W. David Wills – författare

The late David Wills spent a lifetime in the service of the so-called delinquent, the misfit, the maladjusted. He was the first Englishman to train as a psychiatric social worker and was well known for his books The Hawkspur Experiment, The Barns Experiment, etc.Originally published in 1970, this book describes another experiment with a hostel for boys leaving schools for maladjusted children and lacking any settled home from which to enter the community. It demonstrates once again David Wills’s conviction that the offender wants to be ‘good’ and will be helped by affection rather than by punishment. Yet it is obvious that the work was full of stress and that only people with some of the attributes of archangels could respond to the boys’ needs and remain in control of the situation. The book demonstrates the extent of deprivation suffered by such young people and that no ordinary hostels or lodgings will do if they are to be set upon a less turbulent course of life, leading to truly adult independence. It added greatly to our understanding of the personalities, experience of life and needs of maladjusted boys in their ‘teens at the time, although the lessons drawn from it were disturbing in relation both to prevention and treatment. The penetration of David Wills’s assessment is beyond doubt and (as Dame Eileen Younghusband concludes in her Foreword) his book will give a great deal to those ‘trying in various capacities to help boys and girls who otherwise would grow into adulthood permanently handicapped emotionally and socially’.This book is a re-issue originally published in 1970. The language used is a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this re-publication.

The late David Wills spent a lifetime in the service of the so-called delinquent, the misfit, the maladjusted. He was the first Englishman to train as a psychiatric social worker and was well known for his books The Hawkspur Experiment, The Barns Experiment, etc.Originally published in 1970, this book describes another experiment with a hostel for boys leaving schools for maladjusted children and lacking any settled home from which to enter the community. It demonstrates once again David Wills’s conviction that the offender wants to be ‘good’ and will be helped by affection rather than by punishment. Yet it is obvious that the work was full of stress and that only people with some of the attributes of archangels could respond to the boys’ needs and remain in control of the situation. The book demonstrates the extent of deprivation suffered by such young people and that no ordinary hostels or lodgings will do if they are to be set upon a less turbulent course of life, leading to truly adult independence. It added greatly to our understanding of the personalities, experience of life and needs of maladjusted boys in their ‘teens at the time, although the lessons drawn from it were disturbing in relation both to prevention and treatment. The penetration of David Wills’s assessment is beyond doubt and (as Dame Eileen Younghusband concludes in her Foreword) his book will give a great deal to those ‘trying in various capacities to help boys and girls who otherwise would grow into adulthood permanently handicapped emotionally and socially’.This book is a re-issue originally published in 1970. The language used is a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this re-publication.

Originally published in 1941 and written in an attempt to dispute the popular assumption at the time that a ‘bit of discipline’ is what is needed for the correction of young men who show delinquent tendencies, this book is much more than that.Basically an account of a kind of voluntary Borstal Institution of which the author was head from 1936 to 1940, its interest on reissue in 1967 lay in the fact that it contained the germinal ideas of most of the day’s newest methods in penal treatment, not just as ideas, but in practice. Here is the therapeutic community in embryo, here are the beginnings of group therapy, of inmate participation in treatment, of therapy through relationships. None of them are mentioned by name – the names had not been invented; but anyone who wanted to understand the trends in the treatment of delinquent and maladjusted people at the time would find it all here in simple untechnical English.The book is also an account of an enthralling experience, exciting and interesting in itself, apart from any social significance. Just before the camp started, Alec Paterson said to David Wills, ‘Do you really think you can run a place of this kind without the use of punishment?’ Wills said he didn’t know, but looked forward to trying. Readers of this book may judge for themselves how far he succeeded. A particularly interesting feature of this edition is the account of the subsequent lives of the many boys who were at Hawkspur.

Originally published in 1941 and written in an attempt to dispute the popular assumption at the time that a ‘bit of discipline’ is what is needed for the correction of young men who show delinquent tendencies, this book is much more than that.Basically an account of a kind of voluntary Borstal Institution of which the author was head from 1936 to 1940, its interest on reissue in 1967 lay in the fact that it contained the germinal ideas of most of the day’s newest methods in penal treatment, not just as ideas, but in practice. Here is the therapeutic community in embryo, here are the beginnings of group therapy, of inmate participation in treatment, of therapy through relationships. None of them are mentioned by name – the names had not been invented; but anyone who wanted to understand the trends in the treatment of delinquent and maladjusted people at the time would find it all here in simple untechnical English.The book is also an account of an enthralling experience, exciting and interesting in itself, apart from any social significance. Just before the camp started, Alec Paterson said to David Wills, ‘Do you really think you can run a place of this kind without the use of punishment?’ Wills said he didn’t know, but looked forward to trying. Readers of this book may judge for themselves how far he succeeded. A particularly interesting feature of this edition is the account of the subsequent lives of the many boys who were at Hawkspur.

Originally published in 1945, this is a concise account of the remarkable experiment with boys carried out by the author of The Hawkspur Experiment. The war put this latter experiment into abeyance, but gave its author an opportunity to practice his principles on a group of younger difficult boys. Aged from eight to fourteen, these boys were the "throw-outs" of the Evacuation Scheme, but before the Barns experiment had been long in operation troublesome boys were being evacuated not primarily to escape bombs, but in order that they might have the treatment that Barns provided.Barns was a Hostel-school initiated by the Society of Friends, where lawless boys made their own laws, and where the principle instrument in their reformation was not punishment but affection. So successful were the unconventional methods here described that sceptics were convinced, and Barns has now achieved a permanent place in the field of "the therapy of the dis-social." Today it would be described as a therapeutic community and is one of the earliest experiments of its kind that raised awareness and paved the way for further research in this area.