ng afforded by infant schools. But infant schools
are useless, if the education is to cease at seven years old.

The other school is strictly confined to the boys and men employed in the
glass works. It opened July, 1850, with 110 scholars, all boys from twelve
years of age, before which none are admitted into the manufactory. By
degrees the men, at first deterred by shame, began to attend, and at present
a considerable number avail themselves of the advantage for commencing or
extending the imperfect education they had obtained at Sunday Schools.

These schools are not self-supporting, but are found, even in a commercial
point of view, to repay the philanthropic firm by whom they have been founded
and supported.

The Birmingham Free and Industrial School, founded in 1847 by the energetic
exertions of the Hon. and Rev. Grantham Yorke, Rector of St. Philip, includes
a day school for boys and girls above seven years of age; two industrial
classes; and an asylum for deserted and orphans. The scholars are not of the
class to which we are specially calling attention. We shall, therefore,
content ourselves with mentioning the existence of such a School for the
refuse population of this large town.

The deficient education of the working classes, consequent on unregulated
infant labour, would alone be sufficient to account for the prevalence of the
idle custom of losing at least one day every week in busy times, and the
drinking habits, which are a blot upon a population of superior intelligence.
But a still more demoralizing influence exists in the state of the dwellings
of the working classes in Birmingham, which, although at first sight very
attractive in appearance, forming neat courts of cottages, compared with the
crowded lodging-houses of many manufacturing towns, are, nevertheless,
lamentably deficient in two essentials for health and decency, viz.,
efficient drainage, and a sufficient supply of wholesome water.

In two thousand courts, inhabited by fifty thousand people, the supply of
water is either obtained at great loss of time from wells, often dirty,
sometimes fetid, or purchased at an extravagant rate from itinerant water-
carriers.

A Private Water Company exists, but has scarcely been called upon at all to
supply the houses of the working classes. Under these circumstances, with a
clean external appearance, the filth in which fifty thousand people live
seems to be only understood by the local Medical