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CARPENTER — CARPETS
izing power. In 1848 the closing of their own private school gave Miss Carpenter more leisure for philanthropic and literary work. She published a memoir of Dr Tuckerman and a series of articles on ragged schools which appeared in the Inquirer, and were afterwards collected in book form. This was followed in 1851 by Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes, and for Juvenile Offenders. She sketched out three classes of schools as urgently needed—(1) Good free day-schools. (2) Feeding industrial schools. (3) Reformatory schools. This book drew public attention to her work, and from that time onwards she was drawn into personal intercourse with leading thinkers and workers. She was consulted in the drafting of educational Bills, and invited to give evidence before House of Commons committees. To test the practical value of her theories, she herself started a reformatory school at Bristol, and in 1852 she published Juvenile Delinquents, their Condition and Treatment, which largely helped on the passing of the Juvenile Offenders Act in 1854. Now that the principle of reformatory schools was established, Miss Carpenter returned to her plea for free day-schools, contending that the ragged schools were entitled to pecuniary aid from the annual parliamentary grant. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association (1860) she read a paper on this subject, and, mainly owing to her instigation, a conference on ragged schools in relation to Government grants for education was held at Birmingham, 1861. In 1866 Miss Carpenter was at last able to carry out a longcherished plan of visiting India, where she found herself an honoured guest. She visited Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, inaugurated the Bengal Social Science Association, and drew up a memorial to the Governor-General dealing with female education, reformatory schools, and the state of the gaols. This visit was followed by others in 1868 and 1869. Her attempt to found a female normal school was unsuccessful at the time, owing to the inadequate previous education of the women, but afterwards such colleges were founded by Government. A start, however, was made with a model Hindu girls’ school, and here she had the co-operation of native gentlemen. Her last visit to India took place in 1875, two years before her death, when she had the satisfaction of seeing many of her schemes successfully established. At the meeting of the Prison Congress in 1872 she read a paper on “ Women’s Work in the Reformation of Women Convicts.” Her work now began to attract attention abroad. Princess Alice summoned her to Darmstadt to help to organize a Women’s Congress. Thence she went to Neufchatel to study the prison system of Dr Guillaume, and in 1873 to America, where she was enthusiastically received. Miss Carpenter watched with interest the increased activity of women during the busy ’seventies. She warmly supported the movement for their higher education, and herself signed the memorial to the University of London in favour of admitting them to medical degrees. She died at Bristol on 14th June 1877, having lived to see the accomplishment of nearly all the reforms for which she had worked and hoped. (a. z.) Carpenter, William Benjamin (18131885), English physiologist and naturalist, was born at Exeter on 29th October 1813. He was the eldest son of Dr Lant Carpenter, the celebrated Unitarian minister, and brother of the well-known philanthropist, Mary Carpenter. His bent, like that of Huxley and Herbert Spencer, was towards engineering, but, as with Huxley in his early years, medicine was his destiny. After study under the family doctor, with whom he visited the Wbst Indies, Carpenter attended medical classes at University College,
London, and then went to Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M.D. in 1839. The subject of his graduation thesis “ The Physiological Inferences to be Deduced from the Structure of the Nervous System of Invertebrated Animals,’’ indicates a line of research which had fruition in his Principles of General and Comparative Physiology. His work in comparative neurology was recognized in 1844 by his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and that body awarded him a Royal medal in 1861. His appointment as Fullerian Professor of Physiology in the Royal Institution in 1845 enabled him to exhibit his powers as a teacher and lecturer, his gift of ready speech and luminous interpretation placing him in the front rank of exponents, at a time when the popularization of science was in its infancy. His manifold labours as investigator, author, editor, demonstrator, and lecturer knew no cessation through life; but in assessing the value of his work, prominence should be given to his researches in marine zoology, notably in the lower organisms, as Foraminifera and Crinoids, among the latter being the exquisite feather-star (Comatula rosacea), the peculiar form of the nervous system of which he discovered. These researches gave an impetus to deep-sea exploration, an outcome of which was in 1868 the Lightning, and, later, the more famous Challenger, expedition. He took a keen and laborious interest in the evidence adduced by Canadian geologists as to the organic nature of the structure known as Eozoon Canadense, discovered in the Laurentian strata, and at the time of his death had nearly finished a monograph on the subject, defending the now discredited theory of the animal origin of that deposit. He was an adept in the use of the microscope, and his popular treatise on that instrument has stimulated a host of observers to the use of the “added sense” with which it has endowed man. In 1856 Carpenter became Registrar of the University of London, and held the office for twenty-three years; for his services to education generally he was made a C.B. Biologist as he was, Carpenter nevertheless made reservations as to the extension of the doctrine of evolution to man’s intellectual and spiritual nature. In his Principles of Mental Physiology he asserted both the freedom of the will and the existence of the “ Ego,’’ and one of his last public engagements was the reading of a paper in support of miracles. He died in London, from injuries occasioned by the accidental upsetting of a spirit-lamp, on 19th November 1885. (E- CL) Carpets.—The artistic revival of recent years in Great Britain has had a considerable influence upon the design and colouring of carpets. The pioneer in this, as in so many other decorative reforms, was William Morris. His treatment of the Kidderminster fabric was a revelation of its possibilities, but he was perhaps scarcely so successful in his “Hammersmith” carpets, on account of the coarseness of the fabric, while he was also hampered by his self-imposed rules for colouring, by no means always in accordance with principles derived from the best work of the East. Other leading decorative artists have until lately held aloof from carpetdesigning, probably deterred by its difficulties and. by want of technical knowledge. Instruction on this subject had not been given at art schools, so that designs produced by students who lacked separate training under manufacturers have usually been unpractical and useless. Full information as to technical conditions is now avai able, and has to some extent been utilized. Several eminent- decorative artists have entered the field, but while they avoid the faults of many Hade productions, and while their work has much distinction and character,
