Description:The Stafford County Industrial School for Boys opened in 1868 accomodating 107 boys aged or over. Initially the premises were based around an old farmhouse and an adjacent barn and cottages. It originally had seven acres of land attached but a further 26 acres were rented in 1873. It soon gained an excellent reputation; it had a Brass Band by 1879. A Glowing inspection report of 1884 recommended further expansion. By then it taught gardening and farm related tasks, basket making, tailoring and shoe-making.
In 1933 it became an Approved School. In 1955 it was acquired by the Prison Commissioners for use as a Senior Detention Centre. It became a Youth Custody Centre in 1985, then a Young Offenders Centre in 1988.
Industrial Schools were intended to help those children under 14 years old who were found to be homeless or begging but who had not as yet committed any serious crime. The idea was to remove the child from bad influences, give them an education and teach them a trade. The children either attended the school daily or they were able to live in. The boys learned trades such as gardening, tailoring and shoemaking; the girls learned knitting, sewing, housework and washing.
The Industrial Schools Act was intended in 1857 to solve problems of juvenile vagrancy in England by removing poor and neglected children from their home environment to a boarding school. The Act allowed magistrates to send disorderly children to a residential industrial school. An 1876 Act led to nonresidential day schools of a similar kind.The Industrial Schools Act 1857 gave magistrates the power to sentence homeless children between the ages of 7 and 14, who were brought before the courts for vagrancy to a spell in an industrial school.
In 1861, a further act strengthened the powers of the magistrate "to include:
Any child apparently under the age of fourteen found begging or receiving alms (money or goods given as charity to the poor).
Any child apparently under the age of fourteen found wandering and not having any home or visible means of support, or in company of reputed thieves.
Any child apparently under the age of twelve who, having committed an offence punishable by imprisonment or less.
Any child under the age of fourteen whose parents declare him to be beyond their control"