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AOSA CENTENARY HISTORY 1841 - 1941 |
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Chapter
I |
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Contents
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The disciplinary severity of the Society of Friends primarily brought about the foundation of Ayton School, for the Society promptly disowned and removed from membership those members who ‘married out.’ Their children were automatically debarred from membership. This suicidal policy during the early part of the nineteenth century steadily reduced the numbers of a Society already diminishing. Such disownment was at last abandoned in 1854, but much harm had resulted. The Society of Friends had been weakened not only in numbers but also in spirit and in energy. For the active, eager, enterprising, resolute members were often just those who married non-members. Considerable steadfastness and courage of will were needed to face the certain disapproval of the family and of the meeting. The young men and women who married out marched knowingly into spiritual exile. Those who thus braved reproach and isolation showed themselves by the very fact as the potential leaders of the Society which deliberately cast them beyond its borders. Nor was the harm confined to one generation ; their children and their children’s children were lost to the Society. A progressive weakening continued. Friends of foresight realised that the children meant more than the parents. For of each father and mother one parent at any rate knew what the Society stood for. He had felt its call to its members ; he had joined in its devotions ; he believed in its way of life and appreciated its tradition and history. But the child lacked this early training ; he might not go to Ackworth School where his father or mother had been and where he, too, should have received that grounding which would have made him a recruit for the Society. His life and its possibilities were lost to Friends. Such considerations occupied the minds of far-seeing Friends in Durham and North Yorkshire, and at last they were focussed by a visit of two Friends to Brookfield School in Northern Ireland. Jonathan Backhouse and his wife Hannah Chapman Backhouse had attended the Irish Yearly Meeting, and after Dublin had visited Brookfield School which had recently been started for just those children one of whose parents had been disowned for marrying outside the ranks of the Society of Friends. This visit and his observation of the practical direction of the work done at Brookfield, the actual training of the boys and their working as young farmers, the domestic sewing, weaving, knitting of the girls, had commended to Jonathan Backhouse the idea of a similar school for a similar class of children in the North of England. He knew, too, that a young Quaker teacher, George Dixon, lived and taught at Bishop Auckland. So in the spring of 1840 when Darlington Monthly Meeting was held at Staindrop, Jonathan Backhouse had dinner with George Dixon’s parents. From them he learnt that the young man had served a three years’ apprenticeship in farming before he started to teach and was considered a good practical farm hand as well as a teacher of several years’ standing. Jonathan Backhouse forthwith commissioned George Dixon to visit Brookfield School and to report on its working and value and to consider the possibility of an industrial agricultural school for North Yorkshire and Durham. George Dixon went to Brookfield and for a week closely examined the school’s methods and practice. He sent Jonathan Backhouse a report of all he saw’ taking exception to nothing but the dietary to which I thought English parents would object.’ George Dixon paid visits to similar Quaker schools at Penketh near Warrington and at Rawdon near Leeds, and then drew up judicious reports. These reports were presented and favourably received by a special conference held at Darlington in October 1840. Ayton School was almost in being. The conference adopted a long minute for circulation among the members of Durham Quarterly Meeting. It stated that many Friends took a ‘lively interest in the education of children not members but having claims upon the care of our Society,’ yet this education, ‘so long as the children remain under the parental roof and exposed to the association which too frequently contaminates this class, presents many and almost insuperable difficulties.’ But if these difficulties could be overcome and if ‘such children who now receive but very partial assistance’ were properly trained and taught, not only would they themselves benefit but there would arise the pleasing hope that from amongst those so educated in our Christian Principles not a few might be raised up under the divine blessing to adorn our profession.’ Such a spirit moved Friends to take the step they took. They believed that ‘properly conducted boarding schools best
meet the exigencies of the case’ and in these schools a considerable
portion of time should be devoted to agricultural pursuits, for ‘manual
labour is adapted to the previous and prospective habits of those who
would enter such a school, it promotes health and materially reduces
expenditure.’ For an institution like this ‘a location
near a considerable number of our society’ should be chosen,
and in a situation easy of access ; the land ought to be such as would
fairly repay the labour bestowed upon it, and ‘we suppose that
there may be no district more suitable for the establishment of an
Agricultural School for the North of England than the County of Durham.’ |
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