Teaching boys in lace schools

 In the early nineteenth century, many boys, as well as girls, in the villages of the English county of Buckinghamshire went to lace schools. This was not really a school as we know it – more like a sweat shop - as the children learnt very little apart from how to make bobbin lace, which was sold at the end of the month to the local lace dealer. The children had to attend for 10 to 12 hours every day except Sunday, and were allowed a half day off on Saturday. Their parents paid the teacher a fee ranging from 2 to 6 pennies a week, but all teachers charged more for boys because they were less clean, careful and obedient than the girls. According to Thomas Wright, who interviewed many Bucks lacemakers for his history of lacemaking, another disadvantage, from the teacher’s point of view, was that boys’ smocks were thicker than the girls’ clothes and also covered their necks and shoulders so smacking them as a punishment was less effective than it was with the girls. Many of the boys hated the lace school and there are reports of one throwing his lace pillow down a well, another throwing his into a duck pond and one running away to sea – which seems a very drastic solution! They generally left as soon as they could, to work in the fields. However, many men never forgot how to make lace and one lacemaker told Wright that when she was a small girl and went to bed too tired to finish her lace, her father would often return from work and make a few extra inches of lace on her lace pillow, for her to find in the morning. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the demise of lace schools. The Workshop Act of 1867 forbade the employment of children under 8 years and those aged 8-13 could only work half time. The Education Act of 1871 also brought in compulsory education for children, although lace making continued to be taught as part of the curriculum in lacemaking areas.