Ragged School Museum

Both adults and children are inevitably charmed by this combination of mock Victorian schoolroom – with hard wooden benches and desks, slates, chalk, inkwells and abacuses – on the 1st floor, and social history museum below. ‘Ragged’ was a Victorian term used to refer to pupils’ usually torn, dirty and dishevelled clothes, and the museum celebrates the legacy of Dr Joseph Barnardo, who founded the first free school for destitute East End children in this building in the 1860s. On the first Sunday of the month, a Victorian lesson in which ‘pupils’ are taught reading, writing and ‘rithmetic by a strict school ma’am in full Victorian regalia called Miss Perkins, takes place at 2.15pm and 3.30pm.