COUNTY ADMINISTRATION: MIDDLESEX INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL

The series MA/GS relates to the administration of Middlesex Industrial School for boys at Feltham. It is unclear why the collection is part of the Middlesex sessions records, since control of the school passed out of that county's hands and onto the London County Council in 1889, which has in its own records many relating to Feltham both pre and post that date. Relevant records may be found in LCC/EO/SS/02; MF; LCC/MIN/8091 - 8109; LCC/CH/D/MAY; MJ/OC/I/034 - 039; MA/RS; MJ/O/C/044 - 082; MA/D/GS; and MA/DCP

The records are arranged in one series - MA/GS/001 - 013

These records are available for public inspection, although records containing personal information are subject to access restrictions under the UK Data Protection Act, 2018

The problem of exisiting and potential juvenile offenders was tackled in a different way to previous attempts during the 1850s when reformatory and industrial schools began to be established. Reformatory schools (covered in an Act of 1854) dealt with those whose crimes were punishable with imprisonment. Those who had committed less serious offences or who were felt to be living in circumstances which might encourage them to become criminals were sent to an industrial school. Even as early as the late 1850s, public opinion was almost unanimous on the benficial effects of the new movement, and it was credited with the sharp fall in juvenile crime in the late Nineteenth Century. The first legislation relating to industrial schools was passed in 1857, with successive Acts making further improvements. The 1866 Act was both a consolidating and amending Act, defining an industrial school as "a school in which industrial training is provided, and in which children are lodged, clothed and fed, as well as taught". Significantly it also specified the particular sorts of children who should be committed - children found begging, wandering, destitute, orphaned or children with a surviving parent in prison, frequenting the company of reputed thieves, those under 12 years of age and charged with an offence which was not a felony but was punishable by imprisonment, and children under 14 unable to be controlled by their parents. The child could also be detained beyond the age of 14 up to his sixteenth birthday, thereby preventing his return home to a parental influence which was the usual cause for reversion to the 'old way of life'. The Act also allowed the Treasury to supplement the county rate in financing the schools. In 1854 and 1875 Middlesex had passed its own Acts relating to industrial schools, to cover the setting up and running of Feltham. The reference to plural 'schools' in the Act's title is indicative of the permission given to the Justices to also set up a female industrial school. This project was never followed up, although the Middlesex Justices had a contractual arrangement with the one at Bedfont. Following Feltham's administrative transfer to the control of the London County Council in 1889, Middlesex, (with no industrial school of its own to administer), continued to have contractual agreements with it and other industrial schools