Reformatory Boys at the Philanthropic Farm School, RedhilI, Surrey.
From the 1840s onward, the Philanthropic Farm School, one of the oldest of the British reformatory schools, sent small parties of boys to Canada. These lads had committed minor crimes such as truancy or petty larceny. The reformatory maintained strict standards of discipline and wards were clothed in the distinctive uniforms evident here. Redhill inmates were given agricultural training in Britain before they emigrated, a policy imitated later by several other philanthropic institutions. But note that these youngsters are cutting and tying grain by hand, a method feasible in the smaller fields of labour-abundant Britain. In Canada, where horse-drawn reapers did this work, the harvest skills required of the young agricultural apprentice were quite different from those he had learned before emigration.
