Schools

This page summarises the provision of schools throughout the parish, some of which are described in detail on other pages.

Charity schools
From the start, individuals and charitable bodies established schools in the parish. See here for an account of Raine's Foundation institutions from 1719 onwards.

In 1781 the Middlesex Society for educating poor children in the Protestant Religion, and for Clothing them was created, and in 1784 set up a school for 100 children in New Road [later Cannon Street Road]. Dr Stephen Addington, a dissenting minister from an Independent chapel near the monument, and a tutor at the Academy in Mile End, was among those who preached sermons for the cause: The Divine Architect - on laying the first stone of a building for the use of the Middlesex Society... One guinea annually, or a single payment of ten guineas, constituted a governor who was entitled to nominate a child. By his will of 1828, William Game further endowed the school. However, four years later the trustees were having to draw on capital. The British Magazine of October 1832 reported

The fifty first Anniversary of this Institution was celebrated on Wednesday the 11th ult., when a numerous company of gentlemen dined together at the Mermaid Tavern, Hackney. George Byng, Esq., M.P., presided and was supported by A. K. Hutchinson, Esq., a candidate for the Tower Hamlets, C.B. Stutfield, Esq., a county magistrate, and other gentlemen of influence. The interests of the charity were ably advocated by the Chairman and other speakers, and a handsome sum was subscribed in the course of the evening. The school is one of the oldest Protestant charity schools established in this country and is situated in Cannon-street-road St George's-in-the-East; the number of children enjoying its advantages is 100 boys and 40 girls, who are clothed and instructed and attend public worship twice every Sabbath day, at Stepney New Church*. They were introduced to the company and their neat clean and healthy appearance was very gratifying. Since the establishment of this charity, upwards of 3000 children have shared in its benefits. The Report stated that the number of annual contributors had been greatly diminished latterly by deaths, removals, and other causes, in consequence of which the Committee had been compelled to draw largely on the funded stock of the Institution to meet its current expenses.

There was an appeal to donors' self-interest: it was pointed out that, once trained, the boys would be available for work in your manufactories by land or on board your commercial vessels by sea.
James Starke was the master in 1845; one Sunday evening, while at church with the boys, his house was robbed. Henry Crawcour, a Jewish surgeon, was tried but acquitted at the Old Bailey; the colourful account of the trial is here

* Stepney New Church was a proprietary chapel in New Road/Newark Street [Stepney Way] built by local residents between 1817-21, rebuilt 1892 as St Philip's Church, since 1988 the medical library and museum of the Royal London Hospital. In 1862, still short of subscribers and qualifying children, the school was refounded as a National school [see below] within the district of Christ Church, Watney Street, the minister chairing the Committee of Management, and the scholars worshipped there instead - until it became part of Raine's Foundation [see below].

In 1808 Gowers Walk Free School was founded - an early example of an 'industrial school'; its story is told here. In 1851 the Poor Law Guardians of St George-in-the-East established industrial schools at Plashet (then a rural setting) - more details here.

In 1811 the National Society was founded, with the aim of establishing a church school in every parish, and training and paying teachers for them. One of its founders was Joshua Watson, brother of the Rector of Hackney, who retired at the age of 43 having made a fortune in the wine trade and devoted the rest of his life to this cause. The original name was 'The National Society for the Promotion of the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church': its schools taught basic skills, and provided for moral and spiritual welfare by teaching the 'national religion', in its Anglican form. The founders' concern for the children of the newly-industrialised cities was both philanthropic and concerned for social order. Astonishingly, by 1851 (anticipating state provision by 20 years) they had established 12,000 schools in England and Wales. The National Society continues its work - our parish's honorary assistant priest and Rector's wife, Jan Ainsworth, is its General Secretary and Chief Education Officer of the Church of England - and celebrated its bicentenary in 2011; an updated history of the Society is forthcoming. In our parish, the schools of St George-in-the-East (Cannon Street Road), Christ Church Watney Street, St Mark Whitechapel, St Mary Johnson Street and St Paul Dock Street all benefitted from its support and funding - all but the last now gone.

