The Distinctiveness of Catholic Schooling in the West of Scotland Before the Education (Scotland) Act, 1918

Vaughan, Geraldine

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-51370-0_3

Geraldine Vaughan^3,4

494 Accesses
1 Citations

Abstract

Section 18 of the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act—described by historians such as T. M. Devine as the Magna Carta of Scottish Catholicism—has partly overshadowed what Roman Catholics had achieved up until then in terms of education. This chapter sets off to examine the originality of the Catholic schooling system in the West of Scotland in the Victorian era. The Catholics were not the only ones having to accommodate the children of urban workers with very limited means and prospects to educate their children. Did they fare better than the other denominations? What was the purpose of the Catholic Church in maintaining, often at a very high degree of financial sacrifice, separate schools? To examine these issues, this chapter relies on the analysis of primary sources such as the school logbooks, correspondence by priests, annual Catholic directories and reports on schools and school board activities.

I would like to thank Martin Mitchell for his thorough reading and his most useful comments on my work. This chapter was written during a 2016 stay as a Visiting Fellow (School of Divinity, Edinburgh University) which was most generously funded by a Royal Society of Edinburgh/Caledonian Research Fund European Visiting Research Fellowship.

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Notes

1.
Francis J. O’Hagan and Robert A. Davis, “Forging the compact of church and state in the development of Catholic Education in late nineteenth-century Scotland”, Innes Review, 58(1), 2007, 73.
2.
See Mary McHugh, “Catholic schooling in Hamilton before 1918”, in T. M. Devine (ed.), St Mary’s Hamilton: A Social History 1846–1996 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1995), 71–79; Martha Skinnider, “Catholic elementary education in Glasgow 1818–1918”, in T. R. Bone (ed.), Studies in the History of Scottish Education, 1872–1939 (London: London University Press, 1967), 13–70; J. H. Treble, “The development of Roman Catholic education in Scotland, 1878–1978”, in David McRoberts (ed.), Modern Scottish Catholicism 1878–1978 (Glasgow: J. S. Burns, 1979), 111–139; James C. Conroy, “A very Scottish affair: Catholic education and the State”, Oxford Review of Education, 27(4), 2001, 543–558; T. A. FitzPatrick, “The Catholic Teachers’ Union, 1917–1919”, Innes Review, 41(1), 1990, 132–135; James McGloin, “Catholic education in Ayr, 1823–1918. Part One”, Innes Review, 13(1), 1962, 77–90.
3.
Glasgow Courier, 10 June 1824. See also T. M. Devine, “Highland Migration to Lowland Scotland, 1760–1860”, Scottish Historical Review, 62(174), 1983, 137–149.
4.
G. Walker, “The Protestant Irish in Scotland”, in T. M. Devine (ed.), Irish immigrants and Scottish society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1991), 48.
5.
J. E. Handley, The Irish in Scotland (Glasgow: J. S. Burns, 1964), 49.
6.
Parliamentary Papers (64), Answers made by schoolmasters in Scotland to queries circulated in 1838, by order of the Select Committee on Education in Scotland, 1841, 558.
7.
Ibid., 561.
8.
J. E. Handley, The Irish in Modern Scotland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1947), 191.
9.
Glasgow Archdiocese Archives (GAA), WD 9/3: pencil note by Archbishop Eyre.
10.
J. E. Handley, The Irish in Scotland 1798–1845 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1945), 279–280.
11.
Parliamentary Papers (64), Answers made by schoolmasters in Scotland, 675.
12.
The references to heavy parish debts are numerous throughout the correspondence of priests with the Western Vicariate (see GAA, General Correspondence). In 1851, the parliamentary grant amounted to £150,000 and aid was granted on condition that schools be open to Catholic inspectors. See Catholic Directory for Scotland, 1851, 124–127.
13.
Francis J. O’Hagan, Change, Challenge and Achievement: a study of the development of Catholic Education in Glasgow in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Glasgow: St Andrew’s College, 1996).
14.
Catholic Directory for Scotland, 1835, 48.
15.
Glasgow City Archives (GCA), TD729/64: Education in Airdrie before 1872. There were Catholic ‘adventure schools’ in Glasgow up to the 1860s which provided low standards of education with poor staffing—so that children under 13 could produce certificates that they had undergone a minimal number of hours of education. See O’Hagan, Change, Challenge and Achievement, 7.
16.
Catholic Directory for Scotland, 1860, 86.
17.
Glasgow Free Press, 4 September 1867.
18.
Catholic Directory for Scotland, 1879, 103.
19.
