THIS week in Down Memory Lane I feature a new local history book about to be published at Thurrock Museum.

Where the Bad Boys Go is a history of the Training Ship Shaftesbury, once moored of Grays Beach. Author Peter Benson is a Thurrock Museum volunteer who has extensively researched the subject.

The book follows the story of the School Board for London’s Training Ship Shaftesbury, moored in the Thames off Grays, from 1878 to 1906.

It begins in 1854 at her launch as the P&O passenger ship, Nubia, and closes with the auction and subsequent last voyage to a breakers yard in Holland in 1906.

The boys on board were sent to be reformed under “legal detention to the age of 16 years according to the Industrial Schools Act of 1866 and Safeguard Act”, with the aim of getting them off the streets, where most were scratching an illegal living by begging or stealing, and giving them a useful skill.

The British Medical Journal of 1903 says: “At first youths who have lived their lives running wild in the gutters and slums pine very much for their liberty, but once this feeling has worn off they lead comparatively happy lives and become contented.”

The boys would be scrubbed and given a haircut and a new suit of clothes as well as the opportunity to learn a skill (some became sailmakers), and participate in sports, music and lessons (reading, writing and arithmetic).

The boys were given three meals a day, which included bread, butter, potatoes, cocoa and jam or marmalade with meat pie on a Wednesday and fish on Fridays. The Training Ship Shaftesbury has often been overlooked from our first Training Ship Goliath (which caught fire in 1875) to the Exmouth, which was on the Grays station longest.

The book will be launched with a short talk in the museum on Thursday, October 10, at 7.30pm at the Thameside complex, in Orsett Road, Grays.