The Working Classroom

Abstract

In 1851, Henry Hitchcock lived at Number Four, Pope’s Parade, in the centre of the city of Bristol. He was 45 years old and earned his living as a labourer in a large iron foundry. He had spent his whole life in the city, but his wife Ann had been born in a tiny Devonshire village in the year 1800. She, along with countless others of her generation, had been attracted from her rural home by the lure of Britain’s rapidly growing industrial towns. The Hitchcocks shared Number Four, Pope’s Parade with five other labouring families — 21 people in all. It was a dark, squalid and overcrowded place. The building saw many comings and goings, and some of these would have been connected with the little school which, unexpectedly, was kept here.¹