In the Georgian period, the education of children was conducted in the home, as well as in schools. In the Nursery playroom of Number 29 Fitzwilliam Street Lower, is a device which was originally produced for a school room and shows the type of material that was available in the early 19th century for teaching the basics, or 'rudiments', to infants in the class room or domestic setting.
The 'Rudiment Box' originally consisted of two scrolls of educational images mounted back to back in a glass fronted cabinet. The purpose of the device was simple. A handle would be turned each day by a teacher to reveal a new lesson for the children. Each of the images on the scrolls would have originally been issued in a book. The pictures have been glued onto linen to form the scroll, each of which measures approximately 30 feet in length. The glass fronting the box may have been magnified to enlarge the characters on display, but that is not the case now. The earliest print on this scroll, The Natural History of Birds, dates from 1812. Others, such as the Costumes of Nations, date from 1830-1833.
The print series was produced by the firm of William Darton and Son which traded from 1755 until 1854, at Gracechurch Street and latterly Holborn Hill, in London. The Darton family belonged to the Society of Friends, a religious grouping which was interested in social reform, particularly the abolitionist cause. The Darton prints in the Rudiment Box reflect a comprehensive and well-rounded world-view, very much in contrast to the standard domestic Georgian education, which placed emphasis on teaching & learning by rote. Central to the methodology in the Rudiment Box is the association of image & text to improve learning. The Irish novelist Mariah Edgeworth, a contemporary of the Dartons, also stressed the importance of using images in teaching children, advising that 'prints will be entertaining to children at a very early age; they teach accuracy of sight, they engage the attention, and employ the imagination'. The images also allow children to exercise deduction, reasoning, and choice. Also of fundamental importance in the Rudiment Box was the centrality of Scripture in teaching children their place in the world. A complete set of instructions for the Rudiment Box, was published for the Liberty National School in Cole Alley off Meath Street in 1836. The instructions are entitled "Introductory Lectures". These instructions outline how the Rudiment Box should be used and illustrate the variety of subjects taught to children by this device.
The full list of the subjects covered in the Introductory Lectures is as follows. Geography, Agriculture, Natural History: (covering the Animal Kingdom; Mankind, Beasts. Birds, Fishes, Insects and Reptiles. The Vegetable Kingdom, and the Mineral Kingdom. Manufactures, Trades, Figures, Ciphering, & Combination Table Astronomy, Geometry, & c. Grammar. Miscellaneous: covering the Ship, the Compass, Sources of Food, History, Biography, Words.)
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