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 THE 
 SEVENTH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, KG. 
 
From a Photograph by Samuel A. JValker.] 
 
 FRONTISPIECE. 
 
THE SEVENTH 
 
 EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, 
 
 K.G., 
 as Social "Reformer. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN HODDER, 
 
 Author of " The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G." ; " The Life 
 of Samuel Morley " ; " John MacGregor {Rob Roy)" " George Smith, of Coalville," 
 
 etc., tc. 
 
 > > > > 
 
 - 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JAMES NISBET & CO., LIMITED, 
 
 21, Berners Street. 
 
 1897. 
 

 Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ltd., London and Aylesbury. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 [ T was my high honour to be chosen by the 
 * "good" Earl of Shaftesbury to be his biographer, 
 and, in 1886, it was my privilege to give to the 
 world the full story of his life political, social, 
 domestic, philanthropic, and religious. It was, of 
 necessity, a lengthy narrative, occupying three bulky 
 volumes and sixteen hundred pages of print. 
 
 The present work is confined to one aspect of 
 his career that of Social Reformer and is in- 
 tended to set before the reader in a brief form a 
 rfcume of those important movements to which he 
 devoted his life, standing out pre-eminently as the 
 champion of the defenceless and oppressed, and 
 winning for himself a name that will live for 
 ever in the annals of this country as the Friend 
 of the Working Man, and the great Social Reformer 
 of the nineteenth century. 
 
 EDWIN HODDER. 
 
 Heatherdene, Harewood Road, 
 South Croydon. 
 
 723919 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Early Career x 
 
 II. Factory Legislation for Women and Chil- 
 dren 2Q 
 
 III. Lunatics, and the Lunacy Laws . . 50 
 
 IV. Chimney Sweepers and Climbing Boys . 69 
 
 V. Children in Mines and Collieries . 83 
 
 VI. Children not Protected by the Factory 
 
 Act s 96 
 
 VII. Condition of the Working Classes . .114 
 
 VIII. Sanitation, and the Dwellings of the 
 
 Poor I2 g 
 
 IX. Ragged Schools I44 
 
 X. MULTUM IN PARVO jfa 
 
 Index I9I 
 
THE SEVENTH 
 
 EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G. 
 
 CHAPTER 1. 
 
 EARLY CAREER. 
 
 ANTONY ASHLEY COOPER, seventh Earl of 
 Shaftesbury, was born in Grosvenor Square 
 on April 28th, 1801. His father was for many years 
 Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords. 
 His mother was a daughter of the fourth Duke of 
 Marlborough. The ancestors of the Earl, both on 
 his mother's and his father's side, were distinguished 
 men. The first Earl of Shaftesbury was the famous 
 minister of Charles II. ; the third Earl was the 
 equally famous author of the " Characteristics " ; 
 the second, fourth, and fifth Earls achieved no dis- 
 tinction or left no mark on the history of their 
 times. The sixth Earl, Cropley Ashley, succeeded 
 to the title on the death of his brother in 181 1. 
 
 The first qualification for the work before him of 
 the great Englishman, Christian philanthropist, and 
 
 1 
 
2 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 social reformer, whose life we are now to consider, 
 was his birthright of rank and position. He was 
 always sensible of the vantage ground thus afforded 
 him, and it may be well to ask, in passing, whether 
 it is easy to overestimate the gain to the whole 
 community, that not every citizen should be forced 
 to spend his prime in climbing high enough above his 
 fellows to be able to render them effectual service ? 
 
 He had other congenital personal gifts manly 
 good looks and a striking presence, which, it cannot 
 be gainsaid:, help a man more than we sometimes 
 think; -and which' certainly helped him when he 
 endeavoured ; to i-n'sfiire his humble fellow-countrymen 
 with his noble and elevated character. Gifts of in- 
 tellect were added, such as has been truly said 
 might well have inclined him to take a part in the 
 higher walks of political life. Immense energy, un- 
 tiring industry, indomitable perseverance, and the 
 noble ambition which covets, not personal distinction 
 for its own sake, but that honour which in its highest 
 form is to have " the answer of a good conscience " ; 
 a command over language which clothed his thoughts, 
 written or spoken, in right and forcible words ; an 
 unrivalled memory ; a keen power of observation ; 
 a statesmanlike faculty in choosing his instruments ; 
 an insight into character, and a depth of sympathy, 
 developed by special circumstances, which was the 
 human motive of his strenuous labours, together with 
 a vivid imagination and a heart which craved for 
 love and approval, were the natural equipment of 
 the knightly soul destined to engage in more single 
 
Early Surroundings. 3 
 
 combats on behalf of the weak and defenceless than 
 any paladin of the Middle Ages. 
 
 A further qualification for his life-work was the 
 sorrow and sadness and pitiful loneliness of his child- 
 hood and early surroundings. His father, an excellent 
 chairman of committees a duty he discharged faith- 
 fully for forty years was engrossed in the cares of 
 public life, and had acquired harsh and dictatorial 
 habits, which may have facilitated the business of 
 the House of Lords, but certainly did not add to 
 the charm of private intercourse. He brought up 
 his son with great severity, moral and physical, in 
 respect both of mind and body, his opinion being that 
 to render a child obedient it should be in a constant 
 fear of its father and mother. Throughout his life he 
 had no sympathy with his son, and for long periods 
 was totally estranged from him. Nor did the heart 
 of the child find any resting-place in the love of its 
 mother : she was wholly absorbed in the daily round 
 of fashionable pleasures, and found neither time nor 
 inclination to give attention to the proper duties of 
 motherhood. 
 
 Happily, however, there was one who really cared 
 for and loved the child. This was one Maria Millis, 
 the housekeeper, to whose care he was confided : it 
 was she who taught him his first prayer a prayer 
 that until the day of his death he constantly used ; 
 it was she who, from the lessons of Holy Scripture, 
 led him to desire to " be good and to do good " ; it 
 was she who was his spiritual mother, his only 
 sympathetic friend, his " special providence " ; and to 
 
4 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 her influence he traced very much, perhaps all, of the 
 inspiration of his later life. She left him a handsome 
 gold watch, and throughout his life he never 
 any other. " He was fond, even to the last, of sh 
 it, and would say, 'That was given me by the b< 
 friend I ever had in the world.' " * 
 
 When he was about seven years old Maria Mil lis 
 died, and the child was left to the t 
 of servants, who seemed to be lacking in the comm 
 instincts of humanity ; for, strange and almost in- 
 credible as it may appear, if we had not the far 
 from Lord Shaftesbury himself, he was often kept for 
 days without sufficient food, until he was pinched 
 with starvation ; he knew what it was to tkc 
 
 many weary nights in winter, all through the long 
 
 The following anecdote is taken from a Report of the Ashley 
 Mission, Bethnal Green, founded by the Hon. William Ashley, 
 Lord Shaftesbury's younger brother : 
 
 44 The watch which Maria Millis bequeathed to him when he 
 was seven years old, some half-century later, on the occasion 
 of one of his visits to a disreputable neighbourhood, was stolen 
 from its owner. Lord Shaftesbury immediately advertised 
 loss and his great value for the missing property. * There is 
 honour among thieves.' Soon after, a cab drew up to his door 
 in Grosvenor Square ; a tremendous ring was given, a large 
 canvas bag was deposited on the threshold, and the two men 
 who brought it were promptly driven off. The bag was opened. 
 It was found not only to contain the precious watch, but the 
 young culprit who had known no better than to steal it, together 
 with a written request that he might meet with his deserts. It 
 need scarcely be said that the restoration of Maria Millis's legacy 
 was rewarded with his pardon, while a fresh start in life was 
 afforded him, by the good education of the Reformatory School 
 to which he was forthwith sent" 
 
School Life. 5 
 
 hours suffering from cold ; he was the victim of many 
 cruel and petty tyrannies, and spent the years of his 
 young life, that should have been only bright and 
 joyous, in a state of utter misery, without a friend 
 in the world to cheer him with sympathy and loving- 
 kindnesa. 
 
 On entering his eighth year the lad was sent to a 
 school, which has latterly given place to a lunatic 
 asylum Manor House, Chiswick. It was a fashion- 
 able and successful school, kept by Dr. Thomas 
 Home, a good classical scholar, the father of Sir 
 William Home, Attorney-General under Earl Grey, 
 and afterwards Master in Chancery. It is a truism 
 that there are as wide differences in the mental as in 
 the physical constitution of boys. Lord Lyndhurst, 
 who went to this same school under the same master, 
 a somewhat glowing account of it, altogether 
 different from that of Lord Shaftesbury, who, late in 
 life, said, "The memory of that place makes me 
 shudder ; it is repulsive to me even now. I think 
 never was such a wicked school before or since. 
 The place was bad, wicked, filthy ; and the treatment 
 was starvation and cruelty." There is, perhaps, a 
 little exaggeration in this description, the result of an 
 overwrought and sensitive nature ; but the fact remains 
 that to him, whatever it might have been to any one 
 else, life at that school was a prolonged torture. 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell upon this period of his 
 life, but some knowledge of these painful experiences 
 is necessary to the true appreciation of his subsequent 
 career. " No one who knew Lord Shaftesbury could 
 
6 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 fail to observe in him an air of melancholy, a certain 
 sombreness and sadness, which habitually surrounded 
 him like an atmosphere. It was no doubt to be 
 attributed, in great measure, to the scenes of 
 and sorrow which were continually before him ; but 
 it was also largely due to the fact that there had 
 been no light-heartedness in his childhood, and that 
 the days to which most men look back with the 
 keenest delight were only recalled by him with a 
 shrinking sense of horror. But it is important to 
 the understanding of his life in another aspect [that 
 of a social reformer] that this record of his unhappy 
 childhood should be given. Those early years of 
 sorrow were the years in which he was gr 
 for his great life-work. He had suffered oppression ; 
 henceforth his life would be devoted to fighting the 
 battles of the oppressed. He had known k 
 and cold, and hunger ; henceforth he would plead the 
 cause of the poor, the lonely, the suffering, and the 
 hungry. He had known the loss of a happy child- 
 hood ; henceforth he would labour, as long as life 
 should last, to bring joy and gladness to tfa 
 and homes of little children 
 
 In 1811 the father, succeeding to the title, 
 to live at St Giles, the family seat in Dorsetshire ; 
 and in 181 3, after five years at the Manor House 
 School, Chiswick, the son was sent, at about twelve 
 years old, to Harrow, and was placed under the 
 
 * "The Life and Work oi the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, 
 K.G .," by Edwin Hodder (Cassell & Co., Ltd. 1886. In 
 volumes), vol. i., p. 42. 
 
The Starting Point. 7 
 
 care and in the house of the Head Master, Dr. Butler. 
 Here a happier era dawned upon him ; he found 
 friends whom he could love and esteem among 
 them the loving, large-hearted Sir Harry Verney, 
 afterwards distinguished as a philanthropist not less 
 than in other important respects. 
 
 It was while he was at Harrow that an incident 
 occurred which gave shape and tone to his chara 
 and became the starting-point in his life of phil- 
 anthropic labour. Walking alone one day down 
 Harrow Hill he encountered a drunken group shout- 
 ing out Bacchanalian songs as they staggered along 
 with a coffin containing the remains of a deceased 
 comrade. Presently, turning a comer, they let their 
 burden drop, and broke out into foul and horrible 
 language. Struck with unspeakable horror at the 
 ghastly scene, the lad, after gazing at it for a few 
 moments as if spellbound, exclaimed, "Good 
 heavens! can this be permitted simply because 
 the man was poor and friendless ? " And then and 
 there he registered a vow that, with God's help, he 
 would thenceforth make the cause of the poor his 
 own. And faithfully he kept that vow.* 
 
 Soon after he attained his fifteenth year young 
 Lord Ashley, for so we must call him till his accession 
 to the Earldom in his fifty-first year, left Harrow, 
 
 * A suggestion was made in the " Life and Work of Lord 
 Shaftesbury," vol L, p. 49, that a suitable monument should 
 mark the spot where this resolution was made, eventuating in the 
 freedom of thousands of the poor and helpless. We are de- 
 lighted to hear that a movement is now on foot (1897) to carry 
 out this suggestion. 
 
8 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 where he had obtained prizes and reached the sixth 
 form, and went to reside with a clergyman in Derby- 
 shire. Here, if he did not, as he tells us, learn much, 
 he at least acquired a taste for the innocent pleasures 
 of a rustic life. In 1 819, after two years with his 
 private tutor in Derbyshire, his father decided on his 
 going up to Christ Church, Oxford, where he soon 
 began to take life in greater earnest, and made up 
 for what he considered " much wasted time " by such 
 exemplary assiduity in his studies that in three years' 
 time, to his own intense surprise, he came out of the 
 schools a first-class man in classics in 1822. 
 
 To somewhere about this period we may assign 
 an amusing anecdote, " told by one who was present, 
 whose word is above doubt, and who still lives. We 
 tell it * in the words of the witness : ' At Edinburgh, 
 where I was visiting my sister, I first made acquaint- 
 ance with the young Lord Ashley, who was the 
 handsomest young man I ever saw, full of fun 
 frolic, very tall, and his countenance radiant with 
 youthful hope. He had come down to Scotland 
 with his cousin, George Howard, afterwards Lord 
 Morpeth, whom he was very anxious to make as 
 intimate with his friends as he already was him 
 but Mr. Howard, besides being naturally s 
 quite a stranger, and did not sec the pleasure or 
 advantage of the introduction. However, it was 
 effected. We heard a scuffle outside the drawing- 
 room door, which was suddenly thrown open, and 
 he rushed head foremost into the middle of the 
 Church Tim*s % December 17th, 1886. 
 
M.P. for Woodstock. 9 
 
 room, projected as from a battering ram, while 
 Lord Ashley shouted, " Enter the Honourable George 
 Howard ! " Of course there was an end of all shyness 
 
 : this.'" 
 
 is will seem strange to those who remember the 
 habitual and unbroken gravity of the Puritan Earl 
 in later years, but there is abundance of evidence 
 to show that the "unbroken gravity" was very 
 gradually acquired ; for he acknowledges in his 
 diaries the enjoyment of "a round of laughing and 
 pleasure/ 1 and even speaks of "loving joviality"; 
 while every member of his family testifies that to 
 the end of his life he relished a joke and possessed 
 a fund of quiet, subtle humour. His old friend Sir 
 George Burns, with whom Lord Shaftesbury was 
 very intimate, has testified that, when he was on 
 his annual visit to Wcmyss Bay, it was proverbial 
 wherever the ripple of laughter was to be heard 
 and the most fun was going on, there Lord Shaftes- 
 bury was invariably to be found." 
 
 At tig Oxford he travelled for some time, 
 
 according to custom ; and in his twenty-sixth year, 
 at the General Election of 1 826, he entered Parliament, 
 
 a severe contest, as member for Woodstock, 
 then the pocket borough of the House of Marlborough. 
 At that time his future had not, even in his own 
 thoughts, assumed definite shape; his religion was 
 the paramount influence over his conduct, and he 
 was habitually looking for Divine help and guidance 
 to keep his conscience unsullied and to make straight 
 * " Sir George Burns, Bart. : His Times and Friends," p. 405. 
 
io Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 his paths before him. He had resolved generally to 
 plead the cause of the poor and friendless, but he 
 had not yet found the opportunity which he sou 
 For purely political life he felt himself to be unfitted. 
 He was too sensitive, too diffident, to make a 
 ful leader ; he distrusted himself and underrated his 
 own abilities; he possessed a constitutional shy 
 which made it a pleasure to him to pass unnoticed ; 
 and he had fallen into a habit, which he never could 
 quite shake off, of analysing his own motives, prin- 
 ciples, and actions, in a morbid fashion, constantly 
 cherishing self-depreciation and fears of failure, though 
 he longed to do good work for his country. 
 
 About this time a friendship, only int 1 by 
 
 death, sprang up between the Duke of Wellington 
 
 and young Lord Ashley. His enthusiasm for the 
 
 I Duke was unbounded, and it was only increased 
 
 by his prolonged intimacy. 
 
 When Lord Ashley entered Parliament, as a Tory, 
 Lord Liverpool, the Premier, was fast approaching 
 the close of his long official career, and in the 
 following year (1827) Canning became Prime Mii 
 in his stead. Ashley was offered a post in the 
 Government, the negotiations being opened by his 
 great friend Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Canning ; but 
 out of loyalty to the Duke he refused the offer. 
 "With me," he said, "the Duke is the chief con- 
 sideration." 
 
 Four months later Canning died, and in the 
 January following Lord Ashley took office under the 
 Duke of Wellington, for whose sake he had b 
 
In Office. 1 1 
 
 refused it. He was appointed to be a Commissioner 
 of the India Board of Control, and held that office 
 almost the only office of profit he ever held till 
 Lord Grey's accession to power in 1830. This 
 situation afforded him not only a golden opportunity 
 for displaying his inherent ability, but became a 
 source of great satisfaction to him in after life. 
 During the Mutiny era in 1857 he could look back 
 with pleasure to the part he had taken on the 
 
 c question that is, the practice of burning 
 widows at the death of their husbands. It was 
 
 Icted that a revolt would follow, but his opinion 
 
 that it would be safe was justified by the event 
 
 whole of India," he said, "was satisfied that 
 
 .;ht, when Lord William Bentinck appealed 
 
 to those great principles of the human heart which 
 
 inplanted by the hand of God ... If you appeal 
 to the conscience, depend upon it the millions will go 
 along with you." 
 
 During his tenure of office the establishment of 
 "Scientific Corporations for the Institution and Im- 
 provement of Horticulture and Husbandry throughout 
 
 I rovinces of India " was one of his schemes for the 
 benefit of our great dependency, the moral results of 
 the community of pursuits to be thus induced between 
 the European and the native, being one main con- 
 sideration to be kept in view. The salt monopoly 
 deeply interested him as one affecting most nearly 
 the comforts of several millions ; and the course he 
 took in middle life with regard to the opium question, 
 and in advanced age with respect to the progress of 
 
12 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 the factory system in India and its accompanying 
 cruelties, when unrestricted, inspire the wish that the 
 India Board could longer have retained such services. 
 
 Lord Ashley's first speech in Parliament was de- 
 livered in February 1828, in support of a Rill to 
 Amend the Law for the Regulation of Lunatic Asylums, 
 and it sounded the key-note of hi 
 career, although it was not until 1833 that h< 
 send forth the clarion sounds that were to stir the 
 nation. 
 
 In June 1830 he married Lady Emily Co\ 
 daughter of the future Lady Palmerston "a wif 
 11 < his own language, fondly written in the 
 of his life, " as good, as true, and as deeply beloved as 
 God ever gave to man." 
 
 Shortly before this happy event Lord Ashley had 
 been returned, at the General Election, to rcpn 
 Dorchester ; but he only held the seat a year, the 
 rejection of the Reform Bill in 1831 having brought 
 about another dissolution of Parliament. On ace 
 of his popularity and local influence he was tlun 
 chosen to contest the county of Dorset in the anti- 
 reform interest. His opponent was the Hon. William 
 Ponsonby (afterwards Lord de Mauley), and the fight 
 was long and severe, lasting for fifteen days ; but 
 Lord Ashley won the contest, the expense of it 
 exceeding 15,000 an amount which, notw 
 ing the promises of his political friends, he had to pay 
 almost entirely alone ; and being then, and c 
 a comparatively poor man, he became involved in 
 very harassing financial difficult iea For ti 
 
The Reform Bill. 13 
 
 fifteen years he continued to represent the county in 
 Parliament. 
 
 It will be well in this place to define, as well as we 
 can, Lord Ashley's attitude towards the Reform Bill 
 of 1832, and to politics generally. On the jubilee of 
 the passing of the Reform Bill (1882) the question 
 was asked in the Times whether any of the survivors 
 of the Reform Parliament would hold to the opinion 
 then expressed, that the sun of England had set for 
 Lord Shaftesbury replied : 
 I am one of the survivors, but I do not recollect 
 that I ever expressed that opinion, nor was it the 
 opinion of the great statesmen who at that time 
 resisted the measure. They maintained that it would 
 lead eventually to large and organic changes ; that it 
 would overthrow the Established Church, and destroy 
 the independence of the House of Lords, if it did not 
 altogether annihilate its existence, 
 
 "They never contemplated these issues as imme- 
 diate ; they generally believed that about thirty years 
 would elapse before the full and permanent effects 
 were visible. In this they were right The House- 
 hold Suffrage Act of 1867, followed by the introduction 
 of the Ballot, gave the final stamp to the future 
 character of legislation. One enactment yet remains 
 the enactment of Household Suffrage for the 
 counties. This measure will affect the tenure and 
 mission of property in every form, as the other 
 measures have affected the principle and action of 
 political institutions." 
 
 It is somewhat difficult to define Lord Shaftesbury's 
 
14 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 exact place as a politician. Shortly after he entered 
 Parliament, as Lord Ashley, we find him in doubt 
 between a career of party and personal ambition, 
 and complete retirement from public life. His am- 
 bition was at that time as keen as his despondency 
 with regard to his own abilities was morbid ; but 
 such was the state of the times that he saw no alter- 
 native between taking part in the endless round of 
 intrigue for place and power, without any worthy or 
 ultimate object, and studies or moral solituck , there 
 being apparently no obvious connection bctv 
 politics and, in a large sense, the good of mankind. 
 The idea of such a connection would in all proba- 
 bility have been scouted as a Utopian, if not a 
 dangerous dream. 
 
 The political principles upon which h I in 
 
 life were, however, fixed, and he never dev 
 from them. He was so little a partisan that both 
 sides have been anxious, at certain periods, to claim 
 him as their own ; but he never wavered by a 1 
 breadth from the three articles of his political ere < 
 the Crown, the hereditary Peerage, and the Esta- 
 blished Church, institutions on the maintenance of 
 which he considered the happiness of the country to 
 depend. He opposed the Reform Bill of 1832, as we 
 have seen ; he led the opposition in the House of 
 Lords to the Reform Bill of 1867 and to tl 
 Act of 1872, and he always used the word " <1 
 cracy" as a term of reproach. 
 
 The fact is now generally recognised that the 
 history of this country has passed in recent \ 
 
Conservative Principles. 
 
 from a political to a social stage. The questions that 
 most interest us now are questions of social, and not 
 
 \y political, importance ; and no one man ever 
 did more to effect the change that has come over our 
 notion of what is important than the subject of this 
 memoir. Whether he was always right in his opinion 
 of how the popular welfare was to be promoted ; 
 whether he did not attribute too much importance to 
 the action of the State ; whether in the ardour of his 
 philanthropy he would not, unless restrained by more 
 worldly persons with cooler heads, have injured what 
 he wished to benefit, arc questions which have given 
 rise to discussions in the press, but need not be 
 
 with here. He might not have been a statesman ; 
 he certainly was not, in the ordinary sense of the 
 word, a pronounced politician, though he lived amid 
 the dust of political controversy for more than sixty 
 years, and always took the keenest interest in politics ; 
 he probably delivered more speeches in both Houses 
 
 ic Legislature than any member of either during 
 ftc present century who has not been charged with 
 
 responsibility of office. Always retaining Con- 
 servative principles, he held opinions which had a 
 flavour of advanced Liberalism ; and, as life went on, 
 he had a distrust of both the great parties in the 
 State. " To his latest day he held in aversion the 
 economic doctrines of what is commonly known as 
 
 Manchester School, and in the early part of his 
 Parliamentary career he broke many a controversial 
 lance with their greatest champion 
 
 tennined to devote himself to that soundest and 
 
1 6 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 best of political objects, the social elevation of the 
 masses, it was not unnatural that he should, although 
 by no means a man of one idea, measure public 
 men according as they did or did not support the 
 measures in which he was most interested. Judged 
 by this standard, neither Sir Robert Peel nor John 
 Bright, neither Richard Cobden nor Mr. Gladstone, 
 won his admiration or was eulogised by him in his 
 private writings ; whereas Macaulay, who was a con- 
 vert to the Ten Hours Bill, was, on his death, the 
 subject of a just and striking eulogy, which we quote 
 as illustrating the attitude of Lord Shaftesbury's mind 
 in his estimate of men : " His sentiments and expres- 
 sions were always generous; he never thought th.it 
 brilliant exploits compensated for the want of moral 
 worth, and he would call a man a villain, a rogue, or 
 an oppressor, whether he were arrayed like Solomon, 
 or in tatters like Lazarus. . . . May I never forget 
 his true and noble speech, made at my rcque 
 the House of Commons, on behalf of the factory 
 children ! 
 
 The almost universal testimony is, that there W 
 was an English politician, living or dead, who 
 so uniformly upright in his public life as 1 
 Shaftesbury ; he had one single aim to do, at what- 
 ever personal sacrifice, what he believed to be best 
 for the country at large ; and that on the whol 
 judgment on politics was exceedingly accurate and 
 far-sighted. Certainly no minister could ever influ- 
 ence him by any paltry or indirect consideration ; 
 and again and again he astonished his worldly 
 
The Corn Laws. 17 
 
 more easy-going political allies, or opponents, by dis- 
 regarding every bait that should tend to divert his 
 footsteps for a moment from the plain path he had 
 If to follow. 
 It is now time to consider in detail what he wrought, 
 and in doing so we must always bear in mind that he 
 was a deeply religious man, rooted and grounded 
 and settled." From childhood he had a simple but 
 mastering faith in the omniscience and omni- 
 presence of an over-ruling Providence. God was as 
 real to him as a personal friend ; he was always as 
 conscious of His presence as though He were actually 
 ling by his side. This was the source of all his 
 strength, the impetus to all his actions, the deepest 
 of all his convictions; and no one can understand 
 - character or his motives who does not know 
 the open secret that every plan, every speech, every 
 labour was laid upon the altar as "an offering unto 
 1." 
 Let one illustration of this phase of his character 
 suffice. 
 
 Lord Ashley had been sent to Parliament to defend 
 
 the Corn Laws ; but in 1846, in presence of the Irish 
 
 ne, that defence was no longer possible. He 
 
 ilso that good faith to his constituents compelled 
 
 resignation of his seat in Parliament, notwith- 
 
 iing the fact that it would cause him to abandon 
 
 Ten Hours Bill and extinguish the projects for 
 
 which he had laboured incessantly for years. Lady 
 
 ley supported his high-minded resolution, and he 
 
 wrote in his diary : 
 
 2 
 
18 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 "Jan. 1 5///. Ought I not to be deeply thankful to 
 Almighty God that He has given me a wife capable of 
 every generous self-denial, and prepared to rejoice in 
 it, if it be for the advancement of religion and the 
 welfare of man ? " 
 
 "Jan. 2jth. Public necessity and public welfare 
 both demand the repeal of the Corn Laws. I could 
 justify such a vote before God, because I am con- 
 vinced that it would be for the best for every material 
 and moral interest ; but I have entered into relations 
 with men, and I must observe them, though it be to 
 my own detriment. The slight influence I possess is 
 founded on an estimation of character. . . . Far b 
 that I should suffer any loss than give occasion to the 
 enemies of God to blaspheme and say that, ' After all, 
 your religious men, when they come to be trice! 
 no better than any one else.' Many would say this ; 
 many more would think it ; and . . . when I I 
 endeavoured and prayed that all my conduct might 
 be to the honour of God, I should have done m< 1 
 a single hour to cast a stain on 'pious statesmen' 
 than I could render of service to His holy Name in 
 the labours of twenty years. 
 
 I remember, therefore, those blessed t 
 ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, 
 and all these things shall be added unto you'; 
 1 Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He will direct 
 thy paths.' In this hope I will surrender all, and 
 maintain my integrity while I lose my office. 
 
 " I shall resign my seat and throw up all my 
 beloved projects ; all for which I have sacrificed every- 
 
For Conscience' Sake. 19 
 
 ! that a public man values ; all that I have begun 
 and all that I have designed. . . . But God's will be 
 done. ' Though He slay me,' said Job, ' yet will I 
 t in Him.' " 
 Thus, two days after having re-introduced his Ten 
 Hours Bill into the House of Commons this time 
 with every prospect of success he resigned his seat 
 and gave up all for conscience' sake. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 FACTORY LEGISLATION FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN. 
 
 TOWARDS the end of the last century, owing 
 principally to the development of machii 
 and the application of steam power, an enormous 
 extension had been given to the cotton manufactures 
 of England The great centres where they 
 carried on became studded with vast mills, surrounded 
 by a densely crowded population ; and a demand for 
 the labour of women and children had been en 
 which gave rise to frightful abuses and cruelties. A 
 traffic, as revolting as the slave traffic of Africa, had 
 sprung up ; gangs of child -jobbers scoured the country 
 to entrap or purchase thousands of little children of 
 cither sex, from five years old and upwards, to sell 
 them into the bondage of factory slaves. The m 
 and waste of life were terrible, and almost incon- 
 hensible to the present generation. Day and night 
 the iron wheels of the unresting machinery droned 
 and burred with maddening iteration ; and amidst 
 the unceasing din, in an atmosphere polluted by 
 stench and thick with the choking " flew " of the 
 cotton, myriads of these tender little victims were 
 
The First Sir Robert Peel. si 
 
 forced to labour, under the lash of brutal overlookers, 
 till nature gave way, or death brought a merciful 
 release. 
 
 Any one who studies the question of the deep 
 misery of the English poor, which commenced after 
 the Peace of Paris, increased to an alarming degree 
 the Reform Act, and attained its maximum 
 during the first years of the present reign, will find 
 ample confirmation in general literature, in the pages 
 of fiction, in poetry, and above all in the cold and 
 hard statistics of Blue Books, as to the state of women 
 and children who worked in factories and in mines, 
 and whose condition was so appalling that it cried 
 aloud for legislation. 
 
 Several attempts were made in the early part of 
 the century to alleviate these horrors by legislative 
 enactment ; but the influence of the great mill owners, 
 and the jealousy of political economists, prevented 
 any effectual remedy being applied. 
 
 The first Sir Robert Peel, himself a manufacturer, 
 led, in 1802, a measure to provide for the care 
 and education of the hapless children who were 
 apprenticed " to manufacturers. The Act had an 
 influence in gradually doing away with the apprentice 
 system, but only indirectly. The manufacturers re- 
 placed the apprentices sent from a distance by others 
 who dwelt in the same neighbourhood, and thus relief 
 was only given to one set of children at the expense 
 of another set. This circumstance did not escape 
 the vigilance of Sir Robert, who, in 18 19, obtained 
 the assent of Parliament to another measure, which 
 
22 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 forbade the employment in a cotton factory of any 
 child under nine years of age, or any young person 
 under sixteen for more than twelve hours a 
 This Bill, however, only applied to cotton facto 
 in all other industries infant labour was unregu! 
 Children of the tendcrest age were generally w< 
 for fifteen hours a day with brief intervals for 
 and food. Large numbers of them actually perished, 
 worn out by toil, before they attained their full age ; 
 stunted and deformed, the survivors bore on their 
 persons indelible marks of the cruel severity of the ii 
 labours. 
 
 It was not until 1830 that the great and com; 
 hensive movement, with which later on Lord A 
 was to be pre-eminently identified, commenced. '1 'his 
 was no less than beneficent legislation for, not children 
 in cotton factories only, but for children employed 
 in the manufacture of textile fabrics throughout the 
 kingdom. 
 
 At the end of the session of 1831 Mr. Michael 
 Thomas Sadler, a Tory, an uncompromising oppo 
 of political and religious freedom, but in social mat 
 a humane and earnest philanthropist, and a w 
 advocate of the interests of the working classes, 
 introduced his famous Ten Hours Bill, the object of 
 which was to restrict the labour both of women and 
 children in the cotton mills to ten hours daily. He 
 succeeded in getting the Bill referred to a Select 
 Committee, but farther progress was barred by the 
 Reform Bill of the following year. At the ensuing 
 General Election, Newark, the borough which he repre- 
 
A Gigantic Task. 23 
 
 sentcd, was disfranchised He failed to obtain a seat 
 cither for Leeds or Huddcrsficld, and Robert Southey 
 specially laments him among the good men thrown 
 out of Parliament "Who is there," he adds, "that 
 will take up the question of our white slave trade 
 with equal feeling?" 
 
