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Octavia Hill and the Social Housing Debate

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Octavia Hill and the Social Housing Debate Rediscovered Riches No. 3 Octavia Hill and the Social Housing Debate Essays and Letters by Octavia Hill Edited by Robert Whelan London First published February 1998 © Civitas 1998 All rights reserved ISBN 0-255 36431-8 Bookman 10 point Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Blenheim Industrial Park, Newmarket Road Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP33 3TU Contents Page The Authors iv Foreword Debby Ounsted v Acknowledgements vii Editor’s Introduction Robert Whelan 1 Essays and Letters by Octavia Hill 1 Cottage Property in London (1866) 43 2 Four Years’ Management of a London Court (1869) 51 3 Landlords and Tenants in London (1871) 65 4 Selections from Octavia Hill’s Letters to Fellow-Workers (1875-1890) 81 5 Common Sense and the Dwellings of the Poor (1883) 94 6 The Influence of Blocks of Flats on Character (1891) 104 7 Municipal Housing for the Poor (1901) 111 8 Advice to Fellow-Workers in Edinburgh (1902) 114 9 Housing Difficulties: Management versus Re-construction (1904) 122 Notes 126 The Authors Octavia Hill (1838-1912) was born in Wisbech into a family with a radical campaigning tradition on both sides. Her maternal grandfather, Thomas Southwood Smith, was a pioneer of sani- tary reform. Her father edited a radical newspaper promoting Robert Owen’s socialist ideas. Following the bankruptcy of her father and his complete nervous breakdown, Octavia moved to London with her mother and sisters. She helped her mother with the management of a workshop in which children from a Ragged School were taught to make dolls’ furniture, then trained as a copyist of Old Master paintings under John Ruskin. In 1864 Ruskin put up the money to acquire the leases of three houses in Marylebone which he put under Octavia’s management. She developed a style of managing working-class housing which put as much emphasis on improving the tenants as the tenements. Other supporters purchased property for her to manage, or gave her the management of their existing property. By the mid-1870s Octavia estimated that she was responsible for 3,000 tenants. The success of her methods led the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to place large estates under her care. She did pioneering work in the movement to preserve open spaces and was one of the founders of the National Trust in 1895. She was a founder member of the Charity Organisation Society and maintained its opposition to state welfare until her death. She was a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws which met from 1905- 1908. At the time of her death Octavia was estimated to be managing about 1,900 flats and houses, but she refused all requests to form an organisation to perpetuate her work. Robert Whelan is the Assistant Director of the Health and Welfare Unit at the IEA. His publications include Mounting Greenery, IEA Education Unit 1988; Choices in Childbearing, Committee on Population and the Economy 1992; Broken Homes and Battered Children and Teaching Sex in Schools, Family Education Trust 1994 and 1995; Making a Lottery of Good Causes (with Roger Cummins) and The Corrosion of Charity, IEA, 1995 and 1996; and The Cross and the Rainforest (with Paul Haffner and Joseph Kirwan), Acton Institute and Eerdmans, 1996. iv Foreword Octavia Hill’s ideas can be found at the heart of most of today’s social policy pre-occupations. Her philosophy was to develop the potential and self-suffi- ciency of all those around her. Her aims were to find employment for young people, to improve education and opportunities for the poor, especially women, to find a way to provide rented housing without subsidy for those with low incomes, to improve housing standards, to create cleaner air and to maintain open spaces in the heart of the industrialised city. However, what marks her out from so many radical intellectuals is that she was able to give concrete expression to her theories. Octavia Hill’s housing work seems increasingly relevant in the 1990s as housing managers struggle to run estates whose residents are heavily disadvantaged by every social indicator. The current emphasis is on Housing Plus, an approach under which housing association landlords do more than just provide homes which people on low incomes can afford. Housing Associations are finding ways of helping to revitalise communities by initiating training, employment, childcare, leisure and many other projects with their tenants, which will help to improve their opportunities and reduce the poverty which many housing association tenants face. Two years ago we decided to begin each Committee of Manage- ment meeting of the Octavia Hill Housing Trust with a reading from something either by or about Octavia. There is no danger of running out of readings as Octavia had so