Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and Country. Escott Thomas Hay Sweet

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СКАЧАТЬ towns now ensued. In 1865, the first editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, Frederick Greenwood, conceived the idea of commissioning his brother James, a well known writer on social subjects, to pass a night in the casual ward of a workhouse, rumours of abuses in the management of which were then attracting attention. About a year after this, a winter of exceptional severity afflicted the poorest portions of London, near the Docks and elsewhere, with the combined calamities of lack of labour, and as a consequence with famine, firelessness, and pestilence. Three friends, each of them then young men, all Conservatives by conviction and all under the influence of the philanthropic teaching of Disraeli’s novels, were in the habit of frequently meeting with a view of maturing some scheme for the relief of that destitution at the East End, with which existing agencies of help had proved themselves impotent to deal. One of these belonged to a well known Shropshire family, Baldwyn Leighton.22 Another, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, has since become Chancellor of the Exchequer. The third was a son of a former Bishop of Salisbury. Edward Denison was equally quick to master the dominant facts in a social situation, and to take the action that seemed the best thereupon. Within a few days, he decided that the first step towards remedying the evils recorded morning after morning in the newspapers must be personal acquaintance with their magnitude, and their origin, as well as with the habits and homes of the distressed masses. Denison, therefore, established himself in a small house in Whitechapel, the very heart of the necessitous district.

      Since then, the example thus set has been followed frequently. Denison of course was sometimes visited in his East End lodging by his West End friends. These returned, bringing with them a more vivid sense of the industrial suffering just outside the doors of the polite world than literary descriptions, however graphic, could convey to the perfunctory reader of the morning paper. Other incidents were to prove unexpectedly instrumental in deepening the interest of well-to-do Londoners in their destitute neighbours. Within a year or two of Denison’s mission, the Fenian outrage at Clerkenwell Prison not only robbed many poor families of their breadwinners, but left them literally homeless. Disraeli, at that time Prime Minister, sent down his private secretary to distribute alms among the victims of the explosion. Mr Montague Corry, since Lord Rowton,23 saw sad and strange sights during this charitable errand. His recital of these experiences was followed by liberal subscriptions to the sufferers from Pall Mall and Mayfair. From that day to this, not only has the stream of charity flowed less sluggishly; there has been also awakened a new personal and intelligent interest in the condition of the most squalid of poverty’s perennial children. That feeling has not evaporated in charitable doles. Substantial funds have been organized by private or corporate munificence for improving the dwellings of the poor and for practically testifying the neighbourly solicitude of more fortunate citizens.

      The demoralizing effects of public executions were exposed by Thackeray. His essay, ‘Going to see a man hung’ gave shape, and eventually success to the movement for the hanging of criminals within, and not outside, the prison walls. So, at an earlier day, Dickens, who of all our greatest writers was the first to interest the public in the waifs and strays in the London streets, had initiated in Oliver Twist a social demand for workhouse reform. The best causes are liable to abuse and caricature. There have been moments when, since the Mayhews wrote, sympathy with the lot of the London poor has seemed in danger of becoming overdone, or being degraded into a fad, a craze, a fashionable hobby, and thus of ceasing to be an actuating conviction. The modish popularity of ‘slumming’ as it used a few years ago to be called had of course its absurd aspects, but was, nevertheless, not an unhealthy sign. It could be compared to the froth upon the surface which concealed, and did not necessarily weaken, the stimulating and strengthening qualities below. Whether this philanthropic curiosity was displayed in town or country, the social truth of which it constituted evidence was that the commercial spirit and its harsher influences, not unfortunately uncommon among the upper classes in the early days of the new poor law, were becoming obsolete, and that the class fusion born of class sympathy to which De Tocqueville has attributed our later freedom from organic revolutions was in steady process of evolution. Edward Denison came first of all, and could only see with the eye of faith the fruits which his example was to bear in the beneficent experiment of Arnold Toynbee and in the People’s Palace. So it has continued, till to-day the University and public school settlements in the East End of London and in other great cities are institutions not less deeply rooted than the parochial system itself. The kindly work is not confined to a single sex. St Margaret’s House, Bethnal Green, the ladies’ branch of the Oxford agency, presided over by Mrs Burrows, is as firmly established as the homes founded by Trinity or Christ Church in the same neighbourhood. Throughout the English speaking world, the same beneficent inspiration seems to have been almost simultaneously operative. One hears of analogous enterprises in the great cities of Australia and in the United States. The American movement even claims seniority over the English. Andover House, Boston, was in full working order before the cognate agencies in our own capital were complete. The devotion of Trade Unionists to their Union has been employed as a figure to illustrate the mutual loyalty to a great and good idea of those brought up in the same College or University or public school. This reciprocal enthusiasm has now been active and productive long enough to entitle it to the praise of solidity and permanence. The public and legal provisions for quickening the sense of citizenship in town and country will presently be examined in detail. That which seems important to bear in mind is that the legislature did not interpose its machinery until the private agencies, social or moral, already recapitulated, had done their work. Even the improvement in the open spaces of the capital which is so marked a feature in metropolitan progress during the last few decades, has been helped or encouraged largely by private initiative. The late Mr Matthew Arnold recognized as a graceful and original act of public service, the transport of Cleopatra’s Needle from Alexandria to London at the cost of Sir Erasmus Wilson. Before the obelisk was established on the Thames Embankment the municipal authorities had prepared a home for it and converted into daintily kept pleasure grounds the little enclosures by the side of the riverain promenade.

       CHAPTER VII

      THE NEW ERA IN ENGLISH PARISHES

      Reflection of the Estates of the Realm in the old divisions of rural life in England. Modifications in the system introduced by recent changes in local government. The English village as it now is. The public house as a place of resort largely displaced by the parish meeting room. The quickened sense of civic life shown in the speech and bearing of the villagers. The exact functions of the Parish Council, or Meeting. Relations between Parish and District Councils. Retrospect of English Poor Law system. Greater popularity of the District Councils. Other duties than of Poor Law Guardians discharged by District Councils. Clergy and Squires. How affected. District Board’s composition. Its relations with magistrates, and popular feeling.

      Before 1894, English parishes in rural districts possessed, as they still do, three centres of local life. The State was represented by the squire, or chief landowner, often, as may still be the case, an absentee. The Rectory, or Vicarage, with the neighbouring church was the geographical depository of spiritual power. The village inn, or public house, was the place of popular meeting, and with its adjoining skittle-alley was the source of popular amusement. Here the gossip of the neighbourhood was discussed, or the local newspaper read. London journals did not, and do not, often enter remote neighbourhoods in the provinces. The doings of the Imperial Parliament, or the Concert of the European Powers were, as they remain, of little interest to the rural tillers of the soil in comparison with the wages paid by the farmers in the district, the supervision, or the lack of it, exercised by lords of the land over the cottages of the poor. Nothing more struck the stranger who wished to acquire information as to the daily lot of the rural population, and as to opportunities for their improvement, than the prevailing ignorance or indifference about the facts of their daily life. It was not exactly Christian acquiescence in chronic want and squalor as a Divine dispensation. It was rather an unreasoning suspicion as to the motives of the enquirer, and as to the consequences to themselves of the answers given, which, if it did not seal the villagers’ lips, restricted their replies to inarticulate grunts or evasive generalities.

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