 Three weeks later the problem had been solved. 
 On February 6th, 1833, the Rev. G. S. Bull, one of 
 leaders in the movement, wrote to the Short 
 Time Committees : I have succeeded, under Mr. 
 Sadler's sanction, in prevailing upon Lord Ashley 
 to move his (Mr. Sadler's) Bill." 
 
 It was not without a severe mental struggle that 
 Lord Ashley had arrived at this decision. He knew 
 absolutely nothing of the subject, he was even un- 
 aware that an inquiry into it had been instituted 
 by the House of Commons ; he was only known in 
 the factory districts as having voted for benevolent 
 measures ; his special aptitude and fitness for the task 
 had to be taken on trust The task before him 
 was a gigantic one ; and it was one of tremendous 
 self-denial. It meant the giving up of a political 
 career with its high offices, which, in the ordinary 
 e of things, seemed within his reach, and 
 turning his back on power, wealth, and comparative 
 ease, to throw himself into a fierce and long- 
 continuing warfare on behalf of the poor and the 
 oppressed. The task went farther still : to espouse 
 factory cause was to give up home-comfort 
 and domestic leisure, to relinquish the scientific 
 and literary pursuits which had for him an intense 
 
24 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 fascination in short, to disturb the whole course of 
 his natural life. 
 
 He was placed under the necessity of coming to an 
 almost instantaneous decision, or a counter Bill would 
 have been introduced by Lord Morpeth. He begged 
 till next morning for consideration, took counsel of 
 one or two friends, went home to seek guidanc 
 prayer, and to lay the matter before his young 
 He painted in dark colours the sacrifices she would 
 have to make, and the burden it would lay on her 
 shoulders. Her name is embalmed by her answer. 
 "It is your duty," she said, without hesitation ; " the 
 consequences we must leave. Go forward, and to 
 Victory ! " 
 
 On the following day Lord Ashley resolutely put 
 his hand to the plough by giving notice in Parliament 
 that he would move the re-introduction of the Ten 
 Hours Bill. From the first his trumpet gave no uncer- 
 tain sound ; he had taken up the measure as a n 
 of conscience, and as such he was determined to 
 it through. His demands were : a period of ten hours 
 for work and no more, the total abolition of night 
 work, and eight hours only on Saturday. He dec 
 that if the House would not adopt the Bill they must 
 drive him from it, for he would not concede a - 
 so long as he had a scat in that House, so long as 
 God gave him health and a sound mind, be 
 spare no exertion, no effort of any kind, in and i 
 Parliament, to establish the success of the measure. 1 1 B 
 little knew that there lay before him fourteen ; 
 of incessant toil and struggle in this cause before he 
 
The Ten Hours' Bill. 25 
 
 should obtain what he was striving for. He did not 
 fully foresee that his strenuous activity would arouse 
 corresponding resistance on the part of his opponents : 
 he only knew for certain that it was his duty to 
 persevere, and he persevered to the end 
 
 From the first, too, he won the confidence of the 
 operatives and of the many philanthropic men, such 
 he Rev. G S. Bull, Mr. Sadler, Mr. Richard 
 Oastler, Mr. Ficldcn, Mr. Brotherton, and others, 
 who, with true-hearted enthusiasm, were pledged to 
 the cause, Had they not gone before," he wrote, 
 14 and borne such an amount of responsibility and 
 toil, I do not believe that it would have been in my 
 power to have achieved anything at all" 
 
 The first campaign, and many subsequent ones, 
 issued in defeat The Government Bill (Lord 
 Althorp's) was carried by an overwhelming majority ; 
 and although it fell far short of what was desired, 
 and would take effect slowly, it contained, never- 
 theless, some humane and highly useful provisions* 
 and established for the first time the great principle 
 that labour and education should be combined 
 
 In order to give the new Act a fair trial, little 
 was done for a few years in Parliament, but in 1838 
 the question was actively resumed by Lord Ashley. 
 In the meantime, owing to the failure in enforcing 
 the provisions of the Act, a persistent agitation 
 had been maintained, and the brunt of the work 
 
 * "Speeches of the Earl of Shaftesbury, 1838 1867, upon 
 Subjects having Relation chiefly to the Claims and Interests of the 
 Working Classes " (London : Chapman & Hall, 1868), Preface, iv. 
 
26 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 in correspondence and by personal appeal and 
 interference had fallen to his lot. 
 
 In that year Mr. Poulett Thompson, M.P. for 
 Manchester (afterwards Lord Sydenham), br< 
 in a Bill to repeal a clause in Lord Althorp's Act. the 
 effect of which would be to legalise the slavery of 
 some forty thousand children whom the Government 
 had solemnly pledged itself to protect. The factory 
 districts were up in arms, stormy meetings 
 held, petitions were sent up to the House, and Lord 
 Ashley moved that the Bill be read again th.it day 
 six months. It was, however, pressed to a divi 
 but in a House of 354 members it only secured a 
 majority of two, and the Government thought it 
 wise to withdraw the Bill. 
 
 On July 20th, 1838, Lord Ashley moved a reso- 
 lution "That this House deeply regrets that the 
 law affecting the regulation of the labour of chi! 
 in factories, having been found imperfect and in- 
 effective to the purposes for which it was passed, 
 has been suffered to continue so long without any 
 amendment." He supported the resolution En what 
 has been described as one of the ablest speeches 
 ever made on the Factory Question ; and denounced 
 the Government in scathing terms on their dilatory 
 conduct, pleading at the same time with intense 
 earnestness for the 4,000,000 men, women, and 
 children engaged in the various branches of cotton 
 and other mills. Among many startling details he 
 showed that out of 354,684 persons manually engaged 
 in cotton mills 196,385 were females, being about 
 
An Imperfect Act. 27 
 
 55 per cent, many mere children ; and he had it 
 on evidence that in 1832 the distance which a child 
 lied daily in the performance of its work was 
 from twenty to twenty-five miles M a severity of 
 labour exceeding that imposed upon soldiers in 
 forced marches, or under arms before the enemy " ; 
 that under the existing factory system as many died 
 under twenty as elsewhere under forty ; that the 
 Act was daily violated with impunity, the educational 
 clauses not being observed, the limit of hours not 
 being adhered to, and that a generation was growing 
 up totally ignorant of their rights as men and of 
 duties as Christians. He concluded with this 
 powerful peroration : 
 
 "Thus had a great measure, closely affecting the 
 temporal and eternal welfare of so vast a portion of 
 the population, been set aside and treated like a 
 turnpike Bill. But the noble Lord might be 
 
 cd that the people of this country had too 
 much humanity, and that he (Lord Ashley), who 
 had humbly undertaken the subject, was too strongly 
 
 mined to obtain justice to allow the matter 
 to rest in its present state. Did he really think 
 that he could stifle public sympathy, or silence 
 him (Lord Ashley) by such devices? 'Though 
 
 hould hold his peace, the very stones would 
 immediately cry out.' . . . This evil, that was 
 daily on the increase, was yet unremedied, though 
 one-fifth part of the time the House had given to 
 
 * Lord John Russell 
 
28 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 the settlement of the question of negro slavery 
 would have been sufficient to provide a remedy. 
 When that House, in its wisdom and mercy, decided 
 that forty-five hours in a week was a term of labour 
 long enough for an adult negro, he thought it would 
 not have been unbecoming that spirit of lenity if 
 they had considered whether sixty-nine hours a v. 
 were not too many for the children of the British 
 Empire. In the appeal he had now made he had 
 asked nothing unreasonable, he had merely asked 
 for an affirmation of a principle they had already 
 recognised. He wanted them to decide wh 
 they would amend, or repeal, or enforce, the Act 
 now in existence. But if they would do none of 
 these things, if they continued idly indifferent, 
 obstinately shut their eyes to this great and growing 
 evil, if they would give no heed to that fierce and 
 rapid cancer that was gnawing the very vitals of 
 the social system, if they were careless of the gi 
 of an immense population, plunged in ignorance 
 and vice, which neither feared God nor regarded 
 man, then he warned them that they must be 
 prepared for the very worst results that could 1 
 an empire." * 
 
 The resolution was lost in a division 121 vo 
 for ministers and 106 against. 
 
 This division was too close to allow the I 
 ment to remain inactive, and in February of the 
 following year they brought forward a Factory Act 
 
 * Hansard, Third Series, xliv. 443. 
 
Mills and Factories. 29 
 
 Amendment Bill. But it was a Bill only tinkering 
 with the subject, and every proposal of Lord Ashley 
 to improve it, so that it should be in some degree 
 efficacious, was negatived. In the end, as he found 
 it impossible to carry any of his points, he deter- 
 mined to oppose the measure altogether, and in 
 consequence Lord John Russell withdrew the Bill, 
 thereby paying a high tribute to the strength of 
 Lord Ashley's position. 
 
 On March 31st, 1840, Lord Ashley moved for a 
 Select Committee to inquire into the operation of the 
 Act for the Regulation of Mills and Factories, which 
 was agreed to without opposition. 
 
 While the Committee was pursuing its investiga- 
 tions he launched forth several other schemes for the 
 amelioration of the condition of young people, 
 notably for climbing boys (chimney sweeps), for 
 children employed in mines and collieries, and for 
 children in branches of trade and manufacture not 
 included in the Factory Acts. To these we shall 
 r later on. 
 
 During the same period he made a tour in the 
 cotton districts to put himself in personal communica- 
 with the various societies and to investigate the 
 il condition of the operatives. " I made it an 
 invariable rule," he says, " to see everything with my 
 own eyes ; to take nothing on trust or hearsay. In 
 factories, I examined the mills, the machinery, the 
 homes, and saw the workers and their work in all 
 its details. In collieries, I went down into the pits. 
 In London, I went into lodging-houses and thieves' 
 
3<d Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 haunts, and every filthy place. It gave me a power 
 I could not otherwise have had. I could speak of 
 things from actual experience, and I used often to 
 hear things from the poor sufferers themselves which 
 were invaluable to me. I got to know their habits of 
 thought and action, and their actual wants. I sat and 
 had tea and talk with them hundreds of times." 
 
 Lord Ashley had by this time become a rccogn 
 power in the country. No one could fail to acknow- 
 ledge that he was possessed of far more than ordinal) 
 talents for public business, and that these, comb 
 with social rank, which is no mean aid to pol 
 success in England, would have raised him very high 
 in the official world. But the factory question stood 
 in the way. When, for example, Sir Robert Peel 
 formed his second Administration in 1841, he urgently 
 pressed upon Lord Ashley a place in it wl 
 with a view to muzzle the agitating philanthrope 
 whether as an honest recognition of his ability docs 
 not matter here. His reply was a resolut< 
 and the reasons for that refusal he explained 
 letter to one of the secretaries of the Short Time 
 Committees : 
 
 " In answer to your inquiry on behalf of the opera- 
 tives of the West Riding of Yorkshire, I have to 1 
 that an office was tendered to me by Sir Robert Peel. 
 Having, however, ascertained from him that his 
 opinions on the factory question were not matured, 
 and that he required further time for deliberation, 
 
 * " Life and Work," vol i., p. 164. 
 
Sir James Graham. 31 
 
 I declined the acceptance of any place, under circum- 
 stances which would impede, or even limit, my full 
 and free action in the advancement of that measure 
 which 1 consider to be vital both to the welfare of 
 the working classes and the real interests of the 
 country 
 
 This was not the only time he sacrificed his per- 
 sonal ambition to the cause he had at heart Again 
 and again Sir Robert Peel urged upon him the accept- 
 ance of office at one time to occupy an important 
 position in the Royal Household, at another (1845) 
 to take the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland but 
 without avail. So late as 1866 Lord Derby offered 
 him the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster 
 and a seat in the Cabinet, but with the same result. 
 " There were still remaining," he said, fourteen hun- 
 dred thousand women, children, and young persons 
 to be brought under the protection of the Factory 
 ,' and till that was done he could not allow him- 
 self to be withdrawn from the great work of his life. 
 
 The change of Government in 1841 did not mate- 
 rially assist the cause of the operatives. Sir Robert 
 Peel declined to support the Ten Hours Bill, and 
 Sir James Graham, as Home Secretary, took the 
 conduct of factory legislation into his own hands. 
 In February 1844 he brought in his long-promised 
 Bill for the Regulation of Labour in Factories. It 
 proved to be totally inadequate, as it contained no 
 education clauses and provided for twelve hours' 
 labour. On February 1 2th it was read a second time 
 
o 
 
 2 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 and ordered to be committed. Then commenced in 
 agitation outside such as had never been known in 
 the history of social reform, the watchword b( 
 "Ten Hours and No Surrender!" Meeting 
 held, pamphlets scattered broadcast, members of 
 Parliament petitioned, and all the machinery of 
 agitation set in motion. 
 
 When the Bill went into Committee, Lord Ashley, 
 in a speech which occupied two hours and a qu 
 in delivery, moved that the word " night " should be 
 understood as meaning from six o'clock in the evening 
 to six o'clock in the morning, thus practically linv 
 the hours of labour to ten. He began by saying : 
 
 " Nearly eleven years have now elapsed since I 
 made the proposition to this House which I 
 renew this night. Never at any time 1 
 apprehension or even anxiety ; not through any 
 of personal defeat, for disappointment is ' the badge 
 of all our tribe/ but because I know well the hostility 
 I have aroused, and the certain issues of ind 
 on my part affecting the welfare of those who have so 
 long confided their hopes and interests to my 
 Then, rebutting the charge that had so frequently 
 been made against him of being animated by a 
 peculiar animosity to factory employers, he sh<> 
 in a masterly review, how the question had been i 
 with under every civilised form of government In 
 foreign countries. He gave statistics and reports 
 from experts on practical labour, from medical men 
 on the physical mischiefs entailed, from merciful mill- 
 owners who abhorred the system and waited for relief 
 
Evils of the Factory System. 33 
 
 from it, and from personal observation. He made 
 startling revelations as to the appalling progress of 
 female labour and its influence during the tenderest 
 period of female life ; he verified previous statements 
 he had made as to the nature of the work and the 
 
 11 ccs travelled during a day statements which 
 had been called in question ; and dwelt at large upon 
 the Report of the Children's Employment Commis- 
 sion, "that awful document which excites a feeling 
 
 imc, terror, and indignation ! a fearful revelation 
 of intemperance, impurity, demoralisation in every 
 shape and form, and mainly attributable to the fact 
 
 wives and mothers and young daughters occupied 
 the places in the factories that should have been filled 
 with men." 
 
 " These sources of mischief," he cried vehemently, 
 " must be dried up every public consideration de- 
 mands such an issue the health of the females, the 
 care of their families, their conjugal and parental 
 duties, the comfort of their homes, the decency of 
 
 : lives, the rights of their husbands, the peace of 
 
 society, and the laws of God ; and, until a vote shall 
 
 been given this night which God avert! I 
 
 r will believe that there can be found in this 
 House one individual man who will deliberately and 
 conscientiously inflict on the women of England such 
 a burthen of insufferable toiL . . . 
 
 We ask but a slight relaxation of toil, a time to 
 
 a nd a time to die ; a time for those comforts that 
 sweeten life, and a time for those duties that adorn it ; 
 and therefore, with a fervent prayer to Almighty God 
 
 3 
 
34 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 that it may please Him to turn the hearts of all who 
 hear me to thoughts of justice and of mercy, I now 
 finally commit the issue to the judgment and humanity 
 of Parliament." * 
 
 Unmoved by these appeals, Sir James Graham 
 and announced the intention of Government to give 
 the proposition their emphatic opposition, while John 
 Bright, in a violent speech, declared th. 
 not any need for a new Factory Act, and made a 
 series of charges against Lord Ashley, for which he 
 was called upon to apologise, the u scene " \ 
 ensued being memorable in Parliamentary annals. 
 
 Had the House divided that night there is little 
 doubt that the Government would have been de- 
 feated ; but the debate was adjourned. On its 
 resumption, Sir Robert Peel, in the course of a long 
 speech, "ingenious in argument, but wretched in 
 principle," asked why other branches of trade and 
 manufacture should not have the same privi 
 sought by those included in the Factories Bill, and 
 concluded by asking, " Is the House prepared to 
 legislate for all these people ? " To his and 
 
 mortification a ringing cry of Yes," with long re- 
 sounding cheers, was the reply. " Then," said he in 
 angry tones, "I see not why we should no 
 the restriction to agriculture." Another tremendous 
 cheer broke forth in acquiescence, and, dumfounded, 
 he sat down, saying in conclusion, " I cannot and I 
 wiU not acquiesce in the proposal of the noble lord." 
 
 * Hansard, Third Series, lxx. 483. 
 
Government Stratagems. 35 
 
 Two divisions were taken : the result, a majority of 
 eight in favour of Lord Ashley's proposition. 
 
 Already Sir James Graham had endeavoured by a 
 igem to rescind the votes, and he determined to 
 make another attempt Rising amid a solemn silence, 
 he said, "Sir, the decision of the Committee is a 
 virtual adoption of a Ten Hours Bill without modifi- 
 cation. To that decision, with the utmost respect for 
 the opinion of the Committee, I have an insuperable 
 objection." 
 
 The Government determined to try over again the 
 whole question by a division on the following Friday, 
 thus giving themselves an opportunity of employing 
 > Government method of influence and coercion, 
 further stratagem succeeded ; the voting was 
 thrown into hopeless confusion by again taking two 
 votes ; the Government Bill for Twelve Hours and 
 Lord Ashley's Bill for Ten Hours were both negatived, 
 and progress was reported ! 
 
 A compromise, in the shape of an Eleven Hours 
 Bill, would have at this time been accepted by Lord 
 ey, reserving to himself the power of moving 
 when he pleased ; but Sir James Graham was resolved 
 to stick to the Twelve Hours and notwithstanding 
 the popular outcry, and a memorial to the Queen 
 from all the Committees, he brought forward a new 
 Bill. Just on the eve of victory, as it seemed, this 
 decision was very painful to Lord Ashley. He sought 
 rest and quiet, if only for a few days, until the attack 
 should be renewed. But it was in vain. " I am 
 haunted," he wrote, " and I know 1 shall be haunted 
 
36 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 by debates, divisions, spectres of attacks, failure, 
 success." He was of a nervous and excitable tem- 
 perament, and the constant, unrelieved strain, not 
 only of the Factory Question, but of many others, 
 almost, if not quite, as important, was more than he 
 could sustain. 
 
 On May 3rd, 1844, Graham's new Bill was brought 
 forward, and was so worded that it would not admit 
 of any amendment being proposed on any of its 
 clauses, and Lord Ashley was obliged to give notice 
 that he would move the introduction of a new clause 
 viz., " That no young person should be employed 
 more than eleven hours a day, or sixty-four hours a 
 week ; and that from October 1st, 1847, these numbers 
 should be reduced to ten hours a day, or fifty-eight 
 hours a week." 
 
 The interval was one of great mental trial. " I 
 am certainly conscious of a decline in physical and 
 mental energy," he wrote ; " I have no sense of 
 comfort from above ; I have seen no pillar of cloud 
 by day, or of fire by night ; my spirits do not 
 rally. ... I am languid, weary, diffident ; many 
 assail and no one defends me. ... I never felt so 
 forlorn as I do now." 
 
 But by May 10th, when he rose to move the intro- 
 duction of the new clause, all his old strength and 
 courage had apparently returned. For cogency of 
 argument, for vigorous denunciation, for depth of 
 feeling in pleading for justice and humanity, his speech 
 could not have been better. " We have at last lighted 
 such a candle in England as, by God's blessing, shall 
 
Defeat of Ten Hours Bill. 37 
 
 never be put out," he cried, as he sat down amid voci- 
 ferous cheers. 
 
 The effect upon Sir James Graham was paralysing 
 he could not answer the convincing arguments 
 he had heard ; he felt that the crisis of the Ministry 
 had come, and after a short preamble, in which he 
 paid a tribute to the high motives of Lord Ashley, 
 concluded thus : " I must say, with perfect submission 
 and perfect frankness, that I leave this case to the 
 decision of the House ; but, with equal firmness and 
 with equal frankness, I am bound to state that if the 
 decision of the House should be that the proposition 
 of the noble lord should prevail, it will be my duty to 
 seek a private station, hoping that the decision of 
 the House may be conducive to the welfare of the 
 country." The debate was adjourned ; and on its 
 resumption, three days later, Sir Robert Peel con- 
 cluded a two hours' speech by saying, " I know not 
 what the result may be this night, but this I do know, 
 that I shall with a safe conscience, if the result be 
 unfavourable to my views, retire with perfect satis- 
 faction into a private station, wishing well to the 
 result of your legislation." 
 
 There could be but one outcome of this malevolent 
 action on the part of the Ministry : the vote would 
 be to save the Government not against the Ten 
 Hours Bill. And so it proved. Ayes, 1 59 ; Noes, 297. 
 Majority against Lord Ashley's amendment, 138 !! 
 
 Next day he wrote : " Last night defeated utterly, 
 singularly, prodigiously defeated by a majority of 138 ! 
 The House seemed aghast, perplexed, astounded. 
 
38 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K,G. 
 
 No one could say how, why, and almost wlicn. It 
 seemed that 35 or 40 was the highest majority ex- 
 pected. Such is the power and such the exercise of 
 ministerial influence ! " 
 
 The Bill, which, be it remembered, was a distinct 
 gain to the operatives, inasmuch as it established the 
 principle that adult female labour should be restricted, 
 was strongly opposed by Lord Brougham on the third 
 reading, but without avail, and on June 6th, 1844, it 
 became law. 
 
 A brief but vivid description of the public and 
 political excitement of the time is given in Grcvilk's 
 "Journal,"* which we quote here with pleasure, as it 
 emanates from one who had no great sympathy with 
 either the operatives or with the philanthropists who 
 were working for them. He says : 
 
 " I never remember so much excitement as has 
 been caused by Ashley's Ten Hours Bill, nor a more 
 curious state of things such intermingling of parties, 
 such a confusion of opposition ; a question so much 
 more open than any question ever was before, and 
 yet not made so or acknowledged to be so with the 
 Government ; so much zeal, asperity, and animosity ; 
 so many reproaches hurled backwards and forwards. 
 The Government have brought forward their measure 
 in a very positive way, and have clung to it with 
 great tenacity, rejecting all compromise ; they have 
 been abandoned by nearly half their supporters, and 
 
 * "Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, 18371852," by 
 C. C, Greville, vol. ii p. 236. 
 
" Jack Cade Legislation." 39 
 
 nothing can exceed their chagrin and disappointment 
 at being so forsaken. Some of them attribute it to 
 Graham's unpopularity, and aver that if Peel had 
 brought it forward, or if a meeting had been pre- 
 viously called, they would not have been defeated ; 
 again, some declare that Graham had said they were 
 indifferent to the result, and that people might vote 
 as they pleased, which he stoutly denies. Then 
 John Russell, voting for ' Ten Hours/ against all 
 he professed last year, has filled the world with 
 amazement and many of his own friends with 
 indignation. It has, I think, not redounded to his 
 credit, but, on the contrary, done him considerable 
 harm. The Opposition were divided Palmerston 
 and Lord John one way, Baring and Labouchcrc 
 the other. It has been a very queer affair. Some 
 voted, not knowing how they ought to vote, and 
 following those they are accustomed to follow. 
 Many who voted against Government afterwards said 
 they believed they were wrong. Melbourne is all 
 against Ashley ; all the political economists, of course ; 
 Lord Spencer strong against him. Then Graham 
 gave the greatest offence by taking up a word of the 
 miner of last Sunday, and calling it a 'Jack 
 Cade legislation,' this stirring them to fury, and they 
 flew upon him like tigers. Ashley made a speech as 
 violent and factious as any of O'Connell's, and old 
 Inglis was overflowing with wrath. . . . Lyndhurst 
 rubbed his hands with great glee, and said, ' Well, we 
 shall hear no more of " aliens " now ; people will only 
 talk of "Jack Cade" for the future/ too happy to 
 
40 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 shift the odium, if he could, from his own to his 
 colleague's back. The ministers gave out, if they 
 were beaten last Friday, they would resign ; but they 
 knew there was no chance of it. Some abused Ashley 
 for not going on and fighting again, but he knew 
 enough it would be of no use. The House did cer- 
 tainly put itself in an odd predicament, with its two 
 votes directly opposed to each other. The whole 
 thing is difficult and unpleasant. Government will 
 carry their Bill now, and Ashley will be able to do 
 nothing, but he will go on agitating session a ft it 
 session ; and a philanthropic agitator is more dangerous 
 than a repealer, cither of the Union or the Corn 1 
 We are just now overrun with philanthropy, and God 
 knows where it will stop or whither it will lead U 
 
 What Lord Ashley had gained up to this pc-i 
 on behalf of the operatives was not inconsiderable : 
 an enactment limiting the labour of children to 
 hours a day; protection against accident, death, and 
 mutilation from the unguarded state of the machinery ; 
 and the important provision that no woman, of what- 
 ever age, should be employed in any mill or factory 
 more than twelve hours a day. 
 
 He urged upon all the various Committees to 
 the new Bill a fair and patient trial, and he was 
 determined to fortify himself with fresh arguments to 
 be gained from frequent visits to the factory districts. 
 But, in the summer of 1845, a cloud no bigger than a 
 man's hand appeared on the horizon, and it spread 
 rapidly till it covered all the sky. 
 
Out of Parliament. 41 
 
 Disease had fallen on the potato crops. It was 
 alcnt throughout Kent and Sussex ; it might 
 id to Ireland, as in fact it did ; and that meant 
 ruin and starvation, the people being largely depen- 
 dent on potatoes for their daily sustenance. Sir 
 Robert Peel, who was pledged to maintain the Corn 
 Laws, came to the conclusion that he could no longer 
 do so ; the existing duties must be at once suspended, 
 and the ports thrown open to the importation of pro- 
 visions of every kind ; and accordingly he resigned 
 his seat. Lord John Russell, who had become a 
 convert to the principles of the Anti-Corn Law 
 League, was summoned to form a Government, but 
 failing, Sir Robert Peel was reinstated. 
 
 It was at this critical juncture that Lord Ashley, 
 
 \c have seen,* constrained by conscience and 
 
 encouraged by his noble wife, resigned his seat in 
 
 ament in justice to his constituents, to whom he, 
 
 too, was pledged to maintain the Corn Laws. 
 
 Two days before doing so (June 29th, 1846) he 
 again moved to bring in his Ten Hours Bill, and in a 
 vigorous speech brought forward a mass of evidence 
 to show that the reduction of hours of labour had 
 acted beneficially : the produce was not diminished ; 
 the work was better done, as the workers were in 
 better spirits ; the operatives were in better health ; 
 the attendance at night schools had risen 25 per cent ; 
 the taste for reading was growing among the work- 
 people, and many large millowners testified that the 
 
 See p. 17. 
 
42 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 change had resulted in their profit and advantage. 
 The Bill was read a first time; and two days afterwards, 
 Lord Ashley being no longer a member of Parliament, 
 the charge of the Bill was undertaken by one of the 
 staunchest adherents to its principles, Mr. Fielden, 
 the member for Oldham. 
 
 Out of Parliament Lord Ashley's exertions were 
 ceaseless in the factory districts ; his movements 
 were, as he said, " like the pertinacious, unwearied 
 revolution of a steam engine." But he came back to 
 London to be present in the lobby for he had not 
 the heart to attend under the gallery at the second 
 reading, the debate lasting for the whole day. Two 
 adjournments were made, and on May 22nd the Bill 
 was lost by a majority of ten. 
 
 A month later Sir Robert Peel was defeated on the 
 Irish Coercion Bill, greatly to the delight of Lord 
 Ashley, and Lord John Russell, now the staunch 
 friend of factory legislation, came into power. 
 
 It was not, however, till January in 1847 that Mr. 
 Fielden brought in the Bill again. Lord Ashley was 
 still out of Parliament, but he lingered about the 
 House of Commons while the Bill was under dis- 
 cussion, nervously anxious to take his part in it, and 
 grieving at his inability to do so. " I dream of it 
 by day and night," he wrote, " and work as though 
 I had charge of the Bill." 
 
 On May 3rd the Bill was carried by a majority of 
 sixty-three, and on June 1st it successfully passed its 
 final stage. On that day Lord Ashley wrote in his 
 diary : 
 
Ten Hours Bill Carried. 43 
 
 "June 1st. Six o'clock. News that the Factory 
 Bill has just passed the third reading. I am humbled 
 that my heart is not bursting with thankfulness to 
 Almighty God that I can find breath and sense to 
 express my joy. What reward shall we give unto 
 the Lord for all the benefits He hath conferred upon 
 us ? God, in His mercy, prosper the work, and grant 
 that these operatives may receive the cup of Salvation 
 and call upon the name of the Lord ! Praised be the 
 Lord ! Praised be the Lord in Christ Jesus ! " 
 
 So ended the fourteen years' battle on behalf of the 
 poor women and children who had been ground down 
 in the slavery of the cotton mills, and the great victory 
 was hailed throughout the country with intense en- 
 thusiasm. There was, however, much to be done to 
 guard the protection that had been so laboriously 
 won ; and Lord Ashley, having been in the meantime 
 returned for Bath " without asking a single vote or 
 paying a single farthing," to the discomfiture of his 
 bitter opponent, Mr. Roebuck, was able in his own 
 person to head another fight for the cause. 
 
 It was still legal to run the mills for fifteen hours a 
 day ix.y from 5.30 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. and it became 
 the practice of many owners to divide their female 
 and young hands into relays and shifts so as to keep the 
 machinery going the whole of the time. " The result 
 was that the limitation of the protected labour to ten 
 hours daily was evaded in reality, without any literal 
 infringement of the law which could be easily detected ; 
 for the hands were detained in the works the whole 
 fifteen hours at a stretch, so as to be always ready to 
 
44 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 take up their turns, and it became impossible for the 
 inspectors to discover and convict of a serious im- 
 position of overtime. The legality of the system of 
 shifts was tested in the Law Courts, but in vain ; it 
 was upheld, and fresh legislation was the only alterna- 
 tive." Accordingly, in 1850, Lord Ashley introduced 
 a new Bill to meet the emergency, and, after several 
 attempts at a compromise, the settlement was reached 
 that the working day for women and children, which 
 by the Act of 1847 was commenced at 5.30 a.m. and 
 continued to 8.30 p.m., was fixed to begin at 6 a.m. 
 and end at 6 p.m., with an hour and a half for meals 
 that is to say ten and a half hours of labour daily 
 with the exception of Saturdays, on which no pro- 
 tected person should be allowed to work after 2 p.m. 
 Thus the result was a Ten Hours and a Half law with 
 the modification of a half-holiday on Saturday. This 
 compromise, which was unpopular and produced a 
 storm of disapproval at first, continued in force till 
 1878, when Mr. Cross (now Lord Cross), in consoli- 
 dating the Factory Laws, reduced the hours of labour 
 to ten. 
 
