Various - Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 702

Forty years ago or thereabouts, we happened to make a visit to an hospital for pauper orphan children in a large city. It was a dismal spectacle. The little creatures, seated on forms, and dressed in a poor garb, had a woe-begone appearance. Their faces were pallid, and a number of them had sore eyes. The sentiment which arose in our mind was that the whole affair was unnatural, and morally and physically unwholesome. Here was a spacious mansion kept up for the accommodation of some hundreds of poor children whom destiny had deprived of their parents. Treated well, as it was thought, according to regulations, they were evidently unhappy, and pined for that species of freedom which is only to be obtained by children brought up within the domestic circle.

Since that time, so far as Scotland is concerned, there has been a considerable revolution in the matter of juvenile pauper management. The plan of immuring a horde of orphan pauper children in large buildings under the charge of nurses and teachers is pretty generally abandoned, not so much on the score of economy as of common-sense. Nature has clearly ordained that children are to be reared, instructed, and familiarised with the world under the direct charge and responsibility of their parents. That has been the way since the beginning, and it will be so till the end of time. The family system is the foundation of everything that is valued in our institutions. Our whole structure of society rests on it. Any attempt to rear children artificially on a wholesale principle, is necessarily defective, will prove abortive, and be attended, one way and another, with bad effects.

Unfortunately there are exceptions to a sweeping rule. There can be no family system where parents are removed by death, or what is more dreadful, where the parents are so grossly dissolute as to be unfitted for their appropriate duties. In either case arises the question as to what is to be done with children who are so haplessly thrown on public charity. An answer to this brings us to the root of the matter. If at all possible, we must find foster-parents who will do the duty of real ones to the children assigned under proper precautions to their custody. We are aware that this may not be always practicable, and where it is not, the grouping of children in some kind of asylum must still be perpetuated. Some countries appear to be more favourable than others to the plan of boarding out children with foster-parents. For the plan to have a chance of success, there must be a prevalent intelligence, with a sense of moral responsibilities, and that special condition as concerns means of livelihood which would induce a family to board a child alien to them in name and birth.

In certain parts of Scotland, the plan of boarding out pauper children has been so peculiarly successful, that we purpose to give some account of it. The children so treated are not all orphans; some are children deserted by worthless parents; some are the children of sick, infirm, or lunatic parents; some are the children of parents who are in prison or are convicts. In all cases, deep considerations of humanity have guided the poor-law authorities in dealing with them. Throughout Scotland at 1st January 1875, the number of pauper children boarded out was 4512, among whom there was nearly an equality of boys and girls. The cost of each did not exceed ten pounds per annum; that is to say, for the sum of about four shillings a week a child is respectably brought up in the house of a foster-parent. This sum covers cost of bed and board, school fees, and extras of all kinds. The child participates in the ordinary meals of the family; it goes to the nearest school with its companions, plays about with them, and acquires a knowledge of country life along with a love of natural scenery. Instead of being confined in a dull mansion under a dismal routine of discipline, with the chance of acquiring bad or at least narrow notions, the boarded-out child grows up a stout country lad or lass, and is endued with such general intelligence as is likely to pertain to the class amidst whom he or she moves. By these means, the boarded-out pauper children cease to be paupers. Forgetting their unfortunate origin, they drop insensibly into the general population. The catastrophe of orphanism or deserted infancy is robbed of its horrors. Surely, this must be deemed one of the greatest triumphs of humanity.

Of course, the thing could not be done unless under a scrupulous system of management and general supervision. The parochial board, with whom rests the administration, needs to exercise the greatest vigilance in selecting families to whom children may be assigned. Agricultural labourers and small shopkeepers in country villages are, we believe, considered to be eligible, should character and everything else bear investigation. Nor, though boarded out, are the children lost sight of by the poor-law authorities. They are subject to the visits of Inspectors, who report on their condition. In a number of cases, the children are boarded with relatives, who may be supposed to take some special interest in them, and are not disinclined to accept a lesser board than would have to be paid to strangers. Yet the parochial boards do not appear to view with favour the practice of boarding children with relatives who are perhaps aged and infirm, or are in receipt of parochial relief on their own account. The person thoroughly suitable should be in middle life, engaged in active duties, and fit to act the part of a foster-parent. For the success of his endeavours he should be aided in every reasonable way. The child put under his charge must not wear clothes bearing the pauper stamp, but be dressed like the other children in the place. An Inspector reports on the good effects produced by the removal of pauper uniform. 'The hang-dog look of pauperism gradually disappeared from the faces of the children – they saw themselves treated as other children, and soon became as others.'

In the Reports of the Inspectors generally, we have many pleasing instances of the social value of the boarding-out system. The significant fact strongly brought out is that the children do not return to pauperism. 'When they leave school, the boys learn trades or become farm-servants, and the girls go to service like other country girls, and many of them get respectably married. When the children go to service, the family relationship is still kept up, and they return to their foster-parents as other children do to their homes, bringing at term-times, when they get their wages, presents of tea and sugar, articles of clothing, and other tokens of affectionate regard.' We learn that in some cases the children adopt the name of the family with whom they are boarded, and as a rule they are not distinguishable from the younger members of the family. Did our space permit, many valuable particulars could be added. Those who take an interest in this important question in social economics may be referred to an able and handy digest, 'Pauperism and the Boarding-out of Pauper Children in Scotland, by John Skelton, Advocate' (Blackwood and Sons, 1877). The system, it is to be observed, bears no resemblance to that vicious practice of farming-out children, which has been productive of so much demoralisation and infant mortality. In the boarding-out of pauper children as described in the work of Mr Skelton, and now very general in Scotland, the care that is taken in selecting foster-parents, and the constant supervision to which they are subjected, give to the system its peculiar value. Whether such a system would be applicable to all parts of the United Kingdom is perhaps doubtful. It is at any rate important to know that in Scotland it has been eminently successful, and is the theme of praise by authorities on the subject. The Inspector of the poor of Glasgow tells us that it has been in use in that city for upwards of a hundred years. How suggestive is this remarkable fact – how curious to find that in this as in some other valued public institutions, a thing may flourish and be spoken of approvingly for upwards of a century in one end of Great Britain, and yet be hardly known in another, or if known, be only treated with scepticism and indifference.