undoubtedly the education of the children.[1] The separation of the young from all possible contamination from those who are already trained in vice is one of the imperative duties of all who have the management of the poor in their hands; and this seems to be a point on which some additional legislation is called for. The question has its difficulties, but they are not such as should prevent the enforcing of some compulsory regulations with regard to it. The chief difficulty in the case of the entire separation of schools from the workhouse, seems to lie in providing for the education of the children who may enter the house with their parents for a short time. Yet it is as important to separate those children who are undergoing a course of systematic training in the schools from the children of the workhouse, as from the adults. The children of low and vicious parents who may enter for a temporary refuge would be a source of the greatest mischief, and undo much of the influence which had in the course of time been gained over the others. If there must be a choice between the two, it would be better to leave the few children without the regular instruction of a school, than to subject numbers to the evils of an education within the workhouse walls, and the many injurious influences which must arise from such a position. There is abundant evidence at all events as to the necessity of a separation in the case of unions in large towns. In Mrs. Austin's Two Letters on Girls' Schools and on the Training of Working Women, a very strong opinion is expressed on this point, and an interesting account given of the successful working of an attempt which has been carried on for some years in connexion with the Norwich workhouse. The advocates of these schools or "homes," as they are called, have had a great struggle both in establishing and maintaining them, and an alteration in the law which would make such separate schools compulsory, would be gladly hailed by them. Want of sufficient accommodation in the workhouse led to the establishment of these schools in the years 1850 and 1853, and the following is an extract containing an account of them by the gentleman with whom the plan originated:—[2]
"Many years since I was deeply impressed with the importance of industrial training for the children of my poor neighbours, especially for those who inhabited our workhouse. The system to which they were subjected was injurious to their bodily health, deleterious to their mental vigour, fatal to their souls' salvation … Against the cost of the home we must place the cost of the same children in the workhouse; from the former they invariably go to service; we could dispose of twice the number. From the latter they would never go,
