Philanthropic Settlements and the Making of the Social Reformer in London, 1884-1914

Labour Colonies for Gentlemen: Philanthropic Settlements and the Making of the Social Reformer in London, 1884-1914 Emily Nora Duthie A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University. February 2019 © Copyright by Emily Nora Duthie 2019 All Rights Reserved Statement of Sources The work presented in this dissertation is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original, except as acknowledged in the text. The material has not been submitted, in whole or in part, for a degree at The Australian National University or any other university. Acknowledgements Thanks are due to Dr Alexander Cook for his patient supervision and guidance throughout the research, drafting and revision of this thesis. Appreciation is also extended to Professors Angela Woollacott and Paul Pickering who provided helpful feedback as members of my supervisory panel. The suggestions offered by other staff in the School of History at the Australian National University throughout my candidature have also been appreciated. The research undertaken for this research was possible due to the funding I received from the Australian National University. An Australian Postgraduate Award facilitated my study in Canberra. The university also provided research funding which allowed me to undertake archival research in England. A number of librarians and archivists provided assistance in finding material in their collections, including the staff at the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the Lambeth Palace Library, the London Metropolitan Archives and the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I am particularly indebted to the Tower Hamlets Local History Library whose staff enabled me to access its Oxford House collection during a time of refurbishment. I am grateful to the staff of both Toynbee Hall and Oxford House for helpfully addressing my frequent queries and requests for archival material. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their unfailing support and encouragement throughout my university study. Abstract This thesis examines a program of reform that was directed at the gentlemanly philanthropists of London’s first two university settlements, Toynbee Hall and Oxford House. Shifting the focus of previous scholarship on the role of the settlements in promoting moral and cultural improvement amongst East London’s poor, this study analyses the ways in which Toynbee Hall and Oxford House also sought to shape the social reformers who came to live and work in the urban slums. Residency in London’s East End was intended to be a transformative experience that could regenerate Oxbridge men and their West End counterparts, while also providing opportunities and networks for personal development and career advancement. Both Toynbee Hall and Oxford House embraced a two-fold agenda. This included a systematic effort to elevate the urban poor and to redress social problems in surrounding neighbourhoods, and a more introspective program that was concerned with the improvement or advancement of the ‘settlers’ themselves. While mainstream historiography on these settlements has focused primarily on their attempts to study, transform and ‘improve’ East End communities, this study shifts attention away from the campaign aimed directly at the poor in order to explore the ‘making’ of the social reformer as it occurred within these institutions. This component of the settlements’ mission was widely recognised during the era of their creation. Popular representations of Toynbee Hall and Oxford House as ‘settlements’, ‘colonies’ or ‘labour refuges’ for gentlemen drew upon reformist discourses and practices that were typically directed at the urban poor and colonial subjects during this period. The labour colony was advocated in philanthropic circles as a training centre where the unemployed could reside and receive practical education and moral guidance before finding work in Britain or abroad. Drawing upon the image of a labour colony, this thesis argues that Toynbee Hall and Oxford House settlers became the subjects of a parallel educational and vocational project, though the nature of that project varied between the settlements in ways that reflected differences between the ethos of each institution. The chapters that follow consider the settlements as sites for the cultivation, training and networking of gentlemen. This thesis, unlike much of the historiography upon this topic, does not cast Toynbee Hall and Oxford House men primarily as agents of reform. It treats them as the targets of a settlement program. The task of producing social reformers may appear at first glance to be an auxiliary aspect of the settlement houses, but it was inextricably linked both to the goal of redressing problems in the East End and to a wider project designed to form a new generation of leaders and bureaucrats for Britain and its empire. Contents List of Illustrations 1 Introduction 3 Chapter One Civilising the Settlers 43 Chapter Two