Document Three - Letter to Mr Manwaring

This is a report as to the state of the workhouses in Keighley and Bingley. The catalogue entry for it is transcribed below for you to look at. This shows that some children were sent out to work rather than be in the schoolroom.

MH 12/15160/367

Folios 569-571. Draft letter from the Poor Law Board to George Spencer, Clerk to the Guardians of the Keighley Poor Law Union on the subject of the reports on the Keighley and Bingley Workhouses by Mr Manwaring, Inspector.

They state that they have received the above reports from Manwaring following his last visits. They observe that at the Keighley Workhouse eight children go to work at a factory but attend the factory school, and that the remaining eight children are taught to read by an aged male pauper. Also that at the Bingley Workhouse three boys and two girls work at a factory but do not go to school at all, being what are called long timers. The Board do not object to children going to a factory for the purpose of being taught a trade by which they may in future earn their own living but it is necessary that they should receive the instruction required by Article 114 of the Consolidated General Order. They also think it not desirable to entrust the instruction of children in workhouses to a male pauper inmate as is the case at the Keighley Workhouse, and that some better arrangement for their education should be made.

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