Robert Raikes - Sunday School

Philanthropist and pioneer of the Sunday-School movement, born in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, SWC England, UK. In 1757 he succeeded his father as proprietor of the Gloucester Journal. His pity for the misery and ignorance of many children in his native city led him to start a Sunday school (1780) where they might learn to read and repeat the Catechism. He lived to see such schools spread throughout England.

Robert Raikes ("the Younger") (14 September 1736 – 5 April 1811) was an English philanthropist and Anglican layman, noted for his promotion of Sunday schools.

Raikes was born at Gloucester in 1736, the eldest child of Mary Drew and Robert Raikes, a newspaper publisher.

Sunday School

Robert initiated the Sunday School Movement.He inherited a publishing business from his father, becoming proprietor of the Gloucester Journal in 1757. The movement started with a school for boys in the slums. He saw schooling as the best intervention. The best available time was Sunday as the boys were often working in the factories the other six days.

Raikes used the paper to publicize the schools and bore most of the cost in the early years. Within two years, several schools opened in and around Gloucester. He published an account on November 3, 1783 of Sunday School in his paper, and later word of the work spread through the Gentleman's Magazine, and in 1784, a letter to the Arminian Magazine.

The original schedule for the schools, as written by Raikes was "The children were to come after ten in the morning, and stay till twelve;

There were disputes about the movement in the early years. The schools were derisively called "Raikes' Ragged School". "Sabbatarian disputes" in the 1790s led many Sunday schools to cease their teaching of writing.

By 1831, Sunday School in Great Britain was ministering weekly to 1,250,000 children, approximately 25 percent of the population. As these schools preceded the first state funding of schools for the common public, they are sometimes seen as a forerunner to the current English school system.