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Women in English Philanthropy 1790–1830*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

F. K. Prochaska
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Students of institutional charity must sometimes share Walter Bagehot's melancholy doubt “whether the benevolence of mankind does most harm or good”; but they do not dispute that philanthropists were ubiquitous in England by the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Sir James Stephen called the period the age of charitable societies. “For the cure of every sorrow […] there are patrons, vice-presidents, and secretaries. For the diffusion of every blessing […] there is a committee.” Many issues raised by the expansion of philanthropy have been treated with considerable insight. But at least one question has largely escaped the historian: the role of charitable women among the “Fathers of the Victorians”.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , December 1974 , pp. 426 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1974

References

page 426 note 1 Bagehot, Walter, Physics and Politics (London, 1872), pp. 188–89.Google Scholar

page 426 note 2 SirStephen, James, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (2 vols; London, 1849), I, p. 382.Google Scholar

page 426 note 3 Working primarily from wills, W. K. Jordan has put together some very interesting statistical material on the role of women in philanthropy in the years 1480–1660. See Philanthropy in England, 1480–1660 (London, 1959).Google Scholar

page 427 note 1 Brown, Ford K., Fathers of the Victorians (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 333–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The figure is not exact because several societies cannot be dated and others may be repeated in Brown's list under different names. I have found some that do not appear in his list.

page 427 note 2 The percentage of women subscribers would probably increase considerably if we knew the number of joint donations, suggested by wives but usually put in the husband's name.

page 429 note 1 The object of this society was to provide trusses and bandages, perform operations, and supply medicines to the vast number of persons with hernias, estimated at one in eight of the population. City of London Truss Society, for the Relief of the Ruptured Poor (London, 1818), p. 3.Google Scholar

page 429 note 2 List of the Society Instituted in 1787, for the Purpose of Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (London, 1788).Google Scholar There were 860 subscribers in this year, 94 women.

page 429 note 3 See An Account of the Receipts and Disbursements of the Anti-Slavery Society, for the Years 1829 and 1830 (London, 1830).Google Scholar

page 429 note 4 The financial figures in this paragraph are to the nearest pound. The sources of the information can be found in the appropriate account listed under “Sources” in the appendices.

page 430 note 1 There were, of course, many examples of Female Benefit Societies or Friendly Societies established by women in the eighteenth century. See Cappe, Catharine, Observations on Charity Schools, Female Friendly Societies, and Other Subjects Connected with the Views of the Ladies' Committee (York, 1805).Google Scholar

page 430 note 2 The Friendly Female Society, for the Relief of Poor, Infirm, Aged Widows, and Single Women (London, 1803).Google Scholar

page 430 note 3 Plan of the Ladies' Charity School of St. Sepulchre (London, 1805).Google Scholar

page 430 note 4 The Ladies' Royal Benevolent Society (London, 1818).Google Scholar

page 430 note 5 Fifth Report of the British and Irish Ladies' Society (London, 1828).Google Scholar The other ladies' societies founded between 1795 and 1830 were: the Charity for the Relief of Female Emigrants (1795), the Ladies' Society for the Education and Employment of the Female Poor (1804), the Female Friendly Union Society (1806), the London Society for the Encouragement of Faithful Female Servants (1812), the Society of Young Ladies to Sell Clothes at Reduced Prices (1812), the Dorcas Society (1813), the Ladies' Benevolent Society for the Relief of poor married Lying-in Women (1813), the Southwark Female Society (1813), the British Society of Ladies for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners (1821), the Royal Female Philanthropic Society (1822), the Ladies' Hibernian Female School Society (1823), the Invalid Asylum for Respectable Females (1825), the Ladies' Society for Promoting education in the West Indies (1825), and the Philo-Judaean Ladies' Association (1826).

page 431 note 1 Brown, , Fathers of the Victorians, p. 240.Google Scholar

page 431 note 2 MrsMaddocks, , The Female Missionary Advocate (London, 1827), p. 10.Google Scholar

page 431 note 3 The campaign to open lunatic asylums to women visitors, initiated in the early nineteenth century, is discussed in Cappe, Catharine, Thoughts on the Desirableness and Utility of Ladies Visiting the Female Wards of Hospitals and Lunatic Asylums (London, 1816).Google Scholar

page 432 note 1 The Friendly Female Society, for the Relief of Poor, Infirm, Aged Widows, and Single Women, p. 4.

page 432 note 2 Ibid., p. 14.

page 432 note 3 The Second Annual Report of the Loan Society (London, 1817), p. 3.Google Scholar

page 432 note 4 Fund of Mercy; or an Institution for the Relief and Employment of Destitute and Forlorn Females (London, 1813), p. 6.Google Scholar

page 432 note 5 Women also wrote on schools, soup kitchens, recipes, libraries, contagious fever, and regulations governing their own auxiliaries for the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor.

page 432 note 6 The Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft and the Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill (London, 1929), p. 315.Google Scholar

page 433 note 1 See The Second Annual Report of the Religious Tract Society (London, 1801).Google Scholar

page 433 note 2 The highest proportion of titled ladies that I found was in the Royal Jennerian Society, where 19 out of the 29 female subscribers were titled, 66 per cent. See Address of the Royal Jennerian Society for the Extermination of Small-Pox (London, 1803).Google Scholar

page 433 note 3 See, for example, Cappe, Observations on Charity Schools, p. x.

