Sunday school Sunday school A Sunday school is an educational institution, usually (but not always) Christian, which caters to children and other young people who would be working on weekdays. Sunday schools were first set up in the 1780s in England to provide education to working children. William King (see memorial in Dursley Tabernacle Church) first started a Sunday school in Dursley, Gloucestershire, and suggested to his friend Robert Raikes, that he start a similar school in Gloucester, which resulted in Raikes generally being quoted as starting the schools. Raikes was editor of the Gloucester Journal. He wrote an article in his
Thomas Raikes Bank of England from 1797 to 1799, during the crisis of 1797 when war had so diminished gold reserves that the Government prohibited the Bank from paying out in gold and ordered the use of banknotes instead. Thomas Raikes was a personal friend of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, and of William Wilberforce, the leader of the campaign against the slave trade. Raikes died at Stanwell House, Middlesex 29 December 1813. On 8 December 1774 at St George's, Bloomsbury, London, Raikes married Charlotte, daughter of Henry Finch, and granddaughter of Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham. With Charlotte he