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Description
Photography by John Ball - 19 June 1998 (with Agfa ePhoto307 digital camera)
This building, in Pleasant Street, Swansea, was once the home of Swansea's Ragged School. The school was founded in 1847 by the first Medical Officer for Swansea, Dr William Henry Michael. Its purpose was to care for and educate boys and girls of the poor.
By 1857, about 200 children attended the Day School, and 300 attended the Sunday School. The school ran a soup kitchen which must have saved many lives in the 1850s, when, as Charles Dickens wrote, ...the children were in rags, no shoes or stockings, blue with cold...". Swansea Ragged School finally closed its doors in October 1956.
Information source: The Old Swansea Ragged School by Annie Rees, published June 1995. No publisher was identified, but the book was probably published either by the author or Swansea Library Service. In 1998, the book was in the collection of Swansea Lending Library, since relocated to the County Hall, Oystermouth Road, Swansea. There was no ISBN indicated, but the book's Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) - formerly Dewey decimal classification - was 372.0942982.
Find out more about Ragged Schools at http://www.infed.org/youthwork/ragged_schools.htm
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