||The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (June 2009)|
In Ireland the Industrial Schools Act of 1868 established industrial schools (Irish: scoileanna saothair) 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.
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in Ireland
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was established in 2000 with functions including the investigation of abuse of children in institutions in the State. It was dependent on people giving evidence which they did in large numbers.
The conclusions of the report issued in May 2009 (Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009)are copied below. 42 of the 43 conclusions refer to the Industrial Schools. They are in themselves a useful summary of what an industrial school in Ireland was, as well as a damning indictment of Ireland, Church, State and society.
Vaccine trials in some Industrial Schools were to be investigated by the Commission, but were discontinued by the Commission in 2003 following Court judgement. In a statement on their website the Commission said " The Vaccine Trials Inquiry was a Division of the Investigation Committee. Judicial Review proceedings seeking, inter alia , a declaration that the Order which established the Vaccine Trials Inquiry was ultra vires the Act of 2000, were initiated in November 2003. On 25 November 2003, an undertaking was given to the High Court, by the Commission, that it would not conduct any hearings in relation to the matters within the ambit of the Order, until the matter was settled. The practical effect of this undertaking was that the work of the Division was suspended at that point and never re-commenced, given the subsequent decision of the Court, that the Order was ultra vires the Act." 
- Magdalen Asylum
- Haut de la Garenne
- For a comprehensive list of Irish Industrial schools see Industrial Schools in Ireland.
- Reformatory and Industrial School legislation for Ireland, UK: Bopcris.
- Industrial Schools in Scotland
- Industrial Schools in England
- History of child abuse in Ireland: Industrial schools
- Ultimate Disposal
- The Goldenbridge secret rosary bead factory, Butterflies & wheels, 2006.
- St Michael's Industrial School, Wexford, 1901 & 1911 census
- Report, IE: Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009.
- Smith, James M. "Remembering Ireland's architecture of containment: "telling" stories in The Butcher Boy and States of Fear". Eire-Ireland: Journal of Irish Studies (CBS Interactive) (Fall-Winter, 2001).
- Cherry, Richard R (1912). "Juvenile crime and its prevention". Journal of The Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland (Dublin: Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland) XII (Part XCI 1910/1911). hdl:2262/7921.