[1] Although the Union did not extend beyond London, its publications and pamphlets helped spread ragged school ideals across the country before they were phased out by the final decades of the 19th century.

There was an emphasis on reading, writing, arithmetic, and study of the Bible, and the curriculum expanded into industrial and commercial subjects in many schools.

By his death in 1838, he had established 19 free schools offering opportunities and services daily, nightly, and Sundays for children and infants living in the lower-income areas of London.

He actively recruited them to his school, spending time on the streets and quays of Portsmouth, making contact, and even bribing them to attend with the offer of baked potatoes.

In 1840, Sheriff William Watson established an industrial school in Aberdeen, Scotland to educate, train and feed the vagrant boys of the town.

Frustrated by the number of youngsters who committed petty crimes and faced him in court, he used his position as a law official to arrest vagrant boys and enrol them in the school rather than send them to prison.

[4] His Industrial Feeding School opened to provide reading, writing, and arithmetic, as Watson believed that gaining these skills would help them rise above the lowest level of society.

The unassuming Robertson was, however, eclipsed by the self-promoting Rev Thomas Guthrie, who created a parallel Ragged School on Mound Place, off Castlehill in April 1847.

On a visit to Anstruther in Fife, he saw a picture of John Pounds in Portsmouth and felt inspired and humbled by the cobbler's work.

In 1840, the London City Mission used the term "ragged" in its Annual Report to describe its establishment of five schools for 570 children.

[1][12] By 1844, there were at least 20 free schools for the poor, maintained through the generosity of community philanthropists, the volunteers working with their local churches, and the organisational support of the London City Mission.

Then, in April 1844, the London Ragged School Union was founded during a meeting of four men to pray for the city's poor children.

Starey, the secretary of Field Lane school, was present along with Locke, Moutlon, and Morrison, and they formed a steering committee to address the social welfare needs of the community.

On 11 April 1844, at 17 Ampton Street off London's Grays Inn Road, they facilitated a public meeting to determine local interest, research feasibility, and establish structure.

He asked the government to give more thought to preventing crime, rather than punishing the wrongdoers and said the latter course only made the young criminals worse.

In May 1875's Sword and Trowel Spurgeon recorded: A most interesting and enthusiastic meeting was held in the Lecture Hall of the Metropolitan Tabernacle on Wednesday, the 17th ult., in connection with Richmond Street Ragged and Sunday Schools.

After tea, at which about six hundred persons sat down, Mr. Olney took the Chair, and the public meeting was addressed by Dr. Barnardo, J. M. Murphy, and W. Alderson, Mr. Curtis, of the Ragged School Union, and the superintendents, Messrs. Burr and Northcroft.

Wealthy individuals such as Angela Burdett-Coutts gave large sums of money to the London Ragged School Union.

[16] As Eager (1953) explains, "Shaftesbury not only threw into the movement his great and growing influence; he gave what had been a Nonconformist undertaking, the cachet of his Tory churchmanship – an important factor at a time when even broad-minded (Anglican) churchmen thought that Nonconformists should be fairly credited with good intentions, but that cooperation (with them) was undesirable".

School boards were public bodies created in boroughs and parishes under the Elementary Education Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict.

In London, he was confronted by a city where disease was rife, poverty and overcrowding endemic, and educational opportunities for the poor nonexistent.

He watched helplessly as a cholera epidemic swept through the East End, leaving more than 3,000 Londoners dead and many destitute.

He gave up his medical training to pursue his local missionary works and, in 1867, opened his first ragged school where children could gain a free primary education.