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Ancestry UK

Tron Church Industrial School, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland

The Tron Church Industrial School was established in around 1863 and occupied premises at 14 Niddry Street, Edinburgh. Its founding was largely due to the efforts Dr John Hunter and Dr Maxwell Nicholson, ministers of the parish. The object of the school was to prevent girls and young women from falling into bad ways by giving them a good general education, and training them to habits of industry. The school could accommodate around 120 girls. The older pupils were employed in turn in the kitchen and the laundry. Forty or fifty children, mostly orphans, received breakfast at the school each morning. A nominal fee of a penny a week was charged for each child, but the school is free to those whose parents are unable to pay.

The establishment appears only to have operated as a day school and never become a Certified Industrial School, taking girls placed by the courts.

In 1881, Isabella McNeill was recorded as being the matron of the school, with her daughter Janet as sewing mistress.

Maps from the period label the school as being for boys and girls but it is unclear whether it was ever a mixed institution or when it closed. By the early 1900s the building was in use as a Tron Mission Hall.

The building no longer survives.

Records

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  • None identfied at present — any information welcome.

Bibliography

  • None noted at present.

Except where indicated, this page () © Peter Higginbotham. Contents may not be reproduced without permission.