DIFFERING DEFINITIONS

The voluntary ethic which underlined the hospitals’ existence created an ideal that ‘an Englishman rarely stands aside from public business’ with an ‘obligation to contribute, in one way or another to the common good’/ The proliferation of voluntary agencies that resulted in the mid-Victorian period allied itself with the assumption that the state should play a minimal role, leaving philanthropy, in cooperation with local government, to ‘superintend most moral, charitable, education and welfare services’/ Where the reality of government action did not match this ideal and was gradually extended, charity was assigned and carried out a crucial role in the Victorian welfare system. There was scarcely ‘a form of human want or wretchedness for which a special and appropriate provision [had] not been made’.^ Benevolence remained ubiquitous, yet both immune from precise measurement and under constant scrutiny from the press and social commentators. With a self-conscious regard for public opinion, linked to an anxious concern for finance, philanthropists sought to relieve the social conditions that faced an increasingly industrialised and urbanised society. A latent antagonism to state intervention legitimised their reforming efforts. They believed that philanthropy presented a flexible solution to the problems facing society, but their activities helped readjust the boundaries between civil society and the state. Philanthropists revealed problems that were beyond the individual’s competence, prompting calls for legislative activity as they pioneered ‘recognition of new areas of concern but ultimately making it clear that voluntarism is not

^ D.Owen, English Philanthropy 1660-1960 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 164.

^ P.Thane, ‘Government and Society in England and Wales 1750-1914’ in F.M.L.Thompson (ed.), Cambridge Social History o f Britain 1750-1950, 3 (Cambridge,

1990), 33.

enough’ Charity, propelled by its own internal dynamic, came to lead welfare activities and the state followed.

Charity, however, is a contested concept. The word ‘philanthropy’ first appeared in 1625 in Misheu’s Guide to the Tongue. It was believed to be derived from Greek where it meant ‘a loving of man’ and was first used by Bacon in 1625 in his essay on ‘Goodness, and Goodness of Heart’ Within the Victorian frame of reference it was largely understood in Christian terms and was widely eulogised in sermons and pamphlets as a Christian duty linked to sacrifice. Thomas Wentworth Higginson felt that charity was the noblest of epithets, but one that was not above suspicion or criticism.^ The Victorians found no need to define the inspiration behind philanthropy. It was integral to their understanding of society and they remained confident that it would continue to ameliorate social problems. Historians have subsequently puzzled over the exact meaning of philanthropy. Contemporaries presented social, religious and philosophical rationales for benevolence, but made no effort to clarify the impetus behind charity. Some historians have gone as far as to assume that these motivations remain impossible to analyse, but this has not stopped their colleagues from constructing competing theories to explain the Victorians’ benevolent actions.

Traditional interpretations of philanthropy have been rooted in a liberal, essentially Whiggish conception of history. Concentration, especially in Owen’s work, focused on the endowed charities and the Charity Commission. Charity was shown to be progressive in an evolutionary model that culminated in the welfare state.^ By the late 1970s a new critical approach had started to evolve. Marxist historians came to believe that industrialisation imposed pressure on communal and deferential patterns of authority, creating anxiety within the ruling elites. In response philanthropy became an instrument

B.Harrison Peaceable Kingdom: Stability and Change in M odem Britain (Oxford, 1982, 234.

^ F.Bacon, Goodness, and Goodness o f Heart (1625).

^ T.W.Higginson, ‘The Word Philanthropy’ in Freedom and Fellowship in Religion (Boston, 1875), 330.

