Now, since this extraordinary difference coincides in point of time with
the fact of full girls' schools and half empty boys' schools, the
inference can hardly be avoided that the two facts bear the relation of
cause and effect, and that, so far from the late increase of youthful
crime in Aberdeen any-wise impairing the soundness of the principle on
which the schools are based, it is its strongest confirmation. In moral
as in physical science, when the objections to a theory are, upon
further investigation, explained by the theory itself, they become the
best evidence of its truth. Indeed, it is proved, by the experience, not
only of Aberdeen, but, as far as I have been able to ascertain, of every
town in Scotland in which industrial schools have been established,
that the number of children in the schools and the number in the jail
are like the two ends of a scale-beam; as the one rises the other falls,
and _vice versa_.
"The following list of imprisonments of children attending the schools
of the Bristol Ragged School Union shows considerable progress in the
right direction:
____________________________________________________________________
|1847.|1848.|1849.|1850.|1851.|1852.|1853.|1854.|1855.|
_____________|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
Imprisoned, | 12 | 19 | 26 | 9 | 1 | 1 | - | 1 | - |
_____________|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
Imprisonments in } 66, averaging 16.
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