He entered the school on 13 September 1879. He was then nine and a half and, according to the school's records, he could read but could not write. He was to be detained at the school until he was turned 16. The Rev. Dr Thomas Guthrie's original Ragged School — later called the "Industrial School" — had been established in 1847 in Ramsay Lane as an orphanage, primarily for boys. The building still exists, in the tiny street at the top of Castlehill on the Royal Mile, near Edinburgh Castle, and is now part of the Camera Obscura attraction.