DOCSLIB.ORG

Helping the Poor

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Helping the Poor Helping the Poor Friendly visiting, dole charities and dole queues Robert Whelan based on research by Barendina Smedley Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society London First published October 2001 © The Institute for the Study of Civil Society 2001 The Mezzanine, Elizabeth House 39 York Road, London SE1 7NQ email: [email protected] All rights reserved ISBN 1-903 386-16-0 Typeset by Civitas in New Century Schoolbook Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Contents Acknowledgements vi Authors viii Introduction: Hand-outs and Leg-ups 1 Section 1: The Visiting Charity The Charity Organisation Society 1. The Organisation of Charity 9 2. Preaching the ‘Gospel of Social Reform’ in West London 24 3. The Fulham and Hammersmith Committee and Its Cases 39 Section 2: The Dole Charity The Mansion House Fund 4. From West End to East End 51 5. Lord Mayor Aid 59 6. The Aftermath 85 7. Moralities and Mathematics 90 Appendices Appendix 1 Applications for Relief Received by the Fulham and Hammersmith District Committee of the COS, November 1879 - October 1880 99 Appendix 2 The 27 Extant Fulham and Hammersmith Casebooks 137 Appendix 3 The Charity Organisation Society by Miss Octavia Hill 164 Notes 166 Index 182 v Acknowledgements This book has been made possible by a generous grant from the Wincott Foundation. The author would like to express his thanks to the trustees. The research on which the book is based was carried out by Barendina Smedley in the archive of the Charity Organisation Society (now the Family Welfare Association), held in the London Metropolitan Archives. The archive has been accessed by kind permission of Helen Dent, the present director of the Family Welfare Association. Further research was carried out by Yvonne Rigby. The author would like to express his thanks to those who participated in the anonymous refereeing process, and whose comments have been most helpful. Jacques Blanchard’s painting ‘Charity’ is reproduced on the front cover by courtesy of the Courtauld Institute Gallery, Somerset House, London. vi For my mother Violet Whelan who was born in Hammersmith in 1914 and remembers Sister Lizzie Authors Robert Whelan is the Deputy Director of Civitas. He was educated at the John Fisher School, Purley, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read English. His books include Choices in Childbearing, Commit- tee on Population and the Economy 1992; Broken Homes and Battered Children and Teaching Sex in Schools, Family Education Trust 1994 and 1995; The Cross and the Rainforest, (with Joseph Kirwan and Paul Haffner), Acton Institute and Eerdmans 1996; and, for the Institute of Economic Affairs, Mounting Greenery 1988, Making a Lottery of Good Causes (with Roger Cummins) 1995, The Corrosion of Charity 1996, Octavia Hill and the Social Housing Debate (ed.) 1998, Wild In Woods: The Myth of the Noble Eco-Savage 1999, and Involuntary Action: How Voluntary is the ‘Voluntary’ Sector? 1999. Barendina Smedley was educated at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where she read history and wrote her doctoral thesis on local enforcement of the Tudor reformations. She lives in London, where she writes about history, art and related subjects. Previous publications include short histories of Lord North Street, Westminster and Holy Trinity, Ely, as well as articles for The Times, the Spectator and other journals. viii Introduction Hand-outs and Leg-ups The charity, if charity it may be called, of doles and patronage is mean and delusive... But the charity of personal help and organised good sense calls out the best efforts of giver and receiver. C.S.Loch1 n 1914 George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion introduced to the Ipublic the character of Alfred Doolittle, a dustman with original views on welfare: DOOLITTLE I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle-class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: ‘You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.’ But my needs is a great as the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more ... Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving.2 Modern audiences, who would scarcely be shocked by Eliza’s use of ‘bloody’ in the famous tea-party scene, might find this harder to follow, since the idea of making any distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor has vanished from modern welfare policy. In 1914, however, audiences would have picked up immediately on the reference to one of the main strands in the discussion of ‘the social question’, which could be said to have dominated the debate on the relief of poverty for hundreds of years.3 From the time of the Protestant Reformation, when the monasteries were dissolved and the church’s role as the main provider of welfare was curtailed, the responsibility for meeting the needs of the sick and needy had been shared between charitable associations, formed by civic-minded men and women, and the poor law. One important question which welfare providers set themselves to address, from the time of Elizabeth I, whether they were in the public or the private sector, was how to deal with ‘sturdy beggars’, those who could work but preferred to remain idle if they could get a hand-out. For hundreds of years both poor law guardians and charitable trustees struggled to find ways to ensure that help went only to those 1 2 HELPING THE POOR who needed it, while those who could stand on their own feet were encouraged to do so. To err by being too open-handed would result in the corruption of those on the border between self-sufficiency and dependency by turning them into paupers. To err in the other direction would mean that cases of genuine need would be left to suffer. It seems to be an eternal dilemma, and we are still wrestling with it. Each generation places the emphasis differently, and there are certainly few grounds for believing that we have made a better job of it than our ancestors. One of the most frequently heard criticisms of the modern welfare state is that it contains perverse incentives which lead to welfare dependency. The feckless, the idle and the improvident are actually treated better than the prudent and the industrious—what used to be called ‘the working poor’. People who are struggling to pay their way and support their families can find that their next-door neighbours enjoy a more comfortable lifestyle by staying in bed all day. Fear and Loathing of the COS If we were looking for an example of a system at the other end of the spectrum which treated the poor harshly and imposed rigorous conditions on any assistance given, many welfare analysts would cite the Charity Organisation Society. Founded in 1869, it epitomised, from the very start, the view that alms carelessly given are worse than no alms at all.4 It urged people to think before giving money to those requesting assistance, and it instigated a rigorous policy of enquiring into the backgrounds of applicants, and pursuing every alternative before parting with a penny. The Charity Organisation Society was constantly accused of hard-heartedness. In an oft-repeated phrase, it was said to be all organisation and no charity, more concerned with detecting fraud than with meeting needs. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, as support for a universal welfare system overwhelmed the old fears about pauperising low-earners, so the COS found itself becoming the object of intense criticism by the advocates of alternative approaches. It has since attracted to itself all the opprobrium directed against systems which were thought to leave people to ‘stew in their own juice’ rather than compromise the sacred principle of independence, in the same way that all stories about bad landlordism in the 1960s tended to get attached to Peter Rachmann. In the 1960s and 1970s, when welfare statism was at its height, the COS was demonised as the epitome of everything that was cruel, paternalistic and (worst of all) judgmental in welfare policy. It became inescapably linked to a policy of separating the deserving from the undeserving poor, which was regarded as INTRODUCTION 3 thoroughly discredited and morally objectionable. Writing in 1967, T.H. Marshall admitted that he found it hard to be objective about the COS, as their philosophy was ‘repugnant to the modern mind’,5 while David Owen, in his magisterial history of English philanthropy, described the COS as an organisation whose ‘procedures and tactics seem unbelievably dated and ... so contrary to the direction in which the British community was to move that sympathetic understanding does not come readily’.6 However, the 1980s saw the growth of scepticism regarding the rights-based, cradle-to-grave welfare model of the post-war world, and a willingness to consider other options. At the same time, scholars have begun to re-appraise the COS, in an attempt to separate fact from demonology. In their book Philosophy, Politics and Citizenship, published in 1984, Raymond (now Lord) Plant and Andrew Vincent argued that we should consider ‘what they actually said’,7 rather than making unfavourable assumptions about what members of the COS believed.
Recommended publications
  • Scandal, Child Punishment and Policy Making in the Early Years of the New Poor Law Workhouse System

