Why have Penny Readings?
Penny Readings have been described as `entertainments'. Ordinary people attended, sometimes in great numbers, but many of them could not read or write, and had never received any schooling. Did the gentry who organised and performed the readings intend them only to be educational? The details below, extracted from the Marriage Registers of St Peter's Church, Yateley, show the total numbers of brides and grooms, in each decade, who could not write even their own name. Though others could manage to write their own name that did not mean that they had leant to read and write.
| | Cannot Write Name |
Decade | Total Marriages | Grooms | Brides | Percent |
1850s | 113 | 43 | 40 | 37% |
1870s | 111 | 38 | 21 | 27% |
1890s | 98 | 6 | 1 | 4% |
The marked increase in the ability of brides and grooms to sign their names follows the establishment of the National School on Yateley Green in the 1866. In 1870, an Education Act established the principle that all children should receive primary education, and the 1880 Act made school attendance compulsory up to age 10. It seems likely that the gentry did have an altruistic educational motive for running the early Penny Readings, and they they mark the origins of adult education in Yateley
Back to 2003 Exhibition Main Page
Page written by Peter Tipton for the Yateley Society's 2003 Exhibition: Adult Education in Yateley mounted in Yateley Library during Local History Month, for which the theme was Adult Education. This exhibition was held in conjunction with Yateley Workers Education Association (WEA) -- now in 2008 defunct. Pages may have been updated as a result of recent research.
(C) The Yateley Society, 2003 and 2008
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