What is "industrial school"

Industrial \In*dus"tri*al\, a. [Cf. F. industriel, LL. industrialis. See Industry.] Consisting in industry; pertaining to industry, or the arts and products of industry; concerning those employed in labor, especially in manual labor, and their wages, duties, and rights.

The great ideas of industrial development and economic social amelioration.
--M. Arnold.

Industrial exhibition, a public exhibition of the various industrial products of a country, or of various countries.

Industrial school, a school for teaching one or more branches of industry; also, a school for educating neglected children, and training them to habits of industry.

n. 1 A school specifically training for skills aimed at industrial employment. 2 Such a residential school formerly used to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents.

In Ireland, the Industrial Schools Act of 1868 established industrial schools to care for "neglected, orphaned and abandoned children". By 1884 there were 5,049 children in such institutions.

In England, the 1857 Industrial Schools Act was intended to solve problems of juvenile delinquency, by removing poor and neglected children from their home environment to a boarding school. The Act allowed magistrates to send disorderly children to a residential industrial school. An 1876 Act led to non-residential day schools of a similar kind.

There were similar arrangements in Scotland, where the Industrial Schools Act came into force in 1866. The schools cared for neglected children and taught them a trade, with an emphasis on preventing crime. Some of these schools were known as reformatories or, later, as approved schools. In recent times these schools have become notorious for the rampant sexual, physical and mental abuse that took place within their walls, often at the hands of members of the religious institutes running them.