There was also a Free Church society, which began in 1808 as 'The Society for Promoting the Lancasterian System for the Education of the Poor' (the monitorial system created by the Quaker Joseph Lancaster), which after they parted company with him became the British and Foreign School Society. But they did not build any schools in this parish. In an attempt to avoid denominationalism in RE [which was to become a recurring issue] a 'British Union' charity school was created in 1816 by the Joseph Fletcher (who presented evidence to the various parliamentary commissions on the education of the poor, and later wrote The history of the revival and progress of Independency in England, since the period of the Reformation (John Snow 1847)). This was in Farmer Street/Shakespeare Walk, Shadwell, serving Wapping, St. George's, Limehouse, Shadwell and Ratcliff. Specially-printed chapters from the Bible were used without comment by the teacher, and Fletcher seems to have obtained the co-operation of the Roman Catholic clergy. After two years Fletcher was reported that his school had a substantial number of dissenters and Roman Catholics as well as Church of England boys and girls; in 1819 the school had 550 pupils on its registers. See here for details of an application to this school where the parish registers had given a false date of birth.

Parliament introduced annual monitoring of the provision of, and charitable donations to, urban schools in 1815 by 'An Act for procuring returns relative to the Expense and Maintenance of the Poor in England, and also relative to the Highways'. The local return for the year ending 28 March 1815 was

Middlesex Society, for clothing and educating 100 Boys and 50 Girls; Tower Hamlet, for clothing and educating 40 Boys and 20 Girls; Pell-street School, for clothing and educating 40 Children; Roman Catholic School, for educating 65 Boys and 36 Girls (the Girls and also 45 Boys are clothed); Raine's Charities - £1,027 15s 5d.

By 1833 the provision of places at day and Sunday schools - though not the sums contributed - were listed in the 'Abstract of Education Returns' (published in volume 42 of Parliamentary Papers 1835 (p561)):

GEORGE, ST., IN THE EAST, Parish (Pop. 38,505.) — One Infant School (commenced 1827) containing 175 children of both sexes, is supported by voluntary contributions - Forty four Daily Schools (including Boarding Schools): two whereof were founded and endowed in 1719, by Mr. Raine, and contain 381 males and 202 females, of whom 50 of the former and 90 of the latter are on the foundation, the rest are paid for by voluntary contributions; these Schools (to which a lending Library is attached) were united to the National Society in 1816; another, called the "Middlesex SocietyNational School", contains 80 males and 40 females; another, in Pell-street (late Nightingale-lane), contains 40 males, who are annually clothed; a lending Library is attached to this School, which is in connexion with the Kirk of Scotland; another, called the "Tower Hamlets School", appertaining to Protestant Dissenters, contains 40 children; another, in Shakspeare-walk, in connexion with the Baptist denomination, contains 40 females; the four Schools last mentioned are supported by voluntary contributions: of the other thirty-eight Schools (wherein the children are instructed at the expense of their parents), one contains 40 males, with an evening class for females, attended by about 20; in three others are 90 females; in another, 75 males; in another, 25 males and 3 females; in another (commenced 1820) are 100 males; in another (commenced 1822) 10 and 15 females; in another (commenced 1825) 40 males; in another (commenced 1826) 52 males and 4 females, of whom 7 attend for evening instruction only; another (commenced 1827) contains 17 females; in three others (commenced 1830) are 35 males and 45 females; another (commenced 1831) contains 30 females; another (commenced 1832) about 50 males and 20 females; the remaining twenty-two Schools (kept by females) are for very young children, and contain collectively 152 males and 148 females: six of these bchools, with 83 children, have commenced since 1818. — One Day and Sunday School (commenced since 1818) of the Established Church, is attended by 130 males and 30 females daily, and 50 males and females on Sundays; this School is partly supported by subscription and partly small payments from the parents of the daily scholars, those who attend on Sundays are wholly free. - Six Sunday Schools, in connexion with various denominations of Dissenters, consisting of 1,320 children of both sexes; these Schools are supported by voluntary contributions.

Only a few of these can be identified: the Raine's Schools; the Middlesex Society Schools; the 'British Union' Shakespeare Walk school mentioned above, now specifically linked to the Baptists; and Pell Street, where the Countess of Huntingdon's New Mulberry Gardens Chapel (formerly in Nightingale Lane), active until the 1840s, had a school attached (which makes the claimed link to the 'Kirk of Scotland' puzzling - until 1823 when it moved to Stepney there was a 'Scotch Chapel' in Wapping, also meeting at Shakespeare Walk, Shadwell [see above], but no Kirk presence in Pell Street). As for the 'Tower Hamlets School' (also mentioned in 1815), where was it? The list of Subscription Charities & Public Societies in London (John Murray 1823) refers to the 'Tower Hamlets Society for Clothing and Educating Poor Children in the Protestant Religion' for which two sermons had been preached the previous year at the parish church of St John Wapping, but many of its benefactors appear to have been non-Anglicans: for example, in 1828 Henry Mum, probably a member of Zion Chapel, Whitechapel, made various educational bequests including £100 of 3% bank annuities to the school, and in 1829 Johann George Wicke, a member of the German chapel in Hooper Square, left £50 to the school 'of which he is a member'. Unlike the 1815 return, no Roman Catholic schools are specified, though they certainly proliferated. By the late 1850s there was one in Pell Street, which the newly-established Sisters of Mercy visited; had they perhaps taken over the chapel schoolroom?

