The first experiments in the provision of free or cheap dinners for school children appear to date from the early 'sixties.[1] One of the earliest and most important of the London societies was the Destitute Children's Dinner Society, founded in February, 1864, in connection with a Ragged School in Westminster.[2] This Society quickly grew and, between October 1869 and April 1870, fifty-eight dining rooms were opened for longer or shorter periods.[3] The motive, though largely sentimental, was from the first supported by educational considerations. "Their almost constant destitution of food," write the Committee in their appeal for funds, "is not only laying the foundation of permanent disease in their debilitated constitutions, but reduces them to so low a state that they have not vigour of body or energy of mind sufficient to derive any profit from the exertions of their teachers."[4] The influence of the newly-formed Charity Organisation Society is seen in the nervous anxiety of the promoters to avoid the charge of pauperising. "Our object is not the indiscriminate relief of the multitude of poor children to be found in the lowest parts of the metropolis. Our efforts are limited to those in attendance at ragged or other schools so as to encourage and assist the moral and religious training thus afforded."[5] The dinners were not self-supporting,[6] but a great point was made of the fact that a penny was charged towards paying the cost. Nevertheless the promoters admitted that "it has been found impossible in some localities to obtain any payment from the children."[7] Footnote 1: "Many of our own [Roman Catholic] schools ... fed the children even in the 'sixties." (Report of Select Committee on Education (Provision of Meals) Bills (England and Scotland), 1906, Evidence of Monsignor Brown, Q. 1038.) Footnote 2: