Why was Cecilia in an industrial school?
Q My great great grandmother Cecilia cochrane was a scholar at the Sunderland Girls’ Industrial School, 6 Tatham Street. After Cecilia, her mother Catherine had nine children between 1859 and 1871, four of whom died in infancy. Her stepfather David was a coal miner, and the family moved around between Scotland and the north-east. Where can I find an admissions register that might tell me why she was at the school?
Linda Kaden
A In the 1850s, there was growing support for the creation of a national system of reformatory schools as an alternative to prison for convicted juvenile offenders. Prototype establishments were set up by pioneers, such as Mary Carpenter in Bristol, who believed that reformatory inmates should not be forced to work, that recreation and sport should be provided, and that corporal punishment should be kept to a minimum.
Child vagrants could be placed in a cer tified industrial school
In 1854, the Reformatory School Act enabled voluntary-run establishments to be ‘certified’ (licensed) by the inspector of prisons. Convicted juvenile offenders under 16 could be pardoned on condition that they enter a certified reformatory school for two to five years after spending up to 14 days in prison.
A campaign to remove the prison requirement for those entering reformatories led to proposals for an alternative institution, the certified industrial school (CIS), aimed at a younger age group and without the prison element. The resulting 1857 Industrial Schools Act provided that children aged 7-14 who had been convicted of vagrancy could be placed in a CIS until they were 16. A further Act in 1861 widened its scope to include: those found begging, wandering and homeless, or frequenting with thieves; those whose parents could not control them; and under-12s who had committed an imprisonable offence.
Entry into both types of establishment was normally through a local magistrates’ court, or petty sessions, but some also received voluntary cases that were