    Scandal, Child Punishment and Policy Making in the Early Years of the New Poor Law Workhouse System

    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Lincoln Institutional Repository ‘Great inhumanity’: Scandal, child punishment and policy making in the early years of the New Poor Law workhouse system SAMANTHA A. SHAVE UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN ABSTRACT New Poor Law scandals have usually been examined either to demonstrate the cruelty of the workhouse regime or to illustrate the failings or brutality of union staff. Recent research has used these and similar moments of crisis to explore the relationship between local and central levels of welfare administration (the Boards of Guardians in unions across England and Wales and the Poor Law Commission in Somerset House in London) and how scandals in particular were pivotal in the development of further policies. This article examines both the inter-local and local-centre tensions and policy conseQuences of the Droxford Union and Fareham Union scandal (1836-37) which exposed the severity of workhouse punishments towards three young children. The paper illustrates the complexities of union co-operation and, as a result of the escalation of public knowledge into the cruelties and investigations thereafter, how the vested interests of individuals within a system manifested themselves in particular (in)actions and viewpoints. While the Commission was a reactive and flexible welfare authority, producing new policies and procedures in the aftermath of crises, the policies developed after this particular scandal made union staff, rather than the welfare system as a whole, individually responsible for the maltreatment and neglect of the poor. 1. Introduction Within the New Poor Law Union workhouse, inmates depended on the poor law for their complete subsistence: a roof, a bed, food, work and, for the young, an education.
  • The Poor Law of 1601

    The Poor Law of 1601

    Tit) POOR LA.v OF 1601 with 3oms coi3ii3rat,ion of MODSRN Of t3l9 POOR -i. -S. -* CH a i^ 3 B oone. '°l<g BU 2502377 2 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Chapter 1. Introductory. * E. Poor Relief before the Tudor period w 3. The need for re-organisation. * 4. The Great Poor La* of 1601. w 5. Historical Sketch. 1601-1909. " 6. 1909 and after. Note. The small figares occurring in the text refer to notes appended to each chapter. Chapter 1. .Introductory.. In an age of stress and upheaval, institutions and 9 systems which we have come to take for granted are subjected to a searching test, which, though more violent, can scarcely fail to be more valuable than the criticism of more normal times. A reconstruction of our educational system seems inevitable after the present struggle; in fact new schemes have already been set forth by accredited organisations such as the national Union of Teachers and the Workers' Educational Association. V/ith the other subjects in the curriculum of the schools, History will have to stand on its defence.
  • 1982, Boyd, Octavia Hill OCR C.Pdf

    1982, Boyd, Octavia Hill OCR C.Pdf

    'Anyone interested in women, religion, sodal action, biography, or history will find this book valuable. And if you perceive that that list includes just about everyone, you are correct.' - Ellen Miller Casey, Best Sellers 'As a theologian as weil as a feminist Dr Boyd might have a double·edged axe to grind, but the grinding if any is quieto She has written a thoughtful, sensible, non-propagandising and rather entertaining book, striking a good balance ~\\\NE BUll between factual narrative and interpretation' -KathIeen Nott, Observer ~S ~ The three women who had the greatest effect on sodal policy in Britain in the .A. nineteenth century were josephine Butler, Octavia Hili and Florence Nightingale. In an era when most women were confined to the kitchen and the salon, these three moved confidently into positions of world leadership. ..OCTAVIA HILL josephine Butler raised opposition to the state regulation of prostitution and _w...... confronted the root issues of poverty and of dvil rights for wamen. Octavia Hili --~. - artist, teacher and great conservationist - enabled thousands of families to meet the dislocations of the industrial revolution and created a new profession, that of the sodal worker Florence Nightingale not only shattered precedent by establishing a training-school for nurses, she also pioneered work in the use of FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE statistical analysis, and her practicality and passionate urgency effected radical reforms in medical practice and public health. These women atti-ibuted their sodal vision and the impetus for their vocation to their religious faith. Rejecting the constraints on women's work imposed by conventional religion, they found in the gospels ground for radical action.
  • The Poor Law of Lunacy

    The Poor Law of Lunacy

    The Poor Law of Lunacy: The Administration of Pauper Lunatics in Mid-Nineteenth Century England with special Emphasis on Leicestershire and Rutland Peter Bartlett Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University College London. University of London 1993 Abstract Previous historical studies of the care of the insane in nineteenth century England have been based in the history of medicine. In this thesis, such care is placed in the context of the English poor law. The theory of the 1834 poor law was essentially silent on the treatment of the insane. That did not mean that developments in poor law had no effect only that the effects must be established by examination of administrative practices. To that end, this thesis focuses on the networks of administration of the poor law of lunacy, from 1834 to 1870. County asylums, a creation of the old (pre-1834) poor law, grew in numbers and scale only under the new poor law. While remaining under the authority of local Justices of the Peace, mid-century legislation provided an increasing role for local poor law staff in the admissions process. At the same time, workhouse care of the insane increased. Medical specialists in lunacy were generally excluded from local admissions decisions. The role of central commissioners was limited to inspecting and reporting; actual decision-making remained at the local level. The webs of influence between these administrators are traced, and the criteria they used to make decisions identified. The Leicestershire and Rutland Lunatic asylum provides a local study of these relations. Particular attention is given to admission documents and casebooks for those admitted to the asylum between 1861 and 1865.
  • The Poor Law Commission and Publicly-Owned Housing in the English Countryside, 1834–47