 We must not lose sight of the exceptional difficulties 
 Lord Ashley had to contend with throughout this 
 long struggle. Bodies of men organised for the special 
 purpose of agitating for reform, are not, as a rule, 
 capable of easy management. It was necessary to 
 conciliate the millowners on the one hand and on 
 the other to encourage the workpeople. " Soft 
 sawder to the millowners," he said, " is a damper to 
 the men ; and a stirrer to the men is a damper to the 
 
Conduct of the Factory Movement. 45 
 
 millowners." Nevertheless, he was singularly success- 
 ful with both. He had laid down at the outset a few 
 simple rules to govern the conduct of the movement, 
 and he never lost an opportunity of enforcing them. 
 It was agreed " that the proceedings should be carried 
 on in the most conciliatory manner ; that there should 
 be a careful abstinence from all approach to questions 
 of wages and capital ; that the labour of children and 
 young persons should alone be touched ; that there 
 should be no strikes, no intimidation, and no strong 
 language against their employers " ; * and many years 
 later from his place in Parliament he was able to 
 say of himself, " I have carefully abstained, both here 
 and among the people themselves, from all exciting 
 language ; I have studied to produce and to maintain 
 a good understanding between the employer and the 
 employed ; I have never ceased to exhort those who 
 confided this measure to my charge, that their thoughts, 
 their feelings, and their actions must be brought under 
 the dominion of self-control. Well, sir, I rejoice to 
 say that the effort has been successful. I might have 
 resorted to other means, and kept up their zeal by 
 every inflammatory topic. ... I might have collected 
 them, not by hundreds but by thousands, and talked 
 to them of their wrongs and their rights, of where 
 submission ends and where resistance begins ; but I 
 have done no such thing ; and I may now say, to the 
 high honour of those who have so long and so patiently 
 sustained this conflict, that I have never witnessed one 
 
 * ** Shaftesbury's Speeches,'' Preface, iv. 
 
46 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 menacing effort, or heard from them one vindictive 
 expression." * 
 
 Perhaps there is nothing more inte.esting in the 
 whole history of social reform than the persistency of 
 this one man who, amid the deadliest opposition and 
 the bitterest hatred, held on his way until he had 
 accomplished his task, and not only won his way into 
 general favour, but gained the admiration of his most 
 formidable antagonists. 
 
 Mr. Roebuck, who had opposed him tooth and nail 
 with rancorous bitterness, publicly recanted his senti- 
 ments in Parliament, and declared that the views 
 which prompted his action had been wrong in almost 
 every particular, f " The evidence supplied by the 
 enactments which you promoted," he wrote to Lord 
 Shaftesbury, " made a convert of me, and led me, as 
 far as I was able, to imitate your example and follow 
 in your footsteps." 
 
 Sir James Graham, for whom there was some excuse, 
 seeing that men in responsible offices naturally hesitate 
 to incur the risk of deranging the labour market 
 and of driving industry to other countries, made a 
 confession in Parliament, saying that his former 
 evil predictions had not been verified by the result, 
 and nobly added, " That great measure of relief for 
 women and children has contributed to the well-being 
 and comfort of the working classes, whilst it has not 
 injured their masters. ... By the vote I shall give 
 to-night I will endeavour to make some amends for 
 
 * "jShaftesbury's Speeches," p. 211. 
 t Times, March 22nd, i860. 
 
Praise of Opponents. 47 
 
 the course I pursued in earlier life in opposing the 
 Factory Bill." * 
 
 Mr. Gladstone ever voted in resistance to Lord 
 Ashley's efforts, but in 1864 he partially retracted 
 by saying, with reference to interference by pro- 
 hibition in the Factory Acts : " It is an interference, 
 as to which it may be said that the Legislature is 
 now almost unanimous with respect to the necessity 
 which existed for undertaking it, and with respect 
 to the beneficial effect it has produced, both in miti- 
 gating human suffering and in attaching important 
 classes of the community to Parliament and the 
 Government." 
 
 Richard Cobden, though bitterly hostile in the 
 early days of Factory Legislation, abstained from 
 opposition to other movements and gave positive 
 support to some. 
 
 Lord John Russell, though at first out of sympathy 
 with the cause, afterwards espoused it with great 
 vigour, while Sir George Grey and Lord Macaulay 
 manfully gave in their adherence. O'Connell, Lord 
 Brougham, and John Bright were from first to last 
 bitter opponents. 
 
 It may be mentioned here, and should be borne 
 in mind when considering the whole of Lord 
 Shaftesbury's life, that he was never a rich man ; 
 on the contrary, for a man of his position and 
 influence, he was positively poor. His estrangement 
 from his father, who disapproved of the course in 
 
 * Times, May 9th, i860. 
 
48 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 political life he had marked out for himself, or, 
 as he would say, "God had clearly marked out 
 for him," was a material loss, no less than a great 
 heart trouble. Throughout his diaries we find 
 frequent complaints of the pressure on his purse, the 
 lowness of his finances, and sometimes of positive 
 embarrassments, which made it difficult for him to 
 carry on his work, and prevented him from helping 
 others according to the dictates of his heart. Let 
 one entry suffice : 
 
 "Dec. list, 1846. Croesus would be pauper 
 if he were to meet half the demands that arc made 
 upon me every month ! Alas ! I must refuse the 
 largest proportion and give very sparingly to the 
 remainder. I say 'alas' because the cases arc often- 
 times meritorious, and I shall always be misrepresented, 
 and frequently misunderstood. Many people choose 
 to believe that I am rich, and ask accordingly ; 
 more than half of my income is borrowed, to be 
 repaid at some future day with heavy accumulation^ 
 of interest ; eight children, the two eldest costing 
 me more than 200 a year each ; a ninth coming, 
 and an allowance from my father of only 100 
 annually more than I had as a bachelor at 
 Oxford."* 
 
 In the light of this statement we sec more vividly 
 than ever how great was the self-sacrifice involved 
 in the persistent refusal of high offices in the State 
 with their corresponding emolument. 
 
 * "Life and Work," etc. vol. ii., p. 187. 
 
Financial Difficulties. 49 
 
 On June 2nd, 185 1, his father died at the age of 
 eighty-three, and Lord Ashley, then fifty years of age, 
 succeeded to the title and estates. But this change 
 increased, rather than alleviated, his financial em- 
 barrassments. He found the estate in a sadly 
 neglected condition, the cottages "close, indecent, 
 unwholesome." "And what can I do?" he asked 
 himself. " I am half pauperised ; the debts are 
 endless ; no money is payable for a whole year, 
 and I am not a young man. Every sixpence I 
 expend and spend I must on many things is 
 borrowed? For a quarter of a century those debts 
 haunted him, dogged his steps, oppressed him like 
 a nightmare ; and it was only after a desperate 
 struggle, by small sales of outlying property, by 
 disposal of tithes to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 
 and other devices, that he paid off at last the ruinous 
 mortgage on the St Giles estate. 
 
VWs^A CH AFTER III 
 
 \* ^ LUNATICS, AND THE LUNACY LAWS. 
 
 OFb' 1 j 'TpHE fi rst sp eech Lord Ashley ever delivered in 
 
 ' A Parliament was on February 19th, 182 8, when 
 he seconded a motion of Mr. Robert Gordon for " A 
 Bill to amend the Law for the Regulation of Lunatic 
 Asylums." It was a subject on which his compassi< >n 
 had been for some time expended, and it was one 
 which needed, almost more than any other at that 
 time, thorough investigation, with a view to check 
 the evils crying aloud for redress. 
 
 The barbarous treatment of lunatics even so re- 
 cently as the latter part of the last century and the 
 first quarter of the present century is almost incredible 
 to-day. Although in some places asylums were 
 provided, the system pursued was almost invariably 
 coercion, severity, and cruelty. Up to the year 1 77 1 , 
 for example, the lunatics in the old Hospital of 
 Bethlem, in Moorfields, London, were exhibited for 
 a fee of twopence, as if they had been wild bea 
 and the poor creatures were goaded to fury, to render 
 the exhibition more exciting. In the year when this 
 
 shameful exhibition was prohibited, Henry Mackenzie 
 
 50 
 
Lunatics, and the Lunacy Laws. 51 
 
 published his " Man of Feeling," containing a descrip- 
 tion of the hospital. Their conductor," he says, led 
 them first to the dismal mansions of those who arc 
 in the most horrible state of incurable madness. The 
 clanking of chains, the wildness of their cries, and 
 the imprecations which some of them uttered, formed 
 a scene inexpressibly shocking. Harley and his 
 companions, especially the female part of them, 
 begged their guide to return ; he seemed surprised at 
 their uneasiness, and was with difficulty prevailed on 
 to leave that part of the house without showing them 
 some others, who, as he expressed it, in the phrase of 
 those that keep wild beasts for show, were much 
 better worth seeing than any they had passed, being 
 more fierce and unmanageable." Mackenzie 
 into the mouth of Harley words which express 
 the dawning of new opinion, no less than the ignorance 
 of the times. " I think it an inhuman practice," he 
 says, " to expose the greatest misery with which our 
 race is afflicted, to every idle visitant who can afford 
 trifling perquisite to the keeper ; especially as it is 
 ! which the humane must see with the painful 
 reflection that it is not in their power to alleviate it" 
 
 It will be remembered that the last picture in 
 Hogarth's scries of " The Rake's Progress " gives 
 even a more vivid scene of a madhouse of the period. 
 Nearly naked, in chains, his head shaved, in a dark, 
 dirty, straw-littered cell, and wildly raging, the poor 
 maniac is being exhibited by his brutal-looking keeper. 
 
 In 1774 the first law relating to the "proper" 
 treatment of pauper lunatics was passed, and that 
 
52 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 merely authorised any two Justices to apprehend 
 them and have them locked up and chained. There 
 was not at that time in this country any conception 
 of humane and kindly treatment for insane persons, 
 nor had medical science sufficiently advanced to form 
 any notion of curative measures. Insanity was 
 regarded as hopeless ; the sufferer was to be chained, 
 restrained, whipped, and left in a dark cell under the 
 charge of a "keeper," to sink into a state of mere 
 brutality. 
 
 M. Philippe Pinel, a French physician, was the 
 first to attempt the restoration of the insane to a 
 position among human beings. In 1792 he obtained 
 permission from the Government to unloose a certain 
 number of maniacs detained in the Bicetre, a hospital 
 near Paris for insane men, and try upon them the 
 effects of mild treatment. The first case he selected 
 was that of an English captain who had been chained 
 in a dark, unwarmed, and unventilated cell for nearly 
 forty years, and who, in a fit of fury, had killed 
 one of his keepers with a blow from his manacles. 
 The effect of Pinel's treatment was surprising. The 
 patient gave his word of honour that if set free he 
 would not injure any one. He kept his word, had 
 no return of his previous paroxysms, and for two 
 years afterwards rendered himself useful in the 
 hospital by exercising a kind of authority over other 
 insane patients.* 
 
 Unhappily, no Pinel had arisen in this country, nor 
 
 * British and Foreign Medical Review, 
 
Cruel Treatment of Lunatics. 53 
 
 was it till nearly twenty years later that any active 
 public steps were taken to establish a humane system 
 of treatment. 
 
 " In the early part of the present century," says 
 Mr. Robert Gardiner Hill * " lunatics were kept 
 constantly chained to walls in dark cells, and had 
 nothing to lie upon but straw. The keepers visited 
 them, whip in hand, and lashed them into obedience. 
 They were also half drowned in * baths of surprise,' 
 and in some cases semi-strangulation was resorted to. 
 The ' baths of surprise ' were so constructed that the 
 patients in passing over a trap-door fell in ; some 
 patients were chained in wells, and the water made 
 to rise until it reached their chins. One horrible 
 contrivance was a rotatory chair, in which patients 
 were made to sit and were revolved at a frightful 
 speed. The chair was in common use. Patients, 
 women as well as men, were flogged at particular 
 periods, chained and fastened to iron bars, and even 
 confined in iron cages." 
 
 So late as 1 8 1 5 that is to say, when Lord Ashley 
 was a boy of fourteen years of age there might have 
 been seen in Bethlem a patient, once an officer in the 
 navy, for whose " benefit" a new instrument of torture 
 had been invented. " A stout iron ring was riveted 
 round his neck, from which a short chain passed to 
 a ring made to slide upwards or downwards on an 
 upright, massive iron bar, more than six feet high, 
 
 * " Lunacy : Its Past and its Present," by Robert Gardiner 
 Hill, F.S.A., p. 1. 
 
54 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 inserted into the wall. Round his body a strong 
 iron bar about two inches wide was riveted ; on each 
 side of the bar was a circular projection, which, being 
 fashioned to and enclosing each of his arms, pinioned 
 them close to his sides. The waist-bar was secured 
 by two similar bars, which, passing over his shoulders, 
 were riveted to the waist-bar both before and behind. 
 The iron ring round his neck was connected to his 
 shoulders by a double link. From each of these bars 
 another chain passed to the ring on the upright iron 
 bar. His right leg was chained to the trough, in 
 which he had remained thus encaged and enchained 
 twelve years. He read books of all kinds, and 
 reasoned quite coherently on the events of the 
 During the whole of this period it was impossible 
 for him, from the nature of his restraint, to stand 
 quite upright, or to lie down at case. He died in 
 1 815, the year in which a Committee of Inquiry into 
 the State of English Madhouses issued their report 
 a revelation of such frightful abuses, of such 
 brutality and profligacy of keepers, of such wanton 
 cruelty and hopeless suffering, that it is quite unfit 
 to quote in any detail here. For those who wish to 
 pursue the subject there is ample record in the works 
 of the pioneers of more enlightened treatment.* 
 
 From this date, very slowly, it is true, improvement 
 in the condition of the insane may be traced ; larger 
 asylums were opened, leather chains were substituted 
 
 * See particularly " History of the Insane in the British fa 
 by D. Hack Tuke, M.D.,and Mr. Hill's work already referred to. 
 
Commissioners in Lunacy. 55 
 
 for iron ones, some attention was paid to warming 
 and clothing, and an attempt at proper inspection by 
 magistrates was made. 
 
 But no really earnest and effectual steps were taken 
 to remedy this gigantic evil until 1828, when Lord 
 Ashley seconded Mr. Gordon's motion for " A Bill 
 to Amend the Law for the Regulation of Lunatic 
 Asylums." It was but a poor speech he made on that 
 occasion, spoken "in so low a tone," says Hansard, 
 " that it was nearly inaudible in the gallery," and 
 referred to by himself in these words : " Last night 
 ntured to speak, and, God be praised, I did not 
 utterly disgrace myself, |jiough the exhibition was far 
 from glorious." It was a speech, however, that will 
 always have a historical interest, for it launched him 
 forth in his career of social reform. "By God's 
 blessing," he said, "my first effort has been for the 
 advancement of human happiness. May I improve 
 hourly ! " 
 
 The Bill passed into law, transferring the power 
 over lunatics from the College of Physicians to a 
 Board of Commissioners in Lunacy, fifteen in number. 
 Lord Ashley was chosen as one of these, and in the 
 following year became chairman, a post which he 
 retained throughout his long life, with the exception 
 of a very short period in the year before his death, 
 when he resigned on account of his disapproval of 
 Lord Selborne's Lunacy Bill. The Bill, however, fell 
 through, and Lord Shaftesbury was able to resume 
 his position. 
 
 In this connection it may be mentioned that shortly 
 
56 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 after his death a correspondent of the Times (John 
 Charles Bricknill) wrote to call attention to Lord 
 Shaftesbury as an official, "an important phase in 
 his life, which would seem to have been somewhat 
 disregarded under the brighter light shed upon his 
 memory by his extraordinary philanthropic work. . . . 
 Yet Lord Shaftesbury was one of the oldest and one 
 of the most painstaking of English officials, to the 
 day of his death presiding over an important depart- 
 ment of the public service, as Chairman of the 
 Commissioners in Lunacy, an office which he had 
 held virtually for about fifty-eight years ; an office the 
 delicate and difficult duties of which he discharged 
 with admirable knowledge, judgment, and assiduity 
 . . . but for which Lord Shaftesbury never received 
 one farthing of pecuniary reward ; and it is much 
 to be feared that he received no amount even of 
 I gratitude at all commensurate with his services." 
 It was not until several years later than 1828 that 
 any further important steps were taken towards im- 
 provement ; but in the meantime Lord Ashley made 
 visits of inspection to many asylums in London and 
 the provinces, and saw such horrible sights and learnt 
 such painful lessons of " man's inhumanity to man " 
 that he " vowed he would never cease pleading the 
 cause of these poor creatures till either death silenced 
 him or the laws were amended." 
 
 He found his duties in the Commission painful and 
 onerous. It was an unpleasant and responsible office 
 either to detain or discharge a patient, as in the one 
 case there was the hazard of cruelty to the prisoner, 
 
Duties of Commissioners in Lunacy. 57 
 
 and in the other to his friends or the public. In one 
 instance a violent, coarse, and heartless ruffian was 
 incarcerated ; but there was no proof of personal 
 violence against him, and upon a division of six to 
 four the first division that had taken place in ten 
 years the man was set at liberty. " A decision on 
 our part that he was rightfully detained," said Lord 
 Ashley, " would have authorised the incarceration in 
 a Bedlam of seven-tenths of the human race who have 
 ever been excited to violence of speech and gesture." 
 
 This difficulty so pressed upon Lord Ashley, more 
 particularly when a Bill, brought in by Lord Granville 
 Somerset, passed into law in 1842 extending the 
 powers of the Board of Commissioners to the pro- 
 vinces, that in 1844, the year before the statute under 
 which they acted would expire, he ventilated the 
 subject in Parliament. Before doing so he prepared 
 an elaborate report containing the result of the 
 investigations of the Commissioners into the state of 
 Lunatic Asylums generally a report so comprehen- 
 sive that it has been called " the Domesday Book of 
 all that, up to that time, concerned institutions for the 
 insane." It was a terrible revelation of distressing 
 facts, almost too painful to read, but it led to bene- 
 ficial legislation, the effects of which are now patent 
 to every one. 
 
 On moving for an address to the Crown, praying 
 Her Majesty to take into her consideration this Report 
 of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy, Lord 
 Ashley contended that it was the duty of the House 
 to prescribe the conditions under which a man should 
 
58 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 be deprived of his liberty, and also those under which 
 he might be released ; it was their duty to take care 
 that for those who required restraint there should be 
 provided kind and competent keepers, and that, while 
 the patient received no injury, the public should be 
 protected. 
 
 There were at that time three classes of accom- 
 modation for the insane : they were lodged either in 
 single or private dwelling-houses, in public or county 
 asylums, or in private asylums where paupers were 
 also received. In regard to the first class the Com- 
 missioners had no power to interfere, and Lord 
 Ashley was of opinion that even in private families 
 a power of this kind ought to be confided to some 
 hands that would hunt out and expose the many 
 horrible abuses that then prevailed. There were 
 many patients in these single houses for whom was 
 paid not less than 500 per annum, and this was a 
 temptation to keep such a patient in perpetual con- 
 finement, because with the returning health of the 
 sufferer the allowance would be discontinued. So 
 strong was his opinion of the bad effect of this that 
 " if," said he, " Providence should afflict any near 
 relative of mine with insanity, I would consign him to 
 an asylum in which there were other patients, and 
 which was subject to official visitation." The only 
 attempt at a safeguard to abuse was that if the patient 
 resided in the house over a twelvemonth, the owner of 
 the house was bound to communicate the name of that 
 patient to the Commissioners. This, however, was 
 easily evaded by several devices, one being to remove 
 
Lunatic Asylums. 59 
 
 the patient after a residence of eleven months to some 
 other lodging. 
 
 The second class of accommodation was the county 
 asylum. Many of these were quite unfit for the recep- 
 tion of insane persons ; others were suitable according 
 to the feeling of the times, and were in all respects 
 well conducted ; but twenty-one counties in England 
 and Wales were without any asylum whatever, either 
 public or private. All the public asylums then in 
 existence had the advantage of constant supervision 
 and of not giving any profit to the superintendents, 
 so that it was not necessary that the keeper should 
 stint and spare his patients in the articles necessary for 
 the curative process, with the view of realising a profit. 
 
 The third class was that of private asylums, which 
 received persons who paid their own expenses, and 
 also paupers. In these houses horrible abuses existed, 
 paupers being sent there to be maintained at the low 
 rate of Js. or 8s. a week, " out of which the proprietor 
 was to feed, and clothe, and house the patient, and 
 carry on the remedial process, paying all these 
 expenses and still getting a profit." Many instances 
 were quoted by Lord Ashley showing the disgusting 
 condition in which some of these asylums were found 
 to be. We give one example only, and that of the 
 mildest type : 
 
 " West Auckland. Thirteen males, sixteen females ; 
 the violent and the quiet, the dirty and the clean, 
 shut up together ; only one small yard, and when the 
 one sex was in it the other shut up ; in the day room 
 
60 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 of the males five restrained by leg-locks, and two 
 wearing, in addition, iron handcuffs and fetters from 
 the wrist to the ankle. All tranquil, but they would 
 otherwise escape. Chains fastened to floor in many 
 places, and to many of the bedsteads. The males 
 throughout the house slept two in a bed." 
 
 In the course of his speech Lord Ashley strongly 
 emphasised the great benefit, as well as great saving 
 of expense, that resulted from the application of 
 curative means at an early stage of insanity, and 
 urged that it was the duty of the State to pro 
 receptacles for the incurable patients apart from those 
 devoted to the remedial treatment He paid a high 
 tribute to those good and able men, Mr. Tukc, Dr. 
 Hitch, Dr. Corscllis, Dr. Conolly, Dr. Vitre, Dr. 
 Charlcsworth, and others, " who had brought all their 
 high moral and intellectual qualities to bear on the 
 subject, and had laboured to make the rational and 
 humane treatment to be the rule and principle of the 
 government of lunacy." He instanced a striking 
 experience which, true in those days, would be found 
 to be even more so in these viz., the fact " that no 
 more frequent cause of insanity existed than was 
 found in intoxication ; the number of persons who 
 were confined in lunatic asylums, and whose insanity 
 originated in drunkenness, was very great, and would 
 surprise any person who was not aware of the 
 effects of this habit." He deprecated in strong lan- 
 guage the confinement of criminal lunatics in private 
 asylums, and asked the House whether it was not an 
 
Condition of Lunatics. 61 
 
 improper and unnecessary aggravation of their miseries 
 towards the other lunatics to subject them to confine- 
 ment in the same place and under the same regulations 
 as criminals, such regulations being more severe than 
 elsewhere, and debarring them from much indulgence 
 which, under other circumstances, their melancholy 
 position would have procured for them. 
 
 Lord Ashley concluded his remarkable speech in 
 c words : 
 
 "These unhappy persons [lunatics generally] are 
 outcasts from all the social and domestic affections 
 of private life nay, more, from all its cares and 
 duties and have no refuge but in the laws. You 
 can prevent, by the agency you shall appoint, as 
 you have in many instances prevented, the recurrence 
 of frightful cruelties ; you can soothe the days of 
 the incurable, and restore many sufferers to health 
 and usefulness. For we must not run away with 
 the notion that even the hopelessly mad arc dead to 
 all capacity of intellectual or moral exertion quite 
 tin reverse ; their feelings, too, are painfully alive 
 I have seen them writhe under supposed contempt, 
 while a word of kindness and respect would kindle 
 their whole countenance into an expression of joy. 
 Their condition appeals to our highest sympathies, 
 
 " ' Majestic, though in ruin,' 
 
 for though there may be, in the order of a merciful 
 Providence, some compensating dispensation which 
 abates within, the horrors manifested without, we 
 
62 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 must judge alone by what we see ; and I trust, 
 therefore, that I shall stand excused, though I have 
 consumed so much of your valuable time, when 
 you call to mind that this motion is made on behalf 
 of the most helpless, if not the most afflicted portion, 
 of the human race." * 
 
 Here the matter rested for a year ; but on June 6th, 
 1845 , Lord Ashley brought in, at the request of 
 the Government, two Bills of such an inclusive and 
 exhaustive nature that scarcely an evil of any kind 
 capable of remedy was left untouched. One Bill 
 was " For the Regulation of Lunatic Asylums," and 
 the other " For the better Care and Treatment of 
 Lunatics in England and Wales." 
 
 It would be wearisome to give in this place even 
 the outlines of Lord Ashley's speech in bringing 
 forward these Bills, which were to affect the repeal 
 of many existing Acts respecting the treatment of 
 lunatics and to substitute such other enactments 
 in their places as time, circumstances, and extended 
 knowledge had rendered necessary. Speaking 
 broadly, the Bills provided for competent and more 
 frequent inspection of all asylums ; the placing of 
 them under humane and therefore proper regulations ; 
 they fixed the limit of expenses, gave power to the 
 Chancellor to protect the property of lunatics, made 
 the erection of county asylums compulsory, and pro- 
 vided for the prompt care and treatment of all classes 
 of lunatics on the development of their insanity. 
 
 * Hansard, Third Series, Ixvi. 1257. 
 
Lunatics, and the Lunacy Laws. 63 
 
 There was no opposition in the debate that 
 followed, the concluding words of Lord Ashley's 
 speech having produced a palpable effect : 
 
 " Here are we," he said, " sitting in deliberation 
 to-day ; to-morrow we may be subjects of this fearful 
 affliction. Causes, as slight, apparently, as they are 
 sudden, varying through every degree of intensity 
 a fall, a fever, a reverse of fortune, a domestic calamity 
 will do the awful work, and then Farewell, King ! ' 
 The most exalted intellects, the noblest affections, 
 are transformed into fatuity and corruption, and 
 leave nothing but the sad, though salutary lesson / 
 how frail is the tenure by which we hold all that' 
 is precious and dignified in human nature."* 
 
 The two Bills passed into law in that same year, 
 and they have been rightly designated " The Magna 
 Charta of the Liberties of the Insane." 
 
 A permanent Lunacy Commission of competent 
 men, whose functions were greatly widened, was 
 now introduced, six of them receiving salaries of 
 > 1,500 each, while Lord Ashley, one of the hardest > 
 workers from the beginning, became once more f 
 unpaid chairman of the Commission, an office, as/ 
 we have already seen, that he retained to the end 
 of his life. For many long years this heavy and 
 responsible work occupied a very large portion of 
 his time and energy. He would see into cases 
 himself, and not be content with second-hand 
 
 * Hansard, Third Series, Jxxxi. 180, 
 
64 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 information. Let one illustration of his activity, even 
 late in life, suffice : 
 
 " A lady, Mrs. A., residing in the West End, was 
 on visiting terms with Mrs. B., a woman of fashion 
 and position. There was little in common between the 
 two, and the visits of Mrs. A. would have been less 
 frequent than they were, had she not taken a more 
 than passing interest in a young lady, Miss C, who 
 was staying, indefinitely as it seemed, in the house 
 of Mrs. B. There was a great charm in her conversa- 
 tion, and the visits of Mrs. A. seemed to afford her 
 considerable pleasure, though they were only of an 
 occasional and somewhat formal kind. One day 
 when Mrs. A. called, Miss C. was not there, and on 
 making very pointed inquiries, she was, after some 
 hesitation, informed that her young friend was out of 
 her mind and was in an asylum fifty miles away from 
 town, the name of the asylum being mentioned. 
 
 " That evening Mrs. A. felt troubled and distressed : 
 she had seen Miss C. only a week or ten days pre- 
 viously, and perceived no indication of a disordered 
 mind. It was true she had observed indications 
 of sadness and depression of spirits, and had feared 
 that her young friend was not happy ; but that she 
 was out of her mind, and fit to be in an asylum, she 
 could not and would not believe. She was greatly 
 troubled, not knowing what to do or where to go. 
 At length it occurred to her that the Earl of Shaftes- 
 bury was a Commissioner in Lunacy, and she went 
 straight away to his house, found him at home, and 
 told him the whole story. It was evening when she 
 
the House 
 :ics, with a C?" 
 r this class, H^ 
 
 Criminal Lunatics. 65 
 
 arrived in Grosvenor Square, and dinner was on the 
 table, but within a quarter of an hour Lord Shaftesbury 
 was on his way to the railway station to go down to 
 the asylum and investigate the matter for himself. 
 He did so, and on the following day the young lady 
 was released, it having been authoritatively ascertained 
 that she was not in a state to render it necessary for 
 her to be an inmate of an asylum." * 
 
 In 1852, the year after Lord Ashley had become 
 Earl of Shaftesbury, he brought before the House 
 of Lords the question of criminal lunatics, 
 view to the erection of a State asylum for 
 whose incarceration in other asylums was prejudicial '^ 
 
 to the inmates, and checked the operation of the % 
 
 system of non-restraint "a system, the great and 
 blessed glory of modern science, which, by the 
 blessing of God, had achieved miracles." f Nothing 
 further was done at that time, but the promise of 
 Lord Derby was given that the subject should not 
 be lost sight of, and in i860 the Act was passed 
 which resulted in the erection of the State Criminal 
 Asylum at Broadmoor. 
 
 About the same period (1861) Lord Shaftesbury " 
 busied himself in an effort to establish a Benevolent 
 Asylum for the Insane of the Middle Classes, where, ^y 
 upon payment of reasonable fees, patients might ({/ 
 receive proper care and treatment at an early ^ 
 stage of the disease. A public meeting was held at vL 
 
 X 
 
 * " Life and Work," etc., vol. ii., p. 229. 
 t Hansard, Third Series, cxix. 1237. 
 
66 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 Freemasons' Hall to discuss the subject, and he made 
 a speech from the chair of so exhaustive and stirring 
 a nature that one of the audience, Mr. Thomas 
 Holloway, a man of great wealth and generosity, 
 was so deeply impressed with it that he determined 
 on the spot to establish an institution on the lines 
 laid down that day. He was true, and more than 
 true, to his word, and in 1885 the Prince of Wales 
 opened the Holloway Sanitorium at Virginia Water, 
 upon which up to that date Mr. Holloway had 
 expended the sum of ^"300,000 ! 
 v In 1877, owing to a fear, current in many minds, 
 that patients were placed in asylums too easily, while 
 the task of obtaining their discharge was too difficult, 
 a Select Committee was appointed to inquire into 
 the operation of the Lunacy Laws, so far as regarded 
 the security afforded by them against violation of 
 personal liberty. Lord Shaftesbury was, naturally, 
 the chief one to give evidence, and it was so con- 
 clusive that the Committee eventually reported that, 
 "although the present system was not free from 
 risks, which might be lessened, though not wholly 
 removed by amendments in the existing law and 
 practice, yet, assuming that the strongest cases 
 against the present system were brought before them, 
 allegations of mala fides or of serious abuses were 
 not substantiated." 
 
 In commenting on Lord Shaftesbury's evidence, 
 the Journal of Mental Science said : " We must heartily 
 congratulate his lordship on the way in which the 
 Act of 1845, his own handiwork, has passed through 
 
Treatment of Lunatics. 67 
 
 this examination. His lordship spoke with such a 
 thorough mastery of every lunacy question about 
 which he was asked, that his replies are the admira- 
 tion of all his younger fellow-countrymen who are 
 in any way interested in the welfare of the insane." 
 
 From 1828, when he first launched himself into the 
 difficult question of the treatment of lunatics, to the 
 end of his long career, Lord Shaftesbury kept himself 
 en rapport with this subject ; " painful, harassing, 
 perplexing," he often found it to be, and depressing 
 to the last degree to one of his sensitive and nervous 
 temperament. But wherever his sympathies were 
 excited his active labour invariably followed. And 
 his sympathies were ever with the insane. One day 
 he wrote in his diary : " I am visiting in authority 
 to-day. I may be visited by authority to-morrow. 
 God be praised that there are any visitations at all : 
 time was when such visitations were unknown. 
 What an awful condition that of a lunatic ! His 
 words are generally disbelieved, and his most inno- 
 cent peculiarities perverted : it is natural it should be 
 so ; we know him to be insane at least, we are told 
 that he is so and we place ourselves on our guard 
 that is, we give to every word, look, gesture, a value 
 and meaning which sometimes it cannot bear, and 
 which it never would bear in ordinary life." 
 
 It was not till after seventeen years of labour and 
 anxiety that he obtained the Lunacy Bill of 1845, 
 and five years more were needed to carry it into 
 operation. Then he was able to say, " It has effected, 
 I know, prodigious relief, has forced the construction 
 
68 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 of many public asylums, and greatly multiplied 
 inspection and care." 
 