Parliamentary Papers (64), Answers made by schoolmasters in Scotland, 558, 561.
20.
James E. Handley, “French Influence on Scottish Catholic Education in the Nineteenth Century”, Innes Review, 1(1), 1950, 29.
21.
Parliamentary Papers (64), Answers made by schoolmasters in Scotland, 685.
22.
Ibid., 521.
23.
GCA, CO/2/5/6/86/1: St Lawrence’s RC school logbook, 26 October 1869, 178.
24.
Ibid., 561.
25.
Ibid., 521.
26.
GCA, CO2/5/6/86/1: St Lawrence’s RC school logbook, April 1864–November 1884, 27 January 1866, 62.
27.
Catholic Directory for Scotland, 1856, 95–96: School Examination Report, 22 June 1854.
28.
GCA, CO2/5/6/86/1: St Lawrence’s R.C school logbook, April 1864–November 1884.
29.
GCA, CO2/5/6/86/1: St Lawrence’s R.C school logbook, April 1864–November 1884, 84: 13/6/1866.
30.
Handley, Irish in Scotland 1798–1845, 197.
31.
Catholic Directory for Scotland, 1873, 117.
32.
Catholic Directory for Scotland, 1856, 95.
33.
GCA, CO2/5/6/65/1: Paisley, Saint Mary School Logbook, November 1871–October 1887, 141–167.
34.
For instance, the children in Port Glasgow were given a holiday on Saint Patrick’s Day in 1908 (GCA, CO2/5/6/74/1: Port Glasgow, St John’s RC School Logbook, February 1898–December 1912, 328).
35.
Glasgow Free Press, 21 November 1863.
36.
Scottish Catholic Archives, OL/104/18: Michael Condon to Bishop John Murdoch, 13 November 1862.
37.
Parliamentary Papers, 1863 (518) LII.519: Copy of any Regulations, Instructions or Correspondence of the Board of Supervision in Scotland relating to Religious Instruction of the Pauper Children of Roman Catholic Parents: Letter from James Danaher to J. F. Gordon, Esq., Edinburgh, 30 August 1850.
38.
B. Aspinwall, “The Formation of the Catholic Community in the West of Scotland: Some Preliminary Outlines”, Innes Review, 33(1), 1982, 50.
39.
Glasgow Observer, 3 April 1888.
40.
GCA, CO2/5/6/74/1: Port Glasgow, St John’s Roman Catholic School Logbook, February 1898–December 1912, 3 December 1911.
41.
GCA, CO2/5/6/74/1: Port Glasgow St John’s Roman Catholic School Logbook, February 1898–December 1912, 12 November 1909.
42.
Ibid.
43.
GCA, CO2/5/6/37/2: Saint Lawrence’s Boys School Greenock Logbook, April 1904–1918, 11 December 1914.
44.
Handley, Irish in Scotland 1798–1845, 235.
45.
Coatbridge Leader, 2 April 1910.
46.
Handley, Irish in Scotland 1798–1845, 237.
47.
Coatbridge Leader, 20 June 1914.
48.
Scotch Education Department, Education Reports, 1875–1876, 155–156, quoted in T. R. Bone, School Inspection in Scotland 1840–1966 (London: London University Press, 1968), 107.
49.
GCA, CO2/5/6/65/1: Paisley, Saint Mary School, November 1871–October 1887 Logbook, 17 March 1876, 114.
50.
Ibid., 14 April 1877, 151.
51.
Skinnider, “Catholic Elementary Education”, 27.
52.
Handley, Irish in Scotland 1798–1845, 226.
53.
Ibid.
54.
The cumulative vote allowed voters to allocate several votes (as many votes as there were candidates) on one or several candidates. See G. Vaughan, “‘Papists looking after the Education of our Protestant Children!’ Catholics and Protestants on western Scottish school boards, 1872–1918”, Innes Review, 63(1), 2012, 30–47.
55.
Greenock Telegraph, 15 April 1903.
56.
Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser, 22 April 1882.
57.
Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser, 14 April 1900.
58.
Coatbridge Leader, 30 April 1912.
59.
Coatbridge Leader, 19 April 1913.
60.
Glasgow Examiner, 10 July 1897.
61.
Glasgow Observer, 3 January 1920.
62.
B. Aspinwall, “Catholic Teachers for Scotland: the Liverpool Connection”, Innes Review, 45(1), 1994, 48.
63.
Skinnider, “Catholic Elementary Education”, 31.
64.
Hansard, House of Commons Debates 25 February 1944, vol. 397, 1193. (http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1944/feb/25/clause-14-classification-of-auxiliary#S5CV0397P0_19440225_HOC_139).

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Department of English Studies, University of Rouen, Rouen, France
Geraldine Vaughan
Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France
Geraldine Vaughan

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Correspondence to Geraldine Vaughan .

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School of Education, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Stephen J. McKinney
Glasgow, UK
Raymond McCluskey

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Vaughan, G. (2019). The Distinctiveness of Catholic Schooling in the West of Scotland Before the Education (Scotland) Act, 1918. In: McKinney, S., McCluskey, R. (eds) A History of Catholic Education and Schooling in Scotland. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51370-0_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51370-0_3
Published: 24 May 2019
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