From the 1830s, some politicians began to advocate proper state provision, to which there was strong resistance. The 1832 report from the British Magazine referred to above continued with this item:

National Education. - A numerous meeting of Schoolmasters was held on Wednesday, the 29th ult., at Mr Palmer's School Room, Lower Chapman Street. Commercial Road, to take into consideration Mr Hume's notice of bringing a Bill into Parliament for the establishment schools in every parish of the United Kingdom. [They conceived that the measure would only be another plan of imposing an additional tax upon the people; that it would cause the overthrow of Charity Schools and deprive the really necessitous of the educational advantages they now enjoyed; and that it would destroy the interests of the scholastic profession, as it was not likely that any would be appointed masters but the under graduates of our Universities. A resolution was adopted to the effect that not merely schoolmasters but every parochial rate payer should oppose the measure and act with the same spirit as the Dissenters did when Lord Brougham contemplated a similar Bill and thus nip the design in the bud.]

Parish church schools

The first major project of William Quekett, the energetic curate of St George-in-the-East from 1830 and first incumbent of Christ Church Watney Street, was to fit out as boys, girls and infants schools three arches east of Cannon Street Road, near Walburgh Street, under the viaduct of the new London and Blackwall Railway, which he persuaded the directors to let on a 100-year lease for £20 a year, reasoning that as the trains were cable-hauled from stationary steam engines there would be no engine noise! In the event, this system failed and conventional engines were used - see here for more details. The drawing is from the National Society's archive in Bermondsey. The handwritten note says There is communication with each arch by a door in the centre - and to warmed [sic] by an Arnotts' Stove. [See below for the later fate of these premises.]

William Quekett went on to identify a site for new schools in the eastern end of the parish, which was to become the parish of St Mary Johnson Street. St Mary's Schools were designed by George Smith and begun in 1848, providing places for a further 550 children. Quekett claimed he never remembered any child from 'his' schools being in prison. When asked Supposing a child who had been in prison applied to one of your schools, would you admit him? he replied Certainly not.
In the newly-created parish of St Mark Whitechapel National Schools were established in 1841 with a schoolroom between Chamber Street and Royal Mint Street, initially in a portion of a house and two arches under the Blackwall Railway. J. Gledhill, from Battersea Training College, was appointed the master in 1857. The boys' section was rebuilt in 1862, to designs by John Hudson of 40 Leman Street (for which Mr John Jacobs submitted a tender for £685 with £360 for extra classrooms, and Mr F.F. Dudley £675 with £325 for the classrooms). From 1912 to 1921 the school was in protracted negotiation with the Midland Railway over widows that opened onto railway property; draft agreements were eventually produced. In the latter year a petition for closure of the school was submitted, but this did not happen; the final report by the LCC inspectors was in 1939, and it presumably closed during the war. A member of our congregation remembers attending the school. (The London Metropolitan Archives hold a series of files on church and school matters.)

See here for the story of St George's National Schools, rebuilt on the site of the Middlesex Schools in 1856, and here for the story of St Paul's Church for Seamen Schools, rebuilt with National Society assistance in 1870 (correspondence included) - one of its claims to fame is that the first ever free school dinners were served here. It is now the only church school in the parish - see here for current news.

The 1870 Education Act
The 1861 Commission on Popular Education in England (the 'Newcastle Commission' - it was chaired by the Duke of Newcastle) had investigated public spending on education, recommending that it should continue but on a 'payment by results' basis (shades of the contemporary education debate!) Robert Lowe, Vice-President of the Education Board (and later Chancellor of the Exchequer) introduced a revised code of examination and inspection in order to improve effectiveness, commenting enigmatically in the House of Commons If it is not cheap, it shall be efficient; if it is not efficient, it shall be cheap. The Commission's report (vol.3) included a detailed survey by Josiah Wilkinson of provision in three metropolitan Poor Law districts (p320ff), of which St George-in-the East was one; he described it as an area of deteriorating character, and quoted the Medical Officer of Health's description of its people as cowed in mind and exhausted in body.