 Later on he wrote : " Half a century has been 
 devoted to this cause of the lunatics ; and through 
 the wonderful mercy and power of God, the state 
 now, as compared with the state then, would baffle, 
 if description were attempted, any voice and any 
 pen that were ever employed in spoken or written 
 eloquence. Non nobis, Domine? 
 
 It has been well said that if Lord Shaftesbury's 
 labours on behalf of lunatics had been the sole work 
 of his life it would have entitled him to a foremost 
 rank among British philanthropists and social re- 
 formers. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHIMNEY SWEEPERS AND CLIMBING BOYS. 
 
 THE Session of 1840 was signalised by Lord 
 Ashley's exertions in furthering a Bill for the 
 Regulation of Chimney Sweepers and Chimneys ; and 
 it may be of interest to recall the main features of the 
 struggle which ultimately led to the prohibition of 
 the employment of climbing boys, as perhaps few 
 things illustrate more accurately the slow and gradual 
 manner in which humanity advanced in the old days, 
 or the rapid progress which it has made during the 
 present sixty years' reign. 
 
 In August 1760 there appeared in the Public 
 Advertiser the following anonymous letter: 
 
 "To the Magistrates of the Cities of 
 London and Westminster. 
 
 "Gentlemen, There is in this capital an evil 
 of a most crying nature, and which in my humble 
 opinion is truly deserving of your attention. What 
 I allude to is the number of chimney sweepers' boys 
 that are to be met with in all parts of the town 
 without either shoe or stocking to their feet. It is to 
 
70 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 be concluded that when their masters took them from 
 their respective parishes they, in some form or other, 
 bound themselves to provide them with some kind of 
 clothing to defend them against the inclemency of 
 the weather. If, therefore, you, gentlemen, would give 
 directions to the proper officers that whenever they 
 found a boy without proper covering for his naked- 
 ness they should inquire of him his master's name 
 and place of abode, and summon him before you, in 
 order that he might receive a punishment adequate 
 to such an offence, you would soon put an end to it, 
 and at the same time do an act which should reflect 
 honour on yourselves. 
 
 " I am, Gentlemen, 
 
 " Your very obedient servant, 
 
 " Ambulator. 
 "August 1760." 
 
 This letter was read by good Jonas Hanway, the 
 "Shaftesbury " of the eighteenth century, the originator 
 of the Marine Society, the founder of the Magdalen 
 Hospital and the world-known Foundling Hospital, 
 the saviour of pauper children, the author of Hanway's 
 Act of Parliament " The Act for Keeping Poor 
 Children Alive " and the first man who ever used an 
 umbrella ! 
 
 No sooner had Jonas Hanway read the letter than 
 he proceeded to make inquiries ; and he found that 
 the only existing law enabled the master to gain 
 parish apprentices at the very earliest age, but made 
 no proper provision for their treatment ; that they 
 
Chimney Sweepers and Climbing Boys. 71 
 
 were subject to the most cruel hardships ; that the 
 mortality amongst them was fearful ; that they were 
 liable to special and horrible complaints consequent 
 upon the nature of their work, and that their morals 
 and education were altogether neglected. 
 
 In 1785 Hanway published the result of his in- 
 quiries in a book entitled " A Sentimental History of 
 ChimneySweepers in London and Westminster, Show- 
 ing the Necessity of Putting them under Regulation to 
 Prevent the Grossest Inhumanity to the Climbing 
 Boys, etc." In it he exposed the evils of the existing 
 system, and showed, among other things, how orphan 
 and illegitimate children were sold to the masters for 
 20s. or 3Ctf. apiece, "being a smaller sum than the 
 value of a terrier" ; how they were forced up the 
 chimneys in a perfectly naked state, and sometimes 
 wild with terror ; how some were specially employed 
 to ascend chimneys that were on fire, to the great 
 danger of life and limb ; how they were let out for 
 hire to other chimney sweepers, and in " off hours " 
 were required to " call the streets " ; how in some 
 cases he had found that young girls were employed 
 in the hateful climbing business ; and how this con- 
 stant contact with soot produced rapid mortality from 
 "sooty cancer," lung trouble, and skin diseases of a 
 most irritating nature. 
 
 He pleaded for a climbing dress, as worn in France, 
 Germany, and other countries ; for a curtailment of 
 the term of apprenticeship from seven to five years ; 
 for magisterial inquiry and inspection ; for public 
 baths, to free them, at least occasionally, from their 
 
72 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 garment of soot ; and he pleaded earnestly in the 
 name of humanity, on the ground of religion, liberty, 
 and national character, and in the name of Christ, 
 who "loved little children." 
 
 Hanway was even bold enough to hint that climbing 
 boys might be dispensed with altogether, and instanced 
 the practice in Scotland. 
 
 " The chimney sweepers in Edinburgh," he wrote, 
 " are a part of the police of the city under the control 
 of the magistrates. The number is fixed, and they 
 are obliged every quarter to pay a certain sum for the 
 benefit of such of their community as may be sick or 
 in want. They have a house of call built at the ex- 
 pense of the city and in the centre of it, adjoining the 
 town guard. Two of them watch every night in the 
 guard room to be ready in case of fire. They are all 
 firemen, and expert in extinguishing flames. The 
 soot they collect is sold for the common benefit of the 
 whole fraternity. No boys are employed. When any 
 chimney is required to be swept two of these sweepers 
 attend with a birch besom similar to that used by our 
 oastlers, a short ladder, and a rope. One of them goes 
 out at the garret window, and, securing the ladder, 
 mounts to the top of the chimney, whence the besom 
 is let down, and with the assistance of his companion 
 below, very regularly sweep clean every side of the 
 chimney, in which they are very expert." 
 
 Referring to the number of crippled, bandy-legged, 
 and otherwise distorted climbing boys to be seen any 
 day in the streets, he says that " beginning to climb 
 before the knee-bone has acquired a solidity, the daily 
 
Jonas Hanway and Climbing Boys. 73 
 
 pressure necessarily gives the leg a twist, if it does 
 not distort the ankles." He described the con- 
 dition of one boy, twelve years of age, a permanent 
 cripple on crutches, hardly three feet seven inches in 
 stature, who began to climb before he was five years 
 old, his bones not having acquired a fit degree of 
 strength. (" The same treatment of the colt," he 
 says, "would be deemed a transgression against all 
 the rules of rustic economy towards the beasts that 
 perish.") " His legs and feet resemble an S more 
 than an L. His hair felt like hog's bristles. He was 
 blind for six months, but still did his work. He still 
 sweeps chimneys, using his crippled knees uncovered 
 and unfortified." 
 
 Waxing warm with his subject, he charged the 
 magistrates of the country with being accessories to 
 murder : " If we rob a boy of his limbs or his sight, 
 what compensation do we make him? We make 
 him none, but sit down calmly to the repast dressed 
 by the fire of the chimney where the boy, perhaps, was 
 offered as a victim to a cruel custom ! " 
 
 " Let any one examine into the merits of the 
 cause," he says at the conclusion of his book. " With 
 all the laborious efforts which these boys make for 
 a support, their bruised bodies, weakened eyes f 
 frequent wounds, lungs stuffed, unwashen, unclothed, 
 uncomfortable lodging and scanty diet irregularly 
 supplied, indeed constitute ' A Sentimental History/ 
 equal to any of the miseries which human nature 
 seems capable of supporting ; and how this could be 
 connived at in any country professing the lowest 
 
74 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 degree of civilisation, whatever religion it might be 
 of, would be truly wonderful ; but in a country pro- 
 fessing Christianity in its utmost purity, and liberty 
 in its most uncorrupted state, is yet more wonderful ; 
 and if the evil is suffered to remain any longer it 
 must level us with nations whom we call barbarians, 
 if it does not ultimately draw on us the vengeance 
 of Heaven. The magistrate and the legislator, clergy 
 and laity, sovereign and subject, all in their respective 
 stations are called upon, as it were by a voice from 
 heaven, to succour these poor children." 
 
 Alas ! the " evil was suffered to remain," with only 
 slight modifications from time to time, for over a 
 hundred years, to the everlasting shame of our 
 country. 
 
 One result of Jonas Hanway's efforts was that in 
 1788 an Act was passed forbidding master sweepers 
 to have more than six apprentices or to take them 
 under eight years of age. 
 
 At the beginning of the present century one or 
 two societies were formed for bettering the condition 
 of climbing boys, and in 181 7 Parliament referred 
 the question to a Select Committee, whose report was 
 " a record of sickening horrors." An " Amending 
 Bill " was passed in the House of Commons, but 
 was thrown out by the House of Lords, and matters 
 remained in statu quo. 
 
 A number of public-spirited individuals then joined 
 in offering considerable premiums to any one who 
 would invent a method of cleaning chimneys by 
 mechanical means, so as to supersede the necessity 
 
Sweeping Machines. 75 
 
 of climbing boys. Various inventions were in con- 
 sequence produced, and, to encourage the masters to 
 use them, machines were presented to them gratui- 
 tously. They were all more or less after the style of 
 the one now in general use, consisting, as every one 
 knows, of a brush and some hollow tubes, which 
 fasten into each other by means of brass sockets. 
 
 It was not until 1834 that the introduction of the 
 sweeping machine made any material alteration in 
 the custom of sending young boys up the chimneys 
 at the peril, and not seldom, even at that date, at the 
 sacrifice of their lives. In that year an Act was 
 passed, prohibiting the employment of any apprentice 
 under ten years of age ; making it a misdemeanour 
 to send him up a chimney on fire for the purpose of 
 extinguishing it ; imposing penalties for the ill-treat- 
 ment of apprentices, and enacting that flues should 
 not in future measure less than fourteen inches by 
 nine, and that all projecting angles should be rounded 
 off! Public opinion was too weak to demand that 
 climbers should be dispensed with altogether ; 
 masters, builders, owners of property, and insurance 
 companies were too strong to submit to any drastic 
 legislation as to a new construction of chimneys to 
 render this possible. Rectangular flues were still 
 very common, and while they were so it was abso- 
 lutely necessary so it was argued that they should 
 be swept by hand. 
 
 In the year 1840 a Bill was brought forward in the 
 House of Commons for " the Regulation of Chimney 
 Sweepers and Chimneys " ; and Lord Ashley, although 
 
76 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 his hands were full of other legislation, threw his 
 whole heart and soul into the subject. He had read 
 the work of Jonas Hanway, and had long felt that 
 something ought to be done. Now, the matter being 
 pressed upon his consideration, he went into it with 
 that thoroughness which characterised all his efforts. 
 
 If, at any period of his career, he had taken the 
 advice of his friend Robert Southey, to abstain from 
 making himself an eye-witness of the horrors he was 
 striving to abate warning him at the same time that 
 the distressful recollections would be burnt in upon 
 his soul to the injury of his health and mental 
 activity he would, by accepting that advice, have 
 cut away a very large proportion of his usefulness: 
 The warning was kindly given, for these horrible 
 sights did burn themselves into his brain, and the 
 constant surroundings of suffering and despair, new 
 and old, did make him a sad and melancholy man. 
 But for the joy that was set before him the joy of 
 seeing homes made happier and young lives redeemed 
 from cruel and unnatural toil he endured throughout 
 his long life that which was repugnant to his refined 
 and sensitive nature, and persistently continued to 
 be "an eye-witness of the horrors he was striving 
 to abate." 
 
 It was so in the matter of the climbing boys : he 
 went to see them at their work and in their so-called 
 " homes " ; he visited their masters, put himself into 
 direct communication with the hard-hearted employers 
 on the one hand and the generous philanthropists 
 opposed to them on the other, and he collected such 
 
Chimney Sweepers and Climbing Boys. 77 
 
 a mass of information that he fairly made the House 
 of Commons aghast when he narrated how, notwith- 
 standing previous attempts to alleviate their wrongs, 
 these infant chimney sweeps were still being driven 
 naked up the foul flues, where they were exposed to 
 be scorched, roasted alive, or stifled, and from whence 
 they often came down with bruised and excoriated 
 bodies, to pass the hours of rest naked on the soot 
 heaps, and contract tormenting skin disease from the 
 villainous stuff.* 
 
 Notwithstanding a strong opposition in the House 
 of Lords the halting-place of so many beneficent 
 movements and a formidable attempt to shelve it by 
 referring it to a Select Committee, the Bill was carried 
 successfully, and passed into law in August 1840. 
 By this Act f the compelling or allowing a person 
 under twenty-one years of age to ascend or descend 
 a chimney, or to enter a flue for the purpose of 
 sweeping or cleaning it, or of extinguishing fire, 
 was prohibited, under a penalty of not more than 
 10 or less than 5. It was further provided by 
 the same Act that no child under sixteen years of 
 age should be apprenticed to a chimney sweeper, 
 and it contained regulations as to the future con- 
 struction of chimneys. 
 
 Immediately after the passage of the Bill Lord 
 Ashley used his utmost efforts to secure obedience 
 to it, and in some cases he even brought test actions 
 
 * Hansard, Third Series, lv. 108. 
 t 3 & 4 Vic, cap. 85. 
 
78 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 against persons who infringed the law. A charac- 
 teristic entry in his diary refers to two of such suits : 
 
 "August 2^tk Succeeded in both my suits. I 
 undertook them in a spirit of justice. I constituted 
 myself, no doubt, a defender of the poor, to see that 
 the poor and miserable had their rights ; but ' I 
 looked, and there was none to help ; I wondered that 
 there was none to uphold : therefore God's arm, it 
 brought salvation unto me ; and His fury, it upheld 
 me ! ' I stood to lose several hundred pounds, 
 but I have not lost a farthing ; I have advanced 
 the cause, done individual justice, anticipated many 
 calamities by this forced prevention, and soothed, 
 I hope, many angry, discontented Chartist spirits 
 by showing them that men of rank and property 
 can, and do, care for the rights and feelings of all 
 their brethren. Let no one ever despair of a good 
 cause for want of coadjutors ; let him persevere, 
 persevere, persevere, and God will raise him up 
 friends and assistants ! " * 
 
 It was hoped, and by many believed, that this long- 
 suffered abuse was now dead. But abuses die hard, 
 and for more than thirty years after the Bill of 1 840 
 became law, little children, from four to eight years of 
 age, the majority of them orphans, the rest bartered 
 or sold by brutal parents, were trained to force their 
 way up the long, narrow, winding passages of chimneys 
 to clear away the soot. We cannot follow the move- 
 ment through all its stages, but must content ourselves 
 * "Life and Work," vol. i., p. 301. 
 
Legislation for Chimney Sweepers. 79 
 
 by glancing at a few of the direct efforts to crush 
 the evil. 
 
 In June 1851, the month when Lord Shaftesbury 
 took his seat in the House of Lords the " Statue 
 Gallery," the " Dormitory," the " Nova Zembla," as 
 he variously called it he "broke cover in a bit of 
 humanity-mongering about chimney sweepers " ; but 
 although his speech was successful, it did not lead to 
 decisive action. In the following year, therefore, he 
 renewed his efforts on their behalf by giving his sup- 
 port to a Bill for their relief. He " suffered actual 
 tortures through solicitude for prevention of these 
 horrid cruelties," he feared the " accursed system was 
 returning to London," he was mystified that efforts 
 for their real relief had been so long unavailing ; and 
 when the Government in the House of Commons 
 threw out the Bill, and said not a word of sympathy 
 for the wretched children, nor of desire to amend the 
 law, he wrote on the Sunday following : " Very sad 
 and low about the loss of the Sweeps Bill the pro- 
 longed sufferings, the terrible degradation, the licensed 
 tyranny, the helpless subjection, the enormous mass 
 of cruelty and crime on the part of parents and 
 employers are overwhelming." 
 
 Again, in 1855 he was busy with a Bill for further 
 legislation on behalf of chimney sweeps, but, owing 
 chiefly to the active resistance of Sir G. Grey, he was 
 compelled to withdraw it. Then came a long pause, 
 and it was not until 1861, when the Children's Em- 
 ployment Commission was appointed, and climbing 
 boys were included in the scope of the inquiry, 
 
80 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 that the matter was again before the country. Lord 
 Shaftesbury eagerly watched the evidence, carefully- 
 read the Blue Books, found that he had by no means 
 overstated the case in his previous utterances, and in 
 1863-4 brought the whole matter before the House of 
 Lords, with the result that he actually succeeded in 
 carrying a Bill which made it unlawful for a chimney 
 sweeper to take into a house with him any assistant 
 under sixteen years of age, and which empowered 
 magistrates, in case of a breach of the law, " to impose 
 imprisonment with hard labour instead of a fine." 
 But even this measure did not terminate the prevalent 
 abuses. Two years later, in their Fifth Report, the 
 Children's Employment Commission gave evidence 
 showing clearly that the Act of 1864 had failed to 
 answer its intended purpose. 
 
 Ever on the alert and ever ready to press into his 
 cause any circumstance that could forward measures 
 in which he was interested, there came to Lord 
 Shaftesbury's notice in 1872 an account of a climbing 
 boy who had been suffocated in a flue in Staffordshire. 
 This gave him an opportunity of appealing to the 
 public in the columns of the Times, and of drawing 
 attention to the case in the House of Lords ; but 
 nothing came of it. In the following year he drew 
 attention to the case of " a poor little chimney sweeper, 
 seven-and-a-half years old, killed in a flue at Wash- 
 ington, in the county of Durham," again without any 
 success. 
 
 But in 1875 he called the attention of the Govern- 
 ment to the case of one George Brewster, a boy of 
 
Chimney Sweepers and Climbing Boys. 81 
 
 fourteen, who had been suffocated in a flue at Cam- 
 bridge. At last the public mind was excited ; George 
 Brewster's master was sentenced to six months' hard 
 labour. The Times ; in commenting on this ridiculously 
 light sentence, said boldly, in a vigorous article, that 
 "whoever deliberately authorised and permitted the 
 employment of this unfortunate boy are morally guilty 
 of the crime of murder," and expressed the opinion 
 that " the time has come for a final review of the 
 system"* under which such things were possible. 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury was not slow to take the hint, 
 and on April 20th, 1875, he gave notice of a Bill on 
 the subject. " One hundred and two years have 
 elapsed," he wrote, "since the good Jonas Hanway 
 brought the brutal iniquity before the public, yet in 
 many parts of England and Ireland it still prevails, 
 with the full knowledge and consent of thousands of 
 all classes." 
 
 The country was stirred ; the Times " assisted gen- 
 erously " ; on the platform, in the Legislature, and in 
 the press Lord Shaftesbury worked persistently ; and, 
 in that same session, the fetters of the poor climbing 
 slaves were broken, and there was rolled away, for 
 ever, " one of the greatest reproaches to the civilisation 
 of this country." 
 
 Years afterwards, at a great public meeting, a 
 speaker, as speakers very often did if they had any- 
 thing to say about the poor, mentioned the name of 
 Lord Shaftesbury. Instantly there was loud clapping. 
 " And what do you know about Lord Shaftesbury ? " 
 * Times, March 25th, 1875. 
 
 6 
 
82 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 asked the speaker of the people before him. " Know 
 of him ? " answered a man, rising up among the crowd. 
 " Why, sir, I'm a chimbley sweeper, and what did he 
 do for me ? Didn't he pass the Bill ? Why, when I 
 was a little 'un, sir, I had to go up chimbleys, and 
 many a time I've come down with bleedin' feet and 
 knees and a'most chokin'. And he passed the Bill 
 and saved us from all that. That's what I know, sir, 
 of Lord Shaftesbury ! " 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CHILDREN IN MINES AND COLLIERIES. 
 
 SO soon as Lord Ashley stood out in the world's 
 eyes as the champion of the oppressed factory 
 hands and the ill-used climbing boys, every other 
 suffering class began to look upon him as the Hercules 
 who was to cleanse the Augean Stable of its accumu- 
 lated mass of pollution, and piteously invoked his 
 aid. There was no need for this : already his heart 
 was full of sympathy, as his head was full of schemes, 
 for their relief ; and no sooner had he seen the factory 
 children and climbing boys safe in harbour than he 
 turned his attention to the case of the thousands of 
 children who stood outside the protection of the Acts 
 he had succeeded in carrying. For a long time this 
 subject had been on his mind, and, in reply to certain 
 taunts that had been levelled at him to the effect that 
 he had given narrow and exclusive attention to one 
 class alone, to the prejudice of others equally oppressed 
 and not less numerous, he moved, on August 4th, 
 1840, for " a Commission of Inquiry into the employ- 
 ment of the children of the poorer classes in mines 
 and collieries, and in the various branches of trade 
 
 83 
 
84 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 and manufacture in which numbers of children worked 
 together, not being included in the provisions of the 
 Act for regulating the employment of children and 
 young persons in mills and factories ; and to collect 
 information as to the ages at which they are employed, 
 the number of hours they are engaged in work, the 
 time allowed each day for meals, and as to the actual 
 state, condition, and treatment of such children, and 
 as to the effects of such employment, both with regard 
 to their morals and their bodily health." 
 
 The children he had in his mind's eye were princi- 
 pally those who were employed in irksome and 
 unhealthy work, such as earthenware, porcelain, 
 hosiery, pin-making, needle-making, manufacture of 
 arms, nail-making, card-setting, draw-boy-weaving, 
 ironwork, forges, etc. ; iron foundries, glass trade, 
 collieries, calico-printing, tobacco manufacture, button 
 factories, bleaching and paper mills. 
 
 In this new crusade Lord Ashley again addressed 
 himself to the interests of children, on the ground 
 that the future hopes of a country must be laid in the 
 character and condition of its children, and that, 
 however right it may be to attempt, it is almost 
 fruitless to expect, the reformation of its adults. To 
 ensure a vigorous and moral manhood the only 
 effectual course was to train them aright from their 
 earliest years, and so reserve the full development of 
 their moral and physical energies for the services 
 hereafter of our common country. 
 
 He brought some serious indictments against each 
 of the several departments of industry he had named, 
 
Children in Mines and Collieries. 85 
 
 especially as regarded mines and collieries and calico- 
 print works ; and cited upon high authority so many 
 cases of gross cruelty and injustice that he fairly 
 startled the House. Anticipating the question as to 
 what remedy for these evils he could suggest, he frankly 
 replied that he was not prepared to suggest any he 
 could only state the case and explain his motives. 
 The first of these was to place, if possible, all children 
 in the land in such a position and under such circum- 
 stances as to lay them open to an aggressive movement 
 for education ; to reserve and cherish their physical 
 energies ; to cultivate and improve their moral part ; 
 both of which, taken separately or conjointly, are 
 essential to the peace, security, and progress of the 
 empire. His further motive was a desire to remove 
 those spectacles of suffering and oppression from the 
 eyes of the poorer classes, spectacles that perplexed 
 the peaceable and exasperated the discontented, that 
 tended to render capital odious, as wealth was known 
 to them only by its oppressions. " They judge of it," 
 he said, " by what they see immediately around them ; 
 they know but little beyond their own narrow sphere ; 
 they do not extend their view over the whole surface 
 of the land, and so perceive and understand the com- 
 pensating advantages that wealth and property bestow 
 on the community at large. With so much ignorance 
 on one side, and so much oppression on the other, I 
 have never wondered that perilous errors and bitter 
 hatreds have prevailed ; but I have wondered much 
 and been very thankful that they have prevailed so 
 little." 
 
86 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 " Only let us exhibit those evils," he said in con- 
 clusion, " there is wit enough, experience enough, 
 activity enough, and principle enough in the country 
 to devise some remedy. For my own part I will say, 
 though possibly I may be charged with cant and 
 hypocrisy, that I have been bold enough to undertake 
 this task because I must regard the objects of it as 
 being created, as ourselves, by the same Maker, re- 
 deemed by the same Saviour, and destined to the 
 same immortality." 
 
 To his great surprise for he had entertained 
 grave doubts as to how this wide subject would be 
 received the motion was agreed to after only a 
 very brief discussion, and the much desired Commis- 
 sion granted ! " The behaviour of the Government 
 towards me was most kind and gentlemanlike ! " 
 he said. 
 
 It was not till May in 1842 that the Report of the 
 Commissioners * was issued, and it contained such 
 startling revelations of cruelty, misery, and depravity 
 that, despite the efforts of the Home Office to hold it 
 back, and of the Secretary of State to prevent its 
 sale, it obtained a publicity very seldom accorded to 
 Blue Books. Public indignation and excitement were 
 aroused to an extraordinary pitch ; and, taking ad- 
 vantage of this, Lord Ashley moved on June 7th for 
 leave to bring in a Bill to make regulations respecting 
 the age and sex of children and young persons 
 employed in the mines and collieries of the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 Parliamentary Papers, 1842, xv., xvi., xvii. 
 
Employment of a " Trapper." 87 
 
 Taking for his text-book the Report of the Com- 
 missioners, he wove together and delivered with great 
 force a statement of facts that was simply appalling. 
 It was found that in Northumberland and Durham 
 there were nearly as many women and children as 
 men in the pits, and in Lancashire and Yorkshire a 
 much larger ratio, while in many other places the 
 same system prevailed in the east of Scotland almost 
 universally. In Ireland, however, to her honour be 
 it said, neither children of tender years nor females of 
 any age were employed in underground operations. 
 In many of these mines and collieries the children 
 began work at the age of five or six years, others at 
 seven or eight. We have told of the terror experienced 
 by little boy-climbers in their first introduction to 
 dark and narrow flues reeking with soot ; and not less 
 horrible was the child's employment in the damp, 
 dark, and close mine. 
 
 Take one example. "The first employment of a 
 very young child was that of a 'trapper,' and any 
 occupation more barbarous it is difficult to conceive. 
 The ventilation of a mine was a very complicated 
 affair, and cannot easily be explained in a few words. 
 Suffice it to say that, were a door, or trap, left open 
 after the passage of a coal carriage through it, the 
 consequences would be very serious, causing great 
 heat and closeness where the miners were at work, 
 and perchance an explosion. Behind each door, 
 therefore, a little child, or trapper, was seated, whose 
 duty it was, on hearing the approach of a whirley, or 
 coal-carriage, to pull open the door and shut it again 
 
88 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 immediately the whirley had passed. From the time 
 the first coal was brought forward in the morning, 
 until the last whirley had passed at night that is to 
 say, for twelve or fourteen hours a day the trapper 
 was at his monotonous, deadening work. He had to 
 sit alone in the pitchy darkness and the horrible silence, 
 exposed to damp, and unable to stir for more than 
 a dozen paces with safety, lest he should be found 
 neglecting his duty and suffer accordingly. He dared 
 not go to sleep the punishment was the 'strap,' 
 applied with brutal severity. Many of the mines 
 were infested with rats, mice, beetles, and other 
 vermin ; and stories are told of rats so bold that they 
 would eat the horses' food in the presence of the 
 miners, and have been known to run off with the 
 lighted candles in their mouths and explode the gas. 
 All the circumstances of a little trapper's life were full 
 of horror, and upon nervous, sensitive children the 
 effect was terrible, producing a state of imbecility 
 approaching almost to idiocy. Except on Sunday 
 they never saw the sun ; they had no hours of relaxa- 
 tion, their meals were mostly eaten in the dark, and 
 their ' homes ' were with parents who devoted them to 
 this kind of life." * 
 
 Many of the pits were so wet that the people had 
 to work all day over their shoes in water, at the same 
 time that water was dripping constantly from the 
 roof. In other pits, instead of dripping, it constantly 
 "rained," as they called it, so that in a short time 
 
 * " Life and Work," etc., vol. i., pp. 413-14. 
 
Work in Collieries. 89 
 
 after they commenced the labour of the day their 
 clothes were drenched ; and in that state, with their 
 feet in water, they worked all day, and at night had 
 in many cases to walk a mile or two to their homes 
 without changing their clothes. 
 
 In some of the collieries the main roadways did 
 not exceed a yard in height ; in others they varied 
 from 22 to 28 inches, so that in such places the 
 youngest children could only work in the most con- 
 strained position. The ways were so low that only 
 little boys could work in them, which they did naked, 
 and often in mud and water, drawing sledge tubs by 
 the girdle and chain. The girdle was bound round 
 the waist of the child, to which was attached a chain 
 which passed under the legs and was attached to the 
 cart. The child was obliged to work on all fours, and 
 the chain passed under what in that posture might 
 be called the hind-legs ; and thus, with blisters on 
 their sides caused by the girdle, and terrible chafings 
 of the legs from the chains, they crawled for weary 
 hours through avenues not so good as a common 
 sewer, quite as wet and oftentimes more contracted, 
 and in a temperature described as perfectly intolerable. 
 " I went into the pit at seven years of age," said 
 Robert North, in his evidence before the Commis- 
 sioners. " When I drew by the girdle and chain the 
 skin was broken, and the blood ran down. ... If 
 we said anything they would beat us. I have seen 
 many draw at six. They must do it or be beat. 
 They cannot straighten their backs during the 
 day. I have sometimes pulled till my hips have 
 
90 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 hurt me so that I have not known what to do 
 with myself." 
 
 Incredible as it may seem in this day, girls were 
 employed as trappers and " hurriers " in common with 
 boys. " The girls," said Lord Ashley, " are of all ages 
 from seven to twenty-one. They commonly work 
 quite naked down to the waist, and are dressed 
 so far as they are dressed at all in a loose pair of 
 trousers. These are seldom whole on either sex. In 
 many of the collieries the adult colliers, whom these 
 girls serve, work perfectly naked. . . . Any sight more 
 disgustingly indecent or revolting than these girls at 
 work can scarcely be imagined." 
 
 In this condition they had to drag heavy 
 weights, some 12,000, some 14,000, some 16,000 yards 
 daily. 
 
 "Coal-bearing" was an equally cruel slavery, and 
 was almost always performed by women and children. 
 " They carry coal on their backs," said one of the 
 Commissioners, " on unrailed roads, with burdens 
 varying from f cwt. to 3 cwts., a cruelty revolting to 
 humanity. I found a little girl only six years old," 
 he added, " carrying J cwt., and making regularly 
 fourteen long journeys a day. With a burden varying 
 from 1 cwt. to ij cwt., the height ascended and the 
 distance along the roads added together exceeded in 
 each journey the height of St. Paul's Cathedral. And 
 it not unfrequently happens that the tugs break, and 
 the load falls on those females who are following, who 
 are of course struck off the ladders into the depths 
 below." No wonder that one poor girl should say, 
 
Cruelty in Collieries. 91 
 
 " We are worse off than horses : they draw on iron 
 rails, and we on flat floors." 
 
 The hours of labour were everywhere excessive, 
 varying from eleven to sixteen out of the twenty-four, 
 while in the great majority of the mines night-work 
 was a part of the ordinary system of labour. " I have 
 repeatedly wrought the twenty-four hours," said Anne 
 Hamilton, a girl of seventeen, " and after two hours of 
 rest and my peas (soup) have returned to the pit and 
 worked another twelve hours." 
 
 The physical effects of this system were stunted 
 growth, crippled gait, irritation of head, back, and feet, 
 diseases of the spine and of the heart and lungs. The 
 most destructive and frequent diseases were asthma 
 and rheumatism. In addition to these evils, there 
 were those resulting from the violence of the brutal 
 overseers and their assistants. Let the words of a 
 few witnesses, who gave evidence before the Com- 
 missioners, tell their own tale : 
 
 " I v/as bullied by a man to do what was beyond 
 my strength," said Isaac Tipstone. " I would not 
 because I could not. The man threw me down and 
 kicked out two of my ribs." 
 
 " My boy," said Hannah Neale, " ten years old, was 
 at work : about half a year since his toe was cut off 
 by the bind falling. Notwithstanding this the loader 
 made him work until the end of the day, although he 
 was in the greatest pain." 
 
 " A man," said Hannah Craven, aged eleven, " flung 
 a piece of coal as big as my head at me, and it struck 
 me in the back." 
 
