something to the rates, though admittedly less than they would have cost in the workhouse. In a third place it is pointed out that the projected new workhouse will amply accommodate all the children, so that the homes will be unnecessary even as schools--an argument which seems inconsistent with the general policy of the Poor Law Board, unless we are to infer that it wanted only district schools by combinations of unions. We may note, as a final hint of the uncertainty that prevailed, that, after three years' correspondence, the Poor Law inspector advised the guardians to ask the Central Authority to sanction temporarily the continuance of the homes, as "it is quite possible ... that within the next two years the Legislature may resolve on communicating greater vitality to the provisions for the establishment of district schools." He had told the clerk to the guardians verbally that it was probable that Parliament would make it compulsory to provide for pauper children in establishments apart from workhouses, but that he saw "with regret how strongly different views are pressed" in regard to these homes; and that the guardians would meanwhile do well to delay proceeding with any but the adults' wards of the new workhouse.[351] [349] MS. Minutes, Norwich Board of Guardians, 1845. [350] Special Order of 30th January 1845. [351] MS. Minutes, Norwich Board of Guardians, 3rd January and 7th February 1854, 1st April 1856, and 6th January 1857. We gather that the inspector's prescience was so far justified that the Norwich Guardians managed to retain their children's homes, which were in existence a generation later. No such legislation as was thus foreshadowed took place, but the policy of removing the children from the workhouses was meanwhile incidentally promoted by an Act of 1849, which enabled use to be made of any establishment in which paupers were maintained by contract "for the education of any poor children therein."[352] Similarly the various Industrial Schools Acts opened up another class of schools to pauper children.[353] Finally, the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1869 enabled training ships to be established by school districts and the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the education of pauper boys for the sea service.[354] Already by 1856 it was reported with satisfaction that 78 per cent of the children under boards of guardians in the Metropolis were in separate schools--statistics, however, which continued to ignore the much larger number of children on outdoor relief, of whose existence the Central Authority only gradually became aware.[355]