Reformatories and industrial schools[edit]

Reformatory schools were penal facilities originating in the 19th century that provided for
criminal children and were certified by the government starting in 1850. As society's values
changed, the use of reformatories declined and they were coalesced by an Act of Parliament into
a single structure known as approved schools. Although similar in some of their
practice, industrial schools were intended to prevent vulnerable children becoming criminal.[4]
There was a perceived rise in juvenile delinquency in the early 19th century; whereas in a rural
economy very young children could gain paid employment doing tasks such as bird scaring and
stone gathering these opportunities were not available in the cities. Youngsters were very visible
on the streets. In 1816, Parliament set up a ‘Committee for Investigating the Alarming Increase in
Juvenile Crime in the Metropolis’, in 1837 the writer Charles Dickens published Oliver Twist a
story about a child involved in a street gang. and in 1847 it was recognised in the Juvenile
Offences Act of 1847, that children under 14 should be tried in a special court not an adult
court.[5] Begging and vagrancy was rife, and it was these low level misdemeanours that caused
the magistrates to send vulnerable youngsters to industrial schools to learn to be industrious,
and learn skills that would make then more employable.
More serious crimes, required an element of punishment in an environment away from older
prisoners, who would have a further negative effect on the youngster, before the task of
reforming their ways. The power to set up such an establishment was given in the 1854 Youthful
Offenders Act (the Reformatory Schools Act). This provided financial assistance and support for
reformatory schools for convicted young offenders as an alternative to prison.[4] Industrial schools
were regularised three years later by the 1857 Industrial schools act.[4]