until 1831 when the Whigs won office that Brougham was finally appointed onto the commission, subsequently in its final tenure 1835 - 1837, Brougham had the honour of being the Chief Commissioner and bringing a close to the work of the commission. The commissions' investigations were to take twenty years and resulted in a survey of nearly 30,000 charities, documented in forty volumes of reports, published in six parts between 1837 and 1840 which eventually cost £250,000. The Brougham Commission's final report recommended the establishment of a permanent charity commission, which Parliament eventually adopted albeit not until 1853.

As expected by the Inquiry, the Commission's investigatory process itself abated many evils in charity administration, mostly making it unnecessary to commence legal proceedings. Many trustees who had been ignorant of their duties or guilty of nonfeasance focused for the first time on their fiduciary obligations. This by itself improved the accountability of many charities. The Commissioners also offered technical assistance, mediated disputes, recommended changes in practices, offered suggestions and observations, and, where needed, occasionally threatened and browbeat trustees. Altogether 2,100 trusts were reformed or renovated in some way without legal retort. Unfortunately, 400 charities had to be referred to the Attorney General for prosecution, most of which were acted on, through the Court of Chancery. This left nearly ninety percent of those charities examined to be deemed to be in good order, albeit the mere existence of a charity commission and threat of inquiry was thought to have had salutary effect causing this good behaviour.

To summarise, the commission served several important purposes:- increasing the transparency of charitable trusts, bringing malefactors to justice, reaffirming the overwhelming basic probity of the sector, advancing the cause of law reform by highlighting the lack of clear principles to guide fiduciaries, and also demonstrating the dearth of effective mechanisms for accountability.

The original honorary Commissioners were: -


 * Charles Manners-Sutton, 1st Viscount Canterbury (Tory)
 * Dr. John Luxmoore, Bishop of St. Asaph,
 * Dr. John Parsons, Bishop of Peterborough
 * William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell (Tory)
 * Francis Ogilvy-Grant, 6th Earl of Seafield (Tory)
 * Charles Philip Yorke (Tory)

Educational provision
Whilst the recommendations on charities of the inquiry were generally accepted, they were mainly rejected in the field of general education. Brougham's initial proposed commission into general education was struck down by the House of Lords and the subsequent reiteration for such a commission in the final report was never accepted. This left no mechanism to increase the numbers of children educated by promoting the monitorial system, or to remove the religious constraints which were a barrier to education for some children.

Between 1820 and 1821, Brougham went on to make two attempts at implementing a state education system equivalent to the Scottish Parochial School system, but limited to the educationally deprived rural areas of England & Wales. These attempts were through the Education of the Poor bill, the first attempt in 1820 failed due to resistance to the additional tax burden from such a scheme. In the second attempt in 1821, Brougham removed the tax burden and instead proposed to utilise excess funds from charitable endowments through two separate bills. This time the attempt failed because Protestant Dissenters felt Brougham had made too many compromises to the Anglican church so opposed the bills. Just like Whitbread before him, Brougham had been unable to find a compromise which appeased both the established Anglican church and the non-conformists.

The only success was the third recommendation from the committee, for parliament to fund the construction of school-houses. Even this recommendation had to wait over a decade until after a Whig government had replaced the Tory administration, helpfully a complement of the new Whig ministers having previously served as members on the committee including Brougham himself who had become the Lord Chancellor. Even this change had proved difficult to implement since.