This Commission paved the way - at last - for significant state provision and funding. Major change came with the 1870 Education Act, which created local School Boards (elected by ratepayers: significantly, women were eligible, and a number were elected in London). They were empowered to build elementary schools (5-12 years) 'on the rates' - a member of St George's Vestry protested in 1876 at the level of expenditure. Parents still paid fees - unless they were very poor. Religious education was on a 'non-denominational' basis (the result of the then-controversial 'Cowper-Temple clause'): see this 1869 conference paper by the Revd R.E. Bartlett, previously of St Mark Whitechapel, on the subject. Boards could also provide subsidies to church schools.

In the next quarter-century, the following Board Schools were built in the parish [excluding those in Whitechapel] to cater for the huge child population - most accommodated over 1,000 pupils. Many of them, as elsewhere in London, were designed by the London Board School architect E.R. Robson, some (such as Lower Chapman Street) with additions by his successor T.J. Bailey. They used a 'simplified Queen Anne' style for most of their schools between 1874 and 1914, and had large, airy classooms with careful provision of natural light; separate entrances or double staircases to separate boys and girls; and typically, rooftop playgrounds.

Some of the clergy supported this programme; others did not, because it reduced their influence. At Christ Church Watney Street, for instance, the loss of the railway arches schools was a major blow - see a later Rector's comments below. The church also lost the attendance of the Middlesex Society scholars when, in consequence of the Act, this School was incorporated into Raine's Foundation - see above for both institutions - though, as explained here, as part of the scheme £600 was provided to build a mission room adjacent to the church.

§ Berner Street: 1871, disused by the 1920s; now the site of Bernhard Baron House [street renamed Henriques Street 1961] - see below for Harry Gosling School, built opposite in 1909.

Blakesley Street [near Watney Street]: serving the most concentrated area of poverty (apart from St George's Street, below), and becoming predominantly Jewish: a 1910 inspection noted the difficulties attending instruction with a large foreign intake, but reported praiseworthy regularity in attendance and full interest in work.

Lower Chapman Street [now Bigland Street] - [pictured right, from front and rear]: one of Robson's earliest, and one of the few of his to survive (with a rare example of a double staircase separating boys from girls). Robson added a cookery centre - a pioneering example of provision for practical and vocational training. Its catchment area included parts of Wapping, though two Board schools were also built there. [After closure, it had a variety of uses, including the University of Greenwich's School of Earth Sciences (as 'Walburgh House') before becoming Darul Ummah Community Centre. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets supported their plans for its demolition and an eight-storey replacement with three basement levels to include a mosque, funeral facilities, a gym and a café as well as the current boys' school. But in 2010 English Heritage, at the instigation of the Victorian Society, listed the building (Grade II) and plans are being re-drawn.]

Betts Street: 1884, the first 3-storey school with halls for all three departments. Its opening led to the closure of the railway arches school: despite excellent reports for 1881, the boys section was closed in 1883 and the girls and infants in 1884-85 and the premises declared unfit (though the authorities were happy to use them for a time until the new school was ready). H.C. Dimsdale, Rector of Christ Church Watney Street 1892-1909, admitting that the old premises perhaps were quaint, somewhat jealously described the new school as palatial....replete with all the luxuries that art and faddism can supply. This school [pictured right c1910] also became predominantly Jewish. See here for more about this street.

§ Cable Street: 1898 - smaller, for 'only' 400 children [two early class photos right]: built on the site of a former sugar refinery, it bears a plaque 'Cable Street Schools' but has had various names and uses in its time, as maps of the area bear witness. (Some show it as 'Nathaniel Heckford School': Nathaniel Heckford was a paediatrician who founded the East London Hospital for Children, near what is now Heckford Street further along The Highway).

After the Second World War it became a secondary modern school, St George-in-the-East Central School, and it was here that E.R. Braithwaite, the Guyanan author of To Sir with Love, taught during the pioneering headship of Alex Bloom (1945-55). He was an engineer who served as an RAF bomber pilot in the Second World War, but struggled to find employment because he was black, and so trained as a teacher.You can read about him, and Bloom's innovations, here, and a former pupil's memories here. (The film, starring Sidney Poitier, was made elsewhere.)

