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Samuel Smiles and the Genesis of Self-Help; The Retreat to a Petit Bourgeois Utopia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

R. J. Morris
R. J. Morris
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Extract

Recent historical writing has shown the petite bourgeoisie to have been a distinctive group within British politics and society during the nineteenth century. Its politically active members provided a fluctuating and positive challenge to the authority of both the landed aristocracy and the developing urban elites. In the 1790s, an active fringe of small masters, shopkeepers and less prosperous professional men joined with the wage earners and artisans of the Corresponding Societies. They were cautious Painites, giving depth and breadth to the eighteenth-century radical tradition which sought to extend the franchise and reduce the power of government.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 89 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

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44 Samuel and Janet Smiles to Samuel Smiles junior, Haddington, 17 Oct. 1829, Leeds City Archives, SS/A III/1: ‘Dear Son, You are now about to leave us, permit us to give you an advice, the place in which dwelling for a time where much depravity and wickedness is prevelant now when you are away from our parental eye, think of the Prayer, thou God seith me…your conduct from this time forward will either be a joy or sorrow to your affectionate father and mother and be assured if you do as becometh a son who venerates their parents nothing shall be wanting on our part for your good, you will be provided with the meins of making you respectable in the world, you will also have our prayers and affectionately esteemed by us; if you act contrary to your own disgrace, and our shame, your now fair prospects will be forever blasted, we will withhold our support, and give it to another if more deserving. God in his adorable providence often turns blessings into curses for disobedience. My son think on these few hints and by attending to them will prove for your own comfort and will gladden the hearts of your loving and affectionate father and mother…’

45 List of names registered for pew rents, Mill Hill Chapel, 1830–1848, loc cit; J. F. C. Harrison, ‘James Hole and Social Reform in Leeds’, Publications of the Thoresby Society, monograph III (Leeds, 1954); R.J. Morris, ‘The rise of James Kitson: trade union and mechanics institution, Leeds 1826–1851’, Publications of the Thoresby Society, miscellany 15, part 3 (1972), pp. 179–200.

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81 Winskell, P. T., The temperance movement and its workers (2 vols., London, 1892), 1, 196; Conveyance in trust of the buildings and property of the Woodhouse Temperance Hall and Mechanics Institution, 24 June 1861. (My thanks to Mr John Morrish for showing me the papers of the Woodhouse Temperance Hall and Mechanics Institution in the care of Morrish and Co., solicitors of Leeds.)Google Scholar

82 Eleventh annual report of the Woodhouse Temperance Hall and Mechanics Institution, December (1861), from the papers in the care of Morrish and Co.

83 LM 4 Jan. 1851.

84 P. T. Winskell, Temperance, 1, 117 quoting from a pamphlet Lucas wrote about 1851; the Eleventh annual report and the account given me in 1970 by Mr.Hartney, the caretaker of the Hall, also carry this tradition and the consciousness of independence.

85 Subscription book of the Woodhouse Temperance Society, kindly shown me by the present treasurer of the Society.

86 The Conveyance, see footnote 81.

87 Annals of the Zion School, New Wortley’, MS by B. A. Kilburn, in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, MS 116/2. (My thanks to the university librarian for permission to see these papers.)

88 LT 23 Feb. 1839. This was a review of J. F. Bray, Labour's wrongs and Labour's remedies.

89 ‘What is doing for the people of Leeds’, loc. cit. n. 73.

90 Ibid. p. 137.

91 Howitt's Journal (1847), P. 7; LM 9 Jan. 1847.

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99 LT 27 April 1839.

100 Smiles, 1845, p. 4.

101 Smiles, 1845, pp. 6–10.

102 Smiles, Self-Help, 1866, p. 21.

103 LM 25 Jan. 1850.

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105 My thanks to Geoff Crossick, Ken Fielden and Nick Phillipson for critical comments on an earlier draft of this paper.