This late 19th Century black and white print is a clipping from Harper’s Weekly. It depicts a classroom filled with rows of “news-boys” and “boot blacks.” These terms were often used to refer to impoverished, orphaned and/or homeless children. The scene is of a Sunday evening service. Three men are standing, one of whom is reading from what is likely a prayer book. A woman is playing the piano. The setting is in “the New York City Industrial School,” one of several founded in the 1800s to teach self-support skills to poor children, usually from immigrant families. It may have been the Children’s Aid Society Tompkins Square Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School which specifically sheltered and educated destitute working children, particularly newsboys and bootblacks, which opened April 21, 1887. The Children’s Aid Society was founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace.
Harper’s Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City and was published by Harper & Brothers from 1857-1916. It featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor, as well as illustrations.