Photostory

Here is another photo of the garden I made at the back of our townhouse complex. I call it the Ragged Garden because it’s on the site of the former Lower Collins Street Ragged School that operated there for a remarkable 56 years – from 1858-1914.

Ragged schools were for children who were too poor to attend public primary schools, which were fee-paying at that time. Many of the children in the surrounding area, called Wapping, didn’t have suitable shoes or clothes to wear either – hence the name ‘ragged’ school after similar schools in London. As children often roamed the streets of Wapping and the dock area, the school’s teachers knocked on doors in the area to invite parents to send their children to school.

There was a garden mentioned in reports of the annual meetings of Hobart’s Ragged School Association and flowers decorated the classrooms, especially when the inspector made a visit.

See my article about how children found acceptance and self-esteem at the school, as well as an education, in Forty South Tasmania online: here