After the passing of the Education Act of 1870, educational considerations became the dominant motive for feeding. Teachers and school managers as well as philanthropists found themselves increasingly compelled to deal with the problem. It was not only that compulsory education brought into notice hundreds of needy children who had before been hidden away in courts and back alleys,[15] but the effect of education on a starving child proved useless. Footnote 15: "At the present season, when the energy of the School Board visitors is filling the schools with all the poorest of the poor street Arabs, the need of such a society as this is more than ever felt." (Letter from the Committee of the Destitute Children's Dinner Society, _The Times_, December 12, 1872.) The _Referee_ Fund, started in 1874, was the result of Mrs. Burgwin's experience when head teacher of Orange Street School, Southwark. She found the children in a deplorable condition and on appealing to a medical man for advice was told that they were simply starving. With the help of her assistant teachers she provided tea, coffee or warm milk for the most needy. Soon a small local organisation was started, and a year or two after Mr. G. R. Sims drew public attention to the question by his articles on "How the Poor Live," and appealed for funds through the _Referee_.[16] The operations of the fund thus established were at first confined to West Southwark--"in that area," Mrs. Burgwin triumphantly declared, "there was not a hungry school child"[17]--but were gradually extended to other districts. As a result of the meals thus provided it was said that the children looked healthier and attended school better in the winter when they were being fed than they did in the summer.[18] Footnote 16: London School Board, Report of Special Committee on Underfed Children, 1895, Appendix 1, p. 5. Footnote 17: Report of Inter-Departmental Committee on Medical Inspection and Feeding, 1905, Vol. II., Q. 304. Footnote 18: London School Board, Report of Special Committee on Underfed Children, 1895, Appendix 1, p. 6.