Private philanthropy interested itself on behalf of the children long before the Government made any move in the matter. In the eighteenth century a Marine Society for sending lads to sea, and an agricultural school for teaching farming, had been formed at Portsmouth and Redhill respectively, with the object of befriending boys who otherwise were in danger of lapsing into crime; but for many years these were the only agencies of the sort. The Ragged School movement, so warmly espoused by Lord Shaftesbury, took practical shape soon after the Queen's accession, in schools in Westminster, at Old Pye Street, and at Field Lane. The first industrial feeding-school was opened at Aberdeen in 1841; and it proved so successful that the idea was taken up throughout Scotland. Before long Manchester and other English towns followed the example set by the granite city. Excellent as were many of the schools established by private benevolence, they all laboured under two very formidable disadvantages:--they could not compel unwilling parents to send their children to be reformed, or to contribute anything towards their maintenance, and they could not legally detain their pupils any longer than they cared to stay. The first public institution for the detention of juvenile criminals was opened at Parkhurst in 1838. Though called a reformatory, it was in effect a gaol, and hardly differed at all from other prisons except with regard to the age of its inmates. The exertions of Lord Shaftesbury and of Mr Adderley (Lord Norton) who strove to convince the nation of the fatal consequences of its apathy, were soon to be rewarded. A Select Committee of the House of Lords which sat in 1847, was followed by the Juvenile Offenders Act of the same year; in 1851 and following years conferences, largely attended by people interested in the reformatory question, were held at Birmingham, with the object of discovering some better method of dealing with youthful criminals than that in vogue, and the whole subject was investigated at some length by Parliamentary Committees appointed in 1853 and 1854. The result of these deliberations took shape in the latter year when the "Reformatory School Act"[233] was passed, giving magistrates the option of committing offenders under sixteen years of age to reformatories, for a term not exceeding five years, in lieu of sentencing them to imprisonment, penal servitude, or transportation. The expense of the new reformatories was met, partly by Treasury contributions, partly by grants from the local authorities, and partly by compulsory subscriptions of not more than five shillings a week exacted from the parents or guardians of the offending children. The Act of 1854 was amended and improved by subsequent Acts passed in 1855 and 1856, but these early enactments[234] were open to the objection that they only applied to juveniles who had already been convicted of a serious offence, and left untouched a large class of children which, for one