Violence (on both sides), the beating of children and the calling in of the police featured in some of the tussles between the London School Board and a number of parents who resented yet more authoritarian intrusion into their lives. Mr Tomlinson, the head of the boys’ department at the Nichol Street School, wrote in his 1879 logbook: “A little boy, James Monday, eight years old, was brought into the school yard crying but refusing to go into the ranks, had to be carried into the classroom. He then screamed, kicked and so tried to run out that his master sent for me, but nothing would make him move but the cane. He got four or five strokes on his back, but continuing to scream, I removed him to my private room, when his mother rushed in and cursed and swore and threatened to a fearful degree. With much difficulty I got her out of the school, but a mob assembled in the yard and street, which was only dispersed by the arrival of the police.

“This is the first annoyance of the kind which has occurred in the new buildings. Such interruptions were common enough in the old school three years ago; let us hope they are fast dying out.”

Below is an illustration of a “B Meeting” in progress in East London in the 1880s. At a B Meeting, parents of persistent non-attenders were summoned to explain themselves. The next disciplinary step up was a summons to the magistrates’ court and the threat of a fine. A number of London magistrates disliked the London School Board and would routinely dismiss the case against a working person, or, in the case of Montagu Williams JP, pay the find himself. This, in turn, led the Board to complain that magistrates were complicit in undermining the very thing (universal low-cost, or even free, education) that would help the poor to earn their way out of poverty.

Further reading:
Recollections of a School Attendance Officer by John Reeves (circa 1913); this very rare book is held at the Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives, 277 Bancroft Road, E1 4DQ, tel: 020 7364 1290. localhistory@towerhamlets.gov.uk
School Attendance in London 1870-1904: A Social History by David Rubinstein, Hull, 1969, is a brilliant overview of the early years of the London School Board.
The story of James Monday is found in the Nichol Street schools’ surviving paperwork at the London Metropolitan Archives, with the shelfmarks (for the boys dept) at LCC/EO/DIV05/ROC/AD/001 to 007. LMA, 40 Northampton Road, London EC1, tel: 020 7332 3820
https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/london-metropolitan-archives/Pages/default.aspx