_Question_ 16. “We should be glad if you could give us additional reasons and facts, and explain a little more to us why you think that vans should be registered annually, or at any rate have their certificates renewed.”
In the first place, I would say that the non-annual registration was, and is so still, one of the principal causes why the Canal Boats Act of 1877 is not so satisfactory as desired. The children living in canal beats under the Act of 1877 really belong to the place at which the boats are registered. This is as it should be, and I want the principle of localizing or identifying the canal children with some place extended to all travelling children living in vans; but that identification must give the parents a choice of selecting other districts or localities from time to time as changes of circumstances and other things might require. Under the present system, when once the boat is registered at a place, the children, under the Act of 1877, belong to that place till they are past school age, and no provision is made under the Act for changes which often occur in a boatman’s life, or would occur in a gipsy’s life. I will try to illustrate my meaning more clearly by taking a case in point as regards the carrying out of the Canal Boats Act, which would apply with equal force to children living in vans. When the Canal Boats Act of 1877 came into operation, either through the strictness or laxity of other registration authorities, more than eight hundred canal boatmen and boat-owners from all parts of the country applied to the Runcorn registration authorities to have their boats registered. Of course they registered the boats, and obtained the five-shilling fees. After a time it was found out that the School Board authorities at Runcorn were called upon to provide school accommodation for nearly two thousand boat children, which they could not do. At any rate, they did not wish to saddle the town with the expenses of educating boat children from all parts of the country, and from whom they received nothing in return; and the consequence is the two thousand boat children whose floating houses are registered at Runcorn are going without education to-day, and their patents cannot, so long as this registration exists, place them in any other School Board district in this country. The annual registration which I propose will give the boating and gipsy parents the opportunity of changing their homes or headquarters without detriment to the children, and the establishment of more registration districts would, I am thoroughly convinced, place the matter on a satisfactory and workable basis. If John Jones during the year ceased working his boat in and out of Runcorn, and took to Paddington’s scented waters, he could, by registering his boat at Paddington at the time of the renewal of his certificate, put his children under the London School Board, which he cannot do under the present system. To meet the case of the gipsy and van children, any sanitary authority should be a registration authority, or at any rate at those towns where hawker’s licences can be obtained.