page 433 note 4 Lawrence Stone suggests that there was a connection between late marriage and women in school teaching. But I would hesitate to argue that philanthropy was also taken up because of late marriage. It was, after all, unpaid work. Stone, Lawrence, “Literacy and Education in England 1640–1900”, in: Past and Present, No 42 (1969), p. 95.Google Scholar

page 433 note 5 For a discussion of domestic servants see Marshall, Dorothy, “The English Domestic Servant in History”, for the Historical Association (London, 1949).Google Scholar See also Hecht, J. Jean, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1956).Google Scholar

page 434 note 1 A Country Lady, Females of the Present Day, considered as to their influence on Society (London, 1831), p. 78.Google Scholar

page 434 note 2 Trimmer, Sarah, The Oeconomy of Charity (2 vols; London, 1801), II, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

page 434 note 3 Plan of the Ladies' Charity School of St. Sepulchre, pp. 5–8.

page 434 note 4 Extract from an Account of the Ladies' Society, for the Education and Employment of the Female Poor (London, 1804), p. 2.Google Scholar

page 434 note 5 The female benefit societies also worked to relieve retired domestic servants. See Cappe, , Observations on Charity Schools, pp. 145–46.Google Scholar

page 434 note 6 According to Mitchell, B. R., Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar the proportion of females in the population of England and Wales fell during the period. Thus increasing female activity in charity cannot be explained by any rise in their numbers relative to the number of men. (Mitchell estimates that there were 1,057 females for every 1,000 males in 1801, and 1,040 per 1,000 in 1831, p. 6.)

page 435 note 1 I am much indebted in this section to the pioneering work of Pinchbeck, Ivy, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (London, 1930).Google Scholar

page 435 note 2 From Margaretta Greg's Diary, quoted in Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850, p. 315. In a letter to the Times, December 26, 1801, “The Females' Friend” asked for a charity to be instituted for the impoverished middle-class woman, for “she cannot work – she cannot beg”.

page 435 note 3 More, Hannah, Moral Sketches of Prevailing Opinions and Manners (London, 1819), p. 214.Google Scholar

page 435 note 4 Graham, Catherine Macaulay, Letters on Education (London, 1790), p. 290.Google Scholar

page 436 note 1 A Country Lady, Females of the Present Day, pp. 135–48; More, Hannah, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education (2 vols; London, 1799), I, passim.Google Scholar

page 436 note 2 Graham, Macaulay, Letters on Education, p. 290.Google Scholar

page 436 note 3 Thos. Dibdin, Frognall, Reminiscences of a Literary Life (2 parts; London, 1836), I, p. 231Google Scholar; Edward Wakefield to Francis Place, December 1, 1813, British Museum, Add. Mss 35752, ff. 10–11.

page 436 note 4 Pleasure and Pain, 1780–1818, ed. by Baker, J. Bernard (London, 1930), p. 55.Google Scholar

page 436 note 5 For a discussion of women's magazines see Adburgham, Alison, Women in Print (London, 1972).Google Scholar

page 436 note 6 The Female Instructor; or Young Woman's friend and Companion (London, 1830), p. 165.Google Scholar

page 437 note 1 Ibid., p. 164.

page 437 note 2 MrsMaddocks, , The Female Missionary Advocate, p. 11.Google Scholar

page 437 note 3 The lines are Milton's, quoted in More, Hannah, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, I, p. 7.Google Scholar

page 437 note 4 For a list of the leading Evangelical ladies see Brown, , Fathers of the Victorians, p. 358.Google Scholar

page 438 note 1 A Short Account of the Charity Established for the Relief of Female Emigrants (London, 1797), p. 5.Google Scholar

page 438 note 2 The Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor, 5th ed. (6 vols; London, 1815), IV, p. 139.Google Scholar

page 439 note 1 Ibid., pp. 140–41. The Ladies' Society for the Education and Employment of the Female Poor would even have the “infected” French language banned but for its being so much in use in the schools.

page 439 note 2 Burke, Edmund, A Letter from the Right Honourable Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord (London, 1796), p. 21.Google Scholar

page 439 note 3 More, , Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, I, p. 4.Google Scholar

page 439 note 4 Trimmer, , The Oeconomy of Charity, I, pp. xii–xiii.Google Scholar

page 439 note 5 Ibid., I, p. 156; II, p. 120.

page 439 note 6 Ibid., I, p. 84; II, pp. 57–8.

page 440 note 1 Jordan, , Philanthropy in England, 1480–1660, p. 355Google Scholar, note. See also Jordan, W. K., The Charities of London, 1480–1660 (London, 1960), p. 29.Google Scholar

page 440 note 2 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963), p. 57.Google Scholar For a balanced picture of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century charity, it is useful to look at Thomas Bernard's introductions to the Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor.

page 440 note 3 Mill, John Stuart, The Subjection of Women (London, 1869), p. 163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 441 note 1 Ibid.

page 441 note 2 More, , Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, I, p. 4.Google Scholar

page 441 note 3 Ibid., p. 3.