The building subsequently provided accommodation for various local schools being rebuilt, and has now been converted into 34 luxury apartments as 'Mulberry House' [right] - though Mulberry Girls' School was only one of various temporary occupants. In 1980 the church exterior and adjacent buildings featured in the gangster film The Long Good Friday, starring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren, in which Harold Shand's Rolls Royce is blown up while his mother attends a service.

Christian Street: 1901 - built on the site of Martineau's sugar refinery, which at one time had the tallest chimney in London; it was the first local school to have a Jewish headteacher, Isaac Goldstone in 1908. Professor Bill Fishman (b.1921) was a pupil here - here are his childhood memories of the area. [Under postwar legislation, it was transferred to denominational control as Bishop Challoner Girls Secondary School, which is now part of Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School and Learning Village off Commercial Road; the Christian Street site [pictured by night before demolition] has been redeveloped for housing by Bellway Homes as SpacE1].

St George's Street, The Highway: regarded as a school of 'special difficulty'. See here for a spat over evening dancing classes, and here for classes in Esperanto.

§ These schools came to cater for those classified as 'M.D.' (mentally defective), which together with those for the partially deaf formed the 'St George's-in-the-East Group' (and from 1908 'Stepney (No.2) Group of Special Schools').

This map (from W.E. Marsden Unequal Educational Provision in East and West: The 19th Century Roots (Psychology Press 1987) p165ff) shows how thick on the ground were the Board Schools of the area, and how small their catchment areas, mapping those for the first three to be built: Berner Street, Blakesley Street and Lower Chapman Street. The other Board Schools above are also shown, including Brewhouse Lane and Globe Street in Wapping. He comments The relatively homogenous social nature of the area does not appear to have generated a clear-cut hierarchy of elementary schools based on differentiated fees. In 1877, for example, the two board schools then in existence in St George's, Berner Street and Lower Chapman Street, had fees of 1d. and 1d. or 2d. respectively. Of all the board schools of St George's only Cable Street, small for a board school with accommodation for 400 only, attained higher grade status. They were conspicuous in their absence in the lists of successful London scholarship schools.

As for the overwhelming preponderance of Jewish children: in his updated 1898 survey Charles Booth quotes one observer who said I can remember when even at Chicksand Street school [in Whitechapel] less than half the children were Jewish, and now there are hardly any Christian children in the polace. Bink's Row, Rutland Street, Lower Chapman Street and Betts Street schools are all now Jewish or being Judaized. While Booth deplored the overcrowding that resulted from Jews accepting the most cramped living conditions, he regarded them as more moral and less promiscuous than the English or Irish poor. Benjamin J. Lammers, In a monograph The Citizens of the Future’: Educating the Children of the Jewish East End, c.1885–1939 (Twentieth Century British History (2008) 19 (4), pp393-418) argues that - despite the antisemitisms of the age - the policies of the School Board for London were enlightened in enabling Jewish pupils to participate fully in school life without compromising their faith background, and that Jewish pupils had a largely positive attitude to their education in the state system. This can be contrasted with the experience of New Commonwealth immigrants a few generations later.

In 1904 the London County Council's education department took over the functions of the School Boards, adding responsibility for secondary schooling. The LCC continued much of the good practice of their predecessors, and had a proud record, until its abolition in 1965. Division 5 comprised the schools of Bethnal Green, the City of London, Poplar and Stepney.

The present day
There are two voluntary aided (VA) church primary schools in the parish today: St Paul's CE Whitechapel, and English Martyrs RC. Other primary schools are Shapla (next to St Paul's), Harry Gosling, and Bigland Green. Their pupils are almost entirely from Muslim families, but they - and other primary schools on the borders of the parish - enjoy making curriculum visits to St George-in-the-East Church. There are no secondary schools in the parish. The provision of secondary places - particularly for those who do not want single sex education - is a matter of contention.

Here are some pictures of Harry Gosling School, built in 1909: the first shows it shortly after its opening, the second and third are from Fairclough Street today, and the fourth and fifth of its recent revevelopment and extension. Edith Wyeth, our long-serving warden who died in 2011, was school secretary, occasional teacher and governor here for many years. The school plaground was the site of the discovery in 1888 of the body of Elizabeth Stride, one of Jack the Ripper's victims - see here for more about her, and her Swedish connections. And see here for more about Harry Gosling.

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