Opening Schools and Closing Prisons: Caring for destitute and delinquent children in Scotland 1812-1872

The book covers the period from 1812, when the Tron Riot in Edinburgh dramatically drew attention to the ‘lamentable extent of juvenile depravity’, up to 1872, when the Education Act (Scotland) inaugurated a system of universal schooling.

During the 1840s and 1850s in particular there was a move away from a punitive approach to young offenders to one based on reformation and prevention. Scotland played a key role in developing reformatory institutions – notably the Glasgow House of Refuge, ...