13-1/2 6 1.72 5 4.26 4 12.5 5 0.63 14 6 10.5 5 5.82 5 5.87 5 1.14 Girls Age Council A Council B Council C st. lb. st. lb. st. lb. 7 3 1 2 13.1 3 5 7-1/2 3 2.6 3 3 3 8 3 6.85 3 3.9 3 2.16 8-1/2 3 8 3 5.5 3 4.7 3 10 3 7.9 3 6.5 9-1/2 3 10.85 3 10.5 3 8.05 4 1.5 3 12.3 3 10.75 10-1/2 3 13.46 4 3.57 3 11.2 11 4 5.28 4 6.5 4 0.25 11-1/2 4 4.7 4 5.2 4 4.57 12 5 1.31 4 11.07 4 11.7 12-1/2 5 7.3 4 11.7 4 13.12 13 5 0.3 5 3.16 5 3.3 13-1/2 5 10.5 5 5.8 5 4 14 6 9.3 5 4.57 5 12 A is a school where the parents were comparatively well-to-do and the children mostly had comfortable homes. B is a school where the parents were mostly small shopkeepers or labourers in constant employment. C is a school where the parents were mostly unemployed or casually employed. CHAPTER I THE HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT FOR THE PROVISION OF SCHOOL MEALS The latter half of the nineteenth century was remarkable for the birth of a new social conscience manifesting itself in every kind of social movement. Some were mere outbursts of sentimentality, pauperising and patronising, others indicated real care and sympathy for the weaker members of society, others again a love of scientific method and order. Thus in the early 'sixties there was an enormous growth in the amount spent in charity, leading to hopeless confusion. An attempt to introduce some order into this chaos and to stem the tide of indiscriminate almsgiving was made in 1868 by the formation of the "Society for the Prevention of Pauperism and Crime," which split the following year into the Industrial Employment Association and the better known Charity Organisation Society. In the 'eighties "slumming" became a fashionable occupation, while 1884 saw the beginning of the Settlement movement in the foundation of Toynbee Hall. Meanwhile the working classes were becoming articulate, learning more self-reliance and mutual dependence. The growth of Trade Unions, of Co-operative and Friendly societies, showed how the working people were beginning to work out their own salvation. Towards the close of the century methods of improvement were nearly all on collectivist lines--in sanitary reform, in free education, in the agitation for a legal limitation of labour to eight hours a day, for a minimum wage and for Old Age Pensions.