UCL BLOOMSBURY PROJECT

History

It was opened by Frederick William Faber in 1851 as a religious charity to educate and help local poor children (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

According to J. Matthew Feheny, the prime mover in the foundation of the school was actually Fr William Anthony Hutchison, Faber’s fellow Oratorian, who wanted to emulate the success of Protestant ragged schools; he also started a Model Lodging Houses project based on the SICLC in 1853 (J. Matthew Feheney, ‘The London Catholic Ragged School: An Experiment in Education for Irish Destitute Children’, Archivium Hibernicum, vol. 39, 1984)

“They comprise an Infant School, a Boys’ Day School, Girls’ Day School, and Night Schools for those boys and girls who (being employed in selling fruit, sweeping crossings, and similar occupations) cannot attend school in the day-time” (Catholic Directory, Ecclesiastical Register, and Almanac, for the Year 1856)

Attached to the schools is the establishment called St Philip’s Home, which affords a refuge to young destitute girls of good character; and there is also an Industrial School, where a number of girls find employment. These, as well as the Girls’ and Infants’ Schools, are conducted by the Sisters of Compassion. By the permission of the Cardinal Archbishop, the school is used on Sundays as a chapel for the children. Mass is said for them, and confessions heard; and on one evening of the week there is a meeting of a Confraternity of Perseverance, consisting of those children who have been admitted to their first Communion” (Catholic Directory, Ecclesiastical Register, and Almanac, for the Year 1856)

The average number of children present daily is about 600; the number on the books being nearly 1200…The children are of the poorest class. During the past winter and spring the distress among them was so great, that upwards of 100 starving children received food at the schools daily” (Catholic Directory, Ecclesiastical Register, and Almanac, for the Year 1856)

As well as being used as a chapel for services for local poor Catholics on Sundays, the institution became a springboard for the Company of St Patrick, which had seven local reading rooms, a lending library, and organised concerts (J. Matthew Feheney, ‘The London Catholic Ragged School: An Experiment in Education for Irish Destitute Children’, Archivium Hibernicum, vol. 39, 1984)

Its status was threatened by various factors including the industrial school funding reforms of 1861, the deaths of Faber and Hutchison in 1863, and the withdrawal of the Sisters of Compassion, and it eventually came under the control of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster as Macklin Street Catholic Poor School (J. Matthew Feheney, ‘The London Catholic Ragged School: An Experiment in Education for Irish Destitute Children’, Archivium Hibernicum, vol. 39, 1984)

It was taken over by the archdiocese in the later part of the nineteenth century and subsequently became Macklin Street Catholic Poor School (J. Matthew Feheney, ‘The London Catholic Ragged School: An Experiment in Education for Irish Destitute Children’, Archivium Hibernicum, vol. 39, 1984)

This is still operating, still in Macklin Street (just south of High Holborn) as St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School