parts of the town, led to the opening of a Free School in Stafford street by Mrs. Dr. T. Burns and other ladies, and to a like effort in Pelichet Bay. Independently of these schools, however, the Government made every possible endeavour to ensure the proper education of children whose parents were too poor to pay school fees—first, by empowering school committees to remit in such cases the whole or a portion of the fees; and secondly, by providing for the payment by the School Board of 10s. per annum for every child taught gratuitously at the District Schools.
But while the Free Schools were of incalculable advantage to the young people received into them, they did not meet the need of a growing class of children who had the misfortune to be under the control, and thereby subject to the vicious example, of drunken and profligate parents or so-called guardians. In 1866 there were known to be over 100 such children in Dunedin and suburbs, many of whose names had appeared in the criminal records of the province. Referring to this startling fact, Dr. Hislop, in his report to the Hon. T. Dick, chairman of the Education Board, said: "It has become a question of the greatest urgency and importance what steps are to be taken on behalf of these unfortunates. The Free Schools do not at all meet their case; for no real good can be expected from their attendance at an ordinary day school, however efficiently conducted, as long as they are exposed to the counteracting and degrading influences of wicked and criminal home or street example and associations. In fact, the presence of those children in our ordinary day schools is greatly to be deprecated, as it cannot fail to exert a most pernicious influence on the children of honest and respectable parents; and unless means are taken to separate them entirely from their profligate relatives, and to renovate and raise their moral nature, their mere instruction and progress in secular learning may be productive of evil rather than of good to the community in after years."
It was the condition of these poor children that suggested to Mr. St. John Branigan, Commissioner of Police, in consultation with Dr. Hislop and Mr. (now Sir) J. Vogel, at that time Provincial Treasurer, the necessity for an Industrial School "for the proper education and training of vagrant and neglected children, under entire seclusion from their profligate relatives
