[344] The Manchester Board of Guardians had had its own boarding-school at Swinton since 1844, where, on the advice of Mr. Tufnell (assistant Poor Law inspector), the children were eighteen hours a week "at school" and eighteen hours "at labour" (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 22nd August 1844). For the next few years we see them taking great pride in this school, and receiving the highest commendation from the inspectors. But the district auditor, in 1846, complains bitterly of the "costly establishment," warning the guardians that the expense of this school has "already reached an amount that is inconsistent with the class of children for whom the schools were designed," and is "creating dissatisfaction amongst the ratepayers" (_ibid._ 25th June 1846). And in 1861 the Central Authority itself deprecates the payment of so large a salary as £250 a year with board and lodging to the headmaster, and urges the great importance of the industrial as distinguished from the intellectual training of the children (_ibid._ 10th and 16th January 1861). [345] In 1849, at the instance of the Committee of Council on Education, it issued a Circular extending to workhouse schools the privilege of getting at a low price the school-books of which the Government had arranged the publication for elementary schools (Circular of 25th January 1849, in the Second Annual Report, 1849, p. 25). [346] House of Commons, No. 50 of 1867, p. 158 (Letter to Guardians of the Holborn Union). [347] Thus, in 1850, it is reported with laudation that "there are workhouses, like that of the Atcham Union, in which the children receive an education beyond all comparison better than is within the reach of labourers in any part of the county. In the girls' school of the Ludlow Union the children now receive an education in all respects superior to what the humbler ratepayers are able to purchase for their children. This high standard of workhouse education is fast ceasing to be exceptional" (Third Annual Report, 1850, p. 7). [348] _Official Circular_, No. 17, N.S. July and August 1848, p. 264.