92 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 " I remember meeting," said the Sub-Commissioner, 
 " one of the boys crying very bitterly, and bleeding 
 from a wound in his cheek. I found his master, who 
 told me, in a tone of savage defiance, that the child 
 was one of the slow ones, who would only move when 
 he saw blood, and that by throwing a piece of coal at 
 him he had accomplished his purpose, and that he 
 often adopted the like means." * 
 
 We have purposely given only a very few examples 
 of the evils that Lord Ashley was seeking to abate, 
 and those of a mild type, for others are too sickening 
 to record in detail. 
 
 In the course of his speech he said : " Only a few 
 days ago I went over the new prison at Pentonville. 
 Never have I seen such preparations as are there 
 made for securing a proper degree of comfort to the 
 prisoner such care for light, such care for ventilation, 
 such care that every necessary requirement of the 
 
 * M One curious error was made in the debates on this Report 
 of the Commission. It was stated that a miner had thrown a 
 hundredweight at a boy, and hurt him seriously. The statement 
 made some sensation, but admitted of a very simple explanation. 
 The miners, an uneducated race, kept all their records in the 
 mine by tallies or, as they called them, cuts. A cut was a piece 
 of wood on which notches for reckoning were made. It was 
 given in evidence that a miner had thrown a cut at a boy and 
 hurt him seriously. The clerk who copied out the evidence had 
 never heard of a cut, and, changing one letter, wrote ' cwt.' 
 The printer, improving on the error, gave the word at full 
 ' hundredweight.' We ourselves had the curiosity some years 
 ago to search out the mistake in the very voluminous evidence 
 attached to the Commissioners' report." Edinburghs Review, 
 April 1887, p. 367. 
 
Children in Mines and Collieries. 93 
 
 prisoner should be furnished. He is to have books, 
 tools, instruction to hear the human voice at least 
 fourteen times a day. Sir, I find no fault with that ; 
 but I pray you to bear in mind that all this is done 
 for persons who have forfeited their liberty by the 
 laws of their country ; but here you have a number 
 of poor children, whose only crime is that they are 
 poor, and who are sent down to these horrid dens, 
 subjected to every privation and every variety of 
 brutal treatment, and on whom you inflict even a 
 worse curse than this the curse of dark and per- 
 petual ignorance." And he was at a white heat of 
 righteous indignation when in a loud voice he cried 
 to the House to " undo the heavy burthens and let 
 the oppressed go free ! " 
 
 The cry was not in vain. For "two and a half 
 hours the House listened so attent : vely that you 
 might have heard a pin drop, broken only by loud 
 and [repeated marks of approbation." Many strong 
 men wept during its delivery. Richard Cobden, who 
 had been his opponent on the Factory Question, 
 came over to him and said, " I don't think I have 
 ever been put into such a frame of mind in the whole 
 course of my life as I have been by your speech," 
 and from that day friendship sprang up between 
 them. The Prince Consort read * every syllable of 
 the speech to the Queen," and both expressed their 
 profound sympathy in the "arduous, but glorious 
 task." 
 
 The Bill passed into law in a single session, in spite 
 of the coldness of the Government, the peers, and even 
 
94 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 of | the Church. It was a splendid victory, and an 
 inestimable blessing to the country. We can but 
 briefly summarise what the provisions of the Act* 
 were : From the time of passing the Act no female, 
 other than such as were employed previously, was 
 to work in any mine or colliery ; and that after three 
 months from that date no female under eighteen 
 years old should be so employed ; nor any female 
 whatever after March ist, 1843. After this date also 
 no males were to be employed under ten years of 
 age. No person to be apprenticed under ten years 
 of age, nor for longer than eight years (except in the 
 case of engine-wrights and others who were very 
 occasionally at work underground). When there 
 were vertical or other shafts, no steam or other engine 
 to be entrusted to the care of a person under the age 
 of fifteen ; in the case of a windlass or gin worked 
 by a horse or other animal, the driver to be con- 
 sidered the person in charge. After three months 
 from the passing of the Act proprietors of mines or 
 collieries were not to pay workmen their wages at 
 any tavern or public-house. Stringent arrangements 
 were made to enforce these regulations ; Inspectors, 
 appointed by the Secretary of State for the Home 
 Department, were empowered to enter and examine 
 all works in mines and collieries, and to report 
 concerning them to the Government, and heavy 
 fines were to be inflicted upon offenders against 
 any of the provisions of the Act. 
 
 * 5 & 6 Vic, cap. 99. 
 
Children in Mines and Collieries. 95 
 
 Of course, as in all sweeping reforms, there was 
 trouble at first, consequent upon so many young 
 persons being thrown for a time out of employment ; 
 but this was a temporary difficulty, and altogether 
 insignificant in comparison with the hateful system 
 that will ever be remembered as a great blot on 
 the humanity and civilisation of this country. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CHILDREN NOT PROTECTED BY THE FACTORY ACTS. 
 
 IT will be remembered that when the Children's 
 Employment Commission gave in their first 
 report, attention was called to a large number of 
 trades and branches of labour outside the scope of 
 the Factory Acts. The most glaring abuses revealed 
 in that Report related to the employment of women 
 and children in mines and colleries, and that subject, 
 as we have seen, Lord Ashley attacked forthwith. 
 
 When the Second Report of the Commissioners 
 was presented, the subject of greatest importance, as 
 it seemed to him, to be dealt with was the question 
 of the employment of children in calico-print works ; 
 and on February 18th, 1845, he brought forward a 
 Bill to regulate their employment in that trade. 
 
 These repeated attacks on child-labour naturally 
 gave rise to the impression that the representative 
 of the factory operatives was engaged in a gigantic 
 crusade against the employers of labour generally, 
 and, as naturally, the latter rallied in defence of their 
 order. Every step taken in any direction was met 
 
 by the formidable opposition of masters, who feared 
 
 96 
 
Calico-printing. 97 
 
 that " the hope of their gains was gone." Fears were 
 expressed that trade would be ruined, that pauperism 
 must necessarily increase largely, that vested in- 
 terests were being unwarrantably interfered with. 
 What was more lamentable than anything else was 
 the fact that so many of the parents of the children 
 whose social elevation was aimed at, were opposed 
 to protective measures ; so great was their moral 
 degradation that they did not want their children to 
 be educated, and were willing, without hesitation, 
 to sacrifice their future welfare through life for the 
 immediate advantage or gratification obtained by the 
 pittance derived from the child's earnings. 
 
 But whenever Lord Ashley had a cause at heart 
 and especially one affecting the welfare of little 
 children no amount of opposition could deter him 
 from his purpose ; he would not 
 
 " bate a jot 
 Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer 
 Right onward." 
 
 The matter to which he now addressed himself was 
 a large one, affecting, at that time alone, the welfare 
 of at least 25,000 persons. 
 
 Calico-printing, with its subsidiary processes of 
 bleaching and dyeing, was carried on to the greatest 
 extent in the cotton districts of Lancashire, Cheshire, 
 Derbyshire, and the east of Scotland ; there were also 
 a few print works near London, and several near 
 Dublin. A large proportion of the children and 
 young persons employed in this branch of trade 
 
 7 
 
98 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 were girls, the proportion in Lancashire being 
 upwards of one-third of the whole number under 
 thirteen. Children began work at as early an age 
 as between four and five, and the great majority 
 between eight and nine. 
 
 In making their investigations the Commissioners 
 clearly pointed out that there was probably no 
 description of manufacture in which the convenience 
 and comfort of the places in which the various 
 operations were carried on differed so materially in 
 different establishments, and even in different depart- 
 ments of the same establishment, as in calico-printing 
 With the view of lessening, as far as practicable, the 
 noxiousness of these operations, some proprietors 
 spared neither trouble nor expense to secure proper 
 ventilation, temperature, and drainage ; but in a large 
 number of cases these conditions of the place of 
 work were deplorably neglected, and it was to these, 
 of course, that Lord Ashley mainly directed his 
 attention. Let one or two examples suffice. 
 
 The " hooking " and " lashing-out " rooms, and the 
 " singeing " room were very disagreeable places, the 
 air of which was filled with dust, and in the latter 
 with small burnt particles, which exceedingly irri- 
 tated the eyes, throat, and nostrils. The temperature 
 of the workshops usually varied from 6 5 to 8o, 
 while that to which the stenters were exposed 
 was very high from 85 to ioo, and sometimes no c 
 or fever heat. Of course this was very injurious 
 to health, more especially as the steam, rising 
 from wet goods hung up to dry, was more suffo- 
 
Excessive Hours of Labour. 99 
 
 eating and oppressive than dry heat would have 
 been. Many girls, and especially the stove girls, 
 would often faint from exhaustion ; while injured 
 sight and throat diseases were the consequence of 
 labour in other departments. 
 
 It was not, however, with the nature of the labour, 
 which was not in itself heavy, that Lord Ashley was 
 chiefly concerned, but with the continuity of doing it 
 for so many hours, that produced so debilitating an 
 effect on both mind and body. 
 
 The regular hours of work in the different depart- 
 ments of the print-field were rarely less than twelve, 
 including the time allowed for meals ; but it was by no 
 means uncommon in all the districts for children from 
 five to six years old to be kept at work for fourteen 
 and even sixteen hours consecutively. As a matter 
 of fact, there could scarcely be said to be any regular 
 hours, for all the block-printers were in the habit of 
 working overtime, and as they were paid by the 
 piece, and were independent of machinery, they were 
 at liberty to work what hours they pleased. One 
 man told the Commissioners : " I began to work 
 between eight and nine o'clock on Wednesday 
 night, but the boy had been sweeping the shop from 
 Wednesday morning. You will scarcely believe it, 
 but it is true, I never left the shop till six o'clock on 
 the Saturday morning, and I had never stopped 
 working all that time. I was knocked up, and the 
 boy was almost insensible." Instances were found 
 of young girls working at the steam cans for thirty- 
 eight hours in succession a very exhausting labour 
 
loo Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 and of little children under eight years of age working 
 all night through for three or four nights a week. 
 In the morning these poor children seemed as though 
 they were suffering from the effects of gross intoxica- 
 tion ; their eyes were inflamed, their gait unsteady, 
 their hands tremulous, their faces deadly pale or 
 unnaturally flushed. A deputation of calico-printers 
 admitted that " night-work was doubly distressing on 
 this account : that as a great quantity of gas was 
 burnt in rooms badly ventilated, the air was hurtful 
 to breathe and bad for the constitution." It must, 
 moreover, be borne in mind that the print works were 
 always most busy during the winter, in preparation 
 for the spring trade a time of year when toil and 
 exposure were the least endurable. 
 
 It was proved up to the hilt that with proper 
 management all this excessive toil was unnecessary, 
 and that night-work was an evil no less to the 
 employer than to the employed. An influential firm 
 favoured one of the Commissioners with an inspection 
 of their books, which showed rates of production in 
 their roller-printing machines during a period of four 
 months, when they worked fifteen hours a day. 
 " The proportion of spoiled work" he says, " from 
 the beginning of the first to the end of the fourth 
 month actually doubled itself, when the average 
 production of the machines decreased from ioo 
 to 90 per cent. In fact, the amount of spoiled 
 work increased to such an alarming extent that 
 the parties referred to felt themselves obliged to 
 shorten the hours of labour to avoid loss, and as soon 
 
The Calico Print Works Act. 101 
 
 as the alteration was made the amount of spoiled 
 work sank to its former level." 
 
 Between the periods of the first ?nd second read^g 
 of the Bill, Sir James Graham, as Home Secretary, 
 caused all the inspectors of factories to examine the 
 Bill in the light of their own experience, and to 
 attend to such objections as the master printers might 
 urge against it. The result of these inquiries was to 
 induce the Government to assent to the Bill in a 
 modified form. Lord Ashley had proposed that its 
 provisions should apply to bleach works, dye works, 
 and calendering works, as well as to print works ; but 
 Sir James would only agree to the last-named appli- 
 cation. This was a great disappointment to Lord 
 Ashley, but he accepted the Government offer as a 
 means of securing the passing of a Bill which would 
 at any rate be a movement in the wished-for 
 direction, and which would not preclude further 
 measures of a similar kind in subsequent sessions. 
 After amendments in both Houses it passed into law 
 as " The Print Works Act, 8 & 9 Vic, cap. 29," and 
 came into force on January 1st, 1846. 
 
 Henceforth all calico-print works came under 
 proper inspection ; no child could be employed 
 under eight years of age, and no child under thirteen 
 or young person under sixteen at night. A certain 
 amount of schooling was prescribed for every child 
 and young person, the schoolmaster to be controlled 
 in certain matters by the inspectors. 
 
 It was not by any means the kind of Act Lord 
 Ashley had wished it to be, but on the principle that 
 
102 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 " half a loaf is better than no bread " he accepted it, 
 and subsequent experience showed that it mitigated 
 to a very large extent the evils that had once existed, 
 and greatly ameliorated the condition of the young 
 workers. 
 
 It "was anticipated by many that Lord Ashley 
 would immediately proceed to deal with other trades 
 and manufactures, but his hands were too full with 
 other burning questions, and he did not consider that 
 either the time was ripe or his influence sufficient to 
 carry any further measures of the kind to a successful 
 issue. " The House is weary of these narratives of 
 suffering and shame," he said ; " the novelty is past, 
 and the difficulty, the apparent difficulty, of a remedy 
 remains ; it catches, therefore, at any excuse for 
 inattention, and damns the advocate for the toiling 
 thousands by courteous indifference." 
 
 It would be wide of our present purpose to record 
 here, even in the briefest outline, the remedial 
 measures that were passed to benefit children and 
 young persons in all the various departments of trade, 
 as an outcome of the inquiries of the Children's 
 Employment Commission. There was one class, how- 
 ever, viz., children employed in brickfields, who, by a 
 technical difficulty, were excluded from the protection 
 of these measures, while those employed in pottery 
 and porcelain works were included. It was an 
 anomaly and an injustice which Lord Shaftesbury 
 determined he would set right ; but it was not until 
 the year 1 871 that he was able to do so. 
 
 Meanwhile there had been many workers on behalf 
 
Children Employed in Brickfields. 103 
 
 of the brickfield children, the chief of whom was 
 George Smith, of Coalville. He had been to the 
 manner born, and a passage from his own experience 
 will better illustrate the case than any other evidence 
 that could be selected : 
 
 " When a child of about seven years of age " (that 
 is to say in the year 1838) "I was employed by a 
 relative to assist him in making bricks. It is not my 
 wish to say anything against him ; but, like most of 
 his class at that time, and like many even now (1871), 
 he thought kicks and blows formed the best means 
 of obtaining the maximum of work from a lad ; and, 
 as if these were not enough, excessively long hours of 
 work were added. 
 
 " At nine years of age my employment consisted in 
 continually carrying about 40 lb. of clay upon my 
 head from the clay heap to the table on which the 
 bricks were made. When there was no clay I had 
 to carry the same weight of bricks. This labour had 
 to be performed, almost without intermission, for 
 thirteen hours daily. Sometimes my labours were 
 increased by my having to work all night at the 
 kilns. 
 
 "The result of the prolonged and severe labour 
 to which I was subjected, combined with the cruel 
 treatment experienced by me at the hands of the 
 adult labourers, are shown in marks that are borne 
 by me to this day. On one occasion I had to perform 
 a very heavy amount of labour. After my customary 
 day's work I had to carry 1200 nine-inch bricks from 
 
104 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 the maker to the floors on which they are placed to 
 harden. The total distance thus walked by me that 
 night was not less than fourteen miles, seven miles 
 of which I traversed with n lb. weight of clay in 
 my arms, besides lifting the unmade clay and 
 carrying it some distance to the maker. The total 
 quantity of clay thus carried by me was 5 J tons. 
 For all this labour I received sixpence ! The fatigue 
 thus experienced brought on a serious illness, which 
 for several weeks prevented me from resuming 
 work." * 
 
 In 1863 George Smith, who had determined on his 
 deliverance from the slavery of the brickfields to make 
 the liberation of his fellows one of the great labours 
 of his life, fell in with Mr. Robert Baker, 1 one of Her 
 Majesty's Inspectors of Factories, and with his aid 
 ventilated the whole subject in public. By letters to 
 the press and appeals to private individuals, by 
 speeches and pamphlets, he kept the agitation alive. 
 
 One of these pamphlets was sent to Mr. Mundella, 
 M.P., who wrote in acknowledgment of it, " I have 
 determined to bring the matter before the House in 
 some shape or other " ; and another to Lord Shaftes- 
 bury, who replied, " This state of things is simply 
 wicked, and the continuance of it without excuse." 
 In June 1871, public indignation having been strongly 
 roused, Mr. Mundella introduced into the House of 
 Commons a Bill " The Factories Acts (Brick and 
 
 * "George Smith, of Coalville: The Story of an Enthusiast," 
 by Edwin Hodder (Jas. Nisbet & Co., Ltd.), p. 26 
 
A Visit to a Brickfield. 105 
 
 Tile Yards) Extension Bill, 1871 "and on July nth 
 Lord Shaftesbury moved an Address to the Crown 
 in the House of Lords. 
 
 Although he was then seventy years of age, he had 
 not abandoned nor did he till the end his habit 
 of thoroughly sifting and personally inquiring into 
 and inspecting every phase of the subject with 
 which he had to deal ; and we think the following 
 extract from his speech in moving the Address, 
 giving the result of his personal observations, will be 
 regarded as inimitable : 
 
 " I went down to a brickfield," he said, " and made 
 a considerable inspection. On approaching I first 
 saw, at a distance, what appeared like eight or ten 
 pillars of clay, which, I thought, were placed there in 
 order to indicate how deep the clay had been worked. 
 On walking up I found to my astonishment that these 
 pillars were living beings. They were so like the 
 ground on which they stood, their features were so 
 indistinguishable, their dress so besoiled and covered 
 with clay, their flesh so like their dress, that, until 
 I approached and saw them move, I believed them 
 to be products of the earth. When I approached 
 they were so scared at seeing anything not like 
 themselves, that they ran away screaming, as though 
 something Satanic was approaching. I followed them 
 to their work, and then I saw what Elihu Burritt has 
 so well described. I saw little children, three parts 
 naked, tottering under the weight of wet clay some 
 of it on their heads and some on their shoulders 
 
io6 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 and little girls, with huge masses of wet, cold, and 
 dripping clay pressed on their abdomens. Moreover, 
 the unhappy children were exposed to the most 
 sudden transitions of heat and cold ; for after carrying 
 their burdens of wet clay, they had to endure the heat 
 of the kiln, and to enter places where the heat was 
 so fierce that I was not myself able to remain more 
 than two or three minutes. Can it be denied that 
 in these brickfields men, women, and children, es- 
 pecially poor female children, are brought down to 
 a point of degradation and suffering lower than the 
 beasts of the field ? No man with a sense of humanity, 
 or with the aspirations of a Christian, could go 
 through these places and not feel that what he saw 
 was a disgrace to the country and ought not for a 
 moment to be allowed to continue." 
 
 Next day he wrote to Mr. George Smith : " Thank 
 God I carried the Address last night. We shall have 
 this year a Bill for the children in the brickyards. 
 Bless God for His grace on your efforts." 
 
 And so it was. Everything was got through in 
 that same session, and on January ist, 1872, thousands 
 of little white slaves were set free by the coming into 
 force of the famous clause that declared that "no 
 female under the age of sixteen years, and no child 
 under the age of ten years, shall be employed in the 
 manufacture of bricks and tiles, not being ornamental 
 tiles ; and any female or child who is employed in 
 contravention of this section shall be deemed to be 
 employed in a manner contrary to the provisions of 
 
Labour of Juveniles in Workshops. 107 
 
 the Factory Acts 1833 to 1871 and the Workshops 
 Acts 1867 to 1 871." 
 
 For thirty- four years Lord Shaftesbury had been ex- 
 posing the evils which beset children, young persons, 
 and women in the manufacturing industries, and 
 measure after measure had been carried for their 
 relief: inhuman hours of toil had been shortened, 
 excess of physical labour had been abridged ; op- 
 pression and cruelty resulting in premature death had 
 been checked, and the means of education and mental 
 improvement had been made possible. 
 
 Two more legislative measures, however, were still 
 necessary to complete his labours on behalf of the 
 industrial classes of the country. One, successfully 
 carried in 1867, was a Bill " For Regulating the Labour 
 of Juveniles in Workshops." It prohibited the hiring 
 of children under eight years of age, and regulated 
 the hours of labour of all under thirteen ; it provided 
 for the education of all children under thirteen, placed 
 all workshops under the provisions of the Sanitary 
 Act of 1 866, and it brought, for the first time, every 
 branch of juvenile labour, save one, under Government 
 supervision. 
 
 The one other scheme of amelioration remaining 
 untouched was one that had long been in contempla- 
 tion, but Lord Shaftesbury had failed to find a 
 favourable opportunity to introduce it into the House 
 of Lords. The question, an agricultural one relating 
 to the cultivation of the soil, was a ticklish one to 
 introduce into that assembly, and he reserved it to 
 
io8 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 the last because it presented the greatest difficulties, 
 and because it required all the sympathy and ex- 
 perience to be derived from the proofs of success 
 furnished by the Factory Acts to obtain for it a 
 favourable reception. 
 
 In 1863, while the Second Children's Employment 
 Commission was sitting, Lord Shaftesbury moved an 
 Address to the Queen praying that the Commissioners 
 should be directed to inquire into the system of 
 " organised " labour known by the name of Agri- 
 cultural Gangs, and in April 1867, soon after the 
 report of the Commissioners was issued, he brought 
 the matter forward. 
 
 It was found that the system of agricultural gangs 
 existed almost exclusively in the counties of Lincoln- 
 shire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, 
 Suffolk, and Nottinghamshire, and, to a less extent, 
 in the counties of Northamptonshire, Bedford, and 
 Rutland. A "gang" consisted of the gang-master 
 and a number of women and children and young 
 persons of both sexes, numbering from twelve to forty. 
 The average number in the " public " gangs was 
 twenty, that being a manageable number, employing 
 on the whole about seven thousand boys and girls from 
 six years old and upwards, while, in addition, there 
 were " private" gangs employing fully twenty thousand. 
 The public gang was under the control of an indepen- 
 dent master, who engaged the members of the gang 
 and contracted with the farmer to execute a certain 
 kind and amount of agricultural work with this body 
 of slaves ; while the private gang, seldom exceeding 
 
Agricultural Gangs. 109 
 
 from twelve to twenty, was in the farmer's own employ 
 and was superintended by one of the farmer's own 
 labourers. 
 
 The work consisted in making or keeping the land 
 in a fit state for the growth of crops by clearing it 
 from weeds of all kinds, spreading and putting in 
 manure, thinning or " singling " turnips and mangold- 
 wurzel, setting potatoes and dropping in seed for 
 dibblers, treading corn on light soil, getting in crops 
 when ripe e.g., pulling turnips and mangolds or beet, 
 pulling flax and sometimes peas, instead of their being 
 mown, topping and tailing turnips and mangolds, and 
 such-like work. 
 
 It was usual to collect these gangs in the morning 
 about five, each person carrying his own tools and 
 meals, and march them off to their work at a rapid 
 pace, sometimes a distance of four to eight miles ; 
 they would then work in the fields from eight to five 
 or six o'clock in the evening, reaching their " homes " 
 about nine at night. 
 
 " Year in, year out ; in summer heat and winter 
 cold ; in sickness and in health ; with backs warped 
 and aching from constant stooping ; with hands 
 cracked and swollen at the back by the wind and cold 
 and wet ; with palms blistered from pulling turnips, 
 and fingers lacerated from weeding among the stones, 
 these English slaves, with education neglected, 
 with morals corrupted, degraded and brutalised, 
 laboured from early morning till late at night, and, 
 by the loss of all things, gained only the miserable 
 pittance that barely kept them from starvation." 
 
no Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 One clergyman, in giving evidence before the Com- 
 missioners, said : " Turning to the moral side of the 
 picture, all is blank. The benefits of education, which 
 charity has provided, are thrown aside by the parents. 
 The young being engaged in manual labour from 
 morn till night, the village school is comparatively 
 denuded of scholars. In room of moral and religious 
 teaching, children are auditors of obscene and blas- 
 phemous language, while also exposed to the most 
 profligate and debased examples, thus completing the 
 first stage of ruin. Progressing from childhood to 
 womanhood, the girl is brought up without experience 
 in the management of domestic affairs, and it is no 
 wonder that when the duties of servitude and married 
 life are demanded of her she is ignorant of both. 
 There is not one extensive occupier of land, nor one 
 sober-minded person throughout my parish, who does 
 not denounce the gangs as destructive to the morals 
 of the poor." 
 
 With regard to the physical side of the picture, a 
 mother, who had worked in the gangs many years, 
 said : " Sometimes the poor children are very ill-used 
 by the gang-master. One has used them horribly, kick- 
 ing them, hitting them with fork-handles and hurdle- 
 sticks, and even knocking them down. My own 
 children have been dropped into across the loins and 
 dropped right down, and if they don't know how to 
 get up he has kicked them. I have often seen my 
 own and other children knocked about in this way. 
 My boy, when about ten or eleven, had a white swell- 
 ing on his knee, and lay suffering nearly six years 
 
Agricultural Gangs. in 
 
 before he had his leg and thigh taken off. He 
 came back one day and said he had a thorn, but 
 others told me about the man kicking him. He was 
 a very quiet boy, and was for peace. The doctor 
 said it was from ill-usage a fall or kick ; there was 
 no thorn." 
 
 Medical evidence was adduced to show that the 
 mortality of young children was as great as in the 
 most infanticidal of the large manufacturing towns ; 
 that rheumatism was crippling the middle-aged women; 
 that curvature of the spine was common, and, worst 
 of all, that immorality of all kinds was prevalent to an 
 alarming extent. 
 
 And yet no hand had been stretched out for the 
 deliverance of these poor creatures. Once, when the 
 question was discussed in the House of Commons, it 
 was alleged that no legislation on the subject could 
 be effectual ; that it would only do mischief, by de- 
 priving women of their means of subsistence ; that 
 it would be an interference with the rights of em- 
 ployers in short, most of the arguments which had 
 been adduced against the Bill to remove women from 
 employment in mines and collieries were again brought 
 forward with cold, unsympathetic iteration. 
 
 These arguments Lord Shaftesbury had success- 
 fully demolished, and he laid before the House of 
 Lords a scheme, moderate but merciful, to remedy the 
 wrongs inflicted by the horrible " gang " system and 
 to affect the entire agricultural population of every 
 county. He concluded his strong indictment in these 
 words : 
 
ii2 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 " My lords, in attempting to grapple with this evil, 
 I hope your lordships will kindly aid me by your 
 sympathy and support. In this way you will give 
 the crowning stroke to the various efforts made for 
 many years past to bring all the industrial occupa- 
 tions of the young and the defenceless under the 
 protection of the law ; and that, whether they are 
 employed in trade, in manufactures, or in any handi- 
 craft whatever, every child under a certain age may 
 be subject only to a limited amount of labour, and be 
 certain to receive an adequate amount of education. 
 All that remains for your lordships now to do, as 
 representing the landowners of the kingdom, is to 
 embrace within the scope of your beneficent legisla- 
 tion the whole mass of the agricultural population. 
 Then, I believe, we shall be enabled to say that no 
 country upon earth surpasses us in the care we take 
 of the physical, the moral, and the educational well- 
 being of the myriads of our humble fellow-creatures. 
 My lords, the object you have in view is well worthy 
 of all the time, the anxiety, the zeal, and the talents 
 which can be bestowed upon it ; and I am satisfied 
 that your lordships will earnestly desire to see it 
 accomplished." * 
 
 The Agricultural Bill received the affirmation of 
 the House of Lords, and, after some delay, passed 
 into law. It was, as Lord Shaftesbury said, "the first 
 statutory recognition of the rights of the rural children 
 to have equal educational privileges with the children 
 
 * Shaftesbury's Speeches, p. 410. 
 
Industrial Legislation. 113 
 
 of the towns " ; it was, as he had prayed it might be, 
 the " crowning stroke " to his lifelong efforts to bring 
 all the occupations of the young and defenceless under 
 the protection of the law, and it swept from the face of 
 the land the last of the long series of evils which could 
 be dealt with by industrial legislation. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASSES. 
 
 FROM an early period of his career Lord 
 Shaftesbury took an absorbing interest in 
 the welfare of labouring men. He could not shut 
 his eyes to the fact that they were almost universally 
 regarded merely as a part of the machinery of the 
 country, that they were oppressed by unjust laws, 
 that they had no power to combine in their own 
 defence, that artificers were prohibited from emi- 
 grating when the labour-market was overstocked, and 
 that no efforts were being made in any direction to 
 raise and improve them, either physically, morally, or 
 religiously. A spirit of discontent was giving place 
 to a spirit of lawlessness the only argument they 
 could use with effect in self-defence was defiance. 
 
 And, truly, the working man had cause for bitter 
 complaint. There were no efficient educational laws 
 in existence ; industrial schools, mechanics' institu- 
 tions, working-men's clubs, were unknown ; the Poor 
 Laws were pauperising and degrading ; Post Office 
 Savings Banks, the science of sanitation, a free news- 
 paper press, limited liability, employers' liability all 
 
 114 
 
Increase of Population. 115 
 
 these had yet to be. Crime was rampant, and there 
 was no proper police force in existence until 1829 to 
 grapple with it. The tastes of the people were low 
 and coarse, and what cheap literature there was 
 only pandered to it. The Church was in a state of 
 lethargy, and the vast machinery of philanthropy, 
 with which we have been familiar since the beginning 
 of the second half of the century, was only in its 
 infancy. 
 
 Meanwhile, the population of the country was 
 increasing by gigantic strides the result of the 
 introduction of steam and new departments of 
 commerce. In Birmingham, for example, the popu- 
 lation in 181 5 was 90,000; in 1832 it was 150,000; 
 and in Great Britain .generally it increased from 
 about 16,500,000 in 1831 to nearly 30,000,000 in 1881, 
 or nearly 100 per cent.* 
 
 In the early years of which we write, tens of 
 thousands of fresh human beings crowded into our 
 large manufacturing towns to find employment in 
 their turn, and to lead more or less civilised lives. 
 Quite a new phase of humanity was introduced, 
 bringing with it new vices and many new dangers, 
 creating a spirit of disaffection and unrest, and causing 
 much suffering and want. The old order was 
 changing, yielding place to the new, and it brought 
 with it many of the evils which are inevitable in 
 such a crisis. Of course it brought with it "new 
 comforts, new noblenesses, new generosities, new 
 conceptions of duty and of how that duty should 
 * Robert Giffen, " Progress of the Working Classes." 
 
n6 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 be done," but these things were not apparent at 
 the time. 
 
 Moreover, as has been well said, the rapid increase 
 of population during the first half of this century 
 "began at a moment when the British stock was 
 specially exhausted, namely, about the end of the 
 long French war. . . . Year after year, till the final 
 triumph of Waterloo, not battle only, but worse 
 destroyers than shot and shell fatigue and disease 
 had been carrying off our stoutest, ablest, 
 healthiest young men, each of whom represented, 
 alas ! a maiden left unmarried at home, or married 
 in default to a less able man. The strongest went 
 to the war ; each who fell left a weaklier man to 
 continue the race, while of those who did not fall 
 too many returned with tainted and weakened 
 constitutions, to injure, it may be, generations yet 
 unborn." * 
 
 It was patent to all who had eyes to see, that the 
 children of 1830-50 were not equal, constitutionally, 
 to their parents, nor they again to their grandparents ; 
 and this degrading process was going on most surely 
 and most rapidly in our large towns, and was spread- 
 ing in a proportionate degree to the rural districts. 
 
 Bad as was the condition of the ordinary labouring 
 man, that of the agricultural labourer was infinitely 
 worse. From him was exacted the maximum of toil for 
 the minimum of wages ; he was reckoned merely among 
 the goods and chattels of his employer ; his " common 
 round " was to work and eat and drink and die. 
 * Charles Kingsley, " Health and Education." 
 