    The Poor Law Commission and Publicly-Owned Housing in the English Countryside, 1834–47

    The Poor Law Commission and publicly-owned housing in the English countryside, 1834–47 by Roger Wells Abstract This paper addresses aspects of the Poor Law Commission’s policy of encouraging parishes to dispose of their often considerable stock of social housing, in some cases built up over many years, and a topic previously analysed in this Review by John Broad. Policy was in part conditioned by the cost of new workhouses required in many of the unions created under the 1834 New Poor Law. This fell on indi- vidual parishes’ ratepayers; sales of their real estate would lighten, and sometimes remove, the financial pain. It also arose out of the Commission’s commitment to engineering able-bodied workers’ independ- ence through the abolition of all non-medical aid funded from the poor rate, which had traditionally included the provision of domestic accommodation at no or nominal rents by overseers of the poor. But, while putting the Commission in charge of sales by parishes, parliamentarians insisted that the own- ers and occupiers of property in each parish, had to vote to sell or retain, some or all, of their housing stock. The stipulation of compulsory disposals, which Broad erroneously assumed, remained a political impossibility. In a paper published some years ago in this Review, John Broad showed how on the eve of the New Poor Law, some parishes in southern England had accumulated considerable stocks of ‘social’ housing in which they housed their poor, rent-free or at notional rents.1 In Bedfordshire 56 per cent of parishes had some housing of this sort at their disposal, in Buckinghamshire 50 per cent.
  • Henrietta Barnett: Co-Founder of Toynbee Hall, Teacher, Philanthropist and Social Reformer

    Henrietta Barnett: Co-Founder of Toynbee Hall, Teacher, Philanthropist and Social Reformer

    Henrietta Barnett: Co-founder of Toynbee Hall, teacher, philanthropist and social reformer. by Tijen Zahide Horoz For a future without poverty There was always “something maverick, dominating, Roman about her, which is rarely found in women, though she was capable of deep feeling.” n 1884 Henrietta Barnett and her husband Samuel founded the first university settlement, Toynbee Hall, where Oxbridge students could become actively involved in helping to improve life in the desperately poor East End Ineighbourhood of Whitechapel. Despite her active involvement in Toynbee Hall and other projects, Henrietta has often been overlooked in favour of a focus on her husband’s struggle for social reform in East London. But who was the woman behind the man? Henrietta’s work left an indelible mark on the social history of London. She was a woman who – despite the obstacles of her time – accomplished so much for poor communities all over London. Driven by her determination to confront social injustice, she was a social reformer, a philanthropist, a teacher and a devoted wife. A shrewd feminist and political activist, Henrietta was not one to shy away from the challenges posed by a Victorian patriarchal society. As one Toynbee Hall settler recalled, Henrietta’s “irrepressible will was suggestive of the stronger sex”, and “there was always something maverick, dominating, Roman about her, which is rarely found in women, though she was capable of deep feeling.”1 (Cover photo): Henrietta in her forties. 1. Creedon, A. ‘Only a Woman’, Henrietta Barnett: Social Reformer and Founder of Hampstead Garden Suburb, (Chichester: Phillimore & Co. LTD, 2006) 3 A fourth sister had “married Mr James Hinton, the aurist and philosopher, whose thought greatly influenced Miss Caroline Haddon, who, as my teacher and my friend, had a dynamic effect on my then somnolent character.” The Early Years (Above): Henrietta as a young teenager.
  • English Women and the Late-Nineteenth Century Open Space Movement

