Lectures

5th December 2018: Victorian Philanthropy: A Golden Age?

Another very well attended meeting of the Wye Historical Society was held on 5th December 2018. Hugh Cunningham spoke on Victorian Philanthropy: A Golden Age? Philanthropy began well before the Victorian period, with almshouses, foundling and voluntary hospitals commonplace by the eighteenth century. The first person to systematically be called a philanthropist was John Howard, a prison reformer who died in 1790. The philanthropic movement grew in the Victorian period, as did wealth inequality. A few well-known social reformers were Elizabeth Fry, a Quaker who visited female prisoners; Angela Burdett-Coutts who inherited a large fortune and gave most of it away to good causes (she worked with Charles Dickens in setting up Urania Cottage for fallen women); Lord Shaftesbury – Anthony Ashley Cooper – who campaigned for the Factory Acts; Thomas Barnardo, who worked with street children; and Octavia Hill who formed the National Trust. Many of these figures were also evangelical Christians. They encouraged new ideas and personal service to a cause, such as Walter Besant a clergyman and warden of Toynbee Hall who set up a settlement where middle class gentlemen could serve the poor in the East End. Gifts and donations of land led to the establishment of parks, museums, art galleries and swimming pools and the foundation of many organisations which are still part of the fabric of our society today, such as the RNLI, RSPCA, NSPCC and the National Trust. More controversially, philanthropic work had a global reach with 10,000 Christian missionaries in the field by the end of the Victorian age. Philanthropy was tied up with pride and the national character of Britain – it was seen as setting a noble example to others. More money was actually given to the poor by the poor on an exchange basis, but the amounts are not recorded. Rich donations were calculated and donors were often mentioned in the Times.

Many criticisms were levelled at philanthropists at the time. What were their motivations? Some commentators said it was vanity, love of power, superstition, or even spite in disappointing heirs. Barnardo was taken to court for setting up posed images of street children to play on people’s sympathy. The writer Thomas Carlyle believed that model prisons led to the prisoners being too comfortable - some thought that benevolence would lead to a dependency class. Walter Bagehot agreed that people should learn to live on their own without help, saying that philanthropy “also does great evil”. The character of philanthropists was also called into question. Words to describe them included puffing, mawkish and effeminate. Dickens mocked the machinery and complex organisational structure of philanthropy in his fiction - he had no time for the evangelicals who met at Exeter Hall in London. He also made reference to telescopic philanthropy in Bleak House as Mrs Jellyby tries to set up an African settlement instead of concentrating on needs closer to home.

By the turn of the century there was a need for the state to play a greater role - socialists had no time for philanthropy and use of the word declined and even became a term of abuse. However, an article in the Economist in 2014 suggested we are now entering another golden age of philanthropy.

Ellie Morris