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The Middle Class and the Civilising Mission, Sheffield 1790-1843

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The Middle Class and the Civilising Mission, Sheffield 1790-1843 The Heathen at Home and Overseas: The Middle Class and the Civilising Mission, Sheffield 1790-1843 Alison A. Twells Submitted for the degree of DPhil University of York Department of History September 1997 Abstract This thesis is a social and cultural history of the significance of missionary activity to the construction of middle class identity and cultural authority in the late- eighteenth and early -nineteenth centuries. It focuses on the relationships between a group of middle-class evangelicals in Sheffield and the various cultural groups on the receiving end of their mission: the working class and rural poor in Britain and Ireland; girls and women at a Jamaican Mission school; West African men, women and children in Britain, the Gambia and Sierra Leone; and peoples in communities of the South Pacific evangelised by the London Missionary Society. The thesis explores issues of the changing notions of, and relationships between, race and class in this period; the cultural authority of middle-class men and women; the relationship between evangelicalism and enlightenment 'histories of civilisation'; and the centrality of empire and the 'civilising mission' to middle- class formation and to the domestic cultural experience. Contents Page Introduction 1 Chapter One The Civilising Mission and the Middle Class 1790-1803 21 Part One: Evangelicalism and the politics of moral reform 29 Part Two: Cultural difference and the civilising mission 42 Part Three: Missionary philanthropy, public societies and 53 the middle class Chapter Two Languages of likeness and difference: missionary societies, 68 civilisation and midd(e-c(ass formation in Sheffie1L, 1790-1824 Part One: Voluntary societies and middle-class networks: 70 A cultural map of Sheffield Part Two: Missionary practice: class, gender and 96 civilisation Chapter Three Women, the family and missionary identities: 117 The Reads of Wincobank Hall Part One: Happy English children 120 Part Two: Women's missionary practice and cultural 143 authority Chapter Four 'A State of Infancy': West Africa, racial difference and 169 missionary identities in the 1820s and 1830s Part One: Sandanee and Mahmadee 172 Part Two: States of infancy 195 Chapter Five 'A Christian and civilized land': Missions, the South 211 Pacific and the British middle class in the 1820s-1840s Part One: Remaking the South Pacific: Missionary Stories 214 Part Two: Civilisation and progress 240 Conclusion Class, domesticity and the civilising mission in the 253 1830s and 1840s Part One: Domesticating men: the Mechanics' Library 255 and Institute Part Two: Vital Statistics 268 Part Three: Concluding comments 277 Bibliography 280 Acknowledgements I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to Dr Jane Rendall and Dr Edward Royle, for being the most excellent supervisors. I have benefitted immensely from their knowledge and guidance: from Jane's rigour and skill in steering me through unfamiliar material and ideas, and from Ted's reflections on my work and ability to boost my confidence in times of need. I have greatly appreciated their enthusiasm for this project. I would also particularly like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for the award of a three-year Research Studentship. At York, I have appreciated the critical and positive contributions of Dr Joanna de Groot and Professor James Walvin. My debts go back further: to the late Dr Paul Nunn, my supervisor for my MA dissertation at Sheffield Hallam University, who fuelled my enthusiasm and provoked many ideas for this thesis; to Dr Eileen Yeo, Dr Paul Yates and Dr Stephen Yeo, my tutors at Sussex University between 1985-1989, who were instrumental in building my confidence and encouraging my interests; and to Steve Laws, Steve Room and John Turner, formerly of Hind Leys College, Shepshed, who persuaded me that going to university might be a possibility in the first place. My thanks goes also to the librarians at Birmingham University, the British Library, John Rylands, Manchester, SOAS, Sheffield University, and particularly Sheffield Local Studies Library and City Archives, especially Ruth Harman, Paul Harris, Doug Hindmarch and Martin Olive. I would like to thank a number of colleagues and friends at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Nottingham for their support at different stages in the production of this thesis. In particular I would like to mention: Mrs Janice Avery, for many things but especially for her technical support and extraneous emergency services; Dr Alan Booth, for his friendship and support, his job and his office; Professor Chris Wrigley, for his encouraging words; and Professor Dick Geary, for his kindness, support and splendid lunches. I am extremely grateful to Dr Helen Meller and Professor Nick Hewitt, for their exceptional generosity at a time of technological crisis. My thanks also goes to Dr Karen Dunn and