Author Lee Jackson in the article “Ragged Schools” from “The Victorian Dictionary” applicably quotes Victorian author and social commentator Charles Dickens in regard to the social plight of London and the construct of the “Ragged School” system, in an editorial from London’s Daily News. Although London was viewed as the “capital city of the world” paradoxically it was “a vast hopeless nursery of ignorance, misery and vice: a breeding place for hulks and gaols.” “Ragged Schools” were nondenominational, funded by a variety of charities and other “benevolent individuals.” They were few and far between. Those compassionate individuals who committed themselves to this construct had the notion that working class men and woman could be “reclaimed” from the “wretch and filth” of London’s industrial complex. Their goal was to save future generations from similar plights. It is important to note that prior to this time all students paid a tuition fee for attending school and few could afford the luxury (Jackson).

In his article, Jackson further notes that in 1844 the first attempt to provide academic instruction to the working class poor of London’s East End was initiated by a “society called the Ragged School Union” and notes that immediately afterward “two hundred of these schools were opened.” Jackson utilizes the “Jurston Street School to illustrate a typical ‘Ragged School’.” It “opened on Sunday evenings,” had an “average yearly attendance of 250 children” and was serviced by “25 teachers.” Jackson again provides a superb example of how the system worked by introducing Mr. Ainslie, a former student of a school in Windsor. Accordingly, Ainslie “had himself been a bad and abandoned man, who was reclaimed, and who now sat there, with his dirty face, teaching and doing more good than thousands of other of ten times his capacity.” Clearly, London’s “Ragged School System” provided a free education to the East End’s working class children while enabling them to overcome the economic, social and political hardships of the industrial society in which they lived (Jackson).

Jackson, Lee. “Dictionary of Victorian London – Victorian History – 19th Century London –Social History.” Dictionary of Victorian London – Victorian History – 19th Century London – Social History. Yale University Press, 3 Oct. 2014. Web. 26 Aug. 2015.<http://www.victorianlondon.org/index-2012.htm>.