Bluecoat schools were founded as charities to educate poor children. In the past the colour blue was associated with charity. The first was opened in 1552 by King Edward VI.

Halifax’s Bluecoat School was set up in 1642 by a bequest. Its charter was granted by King Charles I. Ten boys and ten girls received a home and an education that prepared them for life in the expanding textile town. Work they produced was to be sold to help finance their keep. It was also apparent that children who did not produce work of a suitable standard were to be whipped.

The Bluecoat School in Durham was started at the beginning of the eighteenth century by traders and operated from Ye Bull’s Head pub. It opened at a similar time to the Bluecoat School in Nottingham which began in 1706 in the porch of St Mary’s Church in the Lace Market. By 1855 it had moved to a purpose built building on the Mansfield Road. It is perhaps not surprising to discover that a similar school opened in York in 1705. Girls were educated at the Greatcoat School. Colchester’s Bluecoat School opened in 1710. For most of the schools the aim was to prepare boys for an apprenticeship and girls for a life in service as well as providing children with a grounding in religious education. Some of the schools also functioned as orphanages.

Children who were deemed as deserving were often chosen from within a parish based on their lack of income and their good character. The aim of the school benefactors who funded the schools was to help reduce poverty and to reinforce discipline and social hierarchy. As well as instilling discipline and teaching religion, sponsorship of these schools also reflected the religious responsibilities of the wealthy.

Education was divided between the sexes. Boys received a basic education and training for trades while girls learned to spin, sew and in the case of the girl in the picture above – to knit. The curriculum was limited and did not encourage upward social mobility. What they did offer was stability and the opportunity for adult employment.

William Blake’s poem Holy Thursday describes the annual ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral associated with London’s Christ’s Hospital. He felt that their poverty contrasted with the idea of a just society and used the image to draw attention to social hypocrisy in his Songs of Experience.