Hall Place in the London borough of Bexley
In Victorian England young ruffians, thieves and homeless children were a problem and the powers that be had the bright idea of confining them to industrial schools to turn them into productive members of society. Given William Arment's background, a father who had been in trouble with the law and an alcoholic mother, when I found him listed in the 1851 census living in a school I assumed that he had been placed in an industrial school to keep him out of trouble.
A rethink was in order when I realized that the school where William had been sent, Hall Place School in Bexley, Kent, was actually a different kind of boarding school, what the Brits called a public school. There were newspaper ads drumming up students for a "Nautical Education". From these ads, it appears that the school started in 1849. Perhaps William had been sent there to get him out of the way of his family's troubles. So much for my theory that the Arments were barely getting by.
It was also in line with the fact that there was an administration on the National Probate Calendar for George Arment. He must have had money to leave upon his untimely death in 1850, rather unexpected for a carman in the East End. The mystery deepens the further I research George's son, William Henry Arment, who by the time of his second marriage gives his occupation as gentleman and whose effects on his own death in 1893 amount to £9972 13s. 6d. Where did that money come from? It makes me want to find out more about the story of these relatives of mine.
Sources:
British
newspapers search for Hall Place School, FindMyPast (subscription site) http://www.findmypast.com
Wikipedia on industrial schools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_school
Image:
By
Ethan Doyle White - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70266439
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