quiry were instituted it would reveal a condition of things very
similar to what exists in France. The scattered and fragmentary
information we do possess points to that conclusion, and the
conclusion, it must be admitted, is not at all a hopeful or comforting
one. Supposing that all the homeless and deserted female children we
have now in our midst were immediately placed under the protection of
the State (as a matter of fact, most of them are), it does not follow
that they will grow up to lead regular lives. According to the
thirty-second report of the Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial
Schools, the authorities are unable to account satisfactorily for the
character of more than four fifths of the inmates of girls' industrial
schools who have left these institutions on an average for two or
three years. That is to say, it is probable that about twenty out of
every hundred girls go to the bad within two or three years of leaving
an industrial school. The proportion of girls discharged from
reformatory schools, whose character is bad within two years of their
discharge, is still larger than in the case of industrial schools.
This is only what might be expected, for it is the worst cases that
are now sent to reformatory schools. "Since the passing of the
Elementary Education Act," said Miss Nicoll of the Girls' Reformatory,
Hampstead, at the Fourth Conference of the National Association of
certified Reformatory and Industrial Schools, "a great change has
gradually been made in the character and age of the inmates of our
reformatories on admission. The School Boards in the country, and more
especially the School Board of London, by enforcing compulsory
attendance of all the children of the poor between the ages of five
and thirteen, have swept into what are termed Truant Schools all the
neglected and uncontrollable children who were formerly sent to
certified industrial schools--these latter being now retained in a
great measure for children who, besides being neglected and beyond the
control of their parents, have either taken their first steps in a
course of crime, or have, by association with vicious companions,
become familiar with it. The industrial schools have thus intercepted
the very class from which our numbers were usually drawn, leaving, as
a rule, for reformatories, girls about fifteen, who, though nominally
under fifteen, are sometimes a good deal older when admitted. Young
persons, as these are termed in