SCHOOLCHILDREN AND BLACKBERRY PICKING – MR WILLIS BUND’S PROTEST
The Worcestershire County Education Committee reported to the County Council yesterday the arrangements made for blackberry-picking.
Mr Willis bund said that long ago the Board of Education made a great fuss about education being interrupted by children being taken from schools to works on the land; yet now they proposed to turn out herds of hungry boys with a teacher and, authorised by the Board of Education, to steal the property of the tenant farmer. A more mischievous thing he could hardly imagine. To incite children to take property in that way was downright wicked. For children at any time to take what they were not entitled to was bad enough, but for the Board of Education to give them power to do so was abominable.
Mr H C Gardner thought Mr Bund was wrong in his interpretation of the law, as it had been held that there was no property in a blackberry unless cultivated.