I'm certain it was residential - the census certainly seems to indicate the boys were living there as inmates.
What little I know is that my great grandfather was born on the "wrong side of the blanket" in Ireland. When he was less than a year old, his mother came to Greenock and married a widower, James Cassidy, who by that point, only had one other child at home (out of the four he appears to have had with his first wife). James was a sugarhouse laborer. I don't know if he was a drunk - but I do know from some family stories that he was very cruel to Tom and that my great grandfather hated him.
Net result was that Tom ended up in the ragged school, which seems to have done him some good, in terms of keeping him alive, fed and at least given basic care - and getting him a bit of an education - he could read and write, which HIS parents couldn't. Somehow he even came away able to play the organ well enough to be the substitute organist at his church in Canada. In the 1891 census, his age is given as 15, but he was actually 17, so doubtless small enough to get away with fibbing about his age so to keep a roof over his head a bit longer.
He must have been terribly starved and neglected as a child - both he and my great grandmother who came from a similar deprived background were very small - he was less than 5' 3" as a man and all of his children towered over him by many inches, so you know poor diet must have been the culprit. I have his WWI service records (he signed up in his 40's when he was the father of 6 as an ambulence driver), and he apparently had foot problems occasioned by improper footwear as a child (the medical records make mention of his foot deformities due to ill fitted shoes and that he couldn't walk far or march).
And for all of that, he ended up as just a lovely sweet man, father of 9, and very gentle, kind and even tempered.
I just can't imagine the poverty. I have a picture taken in Greenock of a school class in 1911 - my great grandmother's first child is in the picture. This little girl was left behind when my great grandmother went to Canada. What is remarkable about the picture is how ragged and dirty all the children are. Most of them look very thin and worn, many are quite dirty, clothing ill fitting, worn, patched and ragged - most of the boys look like they are wearing items made from worn out adult clothing. All of the little boys in the front are barefoot, although it is clearly NOT warm or dry.
It's like something out of a Dicken's novel.
M.