Dr Mark Harrison, for their proof-reading and positive comments, and especially, to Dr Jill Le Bihan, who heroically and meticulously proof-read the entire thesis, and helped out in countless ways in the final few weeks. My friends and family have contributed to the pleasures of the past four years, reminded me of the important things in life and put up with me when I've forgotten them. Thanks to Digger Burton, Rose Hughes and Andrew Walker for not giving up on me, and to Mary-Ann Orme, Helen Rogers and Caroline Webb for helping out in the early days with Hannah Kilham and with much else besides. My thanks also to Jackie and Neil Hamer for house-sitting opportunities by the sea, and to Jan Aitchison for hospitality on research trips to London. During visits to Birmingham Library I enjoyed the hospitality and company of Sally Margaret, who very sadly died this summer. Karen Dunn's perspective, humour and pep-talks in times of need have been greatly appreciated, as have the friendship and generosity of Julie Turner and Carole Webster, both of whom, along with my uncle, Roger Twells, provided me with quiet places to work when, during the final frantic weeks, the roof was off my own house. Jack Turner, born as this project got underway, continues to be the most delightful of preoccupations. Finally, to Tony Mancini, for his love, support and last minute proof-reading, and for the decreasing frequency of his reminders that the need for domestic reform did not end in 1843, I am truly appreciative. Most of all, my thanks goes to my mum, Jean Powditch, for her love, humour and caring generosity, and for her constant support, even though I know there have been times when she's wished I'd just get a 'proper' job. Abbreviations used in this thesis Societies BMS Baptist Missionary Society BFBS British and Foreign Bible Society CMS Church Missionary Society LMS London Missionary Society SBCP Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor WMMS Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society Archives FLA Friends' Library Archive JM/SA James Montgomery Collection, Sheffield Archives JM/SU James Montgomery Collection, Sheffield University Library LMS/SOAS London Missionary Society Archive, SOAS Library MAR/JR Mary-Anne Rawson Papers, John Rylands Library, Manchester MAR/SA Mary-Anne Rawson Papers, Sheffield Archives SLSL Sheffield Local Studies Library Introduction Writing in her journal in 1827, Hannah Kilham compared the uncivilised state of the British poor with that of the heathen overseas. 'The lower ranks in society', she wrote: would be, in many respects, more difficult subjects for instruction than many are in those so-called heathen lands, and they would want the same care even from the beginning in the attempt to civilize and Christianize them, if we might be permitted as instruments in such a cause.1 Kilham, a Quaker school-teacher from Sheffield, had some experience of 'heathen lands.' In 1823 she had led a missionary party to the Gambia, making the first of her three trips to West Africa for the purpose of setting up schools for African children and gaining knowledge of languages to enable the translation of the Scriptures. In 1822, she worked as a missionary in Ireland where, as representative of the British and Irish Ladies' Society, she had assisted in attempts to relieve and reform the Irish Catholic poor. Kilham also had considerable experience of missionary philanthropy in England, in London's East End, and previously in her home town of Sheffield where she had been a founder member of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor in 1803, the Sheffield Bible Society and the Aged Female Society in 1810, and the Girls' Lancasterian School of Industry in 1813. Indeed, her comment on the uncivilised state of many Britons reflected her ambivalence about her own calling, her doubts as to whether she should follow her desires and return to Africa, or whether she should immerse 1 Sarah Biller (ed.), Memoir of the late Hannah Kilham (London: Darton and Harvey, 1837), pp. 294-295. 1 herself in the less compelling but equally important missionary project at home. 'There is much to be done in England', she lamented in 1828, '... Many sit in heathen darkness even here. '2 England, and to a lesser degree Ireland, represented a site of uncertain heathenism for Kilham. Her representation of working-class Britons was not consistent. On some occasions it was they who provided her with hope and consolation when overseas subjects were seen to resist the Christian embrace. Yet from her experience in Africa, Kilham felt able to talk in terms of the similarities between the 'so-called' heathen overseas and the 'more difficult subjects' among the British, both in their depravity and their capacity to receive Christian truths. In her representation of the British working class as 'heathen', therefore, Hannah Kilham was contesting the increasingly popular belief that 'other' peoples, those who were non-British, non-Christian and usually black, had a lesser capacity for improvement than did white Europeans.
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