^ See Owen, Philanthropy’, W.Jordan, Philanthropy in England 1460-1660 (1959); and B.Kirkman Gray, A History o f English Philanthropy (1905).

of class domination; a means to assert Gramsci’s idea of hegemony. In this view endowed charities were marginalised and the new nineteenth-century voluntary associations came to the fore, imposing a middle-class ideology onto society. Gareth Stedman Jones in Outcast London, wholeheartedly embraced such a social control interpretation and applied Mauss’s anthropological construction of the ‘gift relationship’ to ideas of charity and power.® Attention was shifted to the activities of the Charitable Organisation Society (COS) and the modification of the ‘gift relationship’ as charity became more formal. The idea that philanthropy was a mechanism of power was not unique and had been discussed by Cobbettin 1816 and by Engels in his Condition o f the

English Working Class. Kidd amplified this interpretation, noting that many

philanthropists worked with the conviction that they had an obligation to exert a moral influence on the needy.^ Philanthropy as an instrument of social control was a seductive view. Garrard and Yeo acknowledged that voluntary associations were imperfect ideological transmitters, but Garrard himself noted that charity was crucial to the middle classes in their legitimisation of p o w e r . M a r x i s t historians, however, were not the only historians to reinterpret the role of charity. Prochaska equally redefined philanthropy, rejecting the Whiggish model of the passage to modernity. He repudiates the reductionist notion that charity was an instrument of social control and part of a middle-class conspiracy to inculcate its values onto a susceptible working class. Victorian charity for Prochaska was not inspired by the fear of social unrest, but by kindness. Benevolence in his interpretation became a positive concept, able to play an important role in society, mitigate social conditions and help expand the social role of women.

® G.Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study o f the Relationship Between Classes in

Victorian Society (1984) and M.Mauss, The Gift (1980).

^ A.Kidd, ‘Outcast Manchester: Voluntary Charity, Poor Relief and the Casual Poor 1860- 1905’ in A.Kidd & K.Roberts (eds.). City, Class and Culture (Manchester, 1985), 52.

S. Yeo, Religion and Voluntary Organisation in Crisis (1979); J.Garrard, Leadership and

Power in Victorian Industrial Towns 1830-80 (Manchester, 1983).

See F.K.Prochaska, Woman and Philanthropy in Nineteenth Century England (Oxford, 1980) and in The Voluntary Impulse (1988) Prochaska analyses philanthropy’s continued contribution to the welfare state, a view shared by G.Finlayson, ‘A Moving Frontier: Voluntarism and the State in British Social Welfare 1911-1949’, Twentieth Century British History, 1 (1990).

In recent years there has been a move against such interpretations, as historians have returned to the pessimism of the earlier Marxist assumptions. Morris, in his study of the middle class and voluntary associations in early nineteenth-century Leeds, has become the main proponent of this view. He believes that voluntary societies were an important arena for middle-class activity, providing the framework through which they established their class identity. Morris admits that voluntary societies were not perfect transmitters of class values, but he sees them as providing an established cultural norm.^^ Trainor, in his analysis of the Black Country elites, notes that charity was modified by new public initiatives, but remained crucial to the elite provision of medicine and recreation. For Trainor, it reinforced the ‘benign use of middle class wealth, reduced points of conflict between middle class and working class people, helped channel the latter’s aspirations as subscribers, and demonstrates the concerns of the upper orders for social problems’.^"* Others have followed his lead. Once more philanthropy has become a tool in class formation; an instrument of the middle classes to promote their hegemony.

Where does this leave the historian? Is philanthropy such a muddled idea that Jordan is correct in assuming that inspiration is ‘immune... from the fumbling probing of the historian’7^^ True, Victorians did not leave detailed accounts of their motivations, but reconstruction is possible, synthesising the different historical approaches. In a study of hospital finance it is necessary to look at the philanthropic psyche through the workings of the hospital to understand how and why the Victorians gave. The vocabulary governors used in their fundraising indicate the impetus behind benevolence where the subscriber’s own voice may be absent. Governors seemed to know instinctively what would motivate charity. No claim is made to present a complete picture, but to show what factors conspired to generate support for the London hospitals. In investigating the

R.J.Morris, Class, Sect and Party: The Making o f the British Middle Class, Leeds 1820- 50 (1990).

R.H.Trainor, Black Country Elites: The Exercise o f Authority in an Industrialised Area (Oxford, 1993).

Trainor, Black Country Elites, 351.

motives for supporting one of the main channels of charitable action it can be hoped that some light is cast on the often conflicting reasons for benevolence.