654
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
on by the Hon. Odeyne de Grey, her sister, and Miss Gertrude D. Pennant. The class meets for two hours one evening a week, from November or December till July every year. Four out of the six lads who originally formed it are now working in it as men.
From eleven to seventeen men have availed themselves of a class which Lady Grisell Baillie Hamilton and her sister have, during three years, held in Scotland for two hours twice a week throughout the four winter months. They pay a small fee to cover expense of warming and lighting the barn in which they meet, and gladly buy their own tools. The picture frames, hanging cupboards, bookcases, etc., which they make they prefer to keep rather than to sell. Apart from the technical skill gained they benefit by the awakening of interest and effort in connection with something quite outside the ordinary routine of their lines.
In 1889 Miss A. E. Maude formed a class for the villagers of Drayton, Somerset, in order to provide them with profitable occupation when the weather forbids outdoor work. Observing that most of the other Home Arts and Industries classes chose wood carving, she was enterprising enough to take up iron work instead. The zest with which the men and boys, whom she teaches every Wednesday evening during the winter, handle the pliers, and labor at the forge and the anvil, and the ready sale found for the lamps, kettles, screens, brackets and candlesticks produced have amply justified her choice. Gifts from the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, the Somerset County Council, and the Ironmongers Company enabled them to furnish their workshop in the first instance, and it is now open every evening all the year round. Over four hundred articles made by her pupils have been sold since the class was formed, and they have won the bronze medal of the Recreative Evening Schools Association, and the “ Gold Star” of the Home Arts and Industries Exhibition in London.
The Working Lads’ Institute'at Torquay, Devonshire, founded about 1886, offers to lads between twelve and eighteen years of age recreation and education, brightens their lives by human kindness, and brings them under moral and religious influence. Its bent iron and repousse classes are self-supporting. Their products are sold at industrial exhibitions and privately; half the profits pay all expenses, the other half is a welcome addition to the lads’ earnings, and Miss G. Phillpotts states that the classes also form a training school of good manners.
In 1890 a class for brass repousse work was formed at Bournemouth by Miss Edith H. G. Wingfield Digby. A higher motive than either love of art or love of gain led eight men there, chiefly artisans, to give some ten hours a week to brass-work. Missionary zeal had been kindled at the Bible class they attended, and the proceeds of their work, whose high artistic merit may be judged from the specimens sent to Chicago, redeemed a little Chinese girl from slavery, and afterward helped to pay for her maintenance and Christian education in the Jubilee School of the Church Missionary Society at Hong Kong. Certificates of merit have been awarded to three members of Miss Wingfield Digby’s class by the Home Arts and Industries Associations.
We turn to three schemes which combine cookery with the work of the loom and the needle, and the carving-tool, hitherto dealt with separately, and four others nearly as comprehensive.
That it was founded by the Princess of Wales is not our only reason for naming the Technical School at Sandringham first. Her Royal Highness’ desire to train the sons and daughters of the Sandringham laborers bore fruit some years before technical education had gained its present hold upon the public mind. The school began in an old schoolroom, with evening classes instructed by an artisan from a neighboring town. The interest aroused was so great that the princess determined to make the whole scheme larger and more lasting. She sent Fraulein Nödel, formerly German governess to the young princesses, to study the subject in London and the great Continental centers of technical education, and then appointed her lady superintendent of the school. In the enlarged schoolroom men and lads meet to learn carpentry, joinery, wood-carving, brass and copper repousse, and bent iron work. Meanwhile,