The Ragged Schools were early free schools for the poorest children, set up before elementary education was made universal in the 1870s. The children were, by all accounts, literally ragged. One of the most important things offered by the schools was free food and clothing - they were not just about education. Charles Dickens, an early supporter, wrote that 'they who are too ragged, wretched, filthy, and forlorn, to enter any other place: who could gain admission into no charity school, and who would be driven from any church door; are invited to come in here, and find some people not depraved, willing to teach them something, and show them some sympathy.'
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