    English Women and the Late-Nineteenth Century Open Space Movement

    English Women and the Late-Nineteenth Century Open Space Movement Robyn M. Curtis August 2016 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Australian National University Thesis Certification I declare that this thesis, submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the award of Doctor of Philosophy, in the School of History at the Australian National University, is wholly my own original work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged and has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. Robyn M. Curtis Date …………………… ………………… Abstract During the second half of the nineteenth century, England became the most industrialised and urbanised nation on earth. An expanding population and growing manufacturing drove development on any available space. Yet this same period saw the origins of a movement that would lead to the preservation and creation of green open spaces across the country. Beginning in 1865, social reforming groups sought to stop the sale and development of open spaces near metropolitan centres. Over the next thirty years, new national organisations worked to protect and develop a variety of open spaces around the country. In the process, participants challenged traditional land ownership, class obligations and gender roles. There has been very little scholarship examining the work of the open space organisations; nor has there been any previous analysis of the specific membership demographics of these important groups. This thesis documents and examines the four organisations that formed the heart of the open space movement (the Commons Preservation Society, the Kyrle Society, the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association and the National Trust). It demonstrates connections between philanthropy, gender and space that have not been explored previously.
  • (Crimson) 1. Caroline Gardens, Grade II Listed. London's Largest Co

    (Crimson) 1. Caroline Gardens, Grade II Listed. London's Largest Co

    GOLDSMITHS Places of Interest NORTH - Arts and Crafts ride (crimson) 1. Caroline Gardens, grade II listed. London’s largest complex of almshouses, built 1833 onwards, with quadrangle, gardens and a large chapel, which now houses the Asylum arts organisation. 2. Peckham Library - Will Alsop’s iconic and gravity-defying structure, which won the Stirling Prize in 2000 and helped kickstart the regeneration of Peckham. 3. A charming 22 acre conservation area of Arts & Crafts-style housing, early 1900s, built by Octavia Hill, social reformer and co-founder of the National Trust. 4. T34 - A brightly painted and graffiti-bombed Russian tank defends a disused piece of land. 5. The Jam Factory - an impressive housing redevelopment of the huge redbrick former Hartley’s jam factory, built 1900. Bermondsey antiques market (a) - a cornucopia of vintage wares - is just up the road. 6. White Cube, a major gallery in a superbly converted 1970s warehouse. Further along now-trendy Bermondsey Street is the Fashion & Textile Museum (a). 7. One of the most (in)famous graffiti artworks by Banksy, still in situ: one (hooded) man and his (Keith Haring-esque) dog. 8. Dilston Grove - a well respected arts space in a run down former church in Southwark Park. 9. A grade II listed brick and concrete former Swedish Mission, with detached steeple, which was used by Scandinavian sailors who worked the nearby Greenland Docks (part of the Maritime ride). EAST - Maritime ride (teal) 1. Surrey Quays: 10 pin bowling, cinema and shopping complex. 2. One of the last remaining buildings, now residential, in what was the first Royal Navy dockyard, founded by Henry VIII in 1513.
  • Download Waterford Poor Law Union Minutes

    Download Waterford Poor Law Union Minutes

    Repository Repository Name: Waterford County Archives Identity Statement Reference Code: IE WCA BG WTFD Titles: Papers of Waterford Board of Guardians Dates: 1848-1922 Level of Description: Fonds Extent: 182 items Creator Creators: Waterford Poor Law Union, Board of Guardians Administrative History: Waterford Poor Law Union was established under the Poor Law Union Act, 1838. Under this Act the country was divided into poor law unions each of which had a Workhouse run by elected and ex- officio guardians. These guardians were supervised by the Poor Law Commissioners and after 1872, the Local Government Board. The Poor law system has gained a dark reputation due to the fact that only the most destitute were granted „indoor relief‟ and entry into the Workhouse was contingent on it being a last resort rather than a source of hope and comfort. The Workhouses were unable to cope with the fast flood of the destitute that was a result of the famine and they became overcrowded and contributed to the death toll due to the swift spread of disease through their packed wards. Over the years the Board of Guardians acquired further duties in relation to the poor. In the 1850s they accumulated duties in the area of public health, boarding out of children in the 1860s and rural housing from 1883.The Medical Charities Act of 1851 introduced the dispensary system which provided for the appointment of a medical doctor, the provision of a dispensary and the supply of medicines and medical appliances for a number of districts in each Union. The work of the dispensary was overseen by the Dispensary Committee, which was composed of Guardians 1 and local rate payers elected on an annual basis.
  • A Guide to Records Created Under the New Poor

