A VISION FOR LONDON 1889–1914 …WHAT WAS THE VISION BEHIND THE LCC? …AND THE REALITY? As the world’s largest municipal government, the early London County Council was a laboratory for social experimentation. It sought to master the problems of metropolitan amelioration, political economy and public culture. Pennybacker’s social history tests the vision of London Progressivism against its practitioners’ accomplishments. She suggests that the historical memory of the hopes vested in the LCC’s achievements and the disillusions spawned by failure are both major forces in today’s ambivalent response to metropolitan politics in London. Susan D.Pennybacker is Associate Professor of History at Trinity College in Hartford. She is also President of the Northeast Conference on British Studies and author of several essays on the social history of turn-of-the-century London. A VISION FOR LONDON 1889– 1914 labour, everyday life and the LCC experiment Susan D.Pennybacker London and New York First published 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1995 Susan D.Pennybacker All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Pennybacker, Susan D. Vision for London, 1889–1914: Labour, Everyday Life and the LCC Experiment I. Title 942.108 ISBN 0-415- 03588-0 Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Pennybacker, Susan D. (Susan Dabney), 1953– A vision for London, 1889–1914: labour, everyday life and the LCC experiment/Susan D.Pennybacker. p. cm. ISBN 0-415-03588-0 1. London County Council—History. 2. London Metropolitan Area— Politics and government. 3. London Metropolitan Area—Social conditions. 4. Socialism—England—London—History. I. Title. JS3625.P46 1995 306.2′09421′09041–dc20 94–41561 CIP ISBN 0-203-99310-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-03588-0 (Print Edition) For Martha and Albert CONTENTS List of figures viii Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations xii INTRODUCTION 1 1 THE WAYS OF LIFE, ASPIRATIONS AND POLITICAL CULTURE OF 24 MEN AND WOMEN ‘BLACKCOATED WORKERS’ 2 ‘THE INDUSTRIAL REORGANISATION OF SOCIETY’: THE LCC 69 WORKS DEPARTMENT, A MUNICIPAL SOCIALIST EXPERIMENT 3 THE APPETITE FOR MANAGING OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVES 113 CONCLUSION 172 Sources 176 Notes 178 Index 222 FIGURES 1 Map of London boroughs and urban districts, 1900–14 2 2 ‘Acrostic’ dedicated to Miss Jane Cobden 16 3 LCC staff dinner, 1903 25 4 Park keepers, Bostall Woods, c. 1895 138 5 Finch Street cleansing station, 1911 148 6 Sun Street cleansing station, 1914 149 7 Metropolitan Music Hall, 1892 161 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project began as an effort to investigate the ‘labour question’ as it was manifested in London’s ‘municipal socialism’ before the First World War. It grew into a consideration of related dimensions of metropolitan life and political culture. The subsequent abolition of the Greater London Council and other events of our era suddenly cast their shadows over this work and brought the LCC experiment of long ago into touch with a troubled present. As I come to thank those who assisted me, I am mindful of the current plight of this great city and of many of its inhabitants. At the same time, I know that visions are reconfigured and recur. I am grateful to Gareth Stedman Jones for his encouragement and inspiration over many years. His unfailing commitment to rethinking a wealth of historical and political problems has benefited and challenged those of us who have had the opportunity to work with him and to know him as a scholar and a friend. I likewise thank David F.Crew for his example, for the influence of his skill and intelligence, and for his interest in the early stages of this work. I take great delight in conveying my gratitude to the (then) young scholars of London history with whom I worked in the ‘London Group’ on various shared projects: David Feldman, Jennifer Davis, Tom Jeffery, James Gillespie, Sue Laurence, Deborah Weiner and John Marriott. I thank the following persons for specific suggestions about the text and for many exchanges about aspects of this work and related undertakings: Gloria Clifton, Dina Copelman, John Davis, Edith Jones, John Mason, Mark Miller, Philip and Deborah Nord, Ian Patterson, Henry Pelling, Marcus Rediker, Eve Rosenhaft, Andrew Saint, Terry Segars, Frederic Paul Smoler, Peter Stansky, H.McKim Steele, Jr., Robert Thorne, Christian Topolav, Stephen Utz, Stephen Valocchi, Chris Waters and Stephen Williams. Others