Agricultural Labourers. 1 1 7 
 
 Even so recently as 1873, when the county fran- 
 chise was under consideration, there were many who 
 thought the subject was ill-timed ; that the rural 
 workman was an unfit subject to be invested with 
 political power. The idea was even then prevalent 
 that agricultural labourers had no aspirations or 
 desires above working, eating, drinking, and sleeping, 
 and were more than content to let their " betters " 
 think for them, act for them, make laws for them, 
 and administer those laws as they thought fit, without 
 any reference to the opinion of the working man. 
 
 Subsequent events have shown that this view did 
 not represent the true state of things : farm-labourers 
 and others of that class who, for centuries, had been 
 socially, morally, financially, and politically wronged, 
 smarting under a sense of oppression, have within 
 recent years come forward in a manly way to make 
 their grievances known, and to demand their political 
 and educational rights. 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury never made that broad distinc- 
 tion between the workman in trade and the workman 
 in agriculture that was almost universally made. He, 
 almost alone, had a good word for the agricultural 
 labourer at a time when he was the most neglected 
 of all the working classes. 
 
 " That he is a * skilled artisan,' will any one deny ? " 
 he asked. " Look at him engaged with the plough ; 
 see the length and straightness of each furrow ; its 
 mathematical precision, the steadiness of his hand 
 and eye, and his masterly calculation of distance and 
 force. Observe a hedger in all the various branches 
 
n8 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 of that part of labour, and admit the accuracy of 
 judgment that is required for a calling so apparently 
 humble. No spinner could do what he does, any 
 more than he could do what is done by the spinner. 
 His talk, too, may be of bullocks ; it may be also of 
 sheep ; it may be of every parochial matter : but then 
 it is talk upon his special vocation ; and oftentimes how 
 sound and sensible it is ! He has not, of course, the 
 acquirements and acuteness of the urban operative ; 
 his labour is passed in comparative solitude, and he 
 returns to his home at night, in a remote cottage or 
 a small village, without the resources of clubs, 
 mechanics' institutes, and the friction of his fellow- 
 men. Still, he may say with the most scientific, 
 that he is master of the profession to which he is 
 called, and every one should rejoice to add, to this 
 honourable and useful career, whatever is possible 
 to comfort and adorn it." 
 
 Long before the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832 
 Lord Shaftesbury was keenly alive to the condition 
 of the working classes generally, and the pressing 
 necessity there was for an enlightened public opinion 
 on the question, and, as Dr. Arnold termed it, " the 
 solution of the most difficult problem ever yet pro- 
 posed to man's wisdom, and the greatest triumph 
 over selfishness ever yet required of his virtue." He 
 saw symptoms of a universal disease spreading 
 throughout vast masses of the people ; he saw con- 
 spiracies against God and good arising from the 
 tyranny and injustice under which the working 
 classes suffered ; he saw vast and inflammable masses 
 
Condition of the Working Classes. 119 
 
 waiting day by day for the spark to explode them 
 into mischief. 
 
 " We cover the land with spectacles of misery," he 
 said ; " wealth is felt only by its oppressions ; few, 
 very few, remain in the trading districts to spend 
 liberally the riches they have acquired ; the suc- 
 cessful leave the field to be ploughed afresh by new 
 aspirants after gain, who, in turn, count their periodical 
 profits and exact the maximum of toil for the 
 minimum of wages. No wonder that thousands of 
 hearts should be against a system which establishes 
 the relations, without calling forth the mutual sym- 
 pathies, of master and servant, landlord and tenant, 
 employer and employed. . . . When called upon to 
 suggest our remedy of the evil, we reply by an 
 exhibition of the cause of it ; the very statement 
 involves an argument and contains its own answer 
 within itself. Let your laws, we say to the Parlia- 
 ment, assume the proper functions of law ; protect 
 those for whom neither wealth, nor station, nor age, 
 have raised a bulwark against tyranny ; but above all, 
 open your treasury, erect churches, send forth the 
 ministers of religion, reverse the conduct of the enemy 
 of mankind, and sow wheat among the tares ; all 
 hopes are groundless, all legislation weak, all con- 
 servatism nonsense, without this Alpha and Omega 
 of policy ; it will give content instead of bitterness, 
 engraft obedience on rebellion, raise purity from 
 corruption, and life from the dead." * 
 
 * From an article by Lord Ashley in the Quarterly Review, 
 December 1840. 
 
120 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 The welfare of the working classes was the object 
 of almost every great project undertaken by Lord 
 Shaftesbury from the beginning to the end of his 
 career. We have glanced at some of his labours on 
 behalf of women, children, and young persons ; we 
 have now to look at his labours in regard to the 
 education of the working classes and the condition of 
 their dwellings. 
 
 In February 1843 he moved an Address to the 
 Crown praying Her Majesty to take into her " instant 
 and serious consideration the best means of diffusing 
 the benefits and blessings of a moral and religious 
 education amongst the working classes of her people." 
 
 The educational system of the country was at that 
 time in a state of transition. From 1834 to 1839 
 an annual grant of .20,000 had been divided in 
 equitable proportions between the National Society, 
 representing the Church of England, and the British 
 and Foreign School Society, representing the Noncon- 
 formists, and was dispensed by them for the purpose of 
 erecting school buildings in aid of private benevolence. 
 
 In 1839, in the face of a determined opposition, 
 the Committee of Council on Education was appointed, 
 and the system of school inspectors, who dispensed 
 the grants annually made by Parliament, was in 1843 
 in full operation. Schools, not necessarily in con- 
 nection with either of the two great rival societies, 
 had, too, been established, with the sanction of the 
 Committee, in poor and populous places. 
 
 While acknowledging the vast and meritorious 
 efforts of the National Society and of the Dissenting 
 
Education of the Working Classes. 121 
 
 bodies, he found that there was a tremendous waste 
 still remaining uncultivated, "a great and terrible 
 wilderness," and he drew in strong outlines a picture 
 of the prevailing ignorance and moral degradation 
 in all parts of the countiy, and called for State 
 interference on an unprecedented scale. Without 
 entering upon the subjects he dealt with by statistics 
 in the course of his remarkable speech a speech 
 far in advance of the times his position may be 
 indicated in the following extract : 
 
 "If it be true, as most undoubtedly it is, that the 
 State has a deep interest in the moral and physical 
 prosperity of all her children, she must not terminate 
 her care with the years of infancy, but extend her 
 control and providence over many other circum- 
 stances that affect the working man's life. Without 
 entering here into the nature and variety of those 
 practical details which might be advantageously 
 taught in addition to the first and indispensable 
 elements, we shall readily perceive that many things 
 are requisite, even to the adult, to secure to him, so 
 far as is possible, the well-being of his moral and 
 physical condition. I speak not now of laws and 
 regulations to abridge, but to enlarge his freedom ; 
 not to limit his rights, but to multiply his opportunities 
 of enjoying them ; laws and regulations which shall 
 give him what all confess to be his due ; which 
 shall relieve him from the danger of temptations he 
 would willingly avoid and under which he cannot 
 but fall ; and which shall place him, in many aspects 
 
122 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 of health, happiness, and possibilities of virtue, in 
 that position of independence and security from 
 which, under the present state of things, he is too 
 often excluded."* 
 
 Three items only of the " many practical details 
 which might be advantageously taught" were enumer- 
 ated by Lord Ashley. The first was the obnoxious 
 truck system, which encouraged improvidence by 
 preventing the chance of a habit of saving, as nobody 
 could save food ; which prevented families from 
 obtaining a sufficient supply of clothing and more 
 comfortable furniture, in proportion to the possession 
 of which it was always found that the working man 
 became more steady, industrious, and careful a 
 system which drove the mining districts of South 
 Wales into open rebellion in 1834, and produced 
 the serious disturbances that took place in South 
 Staffordshire in 1842.1 The next items were the 
 payment of wages in public-houses,! and the state 
 of the dwellings of the poor. 
 
 The whole speech was full of power and statesman- 
 like foresight, and it was conceived in a spirit that 
 was new to the majority of his hearers. It was 
 spoken, too, at a time (1843) when, as he said, the 
 
 * " Speeches," p. 79. 
 
 t Many of the evils of the system were not abolished till 1887. 
 
 X Earl Stanhope's Bill, " To Prohibit the Payment of Wages 
 to Workmen in Public-houses and certain other Places," taken 
 charge of in the House of Commons by Mr. Samuel Morley, 
 passed into law in 1881, and a system which had wrought nothing 
 but mischief was thus swept away. 
 
The New Philanthropy. 123 
 
 moral condition of England seemed destined by 
 Providence to lead the moral condition of the world. 
 " Year after year we are sending forth thousands and 
 hundreds of thousands of our citizens to people the 
 vast solitudes and islands of another hemisphere ; 
 the Anglo-Saxon race will shortly overspread half 
 the habitable globe. What a mighty and what a 
 rapid addition to the happiness of mankind, if these 
 thousands should carry with them, and plant in those 
 distant regions, our freedom, our laws, our morality 
 and our religion ! " His closing words, hackneyed 
 though they are, deserve to be repeated whenever 
 Lord Shaftesbury's life as a social reformer is set 
 forth, as they rang out the key-notes of the " new 
 philanthropy " for the working classes. 
 
 " We owe to the poor of our land," he said, " a 
 weighty debt. We call them improvident and immoral, 
 and many of them are so ; but that improvidence 
 and immorality are the results, in a great measure, 
 of our neglect, and, in not a little, of our example. 
 We owe them, too, the debt of kinder language and 
 more frequent intercourse. This is no fanciful obliga- 
 tion : our people are more alive than any other to 
 honest zeal for their cause, and sympathy with their 
 necessities which, fall though it oftentimes may on 
 unimpressible hearts, never fails to find some that it 
 comforts, and many that it softens. Only let us 
 declare, this night, that we will enter on a novel 
 and a better course that we will seek their temporal 
 through their eternal welfare and the half of our 
 work will then have been achieved. There are many 
 
124 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 hearts to be won, many minds to be instructed, and 
 many souls to be saved : oh Patria I oh Divum 
 domus ! the blessing of God will rest upon our 
 endeavours ; and the oldest among us may live to 
 enjoy, for himself and for his children, the opening 
 day of the immortal, because the moral, glories of the 
 British Empire." 
 
 Without pursuing in detail Lord Shaftesbury's 
 actions in regard to the question of national educa- 
 tion, it will be sufficient for our present purpose to 
 say that he never departed from the principles he laid 
 down in the speech from which we have quoted. He 
 ever pleaded for an enlarged and comprehensive 
 system for the instruction of the masses, and when in 
 1870, after large masses of the community had been 
 invested with political power, the whole question was 
 taken in hand by Mr. W. E. Forster, the member for 
 Bradford, on behalf of Mr. Gladstone's Government, 
 Lord Shaftesbury was in the forefront of the battle in 
 strenuous opposition to the Secularists. Upon the 
 second reading of the Bill he distinguished himself 
 by his moderation. " Convinced that to require as a 
 condition of State aid that the Bible should be read 
 in all schools would be resisted, he accepted the 
 measure with its optional enactments as to religious 
 education as the best possible thing, having regard to 
 the temper of Parliament. It is beyond doubt that 
 he contributed very largely to the defeat of the 
 Secularists, and saved the country from the scandal 
 of a godless system of education." * 
 * "Shaftesbury: A New Memoir," Record Newspaper Office, 1885. 
 
Education and Dwellings. 125 
 
 In considering Lord Shaftesbury's efforts to better 
 the condition of the working classes, and especially 
 the agricultural labourers, both as regards education 
 and dwellings, we must not lose sight of the fact 
 that while he was Lord Ashley he laboured under 
 special disadvantage, from having marked out for 
 himself, from the first, a course that met with the 
 strong disapprobation of his father. For ten years 
 from 1829 to 1839 he was estranged from his father's 
 home, and a reconciliation effected in the latter year 
 lasted for only a brief period. 
 
 It was only to be expected that the large manufac- 
 turers, smarting under Lord Ashley's attacks on the 
 condition of the operatives whom they employed, 
 should ask why his charity did not begin at home. 
 Hostile newspapers took the matter up, and even 
 Miss Martineau wrote such words as these : " He 
 need but have gone into the hovels of his father's 
 peasantry to have seen misery and mental and moral 
 destitution which could not be matched in the worst 
 retreats of the manufacturing population." To such 
 an extent was this persecution carried on, notwith- 
 standing the fact that it was an open secret how the 
 matter really stood, that Lord Ashley said in public : 
 " The county of Dorset is in every man's mouth ; 
 every paper, metropolitan and provincial, teems with 
 charges against us ; we are within an ace of becoming 
 a byword for poverty and oppression." 
 
 Stung by the censure of his unfriendly critics, he 
 took occasion, at an agricultural meeting held at 
 Sturminster, in Dorset, to utter what he described as 
 
126 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 " some strong truths respecting wages, dwellings, truck, 
 delay of payment, and exclusion from gleaning." This 
 of course called forth the renewed anger of his father, 
 who told him that he was exciting the people, in- 
 ducing them to make extortionate demands, and that 
 they were not easily put down when once up. " They 
 got on very well, he did not know how, with Js. and 
 even 6s. a week ; their wages could not be raised, and 
 as for their dwellings, it was very easy to point out the 
 evil, but where was the remedy ? " 
 
 That was exactly what Lord Ashley was seeking to 
 find out, but the task was one of extreme difficulty. 
 If he suppressed the faults of landed proprietors, he 
 roused the accusations of the League ; if he rebuked 
 them, he stirred the resentment of his father. 
 
 There is an old saying that " the sting of a rebuke 
 is in the truth of it " ; and, unfortunately, the state of 
 affairs in Dorsetshire and on his father's estates was 
 deplorable. " God knows," he wrote, " I have long 
 mourned over these things, and long resolved on every 
 self-denial rather than not remove them." 
 
 It was not until eight years after this that those 
 estates became his, and then he set to work in right 
 good earnest to fulfil his pledge, concentrating all his 
 energies, not in the adornment of St. Giles' House, 
 but in the state of the labourers and their dwellings. 
 He inspected the cottages, and found them "filthy, 
 close, indecent, unwholesome." " I have passed my 
 life," he wrote, " in rating others for allowing rotten 
 houses and immoral, unhealthy dwellings; and now 
 I come into an estate rife with abominations . , , and 
 
A Model Village. 127 
 
 I have not a farthing to set them right." So he 
 borrowed money, raised mortgages, sold his plate and 
 pictures, and after a desperate struggle, lasting for a 
 quarter of a century, he left the village of Wimborne 
 St. Giles a model village. 
 
 " The cottages are mostly semi-detached, and sur- 
 rounded by pleasant little gardens, neatly kept and 
 abounding in fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers. 
 These cottages, admirable in their construction, and 
 consisting of five or six rooms well planned for comfort, 
 for convenience, and for health, are let at the low rent 
 of is. a week, or one-sixteenth of the average wages 
 of the labouring men who occupy them." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SANITATION, AND THE DWELLINGS OF THE POOR. 
 
 IN 1838 a severe outbreak of disease occurred in 
 the East End of London a part of Whitechapel, 
 situated on the borders of a large and stagnant pond, 
 being the locality most affected. Mr. (afterwards Sir) 
 Edwin Chadwick, then Secretary of the Poor Law 
 Board, was applied to, and he immediately persuaded 
 his Board to institute a Medical Commission of 
 Inquiry. Dr. Neil Arnott, Dr. Kay (afterwards Sir 
 Kay-Shuttleworth), and Dr. T. Southwood Smith, 
 three of the best living authorities on sanitary science, 
 were sent to report not only on that particular out- 
 break but on the sanitary condition of the Metropolis. 
 The reports of these three pioneers became text-books 
 on sanitation. 
 
 In 1839 came the far-famed inquiry into the health 
 of the labouring classes of the other parts of England 
 and Wales. 
 
 The subject was of intense interest to Lord Ashley, 
 who had already stood forth as the pioneer of the 
 great question which in after years was to become so 
 
 conspicuous a feature of his labours the Housing of 
 
 128 
 
Sanitation, and the Dwellings of the Poor. 129 
 
 the Poor ; and in the year 1 842 the same year in 
 which the Committee of Inquiry presented its report 
 he assisted in founding the " Labourers' Friend 
 Society," afterwards known as the " Society for 
 Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes," 
 the object of which was to ventilate the question of 
 healthy homes, and to show what could be done at 
 the smallest possible cost consistent with a fair return 
 of interest on the capital expended. 
 
 It was in 1846, at one of the meetings of this 
 Society of which the Prince Consort became the 
 president that Lord Ashley drew public attention 
 to the insanitary state of the dwellings of the poor, 
 in a speech which commanded the attention of the 
 whole country. 
 
 " I do not speak merely.from books," he said, " I do 
 not speak merely from the accounts that have been 
 given me ; because I have not only in past years, but 
 during the present year, devoted a very considerable 
 number of hours day by day to going over some of 
 the worst localities in various parts of this great 
 metropolis." 
 
 In the course of his peregrinations he found crowded 
 rooms, with sometimes two or three families in a single 
 apartment, rooms so foul and dark that they were 
 exposed to every physical mischief that could beset 
 the human race without light, without water, without 
 drainage, without ventilation ; he penetrated into 
 courts and alleys so filthy that they outraged every 
 sense of decency, thronged with a dense and most 
 immoral population of every caste and grade of 
 
 9 
 
130 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 character, defiled by perpetual habits of intoxication, 
 amid riot, blasphemy, noise, and tumult, accompanied 
 by every kind of indecency. 
 
 As an active step to show what might be done to 
 remedy this mass of evil, he announced the intention 
 of the Society " to erect in the heart of the parish of 
 St. Giles a model lodging-house a house where a 
 young man coming up from the country for the first 
 time, or others who wish to live in a place where 
 some, at least, of the decencies of life are observed, 
 may find a place of retirement and of shelter at a 
 moderate rent,"* the germ of the great Model 
 Lodging-House system with which we are all 
 familiar. 
 
 Anxious as Lord Ashley was to advance the question 
 of national education, he felt satisfied that direct 
 labours in that direction were premature until the 
 dwellings of the poor were made fit for decent 
 habitation. 
 
 "There is a mighty stir now made on behalf of 
 education," he said on one occasion, and he repeated 
 the burden of his remarks a hundred times, " and I 
 thank God for it ; but let me ask you to what purpose 
 it is to take a little child, a young female for instance, 
 and teach her for six hours a day the rules of decency 
 and every virtue, and then send her back to such 
 abodes of filth and profligacy as to make her unlearn 
 by the practice of one hour the lessons of a year, to 
 witness and oftentimes to share, though at first against 
 her will, the abominations that have been recorded. 
 * " Speeches," p. 216. 
 
Cholera. 1 3 1 
 
 Gentlemen, if you desire to have a moral and well- 
 conducted people, you must do your best to place, 
 and to keep, them under such circumstances that they 
 may have the means and opportunity to bring into 
 action the lessons they have been taught, the principles 
 they have acquired. People go to their Boards of 
 Guardians and hear the long catalogue of bastardy 
 cases, and they cry out ' Sluts and profligates,' 
 assuming that, when in early life these persons have 
 been treated as swine, they are afterwards to walk 
 with the dignity of Christians." 
 
 The first legislative outcome of this agitation, of 
 any permanent importance, was the Public Health 
 Act of 1848, which he warmly supported, although 
 he thought it was susceptible of very great improve- 
 ment. Nevertheless, it was the practical beginning of 
 the work of sanitary reform. A Board of Health 
 was appointed, with Lord Ashley, Lord Carlisle, 
 Mr. Edwin Chadwick, and Dr. Southwood Smith as 
 Commissioners. 
 
 As Chairman of this Board, Lord Ashley, in con- 
 junction with Mr. Chadwick and Dr. Southwood 
 Smith, entered upon an unprecedented amount of 
 labour which can never be told in detail. In October 
 1848 the country was thrown into a state of alarm 
 by serious outbreaks of cholera. Between that date 
 and October 1st, 1849, no fewer than 14,497 deaths 
 occurred from that cause. Throughout that year 
 Lord Ashley was working with his colleagues night 
 and day in the very midst of the plague. Scenes of 
 the most horrible nature were constantly before his 
 
132 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 eyes ; labours of the most exhausting kind were his 
 daily portion. He led a charmed life, as some thought ; 
 he described it thus : " Have been mercifully preserved 
 through this pestilence. Have not, 1 thank God, 
 shrunk from one hour of duty in the midst of this 
 city of the plague, and yet it has not approached 
 either me or my dwelling." 
 
 The result of his investigations was to prove con- 
 clusively that " wherever neglect, depression, vice or 
 poverty pressed down the population, there the pesti- 
 lence raged with its retributive and warning arm ; 
 the sins of omission and commission were revisited 
 on the lives of those who perpetrated or permitted 
 them/' and that " foul drains, overflowing cesspools, 
 fetid waters, overcrowded lodging-houses, damp cellars 
 and ill-ventilated rooms attracted the pestilence, 
 which then spread to the houses of the better classes 
 and to the mansions of the rich.". 
 
 The toil and anxiety entailed upon him as Chairman 
 of the Board of Health, both during the cholera time 
 and subsequently, in relation to measures for procuring 
 a better water-supply, legislating for extra-mural in- 
 terment, enforcing vaccination and smoke-abatement 
 and such-like sanitary improvements, told greatly 
 upon his health and spirits. 
 
 Every fresh measure brought fresh labour to the 
 Board, and not only so, but it called forth the bitter 
 hostility of every class that it was compelled to 
 attack. The Dissenters were angry because a new 
 Burial Bill was proposed ; Parliamentary agents 
 became sworn enemies because their fees and general 
 
The Public Health Act. 133 
 
 expenses were reduced within reasonable limits ; 
 civil engineers, because new principles were carried 
 into effect by abler men and at less cost ; the College 
 of Physicians and all its dependencies, because of 
 independent action and singular success in dealing 
 with the cholera, many Poor Law medical officers 
 succeeding where fashionable London doctors failed ; 
 all the Boards of Guardians, for their selfishness, 
 cruelty, and reluctance to relieve the suffering poor 
 had been exposed ; all the Water Companies, for 
 their systems had been Weighed in the balance and 
 found wanting, and new ones had been introduced ; 
 the Commissioners of Sewers, for their plans and 
 principles had to be entirely reversed. 
 
 In the summer of 1854 the abolition of the Board 
 of Health was brought about, and Lord Shaftesbury's 
 consequent retirement, after he had given to it " five 
 years of his life and intense labour, and had not 
 received even the wages of a pointer, with ' That's a 
 good dog.' " The Report published by the Board in 
 1854 is a document which still remains as a standard 
 of observation, and if the Board had done no more 
 than publish that work it would have amply vindi- 
 cated itself before the country. 
 
 A few years later, when speaking at the Liverpool 
 Social Science Congress, as President of the Health 
 Section, Lord Shaftesbury spoke of the operation of 
 the Public Health Act, and showed that some towns, 
 instancing Ely, Croydon, and Liverpool had be- 
 come nearly as healthy as the country ; the reduction 
 of mortality to seventeen in the thousand being 
 
134 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 greater than the reduction in the mortality in rural 
 districts around them, which stood at twenty-one in 
 the thousand ; that in Liverpool alone the new 
 sanitary arrangements were saving 3700 lives a year 
 as compared with former times. These considera- 
 tions, he held, were but incentives to further action, 
 seeing that the preventible mortality in the country 
 amounted to no less than 90,000 a year, or, putting it 
 within easy compass and calling it 40,000, meant four 
 lives an hour ! Replying to an outcry against expense, 
 he was always ready with the affirmation that it was 
 disease that was expensive and health that was cheap. 
 
 It was while he was in office as Chairman of the 
 Board of Health, namely, in April 185 1, that he 
 brought forward in the House of Commons a Bill to 
 Encourage the Establishment of Lodging-Houses for 
 the Working Classes, and, a few days later, a Bill for 
 the Regulation and Inspection of Common Lodging- 
 Houses. 
 
 We will not weary the reader with many extracts 
 from the papers he wrote and speeches he made while 
 collecting information on the subjects he had in 
 hand. Let two, out of hundreds, suffice ; the first, 
 contributed in an article published in the Quarterly 
 Review, giving a description of a hapless wanderer 
 from the country seeking a shelter in a London 
 lodging-house, and the other given in a speech in 
 which he brought forward the first of the measures 
 referred to : 
 
 " The astonishment and perplexities of a young 
 
London Lodging- Houses. 135 
 
 person on his arrival here, full of good intentions to 
 live honestly, would be almost ludicrous were they 
 not the preludes to such mournful results. He 
 alights, and is instantly directed for the best accom- 
 modation to Duck Lane (Westminster), St. Giles, 
 Saffron Hill, Spitalfields, or Whitechapel. He 
 reaches the indicated region through tight avenues 
 of glittering fish and rotten vegetables, with door- 
 ways or alleys gaping on either side which, if they 
 be not choked with squalid garments or sickly 
 children, lead the eye through an interminable vista 
 of filth and distress and begins his search for the 
 ' good entertainment.' The pavement, where there 
 is any, rugged and broken, is bespattered with dirt 
 of every hue, ancient enough to rank with the fossils, 
 but offensive as the most recent deposits. The 
 houses small, low, and mournful present no one 
 part, in windows, doorposts, or brickwork, that 
 seems fitted to stand for another week ; rags and 
 bundles stuff up the panes and defend the passages, 
 blackened with use and by the damps arising from 
 the undrained and ill-ventilated recesses. Yet each 
 one affects to smile with promise, and invites the 
 country bumpkin to the comfort and repose of 
 ' Lodgings for Single Men/ 
 
 " He enters the first, perhaps the largest, and finds 
 it to consist of seven apartments of very moderate 
 dimensions. Here are stowed besides children 
 sixty adults, a goodly company of males and females, 
 of every profession of fraud and violence, with a very 
 few poor and industrious labourers. He turns to 
 
136 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 another hostel the reader will not, we know, pro- 
 ceed without misgivings, but we assure him our 
 picture is drawn from real life. Thepar/our measures 
 eighteen feet by ten. Beds are arranged on each side 
 of it, composed of straw, rags, and shavings, all in 
 order, but not decently according to the apostolic 
 precept. Here he sees twenty-seven male and female 
 adults, and thirty-one children, with several dogs (for 
 dogs, the friends of man, do not forsake him in his 
 most abandoned condition), in all, fifty-eight human 
 beings in a contracted den, from which light and air 
 are systematically excluded. He seeks the upper 
 room, as more likely to remind him of his native 
 hills. It measures twelve feet by ten, and contains 
 six beds, which in their turn contain thirty-two 
 individuals and these bearing but little resemblance 
 to Alexander the Great, Cujas the Lawyer, or Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury, whose bodies yielded naturally 
 a fine perfume. Disgusted once more, he turns with 
 hope to the tranquillity of a smaller tenement. Here, 
 groping his way up an ascent more like a flue than 
 a staircase, he finds a nest of four tiny compartments 
 and they are all full. It is, however, in vain to 
 search further. The evening has set in ; the tenants 
 are returned to their layers ; the dirt, confusion, and 
 obscenity baffle alike tongue, pen, and paint-brush ; 
 but if our bewildered novice would have for the night 
 a roof over his head, he must share the floor with as 
 many men, women, and babies as it has space for." 
 
 Our second extract is from the speech of Lord 
 
Dwellings of the Poor. 137 
 
 Ashley on moving to bring in the Lodging-House 
 Bill. After drawing attention to the necessity that 
 existed for making provision for the working classes 
 who were turned out of their dwellings by the opening 
 up of new thoroughfares for the improvement of the 
 metropolis, he said : 
 
 " To give a summary of the state of the country I 
 may mention that the Inspectors of the Board of 
 Health have examined 161 populous places, the 
 aggregate population being 1,912,599; and, without 
 exception, one uniform statement has been made with 
 respect to the domiciliary condition of large masses 
 of the workpeople that it is of one and the same 
 disgusting character." 
 
 He showed how in a model lodging-house a man 
 could have a compartment to himself, with a bed, 
 chair, and space for all necessary movements, for 4^. 
 a night exactly the same payment demanded from 
 him in the worst and most disgusting locality and 
 that such a house, as evidenced by the accounts of the 
 Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring 
 Classes, yielded to the investors the clear profit of 
 6 per cent. 
 
 It was a curious circumstance that, as Lord Ashley, 
 he moved for two Lodging-House Bills in the House 
 of Commons, and, his father dying in the meantime, it 
 was as Lord Shaftesbury that on the very day after 
 he took his seat in the House of Lords he moved 
 the second reading of one of them the Bill for the 
 Inspection and Registration of Lodging-Houses. This 
 
138 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 measure speedily passed into law, and proved so suc- 
 cessful in abating the monstrous evils arising from the 
 crowding of the poorest and most helpless, amidst 
 filth and stench, as thick as men, women, and children 
 could be huddled together, in unventilated rooms, that 
 it elicited from Charles Dickens the praise of being the 
 best Act ever passed by an English Legislature. 
 
 In that same year the second measure the Bill to 
 Encourage the Establishment of Lodging-Houses 
 also passed into law ; but, owing to its mutilation in 
 passing through the House of Commons, it was only 
 to a very limited extent put into practice, and in 
 course of time became a dead letter. 
 
 Two years later (1853) Lord Shaftesbury took in 
 hand a Bill to provide accommodation for the poor 
 who were turned out of their homes by the operations 
 of " Improvement Companies," and obtained a Com- 
 mittee of Inquiry ; at the same time he procured 
 further legislation to bring common lodging-houses 
 under more thorough inspection and control, so as to 
 throw broad daylight into those dens in which nine- 
 tenths of the crimes perpetrated in the metropolis 
 were planned and plotted. 
 
 There is little need to dwell in detail upon the 
 various stages of Lord Shaftesbury's labours with 
 regard to sanitary legislation up to this point.* The 
 Times summed them up in an admirable article at 
 this date,f in which it said : " To purify the Inferno 
 
 * See Hansard Debates, cxxv. 400; cxxvi. 1291 ; cxviii. 235 ; 
 cxxvii. 294 ; clvii., clviii. 
 t Times, May 16th, 1853 
 
Sanitary Legislation. 139 
 
 that reeks about us in this metropolis, to recover its 
 inmates, and to drive the incorrigible nucleus into 
 more entire insulation, is one of the labours to which 
 Lord Shaftesbury has devoted his life ; and we can 
 never be sufficiently obliged to him for undertaking a 
 task which, besides its immediate disagreeableness, 
 associates his name with so much that is shocking 
 and repulsive. 
 
 " To Lord Shaftesbury's legislation we owe the 
 gratifying fact that these recesses are explored by 
 authorised persons, that houses are no longer per- 
 mitted to take in more than as many as can breathe 
 properly in them, that lodging in cellars is prohibited, 
 that* the rooms are properly cleaned and white- 
 washed, that ventilation, lighting, and drainage are 
 provided for, and the furniture of the houses sufficient 
 for the authorised number of lodgers. As far as the 
 work has proceeded, we can hardly conceive a more 
 meritorious or more gratifying triumph. It is a great 
 result out of the very worst materials. To change a 
 city from clay to marble is nothing compared with a 
 transformation from dirt, misery, and vice to cleanli- 
 ness, comfort, and at least a decent morality." 
 
 It will be well now to glance, very rapidly, at 
 some of the innumerable movements which resulted 
 from this agitation. Sanitary questions, of which 
 Lord Shaftesbury saw the dawn and had all the early 
 labours, passed into " Imperial " subjects. Boards 
 were everywhere, laws were enacted, public attention 
 roused, and ministers declared themselves prepared to 
 bring to bear on them the whole force of Government. 
 
