Abstract

The Refuge for the Destitute, a charitable reformatory in London, aimed to transform juvenile delinquents into ‘honest and useful’ citizens through institutionalization, moral instruction, and occupational training. While historians have dwelled on Refuge beneficiaries’ lives before and during their stay in the institution, only minimal attention has been paid to their subsequent progress. As a result, very little is known about the success of the Refuge’s methods. This article addresses this historiographical gap by investigating the post-institutional experiences of beneficiaries who left the Refuge in 1823. It assesses the degree to which Refuge youths met the long-term goals outlined by their benefactors: abstaining from crime, sustaining themselves through honest labor, and establishing respectable Christian households. The Refuge obtained results which were much more mixed than the charity governors cared to admit. Recidivism rates were high and the Refuge’s occupational training was ill-adapted to conditions outside the institution. This study builds upon a recent shift in interest from elites’ implementation of moral reform schemes to their impact on individual subjects, adding detail to emerging research on criminality and life stages and contributing to our understanding of a broad range of corrective institutions which employed the same techniques as the Refuge.

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