Education

The Best Means for Decreasing Juvenile Crime: A Plea for their General Adoption in Small or Large Parishes, and for Improving the Dwellings of the Poor; with a Short Sketch of the Progress of the National Industrial Schools of Finchley, by one of the editors of ‘The Finchley Manuals’, viii & 142 pp, original brown embossed cloth, edges of spine split with sections missing at top and bottom of spine (see picture), corners bumped, endpapers discoloured, but binding sound and altogether a good working copy, Joseph Masters 1853

16.9 x 9.8 cm, 170g, no ISBN  

The only copy of this book we have been able to trace is in the library of Deakin University, in Geelong in Australia.

This book may well have been instrumental in changing popular opinion, because in 1857 an Act of Parliament was passed setting up Industrial Schools. These were intended to provide education to those members of the urban youth who were not yet involved in crime.