140 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 The matter of the dwellings of the poor in like 
 manner passed from individuals to companies, specu- 
 lators, and finally into the regions of " Imperialism." 
 But every effort advanced the common cause, and 
 it is sufficient for our present purpose to mention 
 the great organisation of Sir Sydney Waterlow and 
 the more humble, but not less useful, efforts of 
 Miss Octavia Hill ; the erection of the Peabody 
 Dwellings, and afterwards the institution of those 
 suburban cities at Shaftesbury Park, Noel Park, and 
 Queen's Park, and scores of kindred undertakings 
 which have sprung up all over the country. 
 
 Then came the great agitation of 1883-4, when the 
 Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor was 
 appointed, with the Prince of Wales as its most active 
 member, culminating in Lord Salisbury's Act of 1885 
 the " Housing of the Working Classes Act." 
 
 It was invaluable to the Commissioners to have at 
 the outset the evidence of Lord Shaftesbury, and they 
 had the good sense to make large use of his " sixty 
 years' experience" of the subject in forming their 
 conclusions. They recognised that he was without 
 doubt the first living authority on the housing of 
 the poor. 
 
 When the Report of the Commissioners was pub- 
 lished it was found that there was nothing in it with 
 regard to the state of the " slums " that had not been 
 said before it added nothing to the stock of know- 
 ledge of those who had previously examined into the 
 matter. But it gave generous acknowledgment of the 
 enormous advance which had been made during the 
 
" The Working Man's Friend." 141 
 
 previous half-century towards a solution of the great 
 problem, and it furnished a full insight into the estima- 
 tion in which Lord Shaftesbury's labours were held. 
 
 Quite early in his career Lord Shaftesbury was 
 known generally as " The Working Man's Friend," 
 and never did any man prove more emphatically his 
 claim to the title. He recognised in them the men 
 who have made our country what it is to whom the 
 nation owes a debt of boundless gratitude ; the men 
 who have tilled our fields, cut our canals, built our 
 cities, laid down our railroads, melted our iron, dived 
 into the earth and brought up millions of wealth to 
 the surface, and yet, until he espoused their cause, 
 had been the least considered and the least cared for 
 of any part of the population. Everything, therefore, 
 that made it more easy and more pleasant to live 
 every sanitary reform, prevention of plague, medical 
 discovery, drainage of soil, improvement in dwelling- 
 houses, every reformatory school, every hospital, every 
 cure of drunkenness, every movement, in short, which 
 tended to sweeten, brighten, and prolong life received 
 his hearty co-operation and support for their sakes. 
 
 We think that no one, at this time of day, will 
 question the wisdom of Lord Shaftesbury's method 
 first to provide a decent home, and then to provide 
 a judicious education. So far, much has been done 
 in both directions ; and now men have to be taught 
 how to mend their own matters of their own reason 
 and their own free-will, as arbiters of their own 
 destinies, and, to a large extent, of their children's 
 
142 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 after them. They must be taught not only that they 
 ought to be free, but that they are free, whether they 
 know it or not, for good and for evil. 
 
 We must teach both them and their children the 
 value of healthy homes, of personal cleanliness, of 
 pure air and pure water, of various kinds of food as 
 each tends to make bone, fat, or muscle ; the value of 
 various kinds of clothing and physical exercise, of a 
 free and equal development of the brain power without 
 undue strain in any one direction, and of the causes 
 of zymotic disease, consumption, scrofula, dipsomania ; 
 in short, that soundest of practical sciences the 
 science of physiology as applied to health. 
 
 It is well to call attention to these subjects with 
 marked emphasis, for no one can shut his eyes to the 
 fact that town is being added to town with marvellous 
 rapidity ; that every year the population of these 
 islands is becoming a town one ; that annually more 
 and more human beings are engulfed by the ad- 
 vancing tide of buildings, and become absorbed in 
 endless streets and courts and alleys ; that fresh air 
 and the means of wholesome exercise are daily being 
 withdrawn from larger and larger numbers of people ; 
 that crowded streets and ill-ventilated dwellings pro- 
 duce vitiated air ; that the want of a proper "supply 
 of oxygen and of means of obtaining healthy exercise 
 weakens the human system ; and that daily and hourly 
 a large number of men and women, conscious of 
 impaired vitality, resort to the spendthrift habit of 
 drawing upon capital to replace income by perma- 
 nently injuring their constitutions for the sake of the 
 
Town Populations. 143 
 
 transitory stimulus which is obtained through the use 
 of alcoholic liquors. 
 
 "The truth is," says a philanthropist in one of our 
 monthly reviews * " that our eyes are blinded to the 
 evil effects of overcrowding by reason of the continued 
 stream of fresh blood which is ever flowing from the 
 more healthy districts into our towns, thus hindering 
 and delaying the natural physical decay of the consti- 
 tutions of the inhabitants of the latter, which would 
 otherwise be more rapid, and consequently more ap- 
 parent. If we could establish a thoroughly efficient 
 blockade of our large cities, and allow no further 
 emigration into them from the country, it would not 
 be many years before the mortality in our centres of 
 population, as compared with that in healthier dis- 
 tricts, would be so marked, and the physical deteriora- 
 tion in our city population would become so apparent, 
 that we should be forced to take immediate steps to 
 prevent their utter annihilation." 
 
 * Lord Brabazon, Nineteenth Century ', vol. x., p. 84. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 RAGGED SCHOOLS. 
 
 NO account of Lord Shaftesbury as a social 
 reformer would be even tolerably complete 
 which omitted to notice his labours on behalf of 
 Ragged Schools. Forty years after he had given 
 the best of his time and talents to their advocacy, he 
 wrote : " If my life should be prolonged for another 
 year, and if, during that year, the Ragged School 
 system were to fall, I should not die in the course of 
 nature, I should die of a broken heart." 
 
 It was in 1843 that, by chance, he came across an 
 advertisement headed " Ragged Schools," being an 
 appeal on behalf of an experimental school which 
 had been opened for gutter children in an unsavoury 
 spot known municipally as Field Lane, but popularly 
 styled " Jack Ketch's Warren," from the largeness of 
 its annual contribution to the gallows. 
 
 A " Ragged School " the name was given by 
 Charles Dickens was really what Lord Shaftesbury 
 had been looking and hoping for, and he at once re- 
 plied to the advertisement. The promoters forthwith 
 waited upon him and explained fully their scheme 
 
Ragged Schools. 145 
 
 for helping the neglected, destitute, and criminal 
 children of the metropolis ; and without delay he 
 threw himself into the effort to multiply such 
 schools, and eventually to bind them together in 
 corporate union. 
 
 This enterprise led him into the heart of the vilest 
 rookeries happily unknown in the present day to 
 find places where such schools might be opened, and 
 to hunt up the young arabs of the gutter to fill them ; 
 and often might he be seen sitting amid the tattered 
 outcasts, speaking to them kindly words of admonition 
 and encouragement. 
 
 Those who only know the Ragged Schools of 
 to-day can hardly conceive of what they were in the 
 forties. The graphic pen of Charles Dickens has 
 painted from the life the very school to which the 
 memorable advertisement referred, and which was 
 the scene of Lord Shaftesbury's earliest labours. 
 
 " I found my first school," he says, " in an obscure 
 place called West Street, Saffron Hill, pitifully 
 struggling for life under every disadvantage. It had 
 no means ; it had no suitable rooms ; it derived 
 no power or protection from being recognised by 
 any authority ; it attracted within its walls a fluctu- 
 ating swarm of faces young in years, but youthful in 
 nothing else that scowled Hope out of countenance 
 It was held in a low-roofed den, in a sickening 
 atmosphere, in the midst of taint, and dirt, and 
 pestilence ; with all the deadly sins let loose, howling 
 and shrieking at the doors. Zeal did not supply 
 
 10 
 
146 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 the place of method and training ; the teachers 
 knew little of their office ; the pupils, with an evil 
 sharpness, found them out, got the better of them, 
 derided them, made blasphemous answers to Scriptural 
 questions, sang, fought, danced, robbed each other 
 seemed possessed of legions of devils. The place was 
 stormed and carried over and over again ; the lights 
 were blown out, the books strewn in the gutters, and 
 the female scholars carried off triumphantly to their 
 old wickedness. With no strength in it but its purpose, 
 the school stood, it all out and made its way. Some 
 two years since I found it quiet and orderly, full, 
 lighted with gas, well whitewashed, numerously 
 attended and thoroughly established." 
 
 The history of that school was typical of dozens of 
 others planted in the vilest and most disreputable 
 parts of London. Within ten years of its establish- 
 ment, thanks in great measure to Lord Shaftesbury's 
 influence, the Committee were able to report that 
 they had established " a free day school for infants ; 
 an evening school for youths and adults engaged in 
 daily occupation ; a women's evening school, for 
 improving character and extending domestic useful- 
 ness, thereby making better mothers and more 
 comfortable homes ; industrial classes, to teach 
 youths tailoring and shoemaking ; employment in 
 the shape of wood chopping, as an industrial test 
 for recommendation to situations ; a home for boys 
 when first engaged in places, apart from unwholesome 
 contamination ; a night refuge for the utterly desti- 
 
Life in the Slums. 147 
 
 tute ; a clothing society for the naked ; a distribution 
 of bread to the starving ; baths for the filthy ; a room 
 to dry clothes worn in the rain during the day ; 
 Bible-classes, under voluntary teaching, through which 
 nearly ten thousand persons of all ages, but of one 
 class all in a state of physical and spiritual destitution 
 had heard set forth the glad tidings of salvation ; 
 various prayer-meetings, quarterly conferences for com- 
 mittee and teachers for minute examination into the 
 detailed working of the institution ; a school missionary 
 to supply the spiritual wants of the sick, to scour the 
 streets, to bring youthful wanderers to the school, and 
 to rescue fallen females from paths of sin ; and a 
 Ragged Church for the proclamation of the Gospel 
 and the worship of God ! " 
 
 Excellent as all this was, and encouraging as an 
 example of what might be done, it was as nothing in 
 comparison with what was needed for the tens of 
 thousands of waifs and strays distributed throughout 
 the metropolis. One of the first active steps of Lord 
 Shaftesbury in connection with the movement was, 
 therefore, to visit the slums of the great city in order 
 to find out the extent of the evil to be dealt with. 
 He found that everywhere " they swarmed the streets ; 
 they gambolled in the gutters ; they, haunted the 
 markets in search of cast-away food ; they made 
 playgrounds of the open spaces ; they lurked under 
 porches of public buildings in hot and wet weather ; 
 and they crept into stables or under arches for their 
 night's lodging. They lived as the pariah dog lives, 
 and were treated much in the same way ; everybody 
 
148 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 exclaimed against the nuisance, but nobody felt it to 
 be his business to interfere." 
 
 Up to this time each Ragged School (and there 
 were not many) had an isolated and independent 
 existence, and it was borne in on the heart of one 
 Mr. R. S. Starey, one of the early workers in the 
 movement, that it would be desirable to call together 
 all the superintendents and teachers of these isolated 
 schools and set before them the benefits that might 
 accrue if they were to unite together in one common 
 society. Accordingly, in 1844, forty superintendents 
 and teachers met in a hayloft over a cowshed in the 
 very centre of what was then known as the Rookery 
 of St. Giles, and then and there this little band of 
 heroic workers formed themselves into the now world- 
 known " Ragged School Union." Six months later 
 Lord Ashley was elected President of the Union, an 
 office he retained till the end of his days. 
 
 It was soon found that union was strength, and 
 that the public association of his name with the 
 movement was an incalculable advantage. But the 
 duty was undertaken at an enormous cost. The toil 
 which the success of the movement entailed grew to 
 extraordinary dimensions. When there were more 
 than a hundred schools affiliated to the Union, and 
 each on its anniversary claimed his presence to pre- 
 side, make a speech and distribute prizes, it may be 
 imagined how great was the addition made to the 
 demands on his strength and time. 
 
 But he seems never to have known what weariness 
 meant in any work in which he was deeply interested ; 
 
The Ragged Race. 149 
 
 and though, as he said, " the ragged children were 
 never out of his thoughts night and day," though 
 he delivered thousands of speeches on their behalf, 
 though he wandered day by day in reeking courts 
 and alleys repulsive to every sense, though his house 
 was invaded at all hours by secretaries of societies, 
 teachers, superintendents, even the ragged poor them- 
 selves, he never grew weary in his work, even though, 
 as we have seen, he had at the same time great 
 legislative measures on hand demanding continued 
 alertness of every faculty. It was said of him that 
 he spoke on each of the hundred subjects in which he 
 was interested with so much vigour and earnestness 
 as to give the impression that the matter occupying 
 his thought at the moment was the one hobby of his 
 life ; but those who knew him best perceived in every 
 utterance on behalf of Ragged Schools a depth of 
 sympathy and tenderness, a restful satisfaction, an 
 inspiring hope which no other work seemed to afford 
 him in an equal degree. 
 
 A great impetus was given to the movement by the 
 publication of an article from his pen on " Ragged 
 Schools," in which he described the habits and sur- 
 roundings of the queer mortals, " who look not like 
 th' inhabitants o' the earth, and yet are on't," the 
 objects of his solicitude. He says : 
 
 "It is a curious race of beings that these philan- 
 thropists have taken in hand. Every one who walks 
 the streets of the metropolis must daily observe several 
 members of the tribe, bold, and pert, and dirty as 
 
150 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 London sparrows, but pale, feeble, and sadly inferior 
 to them in plumpness of outline. Their business, or 
 pretended business, seems to vary with the locality. 
 At the West End they deal in lucifer matches, 
 audaciously beg, or tell a touching tale of woe. Pass 
 on to the central parts of the town, to Holborn or 
 the Strand, and the regions adjacent to them, and you 
 will there find the numbers greatly increased ; a few 
 are pursuing the avocations above mentioned of their 
 more Corinthian fellows; many are spanning the 
 gutters with their legs, and dabbling with earnestness 
 in the latest accumulation of nastiness, while others, 
 in squalid and half-naked groups, squat at the 
 entrances of the narrow, fetid courts and alleys that 
 lie concealed behind the deceptive frontages of 
 our larger thoroughfares. Whitechapel and Spital- 
 fields teem with them like an ants' nest ; but it is 
 in Lambeth and in Westminster that we find the 
 most flagrant traces of their swarming activity. There 
 the foul and dismal passages are thronged with 
 children of both sexes, and of every age from three 
 to thirteen. Though wan and haggard, they are 
 singularly vivacious, and engaged in every sort of 
 occupation but that which would be beneficial to 
 themselves and creditable to the neighbourhood. 
 Their appearance is wild ; the matted hair, the dis- 
 gusting filth that renders necessary a closer inspection 
 before the flesh can be discerned between the rags 
 which hang about it, and the barbarian freedom 
 from all superintendence and restraint, fill the mind 
 of a novice in these things with perplexity and 
 
Juvenile Crime. 151 
 
 dismay. Visit these regions in the summer, and 
 you are overwhelmed by the exhalations ; visit them 
 in the winter and you are shocked by the spectacle 
 of hundreds shivering in apparel that would be scanty 
 in the tropics ; many are all but naked ; those that 
 are clothed are grotesque : the trousers, where they 
 have them, seldom pass the knee ; the tail-coats very 
 frequently trail below the heels. In this guise they 
 run about the streets and line the banks of the river 
 at low water, seeking coals, sticks, corks, for nothing 
 comes amiss as treasure-trove ; screams of delight 
 burst occasionally from the crowds, and leave the 
 passer-by, if he be in a contemplative mood, to 
 wonder and to rejoice that moral and physical de- 
 gradation have not yet broken every spring of their 
 youthful energies." 
 
 The movement grew with rapidity ; the children 
 flocked to the schools, sometimes it may be for the 
 sake of the light and warmth and shelter, oftener 
 perhaps for the fun of the thing, but still they came, 
 and with them a staff of manly men and brave women 
 who gave their time, their money, and their talents 
 gratuitously and ungrudgingly to the work. Questions 
 relating to the immediate education and relief of street 
 arabs soon gave place to larger and wider questions 
 how they were to be employed, what was to be their 
 future. 
 
 It was found that between 1840 and 1847 youthful 
 crime had increased to an enormous extent. Youths, 
 whose ages ranged from fourteen to twenty-four, 
 
152 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 were shown to constitute less than a tenth of the 
 population, while in point of fact they committed 
 no less than a fourth part of the crime. It was 
 stated on authority that in London alone there 
 were over thirty thousand "naked, filthy, roaming, 
 lawless, and deserted children, quite distinct from the 
 ordinary poor." 
 
 To let these alone was to ensure that they would 
 not let society alone hereafter. The quick-eyed, 
 ragged urchin who could successfully withdraw an 
 article from a window stall and transfer it to his 
 trousers' pocket, would, in all probability, be a des- 
 perate burglar in a few years if his present pilfering 
 were not prevented. He needed but little practice to 
 master the easy rule of progression in crime. " For 
 example," says a practical philanthropist, " a young 
 acquaintance of ours graduated in a fortnight from 
 stealing twopence to taking a paraffin lamp, and 
 from taking a paranin lamp to driving off in a horse 
 and cart not his own. And when, from constant 
 practice, the child's nimble fingers have attained 
 dexterity in the art of thieving, he will not only brag 
 of his exploits among his young companions, but also 
 initiate them in the tricks of his trade. Thus he 
 becomes ' captain ' of a gang of child-rogues, who 
 drink in with avidity his thrilling tales of hair-breadth 
 escapes from shopmen's and policemen's clutches, and 
 eagerly covet similar experiences. Some follow him 
 chiefly from that boyish love of adventure which a 
 career of petty theft furnishes so many opportunities 
 to gratify, while others join the band simply to satisfy 
 
Emigration. 153 
 
 the natural craving of empty stomachs for food 
 otherwise not forthcoming." 
 
 It was in order to rescue the deserving from the 
 contamination of such, and other, influences, that in 
 June 1848 Lord Ashley brought forward a motion 
 in the House of Commons, "That it is expedient 
 that means be annually provided for the voluntary 
 emigration to some one of Her Majesty's colonies of 
 a certain number of young persons, of both sexes, 
 who have been educated in the schools ordinarily 
 called ' Ragged Schools,' in and about the metropolis." 
 He stated that with the aid of the London City 
 Mission 1600 street arabs had been placed under 
 examination, of whom 162 confessed that they had 
 been in prison not once nor twice many of them 
 several times ; 116 had run away from their homes, 
 the result, in many instances, of ill-treatment ; 170 
 slept in lodging-houses nests of every abomination 
 that the mind of man can conceive ; 253 confessed 
 that they lived altogether by begging ; 216 had neither 
 shoes nor stockings ; 280 had no hats, caps, or head- 
 covering ; 10 1 had no linen ; 219 never slept in 
 beds ; 68 were the children of convicts ; 125 had 
 step-mothers, to whom may be traced much of the 
 misery that drives the children of the poor to the 
 commission of crime ; 306 had lost one or both 
 parents, a large proportion having lost both. 
 
 Even more startling was the statement, compiled 
 from the reports of the metropolitan police, that in the 
 previous year (1847) there were taken into custody 
 62,181 persons of all ages and of both sexes. Of 
 
154 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 these 20,702 were females, and 41,479 were males ; 
 whereof there were under twenty years of age 1 5,698 ; 
 between ten and fifteen, 3,682 ; under ten, 362. Of 
 the whole 62,000, 22,075 could neither read nor 
 write, and 35,227 could read only, or read and write 
 imperfectly. Out of these 62,000 persons taken into 
 custody there were no less than 28,118 who had no 
 business, trade, calling, or occupation whatsoever. 
 
 Lord Ashley's proposal, in order to stimulate the 
 Ragged School system, was that the Government 
 should agree to take every year from these schools 
 say 1000 children 500 boys and the same number 
 of girls and transplant them at the public expense 
 to South Australia, the colony at that time making 
 the greatest demand for labour. The response of 
 the Government was a grant of 1500 for an 
 experimental trial of the scheme, and this, aided 
 by contributions of friends, placed Lord Ashley in a 
 position to launch it. 
 
 From its inception the scheme was a success, 
 " Lord Ashley's boys " soon became a demand in 
 the colonies, and the most gratifying accounts were 
 received of their behaviour under the altered cir- 
 cumstances of their lives. Yet, strange to say, when 
 in the following year Lord Ashley narrated in the 
 House of Commons the story of the success of the 
 scheme, the House refused a further grant, and 
 henceforth emigration was promoted from private 
 sources. 
 
 Although we cannot follow in detail the marvellous 
 developments and amplifications of the Ragged School 
 
The Shoe-black Brigade. 155 
 
 Union, we must at least glance at a few. In Novem- 
 ber 1850, in view of the Great Exhibition of the 
 following year, a band of Ragged School teachers 
 met at Field Lane to consider how they might 
 obtain employment for some of their scholars when 
 London would be crowded with visitors from all 
 parts of the world. Various simple industries were 
 considered, such as wood-chopping and mat-making, 
 and so far the matter ended. But as four of the 
 teachers * were walking arm-in-arm up the middle of 
 Holborn Hill on their way home, one of them made 
 the suggestion, " Why should we not employ shoe- 
 blacks in the streets of London as they do in 
 various foreign cities ? " 
 
 The idea was snapped at, each subscribed 10s. 
 on the spot the price of a uniform and apparatus 
 for four boys 500 circulars were sent out, and the 
 first and only reply came as follows : 
 
 "Dear MacGregor, Good idea. Carry it out. 
 I will give you 5. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " Ashley." 
 
 The scheme was successful beyond all anticipa- 
 tion. Lord Ashley became president of the society, 
 " stations " were assigned to the boys ; Sir George 
 Cornewall Lewis, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 
 * The four teachers were John MacGregor (Rob Roy), J. R. 
 Fowler, R. J. Snape, and F. S. Reilly (afterwards Sir Francis 
 Reilly, K.C.M.G.). 
 
156 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 obtained the insertion of a clause in an Act of 
 Parliament whereby street shoeblacks were hence- 
 forward to be regarded as functionaries to be regulated 
 and protected by the police. From the outset the 
 earnings of the boys were divided into three parts : 
 one part went into the boy's own pocket, one part 
 to the society's fund for working expenses, and 
 one part to the boys' bank. The philanthropic 
 enterprise now extends to the whole kingdom. 
 Thousands of boys have been trained under its 
 auspices, but at their own cost, who, but for its 
 instrumentality, would probably have drifted into 
 the criminal classes. The wise forethought which 
 prompted the founders of this society to dispose 
 of the earnings of the boys into equal proportions 
 has been the rule to this day. " Unlike man) 
 societies, which flourish for a season and then begir 
 gradually to wither away, this has maintained it< 
 robust and healthy growth, and every year th< 
 earnings have steadily increased, until in 1892 the) 
 reached, merely for shoeblacking, the sum of 7 5, 80c 
 The present income of the brigade in London alon< 
 is over 1000 a month."* 
 
 Another important organisation sprang out of th 
 Ragged School Union namely, the establishment c 
 refuges and industrial classes. The old complain 
 upon which Lord Shaftesbury had so often harpe 
 when speaking upon education and the dwellings c 
 the poor that it was useless to educate young peopl 
 for a few hours in the day and then send them bac 
 * " Life of John MacGregor" (Rob Roy), p. 86, 
 
Refuges and Industrial Classes. 157 
 
 to filthy homes and immoral influences applied with 
 special force to the children of the Ragged Schools. 
 It was found that the work in these schools * lost 
 much of its moral power in consequence of the 
 constant and daily antagonism it encountered from 
 the exposure of the scholars, on retiring from the 
 scene of instruction, to all that was contaminating 
 and vile in the wretched places they called their 
 homes. Lessons of virtue were nullified by examples 
 of vice." Special and successful efforts were there- 
 fore made to provide refuges not in the metropolis 
 only, but in the large towns and cities of the kingdom. 
 These were of two kinds : night refuges for casual 
 vagrants, preference being given to children attending 
 Ragged Schools, and permanent refuges for the 
 support and education, for a stated period, of young 
 persons between ten and sixteen years. In this work 
 Lord Shaftesbury, as president of the Reformatory 
 and Refuge Union, took an absorbing interest, and 
 an enormous amount of good was accomplished. 
 It was to the refuge work, however, that he devoted 
 his chief attention ; in reformatory work others were 
 more prominent. 
 
 The intention of the industrial classes was rather 
 to assist in the formation of tidy and useful habits 
 than to rear a race of regular artisans. "In some of 
 the classes, making and mending their own clothes 
 was the only thing taught to the children ; in others, 
 making and printing paper bags, printing handbills 
 and circulars, making mats and church hassocks, and 
 other simple handicrafts." 
 
158 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 This movement, no doubt, led up to the Industrial 
 School system, which came under the jurisdiction 
 of the Home Office Department, and played an 
 important part in the dimunition of juvenile crime, 
 which has decreased during the last thirty years no 
 less than 75 per cent. 
 
 No words of praise can be too high, and no fear of 
 exaggeration can be entertained in speaking of the 
 wide usefulness of two other developments of the 
 Ragged School movement namely, the National 
 Refuges for Homeless and Destitute Children, and 
 the Training Ships. Of the former, the late Mr. 
 William Williams, a man of indomitable zeal and of 
 great courage, intelligence, and activity, was the prime 
 mover, and remained at the head of the movement 
 until his death. 
 
 The institution of the training ships was a happy 
 inspiration of Lord Shaftesbury's. In February 1866 
 the lads in the casual wards of workhouses and other 
 similar places were invited to a supper at St. Giles' 
 Refuge, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 Four hundred were invited ; only 1 50 were present, 
 some of the absentees excusing themselves on the 
 ground that they " thought it was a trap," and others, 
 more practical, that they thought "they would get 
 lots of jaw and nothing to eat." After supper a 
 meeting was held, when Lord Shaftesbury asked 
 them the question, "Supposing that there were in 
 the Thames a big ship, large enough to contain a 
 thousand boys, would you like to be placed on board 
 to be taught trades, or trained for the navy and 
 
Training Ships. 159 
 
 the merchant service ? " A unanimous shout in the 
 affirmative was- the reply. 
 
 The Times took the matter up ; the Committee of 
 the Boys' Refuge discussed it, and it was resolved to 
 petition the Government for a useless ship of war and 
 fit it up for homeless boys who wished to follow a sea- 
 faring life, and at the same time to acquire a house 
 with about fifty acres of land where boys, not fitted 
 for the sea, could be trained in agricultural pursuits, 
 and so be qualified for colonial life. 
 
 The Government granted the Chichester, a fifty-gun 
 frigate, which had never been out of dock, and so 
 rapidly extended the good work on board that in 
 1874 the Arethusa was granted for the same purpose. 
 In due course the Farm and Shaftesbury schools at 
 Bisley, and Fortescue House at Twickenham were 
 opened for the training of boys for colonial life ; 
 Girls' Refuges were established at Sudbury and 
 Ealing ; other organisations were set on foot, and the 
 " National Refuges for Homeless and Destitute 
 Children " continue to this day an honour and a 
 blessing to the country. 
 
 On laying the foundation stone of the new buildings 
 of the Central Boys' and Girls' Refuge at Manchester, 
 in June 1883, Lord Shaftesbury, in his speech, said 
 he was " glad to see they had been directing their 
 efforts towards the training ship at Liverpool, the 
 like of which we had many in our different ports. 
 He believed these training ships would conduce more 
 to the welfare of England and the honour of their 
 country than almost anything he had ever known. 
 
160 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 Our mercantile marine was now supplied almost 
 entirely by foreigners, and the object of these training 
 ships was to have it supplied by native-born subjects, 
 men who in case of exigency in case of war, which 
 God forbid ! would be able to furnish our military 
 marine with true patriotic British soldiers to defend 
 our shores from insult and aggression. It was a 
 noble training, too, for the lads, and showed what 
 might be done among the destitute, among the most 
 degraded and miserable. He had always maintained, 
 and his long experience proved it, that the deeper we 
 go the brighter the jewels we bring from the depths 
 to which we descend. He was satisfied that among 
 the great mass of the poorer classes there were some 
 of the noblest spirits, if only they were brought to the 
 surface and trained in the fear of God." 
 
 In a recent article* Earl Compton, the present 
 president of the Ragged School Union, says : 
 
 " For years the education of the children was carried 
 on in the Ragged Schools, until a national system 
 was adopted. But even then the work of the Union 
 could not stop ; for while secular teaching was no 
 longer wanted, religious training and secular in- 
 struction remained as necessary as ever. No national 
 system can supply the spiritual and physical needs 
 of the children of the poor, many thousands of whom 
 are even now only half-clad in winter, many are 
 shoeless and many are half-starved. As our ideas 
 progress the wants of child-life increase. Thus it is 
 * The Quiver i April 1897. 
 
The Ragged School Union. 161 
 
 that after fifty-two years the work is greater and the 
 workers are as much needed as in the commencement. 
 It is to meet this necessity that more than 5000 
 voluntary helpers are now labouring amongst, and in 
 touch with, 50,000 of London's poorest children. 
 
 " Free breakfasts, penny dinners, soup suppers are 
 given to the hungry children, and none know better 
 than the School Board teachers how many are half- 
 starved when they arrive at school, and what little 
 prospect they have of a meal during the day. . . . 
 Thousands are sent, under proper management, for a 
 day in the country ; and what is better, many a 
 sickly child picks up strength by a fortnight's stay in 
 one of the Holiday Homes." 
 
 One of the latest developments of the work of the 
 Ragged School Union is the attention which is being 
 paid to poor crippled children, of whom there are now 
 no fewer than 6000 on the books. 
 
 Of the schools affiliated, at the present time, (1897), 
 to the Union, there are 192 separate buildings where 
 253 afternoon and evening Sunday Schools are held, 
 with an average attendance of 50,000 children and 
 4887 teachers. Only 79 of all the workers receive 
 salaries, and these give all their time. In addition 
 there are 8 Day Schools, with an average attendance 
 of over 1800; 53 Night Schools, with 2400; 116 
 Industrial Classes, with 4700 ; 198 Special Religious 
 Services, with 15,567; 232 Bible-classes, with 4523; 
 131 Mothers' Meetings, with 9298 ; 204 Prayer 
 
 11 
 
1 62 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 Meetings, with 9200 ; 171 Bands of Hope, with 13,067 
 members ; 97 School Libraries ; 70 Penny Banks, 
 with 21,000 depositors and over 11,665 deposited ; 
 119 Men's and Lads' Clubs, Gymnasia, etc., with 
 3500 members, and Recreation Classes, etc., for 2200 
 members. 
 
 " The Ragged School Union," says Earl Compton 
 in conclusion, " by its businesslike, quiet, and zealous 
 labours, has gained the good wishes and respect of 
 all who have gone deeply into the question of the 
 training of our young ; and no agency could be less 
 spared than the one which takes to its heart and 
 cares for the most neglected and the most wretched." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 MULTUM IN PARVO. 
 
 IN the preceding chapters we have attempted to 
 describe the main public achievements of Lord 
 Shaftesbury. Let us now turn to some of his minor 
 but, in many respects, not less important, labours in 
 a less public sphere ; glancing first at those relating 
 to religion, and next at those connected with social 
 philanthropies and reforms. 
 
 It must be understood, at the outset of our re- 
 marks on the first head, that Lord Shaftesbury was an 
 Evangelical Churchman, of the old school of Evan- 
 gelicals, bitterly hostile to Roman Catholicism, and 
 antagonistic to the Oxford movement in every phase 
 of its manifold ramifications. He believed in original 
 sin and the necessity of a " new birth " to righteous- 
 ness ; in Justification by Faith as the very life of the 
 Bible and the key of the Reformation ; in the inspira- 
 tion of the Holy Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation 
 " from the very first syllable to the last " ; in Divine 
 Providence as guiding every incident in human life, 
 however inexplicable ; in direct answers to prayer ; 
 
 in appropriating, by faith and love, the merits of 
 
 163 
 
164 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. These views, branded 
 by many as narrow, he held from early youth 
 till his death, never deviating from them by a 
 hair's breadth. He was brought much into contact, 
 and willingly, with the evangelists and philan- 
 thropists of Nonconformity ; he gave as wide a 
 berth as he could to Ritualists, for whom he prayed, 
 " O Lord, deliver the Church of these men, who, while 
 their hearts tare in the Vatican, still eat the bread of 
 the Establishment and undermine her " ; and he had 
 no sympathy with the Broad Church, whose creed he 
 denominated Neology. 
 