A Modern Monastery in the East End: Creating the Ideal Settler 85 Chapter Three A University in the East End: Educating the Settlers 141 Chapter Four The Settlement Laboratory: Social Investigation and Research 184 Chapter Five A Clubhouse in the East End: Settlement Networking 228 Chapter Six The Settling Experience 282 Conclusion 329 Bibliography 341 1 List of Illustrations Figure 1: Portrait of Samuel Barnett and his wife Henrietta, 1908 Figure 2: Portrait of Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith, 1917 Figure 3: William Beveridge at Balliol College, 1898 Figure 4: Photograph of Richard Henry (R.H.) Tawney Figure 5: The Warden, Mrs Barnett and the Residents, 1885 Figure 6: The First Six Heads of Oxford House Figure 7: The First and Second Oxford House Buildings Figure 8: Toynbee Hall Quadrangle and Buildings, c.1903 Figure 9: Toynbee Hall Dining Room Figure 10: Toynbee Hall Drawing Room, c.1903 Figure 11: Photograph of the Toynbee Hall Students’ Free Library, c. 1903 Figure 12: Two of Toynbee Hall’s Parlour Maids Figure 13: A round robin received by Henrietta Barnett to attend functions at Toynbee Hall Figure 14: Extract from lecture list, Oxford House Annual Report, 1892 Figure 15: Extract from list of lectures delivered at Toynbee Hall’s smoking debates, 1892 Figure 16: A Selection of Lectures Offered at Oxford House, 1900 Figure 17: Caricature of Arthur Winnington-Ingram Figure 18: Charles Booth’s ‘Descriptive Map of London Poverty’, 1889 Figure 19: Charles Booth’s ‘Descriptive Map of London Poverty’, showing the City of London and the East End Figure 20: George E. Arkell’s map of Jewish East London, 1899 Figure 21: Enlargement of George E. Arkell’s map of Jewish Whitechapel Figure 22: Portrait of Benjamin Jowett, 1890 2 Figure 23: A Reception in the Toynbee Hall Drawing Room Figure 24: Clement Attlee with some young boys from Stepney 3 Introduction He knows that he is thereby not only the giver but the receiver. Werner Picht, Toynbee Hall and the English Settlement Movement, 19141 In 1875, Arnold Toynbee, an Oxford undergraduate who wanted to understand and to assist the poor of London, spent part of his summer vacation in Whitechapel. There, as the Master of Balliol College, Benjamin Jowett recalled, Toynbee lived in half-furnished lodgings, ‘as far as he could after the manner of workingmen’, joining in their clubs and discussing social and religious issues with them, ‘sometimes in an atmosphere of bad whisky, bad tobacco and bad drainage’.2 It was impossible, Toynbee felt, to do any adequate work among the poor without first visiting or residing in the district. Drawing upon his personal experiences of the conditions of urban poverty, he sought to reconcile the extremes of class and wealth. In a lecture to a working-class audience in 1883, he highlighted the need for reform not only among the poor but also within his own social class: We – the middle classes, I mean, not merely the very rich – we have neglected you; instead of justice we have offered you charity, and instead of sympathy, we have offered you hard and unreal advice, but I think we are changing . I think that many of us would spend our lives in your service. You have, I say it clearly and advisedly, you have to forgive us, for we have wronged you; we have sinned against you grievously not knowingly always, but still we have sinned, and let us confess it . you must remember that if you will join hands with us, we do intend that we shall as a nation accomplish great things, and seek to redeem what is evil in our past.3 1 Werner Picht, Toynbee Hall and the English Settlement Movement (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1914), 2. 2 Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the industrial revolution of the 18th century in England: Popular addresses, notes and other fragments, together with a short memoir by B. Jowett (London: Longmans, Green, 1894), xv. 3 Arnold Toynbee, Progress and Poverty: A Criticism of Mr. Henry George: Being Two Lectures Delivered 4 Toynbee’s act of residing in the East End and his critical introspection on the perceived failings of his social class encapsulate a significant aspect of philanthropy in the late nineteenth century. It was concerned not only with the welfare of the poor but also with the character and conduct of the educated elite. As Toynbee suggested in his speech, the benefits of social work as a form of personal reconciliation were not intended to flow in only one direction. It was work that could be recommended for the moralising benefits it provided to social reformers themselves. The Bishop Suffragen for East London, William Walsham How, expressed this notion in the periodical Eastward Ho! in 1884: ‘Come and try to brighten their lot, and guide them to better, braver, purer, happier modes of life. Come for their sakes. Come mostly for your own.’4 This distinctive strand of late Victorian philanthropy was concerned with the making of new social reformers who could address the problems of urban poverty.

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