are thanked in the Notes section. I especially appreciate the insights and assistance offered over many years by Denise Riley, Tom Jeffery, Deborah Thom and James A.Miller. The entire manuscript was read by David Feldman and Geoffrey Crossick, who made invaluable suggestions based upon their intimate knowledge of London. Anonymous readers for Routledge offered guidance that shaped the general direction of the book. Richard Rodger scrutinised the Introduction and lent his vast knowledge of urban history to the project as it unfolded. I offered versions of this material as seminar papers in many settings, including the following: the American Historical Association, the Social History Seminar at King’s College, Cambridge; the Social Policy seminar at the University of Liverpool; the ‘Gender and Social Rationalisation’ conference held at Berlin in 1989; the Centre for Metropolitan History and the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London; the Centre for Urban History at the University of Leicester; and several History Workshops. I thank all those who offered criticisms and suggestions in these and other sessions. Parts of this work have appeared in other forms in several edited collections: Peter Bailey (ed.) The Business of Pleasure: Victorian Music Hall (1986); Rudy Koshar (ed.), Splintered Classes: Politics and the Lower Middle Classes in Interwar Europe (1990); David Feldman and Gareth Stedman Jones (eds), Metropolis: London Histories and Representations since 1800 (1989); Dagmar Reese, Eve Rosenhaft, Carola Sachse and Tilla Siegel (eds) Rationale Beziehungen? Gesechlechterverhältnisse im Rationalisierungsprozeβ (1993); and Genèses: Sciences Sociales et Histoire, (1994). I thank those who acted as editors and translators. At the outset of this project I received indispensable support and encouragement, in ways certainly known to them, from Maxine Berg, Jane Caplan, Gillian Sutherland, Lynn Hollen Lees, Betty Wood, Dorothy Thompson and Dorothy J.Thompson of Girton College. I thank them for their advocacy. I thank the Fellows of Girton College, Cambridge, for their generous financial support of this work and the dissertation that preceded it. I also received grants from Newnham College, Cambridge, the Cambridge Historical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies for which I am grateful. Trinity College in Hartford awarded a Junior Faculty Research leave and support for the technical completion of the manuscript. John Mason has acted as a research assistant in the completion of certain details of the text; his encyclopedic knowledge of London improved this work. Georgene St. Peter and Jonathan Reiner assisted in many tasks in Hartford. I thank the reference staff of Trinity College Library for their help in locating materials. I thank the indefatigable staff of the Greater London Record Office, and in particular, Miss Joan Coburn, for years of patient consideration and instruction. The late Mr Alan Neate provided help at County Hall in the days when the LCC archives were still submerged in his basement lair. I also thank the staffs of the other collections mentioned in the section entitled ‘Sources’ and especially those of the Trades Union Congress Library and the Library of Nuffield College, Oxford. The Greater London Photograph Library and the West Sussex Record Office provided prints and materials for which I thank them. As a stranger in a strange land, who had planned to stay for a year and stayed for nearly a decade, I close with thanks to those who gave of their intellectual and personal resources in abundance, enriching work and life: Rajnayaran Chandavarkar, Biancamaria Fontana, Andrew Freeman, Istvan and Anna Hont, Alison Jeffery, Angela John, Joel and Jane Jaffey, John and Susan Kellett, Hazel Mills, Richard Mitten, Deena Shiff, and David and Margaret Thompson. None of those mentioned above bears responsibility for errors of fact or judgement; this lies solely at my feet. This work was finally completed in New England. I thank Sandra Andrews of Trinity College for her ingenious, conscientious and untiring work on the typescript. Claire L’Enfant and her staff at Routledge waited far too long for what must at times have seemed an imaginary proposition. I appreciate their care and patience and the advice so readily and intelligently offered by Catherine Turnbull and others. As for those to whom the volume is dedicated, we journey still. Hartford, Connecticut August 1994 ABBREVIATIONS AMU Amalgamated