much to say which is relevant, not only to today’s big issues, but to the day-to-day problems caused by poor administration and shortage of time. It is strange that she is so much less well-known than other eminent Victorians. Perhaps this is due to her commitment to operating on a small scale, and to her belief that she should only set a pattern for others to learn from and develop. The large organisations which memorialised some of her contemporaries were not for Octavia. Indeed the Housing Trust which she founded, and which still flourishes in London one hundred years on, only took her name into its title a few years ago. v vi THE SOCIAL HOUSING DEBATE The publication of Octavia Hill’s writings by the IEA is timely. The climate of late twentieth century Britain looks for better ways of sustaining individuals, the economy and the environment. On all of these important issues Octavia Hill’s writings serve as a fresh and inspirational source for new policies and action. Debby Ounsted Chief Executive, Octavia Hill Housing Trust Acknowledgements Chapter 4, ‘Selections from Octavia Hill’s Letters to Fellow- Workers’, is reproduced, with permission, from the letters in the collection of the Westminster City Archive. Chapter 8, ‘Advice to Fellow-Workers in Edinburgh’, is reproduced, with permission, from Octavia Hill’s manuscript which is preserved in the archive of the Edinburgh Social Union, held in the Edinburgh Room of the Central Library in Edinburgh. Chapter 9, ‘Housing Difficul- ties’, is reproduced, with permission, from the copy held in the Goldsmith’s Library of Economic Literature, University of London Library. Like so many authors, I am indebted to the helpful and friendly staff at the London Library. Debby Ounsted, Chief Executive of the Octavia Hill Housing Trust, supplied information about housing associations in general and her own in particular. David Gladstone advised on the history of local government, and useful suggestions were made by the anonymous participants in the IEA’s refereeing process. Allen and Elizabeth Mills helped with proof-reading. Finally I would like to thank Peter Clayton of the Octavia Hill Society for his unfailing enthusiasm and support. The Society can be contacted at The Octavia Hill Birthplace Museum Trust, 1 South Brink Place, Wisbech, Cambs PE13 1JE. vii Almost the worst house, if the household be wisely governed, is better than ever so costly a one ill-managed Octavia Hill Editor’s Introduction Robert Whelan N 1887 a service was held in Westminster Abbey to commemo- Irate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Only three women were invited to attend in their own right: Florence Nightingale, Josephine Butler and Octavia Hill. Florence Nightingale has long since passed into the pantheon of great historical figures and Josephine Butler is still remem- bered for her campaigns against the oppression of women. Octavia Hill, on the other hand, has been almost completely forgotten. If she is remembered at all, it is as one of the co- founders of the National Trust, an organisation which was only one among many of Octavia’s interests, and certainly not the most important. She was one of those curious people who make an enormous impression upon their contemporaries and then seem to sink from view. Octavia Hill was born in 1838 in Wisbech into a family with a tradition of support for radical causes on both sides. Her maternal grandfather was Dr Thomas Southwood Smith, the pioneer of sanitary reform who was later to become one of the Commissioners of the first Board of Health. Her mother Caroline was an educational theorist and teacher who championed the methods of J. Pestalozzi, ‘the children’s friend’. As a result of one of her magazine articles Caroline was contacted by James Hill, a widower looking for a governess for his children. She accepted the position, and they were soon afterwards married. James shared the interest of his wife’s family in reforming movements, and in particular wanted to promote Robert Owen’s brand of socialism. He set up, together with Caroline, a pioneer- ing infant school in Wisbech, based on Owen’s New Lanark school, and founded an East Anglian newspaper called The Star of the East to promote radical ideas. He attempted to set up a co- operative commune, again imitating Owen, and founded the United Advancement Society, but he became seriously over- extended financially as a result of his involvement with radical causes and was declared bankrupt in 1840. Soon afterwards 1 2 THE SOCIAL HOUSING DEBATE James Hill experienced a severe nervous breakdown. As a result of medical advice he never lived with his family again, with the result that, from her earliest years, Octavia was brought up in a fatherless household. Caroline Hill moved around the country with her children, trying to establish the family somewhere where they would have means of supporting themselves.
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