    A Guide to Records Created Under the New Poor

    A Guide to Records Created Under the New Poor Law Dr Paul Carter The British Association for Local History 2 | P a g e Guide to Records Created Under the New Poor Law This guide was produced as part of the Pauper Prisons… Pauper Palaces (the Midlands) project run by the British Association for Local History between 2012 and 2015.1 Part of the project remit was to examine the nineteenth century archive created by the Poor Law Commission (and its successors) which are held by The National Archives (TNA),2 and the archive created by the hundreds of poor law unions across England and Wales,3 now held at county and borough record offices and local studies libraries. The central authority created its own archive (minutes, registers, indexes, forms etc.) and it received and archived a huge collection of letters, reports, memos etc. from parishes, poor law unions and other government officials and their departments. Such central authority material that survives can now be found at TNA. In tandem with this each poor law union created its own archive mainly from the operational records of the workhouse and specific union employees; it is this material that is held locally. Rather than just list the various records created in the nineteenth century I have sought to explain them and so provide an account of the type of information a researcher might find in the various records. There are thousands of sets of documents which will inform the researcher interested in the rather overarching subject of poverty in the nineteenth century.
  • The Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, 1905–09

    The Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, 1905–09

    KATHLEEN WOODROOFE THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE POOR LAWS, 1905-09 Although there is some truth in the comment made by Canon Barnett, rector of St Jude's, Whitechapel, and founder of Toynbee Hall, that the issue in 1909 of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws "may mark the beginning of a new epoch in our social life",1 the precise reasons for the appointment of the Commission on December 4th, 1905, are not yet known. The Conservative government, which made the appointment almost on the eve of its defeat, had been in power for ten years, first under the prime ministership of Lord Salisbury and then, until his resignation in December 1905, of A. J. Balfour. During that time the cost of the Poor Law had risen steadily, and yet, until the end of 1904, either through social myopia or a preoccupation with the greater drama of events abroad, the government displayed little interest in the problem of the Poor Law or, indeed, in any of the wider questions of social reform. Beatrice Webb, that determined Fabian, writing in her diary at Torquay on January 31, 1900, summed up the mood of impatience and despair which existed among social reformers during the early days of the Boer War. "The last six months [...] have been darkened by the nightmare of war", she wrote. "The horrible consciousness that we have, as a nation, shown ourselves to be unscrupulous in methods, vulgar in manners as well as inefficient, is an unpleasant background to one's personal life". To her and her husband, public affairs seemed "gloomy"; the middle classes were "materialistic" and the working class "stupid, and in large sections sottish".
  • Octavia Hill

    Octavia Hill

    SANDRA ALEXANDER : OCTAVIA HILL Octavia Hill (1838 – 1912) I was drawn to research Octavia Hill because of my interest and appreciation of The National Trust. Octavia was not only a founder member of the formation of The National Trust, she was an English social reformer, public figure, artist and activist. She strongly believed that good environments make better people and campaigned to give ordinary people, particularly those living in cities, access to the countryside. Octavia was born on 3 December 1838 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire She was the eighth daughter (and tenth child) born to her parents James Hill and Caroline Southwood Hill. Caroline was James’ 3rd wife. He had been widowed twice and he had taken on Caroline to be governess to his then six children. They married and had a further four children. They were both progressive and socially-concerned parents. Octavia’s father was a corn merchant and initially they lived in a comfortable 18th-century townhouse at Wisbech. During this time James also built an Infant School, which was run by Caroline and according to Octavia, her mother was the first Englishwoman to teach using the methods of Johann Pestalozzi. According to the records Octavia and her sisters were educated at home by her mother. However, all this changed when James was declared bankrupt after his investments failed. He fell into depression and ‘a term of insantity’ and subsequently abandoned his wife and children. Caroline took charge of the family, moving them in 1852 to Finchley on the edge of London, and then to the capital itself, where the grim urban poverty horrified Octavia.