the course of virtue and the way of an honest livelihood."
General reforms were also made, especially through the instrumentality
of Jonas Hanway, to check infant mortality, and metropolitan parishes
were required to provide for their children outside London. A kindred
movement led to the establishment of penitentiaries (1758), of lock
hospitals and lying-in hospitals (1749-1752).

In Queen Anne's reign there was a new educational movement, "the charity
school"--"to teach poor children the alphabet and the principles of
religion," followed by the Sunday-school movement (1780), and about the
same time (1788) by "the school of industry"--to employ children and
teach them to be industrious. In 1844 the Ragged School Union was
established, and until the Education Act of 1870 continued its voluntary
educational work. As an outcome of these movements, through the efforts
of Miss Mary Carpenter and many others, in 1854-1855 industrial and
reformatory schools were established, to prevent crime and reform child
criminals. The orphanage movement, beginning in 1758, when the Orphan
Working Home was established, has been continued to the present day on a
vastly extended scale. In 1772 a society for the discharge of persons
imprisoned for small debts was established, and in 1773 Howard began his
prison reforms. This raised the standard of work in institutional
charities generally. After the civil wars the old hospital foundations
of St Bartholomew and St Thomas, municipalized by Edward VI., became
endowed charities partly supported by voluntary contributions. The same
fate befell Christ's Hospital, in connexion with which the voting
system, the admission of candidates by the vote of the whole body of
subscribers--that peculiarly English invention--first makes its
appearance.

A new interest in hospitals sprang up at the end of the 17th century. St
Thomas's was rebuilt (1693) and St Bartholomew's (1739); Guy's was
founded in 1724, and on the system of free "letters" obtainable in
exchange for donations, voluntary hospitals and infirmaries were
established in London (1733 and later) and in most of the large towns.
Towards the end of the 18th century the dispensary movement was
developed--a system of local dispensaries with fairly definite districts
and home visiting, a substitute for attendance at a hospital, where
"hospital fever" was dreaded, and an alternative to what was then a very
ill-administered system of poor-law medical re