Ragged School founder Thomas Guthrie died - On this day in history

Reverend Thomas Guthrie, one of the founders of the nineteenth-century Ragged School movement, died on 28 February 1873. Guthrie was a clergyman who became moved by the plight of his poverty-stricken parishioners in an age before free schooling. He was one of the original founders of the Ragged School movement and after writing Plea for Ragged Schools, in 1847 founded a Ragged School in Edinburgh, which was soon followed by another in Aberdeen.

Guthrie was also a leader of the Free Church of Scotland and helped to raise £10,000 to build manses for the church's ministers, as well as working for the Blind Asylum and Night Refuge charities.

He is buried at The Grange Cemetery at Edinburgh and is remembered by a statue on Edinburgh's Princes Street.

Further reading Life of the Reverend Thomas Guthrie: Mostly from his own lips