Redhill Farm School - Introduction

Redhill Farm School

 

This project seems to have taken on a life of its own. It was originally intended as a way of finding my great grandfather’s contemporaries at The Philanthropic Society’s Farm School at Redhill in the 1860s – but it has just grown.

The Philanthropic Society was formed in 1788 to aid the reformation of boys who had been engaged in criminal activities. In 1792 it transferred to Southwark and in 1849 to a farm school of 133 acres, later expanded to 350 acres, at Redhill. Boys accepted at the school early on were either voluntary cases at expiration of prison sentences, voluntary cases part paid for by parents who could not manage them at home, or very young boys sentenced to transportation. The Reformatory School Act of 1854 made changes that meant that in place of these three categories the school began receiving boys directly from the courts. The numbers of boys at the school rose considerably, and at the end of their time at the school many Victorian era boys were sent to parts of the British Empire. The basic training for the boys was working on the land, although tailoring, carpentering, shoemaking, and blacksmithing were also taught.

On arrival at the school, each boy was entered into an Admissions Register (Surrey History Centre Reference Series 2271/10). There were a number of such Registers, numbered chronologically, so, for example, Volume 13 was started towards the end of 1861, after Volume 12 had been filled up.

The entry for each boy consisted of a double-page spread with an individual folio number. In the listing below, each entry starts with the relevant folio number and date of admission.

The details given included birthdates, physical data such as height, colour of eyes, etc, next of kin and their circumstances, crime committed, level of education, previous employment, etc. Then, during the boy’s term at the school, notes were made of his behaviour and punishments, and other events such as visits or the grants of leave.

Finally, as former pupils were encouraged to write to the school and keep the staff informed of their new situations, often there are some notes about their later lives.

The punishments inflicted on the boys by the courts (where known) always include a term of imprisonment varying for 1 week to 3 months or more (sometimes with hard labour), and then between 2 and 5 years at the Reformatory. In a few cases, the boys were also whipped.

The blogs that will follow this will be listings of the boys admitted to the school in each of the 10 years under study. These listings are based on that created by the Surrey History Centre (in Roman type) plus, wherever possible, details of sentencing from the England & Wales Criminal Registers held at The National Archives at Kew. There also some trial details from Old Bailey On-line, plus various parish records, census records, etc, and emigration details. All the additional information is in italic.

The excellent SHC list http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/recreation-heritage-and-culture/archives-and-history/archives-and-history-research-guides/the-royal-philanthropic-school-at-redhill is alphabetical by surname and covers a long period – 1849 to 1906 – Pea-Bee’s is chronological and covers just 10 years.

There were 919 boys admitted to the school between 1856 and 1865, and clearly researching the biographies of all of them would be a job of a lifetime. However, it has proved possible to find some basic information about many of them.

In the late 1850s, most of the boys who emigrated went to Australia, but over the decade, the numbers going south decreased and those going west – to Canada – increased.

Year           Total intake            Total emigrated          to Australia          to Canada

1856                126                               63                          47                     8

1857               144*                              44                          24                    12 

1858                 60                                19                           4                      8

1859                 96                                30                          14                    11

1860                 89                                35                           7                     19

1861                 98                                27                           2                     21

1862                 97                                22                           –                     22

1863                 53                                10                           1                      9

1864                 92                                44                           –                     43

1865                 64                                38                           –                     38

Other destinations were USA, New Zealand, Natal and Cape Colony

* Following the decision early in 1857 to build the Adel Reformatory in Leeds, the Redhill School took 14 additional boys who were later transferred to the new Reformatory when it was completed at the end of that year