Robert+Raikes



(Back to Leaders Page) **Robert Raikes** ("**the Younger**") (14 September 1736 – 5 April 1811) was an English philanthropist and [|Anglican] [|layman], noted for his promotion of [|Sunday schools]. Pre-dating state schooling and by 1831 schooling 1,250,000 children, they are seen as the first schools of the [|English state school system].

Raikes was born at [|Ladybellegate House], [|Gloucester] , in 1736, [|[1]]  the eldest child of Mary Drew and [|Robert Raikes] , a newspaper publisher. He was baptised on 24 September 1736 at [|St Mary de Crypt Church] in Gloucester. On 23 December 1767 he married Anne Trigge, with whom he had three sons and seven daughters. Their oldest son [|Reverend Robert Napier Raikes] had a son [|General Robert Napier Raikes] of the Indian Army.

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. Raikes had been involved with those incarcerated at the county [|Poor Law] (part of the jail at that time) and saw that vice would be better prevented than cured. 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. The best available teachers were [|lay people]. The textbook was the Bible, and the originally intended curriculum started with learning to read and then progressed to the [|catechism]. [|[2]]  [|[3]]  Raikes used the paper to publicise the schools and bore most of the cost in the early years. The movement began in July 1780 in the home of a Mrs Meredith. Only boys attended, and she heard the lessons of the older boys who coached the younger. Later, girls also attended. Within two years, several schools opened in and around Gloucester. He published an account on 3 November 1783 of Sunday schools in his paper, and later word of the work spread through the // [|Gentleman's Magazine] //, and in 1784, a letter to the // [|Arminian Magazine] //.

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