 Every organisation that had for its object the carry- 
 ing out of the principles of the Reformation, every 
 bulwark of backbone Protestantism, found in Lord 
 Shaftesbury a warm-hearted supporter. To his view 
 the stability of the Constitution, the true progress of 
 the nation, the well-being of the people, all hung upon 
 faithfulness to these principles. For more than half 
 a century he was regarded as the lay leader of the 
 Low Church party although he himself repudiated 
 the title and in Parliament, on the platform, and in 
 the press he was engaged in almost unceasing contro- 
 versy with the Church of Rome and the High Church 
 party on the one hand, and the Broad Church party 
 on the other. 
 
 Although it is true that in 1829 three years after 
 he entered Parliament he voted in favour of Catholic 
 Emancipation, he had special reasons for doing so. 
 " At first I voted against it," he wrote, " but when 
 Peel and Wellington took it up, and showed the 
 
Roman Catholicism. 165 
 
 necessity for it, I saw that resistance was impos- 
 sible. It was a subject that was always coming up ; 
 it stood in the way of everything. So, although I 
 voted against it at first, when Peel and Welling- 
 ton changed I changed, and recorded my vote for 
 Emancipation as a member of the Commons and 
 of the Government." 
 
 A remarkable entry in his diary some years later 
 on, shows his feeling with regard to the matter : 
 
 "April 8tk, 1835. It is a sign, a fearful sign of 
 retributive justice, that every great question involving 
 the existence of principles, the safety of institutions, 
 and the stability of Governments, has now for five 
 years been determined by majorities equal to, or less 
 than, the numbers admitted from the ranks of Popery 
 to the privileges of members of Parliament. The 
 other night the division was carried by thirty-three, 
 the precise number of Papists in the House of 
 Commons ! " 
 
 It was a matter of course that he persistently 
 opposed the grant to the Maynooth Roman Catholic 
 College in Ireland, a subject which, in 1845 and 
 onwards, made an unprecedented stir in Protestant 
 circles. He took exception to the grant on the 
 ground that it was encouraging the Roman Catholic 
 religion, fostering its colleges where that religion was 
 taught, and endowing its priesthood involving con- 
 cession of principle without corresponding benefit. 
 
 The Papal Aggression, as it was called, of 1850 
 
1 66 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 caused Lord Ashley to stand forth as the acknow- 
 ledged champion of Protestantism. A Papal Bull 
 had been published abolishing the administration of 
 Roman Catholics in England by Vicars Apostolic, 
 and appointing instead two Archbishops and twelve 
 Bishops, with territorial districts. Dr. Wiseman was 
 raised to the dignity of Cardinal, and was appointed 
 the first Archbishop of Westminster. He forthwith 
 issued a pastoral, heading it " From out of the 
 Flaminian Gate at Rome," and this notorious letter, 
 full, it must be confessed, of arrogant assumption, 
 ignored the Church of England, and spoke as though 
 England had been restored to the Roman Communion, 
 and would henceforth be ecclesiastically governed by 
 the new hierarchy. 
 
 This " aggression," coupled with the rapid rise and 
 spread of Puseyism and the secession of notable men 
 to the Church of Rome, caused a sensation and an 
 activity such as had never been known before and 
 will probably never be known again. The Eccle- 
 siastical Titles Act of 185 1 was the Parliamentary 
 outcome of the agitation, and was introduced by the 
 Government of the day to render the assumption of 
 these titles illegal. As everybody knows, the Act did 
 not please anybody or accomplish anything, and in 
 course of time good Protestants made no objection to 
 the assumed ecclesiastical titles, and the Act remained 
 a dead letter for twenty years, when it was at length 
 repealed. 
 
 In this, as in many other controversies, Lord Ashley 
 was constant in his saying, " We wage no war upon 
 
Church Reform. 167 
 
 the Roman Catholics of these realms, but we wage 
 interminable war against the Pope and his Cardinals." 
 
 In 1 85 1 the Protestant Alliance was formed, and 
 Lord Ashley became its energetic president. The 
 object of the Society was, and is, to establish union 
 among Evangelical Protestants, and to maintain and 
 defend against all encroachments of Popery the Scrip- 
 tural doctrines of the Reformation and the principles 
 of religious liberty as the best security for the temporal 
 and spiritual welfare of the kingdom. 
 
 As a Church Reformer Lord Shaftesbury rendered 
 important services. So early as 1836 he became 
 identified with the Church Pastoral Aid Society. At 
 its inauguration seventy clergymen met to " consider 
 a plan for extending the means of grace in and to 
 necessitous parishes in strict conformity with the spirit, 
 constitution, and discipline of the Established Church." 
 The result of the meeting, at which Lord Ashley 
 presided, was the formation of the Society, "for 
 the purpose of benefiting the population of our own 
 country by increasing the number of working clergy- 
 men in the Church of England, and encouraging the 
 appointment of pious and discreet laymen as helpers 
 to the clergy in duties not ministerial." 
 
 Although it was patent to everybody that there was 
 at that time a lamentable lack of clergymen to minister 
 to the densely crowded districts of the country, and 
 that there was a crying need for pastoral aid, much 
 controversy ensued as to the nature of the lay help 
 that should be given, some contending that it should 
 be limited to candidates for holy orders who had 
 
1 68 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 completed their university course and were waiting for 
 ordination, while others were opposed altogether to 
 the introduction into the Church of a new order of 
 lay teachers not amenable to ecclesiastical authority. 
 Notwithstanding formidable opposition from many 
 quarters, the Society decided " to assist, as it might 
 be able, in the supply to destitute places of lay agents, 
 whether candidates for holy orders or others, or 
 whether partially or wholly to be maintained, which 
 lay agents shall act under the direction of the 
 incumbent, and be removable at his pleasure." 
 
 For over sixty years the Society has been in 
 existence, and throughout his life Lord Shaftesbury 
 gave to its operations the best of his time and talents. 
 He presided, almost without a break, at its popular 
 annual meeting, and it has been said that his speeches 
 on these occasions " give the religious history of nearly 
 half a century." 
 
 The employment of the laity for spiritual work 
 always had the warm advocacy of Lord Shaftesbury. 
 In the splendid work of the London City Mission he 
 took a special interest. Although the Society was 
 founded in 1835, it was not until ten years later that 
 he was publicly identified with it, and then it was as 
 a debtor to the Society, for he was wont to confess 
 that without its aid he could never have prosecuted 
 his inquiries into the state of the dwellings of the 
 poor, or of the state of misery and moral degradation 
 in which they were living. He admired the devoted 
 lives of the missionaries and their unwearying solicitude 
 to bring the glad tidings of the Gospel into the homes 
 
The Open Air Mission. 169 
 
 of the poor and neglected. " These men/' he said, 
 " go out day by day taking God's Word in all its 
 simplicity, not charged, as many are, with Hebrew 
 and Greek and Latin, and the higher criticism and 
 1 all that dreadful nonsense ' ; they go out with nothing 
 but a deep, living knowledge of the Word of God, and 
 see what marvellous achievements have been wrought 
 thereby." And truly these " Spiritual Police of 
 London," as he called this army of missionaries, have 
 made the hearts of tens of thousands to rejoice in 
 living better lives, in better homes, and with a com- 
 fortable sense that they are not left alone in the 
 world, but that some at least care for their state. 
 
 In like manner he admired and supported the work 
 of the Open Air Mission. Such religious services he 
 regarded as perfectly normal, seeing that the earliest 
 preaching of the Gospel was in the open air ; and they 
 were certainly ecclesiastical, as the Bishops were wont 
 at one time to preach at Paul's Cross. He was himself 
 an occasional preacher, and it was through his instru- 
 mentality that the worthy Archbishop Tait was 
 induced to preach on the steps of the Royal Exchange. 
 " I believe," said Lord Shaftesbury, " that if you go 
 and speak to the people daily and hourly the simple 
 Word of God, you will be astonished at the thousands 
 that will rally round the preacher, and at the mighty 
 effects he will produce." Mighty effects were pro- 
 duced, multitudes were led to lead quiet and peaceable 
 lives, bad habits were abandoned, and a new tone was 
 given to the religious life of the poorer classes. To 
 the last he was as forward in promoting Evangelical 
 
170 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 preaching as he was sternly opposed to Romanism 
 and Ritualism. But, although he encouraged such 
 efforts as those of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, he did 
 not sympathise with the mode of operations adopted 
 by the Salvation Army in their directly religious 
 work. " Reverence," said he, " must be the basis of 
 all true religion " ; and this quality he considered at 
 that time was sadly lacking among the Salvationists. 
 
 It may not be generally known to our readers that 
 up to the year 1855 there was in this land of religious 
 liberty an Act of Parliament in force and in operation 
 which made it illegal for more than twenty persons, 
 above the members of a household, to meet together 
 for reading the Bible and religious worship, unless the 
 place of meeting was licensed, under a penalty of 
 fine and imprisonment. So recently as 1820, Lord 
 Barham, afterwards Lord Gainsborough, was fined 
 ^"40 20 for each meeting for holding religious 
 meetings in his house when he was unwell and 
 unable to use the village schoolroom. In 1854 a 
 magistrate in a northern county, finding great religious 
 destitution in his densely populated neighbourhood, 
 instituted religious meetings in a large cottage on his 
 estate. He was threatened with proceedings for a 
 breach of the Conventicle Act, and, being a magistrate, 
 did not dare to set the law at defiance, and the meetings 
 were given up. " The gentleman in question," said 
 Lord Shaftesbury, " might have had a cock-fight, 
 jumping in sacks, or any sort of amusement, and 
 nobody could have objected to it; but the moment 
 
Freedom to Worship God. 171 
 
 this gentleman, commiserating the religious destitution 
 of the people, went to their cottages, read to them a 
 chapter in the Bible, and joined with them in religious 
 worship, the law said, ' Mind what you are doing, for 
 if you are caught at this again you will be fined 20' " 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury saw that here was an engine 
 which, in the hands of the High Church party, might 
 be made destructive to many of the institutions he 
 was fostering. In that very year (1854) the London 
 City Mission alone had held no fewer than 25,318 
 meetings, of which 22,000 were in direct infringement 
 of the law! In May 1855, therefore, he gave notice 
 of a motion to repeal the obnoxious clauses of the 
 Act which related to this prohibition. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford (Wilberforce) and the Earl 
 of Derby gave vehement and persistent opposition ; 
 many bishops sided with them, and what at first had 
 appeared to Lord Shaftesbury to be merely a matter 
 that would, so soon as the anomaly were pointed out, 
 he remedied, gave rise to a long and anxious struggle. 
 Bishop Wilberforce and Earl Derby succeeded in 
 getting the Bill referred to a Select Committee, where 
 it was so terribly mauled and mangled that Lord 
 Shaftesbury moved its rejection in a masterly and 
 memorable speech in which he trod under foot all 
 the proposed clauses that required for such services 
 the presence of a " licensed " curate, and that prayer, 
 if offered, should only be by the permission of the 
 incumbent or bishop, and so on, and claimed that 
 " every man should have a perfect right to worship 
 God when and how he pleased to worship in his 
 
172 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 own house, with his neighbours, in any number, and 
 at any time ; that this should not be a mere privilege, 
 but a right, unless it could be shown that public 
 morality or public safety would be endangered by it." 
 
 The effect of this speech, and that of Lord Brougham 
 who followed, was that the Bill of the Earl of Derby 
 was withdrawn, and a little later on Lord Shaftesbury's 
 Religious Worship Bill, enabling every householder 
 to use his house for religious worship free from the 
 fear of pains and penalties, or the interference of any 
 power, judicial or ecclesiastical, passed into law. 
 
 Two years later (1857) a series of Special Religious 
 Services were held in Exeter Hall on Sunday even- 
 ings, at which some of the " Shaftesbury Bishops," 
 among other ecclesiastics, took an active part. The 
 audiences averaged about 5000 persons, while 
 hundreds were unable to gain admission. But the 
 clergyman of the parish in which Exeter Hall is 
 situated issued an inhibition, and, until the legal 
 point at issue should be settled, the services were 
 suspended. The Nonconformists then stepped in by 
 mutual arrangement, and Lord Shaftesbury brought 
 forward a Religious Worship Act Amendment Bill 
 to make a rector's sanction unnecessary when there 
 were more than 2000 parishioners. This was 
 strenuously opposed by Bishop Wilberforce and his 
 party, and by consent the question was adjourned 
 until the following year, when Archbishop Tait 
 brought in his Bill for Legalising Special Services 
 in connection with the Church of England in un- 
 consecrated buildings, " The Bishops and Lord 
 
Religious Services in Theatres. 173 
 
 Shaftesbury," says the Record, "each succeeded in 
 tearing to pieces the Bill of the other, with the result 
 that nothing at all was done." 
 
 But a direct outcome of the Exeter Hall services 
 was the inauguration of special evening services in 
 St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, and 
 the holding of Sunday evening services in the metro- 
 politan theatres. The latter movement may be said 
 to have been "founded" by Lord Shaftesbury, in 
 so far as any movement that could not possibly be 
 inaugurated or sustained except by the united efforts 
 of many, may be ascribed to the labours of an 
 individual. Seven London theatres were opened 
 for religious services in the first two months of i860, 
 with an average attendance of over 20,000 persons. 
 At these services Lord Shaftesbury frequently 
 " assisted " by reading the Scriptures, giving out the 
 hymns, or briefly explaining the aim in view. His 
 standpoint was this : 
 
 "To aid the progress of the general improvement 
 is the object of these special services. No one con- 
 templates them as a permanent system ; our desire 
 is to fell the trees, to clear the jungle, to remove 
 impediments. We hope to bring thousands of our 
 ignorant and neglected brethren to think about 
 Christianity. Having learned it, they will, we trust, 
 pursue it ; and, rising above their attendance at the 
 theatre, attach themselves to the Church of England, 
 or some one or other of the recognised and established 
 forms of worship." 
 
174 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 Of course the feelings of the " unco' guid " were 
 violated ; and on February 24th, i860, Lord Dun- 
 gannon called attention in the House of Lords to the 
 performance of Divine service at Sadler's Wells and 
 other theatres by clergymen of the Church of England 
 on Sunday evenings, and moved a resolution " that 
 such services being highly irregular and inconsistent 
 with order, are calculated to injure rather than 
 advance the progress of sound religious principles 
 in the metropolis and throughout the country." 
 
 In one of the best speeches he ever delivered Lord 
 Shaftesbury replied to this charge, and for two or 
 three hours kept the "statue gallery" of the peers 
 spellbound as he told the story of the movement, 
 the inability of the churches to cope with the irreligion 
 of the masses, and the proved good that these services 
 had accomplished. He flatly denied, from personal 
 experience, the charges of Lord Dungannon, that the 
 meetings were in any way disorderly, and he con- 
 cluded with this forcible appeal, which is worthy of 
 repetition to-day : 
 
 "My lords, you must perceive the rising struggle 
 to preach the Gospel among this mighty mass of 
 human beings. Can you be indifferent to it ? I ask 
 whether you are prepared, as members of the Church 
 of England, to see the Church stand aloof and the 
 whole of this movement given up exclusively to the 
 Dissenters? Will you say to those destitute and 
 hungering men, ' We can give you no sort of food. 
 Come, if you like, to Episcopal churches and chapels, 
 
The "Bishop-Maker." 175 
 
 and there you shall be preached to in stiff, steady, 
 buckram style. We will have you within walls 
 consecrated in due and official form ; otherwise you 
 shall never hear, from us at least, one word of Gospel 
 truth ' ? Are you prepared to admit that the Church 
 of England, despite the pressing and fearful necessity, 
 is bound so tightly by rule and rubric, and law and 
 custom, that she can do none of the work ? ... In 
 that case the people who are benefited by these 
 services will reply, ' Let the Nonconformists, then, do 
 the work, but let the Church of England take up her 
 real position as the Church of a sect, and not that of 
 a nation ; she has been applied to and found wanting, 
 and let us follow those who have called us to the 
 knowledge of the truth.'" 
 
 Lord Dungannon withdrew his motion. 
 
 It would be foreign to our present purpose to enter 
 at length into the purely ecclesiastical questions in 
 which Lord Shaftesbury for so many years stood 
 forward as the champion of the Low Church party, 
 but our work would be very incomplete if it did not 
 allude to his unprecedented position as "Bishop- 
 maker " to use the designation given to him by 
 Bishop Wilberforce. 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury was a sincere admirer of Lord 
 Palmerston. This admiration was partly due to 
 family reasons. Lady Shaftesbury's mother, after 
 the death (in 1837) of her first husband, Earl Cowper, 
 married Lord Palmerston in 1839, and became famous 
 as the hostess of a brilliant salon. This relationship 
 
176 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 brought Lord Palmerston into close intimacy with 
 Lord Shaftesbury, and, opposite as the two men 
 were in almost every respect, each highly esteemed 
 the intrinsic worth of the other, and a warm friendship 
 sprang up between them. 
 
 During Lord Palmerston's administrations the 
 amount and variety of Church patronage that fell 
 to his bestowal was unprecedented in history. It 
 consisted of " twenty-five mitres and ten deaneries ; 
 including three appointments to English and two to 
 Irish archbishoprics, sixteen English and four Irish 
 bishoprics, and ten English deaneries." According to 
 Lord Shaftesbury himself, Lord Palmerston did " not 
 know, in theology, Moses from Sydney Smith," and 
 that being the case it was perfectly natural that 
 he should turn to the man he implicitly trusted, 
 and who had his entire confidence, in making these 
 appointments. It is a mistake, however, to suppose 
 that every appointment was made at the suggestion 
 of Lord Shaftesbury, and equally a mistake to sup- 
 pose that the appointments were given exclusively, 
 or even approximately so, to Evangelicals. 
 
 The principle on which Lord Shaftesbury acted in 
 his recommendations was this : 
 
 " He (Palmerston), at once, and from the very first, 
 gave me his confidence on these matters, and I very 
 early determined to look at every vacancy, not from 
 my own, but from his point of view. Many fit men 
 passed before me whom I would, had /been Prime 
 Minister, have raised to high places in the Church, 
 
Social Philanthropy. 177 
 
 and so I told him ; ' but,' I added, * I do not advise 
 you to do so, because you could not maintain them, 
 if questioned, on the same grounds as myself, nor 
 allege the same reasons. I must consider your posi- 
 tion, the difficulties you have to contend against, the 
 legitimate objections, even in such matters, that beset 
 the path of a public man, and one, from his special 
 office and responsibility, by no means in the attitude 
 and powers of a private patron. I must propose 
 what you and I can defend, not that which could be 
 defended by myself alone.' " * 
 
 The principle on which Lord Palmerston acted in 
 making the appointments was this : 
 
 " I have never considered ecclesiastical appoint- 
 ments as patronage to be given away for grace and 
 favour, and for personal or political objects. The 
 choice to be made of persons to fill dignities in the 
 Church must have a great influence on many im- 
 portant matters ; and I have always endeavoured, in 
 making such appointments, to choose the best man I 
 could find, without any regard to the wishes of those 
 who may have recommended candidates for choice." f 
 
 We must now pass on to the survey of some of 
 those social philanthropies and reforms in which Lord 
 Shaftesbury was a prime mover, and which have 
 not yet been touched upon in these pages. 
 
 * "Life and Work," etc., vol. iii., p. 196. 
 t Lord Palmerston to Lord Carlisle. Quoted in " Life and 
 Work," etc., p. 192. 
 
 12 
 
178 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 He was, as it would be considered in these days, 
 a somewhat strict Sabbatarian, and every encroach- 
 ment on the sanctity of the seventh day he stoutly 
 resisted. He objected to Sunday labour in the Post 
 Office, and in 1850 made himself the most unpopular 
 and roundly-abused man in the kingdom, by obtain- 
 ing the stoppage of Sunday postal deliveries through- 
 out the country for the space of three weeks, when an 
 inquiry having been moved for, the resolution he had 
 carried, and the order of the Postmaster-General 
 under it, were rescinded. He succeeded in passing 
 a "Sunday Closing of Public Houses Act "in 1854, 
 but it was repealed in the following year. He was 
 the sworn foe of every agitation for opening museums 
 and places of entertainment of any kind on Sunday, 
 and protested strongly against the playing of bands in 
 the metropolitan parks on that day. Holding these 
 views, it was only consistent that he should identify 
 himself with the Lord's Day Observance Society, 1 the 
 Working Men's Lord's Day Rest Association, and 
 other kindred organisations. 
 
 " Your political liberties," he said to the members of 
 the Working Men's Lord's Day Rest Association, " are 
 more secure under the charter of the Sabbath than 
 they can be under all the charters which were ever 
 given by any of our kings, including that of Runny- 
 mede itself. That charter is greater than any other 
 that God has ever given to man. It is as great as the 
 sanctity of His own Book." 
 
 Severe as his views may be considered on the 
 
Early Closing Movement. 179 
 
 Sunday question, they were broadly charitable on 
 the question of holidays and relaxation of toil for the 
 people. When Lord Dunraven brought forward his 
 famous resolution in 1883, in favour of the Sunday 
 Opening of the National Museums and Picture 
 Galleries, Lord Shaftesbury met it by moving an 
 amendment, "That such institutions as the British 
 Museum and the National Gallery should be opened 
 on weekday evenings to the public between the hours 
 of seven and ten in the evening, at least three days 
 in the week," an amendment that was carried without 
 a division. 
 
 He took up a position of characteristic consistency 
 by standing at the head of the Early Closing Move- 
 ment from its commencement in 1842. " In what 
 way," he would ask, " can you improve the observance 
 of the Sabbath so effectually as by giving a time for 
 amusement and repose on every Saturday afternoon ? 
 And I maintain that all those who have concurred 
 with me in opposition to the motion for opening 
 places of amusement on the Lord's Day are bound 
 to go along with those who entertain the opinion that 
 I do that if we refuse to give them that form of 
 recreation on the Lord's Day, we are bound to do 
 what we can to give them some form of recreation on 
 some other day." 
 
 In the rise and progress of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association he was deeply interested, and 
 from its commencement in 1844 to the end of his 
 life he remained its president. " I have always looked 
 upon this Association," he said, "and all kindred 
 
180 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 Associations in all parts of the United Kingdom and 
 in America, as grand cities of refuge from the com- 
 mercial life, individually and collectively, of the several 
 nations places where young men, coming from a 
 distance, and removed from all parental influence and 
 all the influence of domestic life, may find shelter, and 
 where they may learn the way of salvation, and obtain 
 courage and confidence to walk in it." Nor was he 
 indifferent to that other side of the work of the 
 Association which tends to the salvation of the body. 
 " When people say we should think more of the soul 
 and less of the body," he said on one occasion, " my 
 answer is that the same God who made the soul made 
 the body also. It is an inferior work, perhaps, but 
 nevertheless it is His work, and it must be treated 
 and cared for according to the end for which it was 
 formed fitness for His service." When the Associa- 
 tion added to its prayer-meetings and Bible-classes 
 a gymnasium and athletic training classes, the welcome 
 innovation met with Lord Shaftesbury's marked 
 approval. Thus, when referring to the gymnasium, 
 he said : " When I see the vast number of young 
 men before me who are engaged the whole day long 
 in heated rooms, some never sitting down, some never 
 standing up, occupied in businesses which are not 
 conducive to physical health, I feel that it is abso- 
 lutely necessary that the body should be regarded ; 
 that you should be able to develop your muscular 
 and physical faculties and get them into order and 
 shape ; and that the body should be cherished in an 
 honourable, noble, and becoming way, and made more 
 
Cost er mongers . 1 8 1 
 
 adapted and suitable to the great intellectual purposes 
 of which it is only the depository. I hope you will 
 use the gymnasium well." 
 
 In like manner he delighted to forward by every 
 means in his power the splendid work of the Ragged 
 School Union and other societies in their beneficent 
 schemes for sending poor children from the crowded 
 courts and alleys of the great city for " a day in the 
 country," and in aiding every movement for providing 
 playgrounds and open spaces. 
 
 The absorbing interest taken by Lord Shaftesbury 
 in Ragged School work brought him into strange 
 company, and none stranger, perhaps, than the coster- 
 mongers of London, whose families furnished the 
 largest portion of the Ragged scholars. Johnson's 
 definition of a costermonger, it seems, as " a person 
 who sells apples," is pronounced " gammon " by the 
 fraternity, one of whom is said to have substituted 
 the following for it : "A cove wot works werry 'ard 
 for a werry poor livin', and is always a-bein' hinter- 
 fered with, and blowed up, and moved hon and fined, 
 and sent to quod by the beaks and bobbies." Among 
 this curious tribe who herd together by thousands 
 in the neighbourhood of Golden Lane, which is 
 bounded by Goswell Street, Old Street, Bunhill Row, 
 and Chiswell Street Mr. W. J. Orsman, civil servant, 
 evangelist, and, later, member of the London County 
 Council and the London School Board, organised 
 a mission, still in existence and doing as noble and 
 useful a work as any organisation for the benefit of 
 
1 82 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 the poor in London ; and when Lord Shaftesbury 
 heard of it he at once offered his services and became 
 its president. He won his way to the hearts of the 
 costers in a surprising manner, and was soon as much 
 1 at home " with them in their sphere as he was in his 
 own mansion in Grosvenor Square. He fought their 
 battles, attended their meetings, and brought influence 
 to bear on their condition through vestries and parish 
 magistrates. Of the "Barrow and Donkey Club," 
 which had been instituted, he enrolled himself a 
 member, and subscribed for a barrow of his own, 
 which bore his arms and motto, and was lent out to 
 deserving young members who had not yet attained 
 to the honours of proprietorship. It was his delight 
 to call himself a " coster " and spend a social evening 
 with the "brethren." He told them that if at any 
 time they had any grievance they wanted redressed 
 they should write to him, and being asked his address, 
 he assured them that any letter sent to Grosvenor 
 Square, with " K.G. and Coster " after his name, would 
 be sure to find him ! 
 
 In the institution of donkey shows and prizes, much 
 good was done in rescuing many hundreds of poor 
 beasts from a life of ill-treatment to one of compara- 
 tive happiness, and in this department of the work 
 Lord Shaftesbury was always ready to lend his assist- 
 ance by distributing prizes and speaking on the 
 economy of kindness. On one occasion (1875), the 
 costers invited their president to meet them to receive 
 a presentation. To his surprise he found over a 
 thousand of the fraternity assembled, with many friends 
 
Flower Girls' Mission. 183 
 
 of all classes ; and presently, after taking his seat, a 
 fine donkey, decorated with ribbons, was introduced, 
 led up on to the platform, and solemnly presented 
 to the earl. Lord Shaftesbury, having vacated the 
 chair in the donkey's favour, stood with his arm round 
 its neck while he briefly returned thanks, adding, with 
 a touch of pathos, " When I have passed away from 
 this life I desire to have no more said of me than that 
 I have done my duty, as the poor donkey has done 
 his, with patience and unmurmuring resignation." 
 On the retirement of the donkey from the platform, 
 his lordship begged the reporters to state that " the 
 donkey having vacated the chair, the place was taken 
 by Lord Shaftesbury ! " 
 
 His interest in costers, and street dealers generally, 
 brought him into contact with the " Watercress and 
 Flower Girls' Mission," and soon after the death of 
 his wife he established a fund in her memory, the 
 " Emily Loan Fund," to assist deserving flower and 
 watercress girls in times of necessity, and especially 
 in the winter months, when the sources of their incomes 
 failed. " Thus, one poor woman would make applica- 
 tion for the loan of a baked-potato oven, a coffee stall, 
 a barrow and a board for the sale of whelks, or any 
 other article by which she might see a reasonable 
 prospect of earning a living." The system on which 
 loans were granted was simple and safe, and the insti- 
 tution has done in the past, and is still doing, incalcu- 
 lable good to a hard-working and industrious class. 
 
 Always a lover of dumb animals, and especially of 
 
184 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 dogs, Lord Shaftesbury rendered important aid in 
 1876 in founding the Society for the Protection of 
 Animals from Vivisection " a diabolical system," he 
 said, " the thought of which distresses me night and 
 day." On two occasions he spoke at length in the 
 House of Lords in support of Bills for its total aboli- 
 tion. His argument was that, whether vivisection was 
 conducive to the advancement of science or the reverse, 
 there was one great preliminary consideration "on 
 what authority did his opponents rest their right to 
 subject God's creatures to unspeakable sufferings ? 
 The animals were His creatures, as we are His 
 creatures, and * His tender mercies,' we are told in 
 the Bible, ' are over all His works.' " Whatever view 
 may be taken of this much-debated subject, it is 
 interesting to know that Lord Shaftesbury never 
 altered his opinion on it, and from the establishment 
 of the Society to the close of his life he practically 
 directed all its public action. 
 
 Brought into contact as he was throughout his life 
 with so much of sin and its consequences and of 
 moral evil generally, he was deeply interested in every 
 effort that was made to provide pure literature for the 
 people. Generations of magistrates had declared that 
 immoral literature was the cause of an enormous per- 
 centage of youthful crime. Before the passing of 
 Lord Campbell's Act the traffic in obscene literature 
 went on practically unchecked, and this "death 
 fountain" sent forth its impure waters freely to 
 corrupt and poison the youth of the nation. The 
 
Pure Literature for the People. 185 
 
 importation from France was extremely large, the 
 very titles of pictures and translated pamphlets being 
 unfit to mention ; and, besides the supplies coming 
 from foreign sources, " the printed abomination which 
 went forth from Holywell Street in a single week was 
 reckoned to be sufficient to corrupt the morals of the 
 entire youth of London." But this was an open and 
 seen danger. What he dreaded, and what he foresaw 
 advancing as a rapid tide and spreading everywhere, 
 was sensational literature so fascinating in itself that 
 the evil in it was not readily perceived, compositions 
 "the most insidious, the most attractive, the most 
 skilful, and the most deceptive of all the literature that 
 ever emanated from the minds of men." 
 
 " I was led to look into works like those to which 
 I allude very seriously," he said in one of his public 
 speeches, " and I was struck by the beauty of the 
 composition and by the artful way in which the most 
 wicked and foul ideas were conveyed. I observed, 
 particularly, the manner in which they were especially 
 addressed to the minds of young men and young 
 women ; how the most pure-minded young man, or 
 the most modest young woman, might read one of 
 those works twice or thrice without discerning the 
 object of the composition, and perhaps would never 
 discern it until the poison had entered the soul. In 
 fact, these things had been written with so much care, 
 that I would defy any writer that ever was, or any 
 writer that ever will be, to draw an Act of Parliament 
 containing clauses that would suffice to put down 
 such literature as that." 
 
1 86 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 
 the Religious Tract Society, the Pure Literature 
 Society, and other societies of a kindred nature, 
 found in Lord Shaftesbury a willing and an able 
 supporter. 
 
 Although we have confined ourselves to a record 
 of Lord Shaftesbury's labours on behalf of the poor 
 and suffering in his own country, it must not be 
 inferred that he was either indifferent or inactive in 
 relation to the claims of the needy, and the necessity 
 for social reforms, in other lands. He brought before 
 Parliament in 1844 the case of the Ameers of Scinde, 
 who were suffering imprisonment and deprivation of 
 their rights from no fault, as he conceived, of their 
 own ; he took up the cause of persecuted Jews in 
 Russia and elsewhere ; of Pomare, the Queen of 
 Tahiti, a convert to Christianity ; for forty years he 
 waged war against the opium trade, "fraught with 
 misery and ruin to tens of thousands of the Chinese 
 people " ; it was he who organised the Sanitary 
 Commission to the Crimea " that Commission," 
 said Miss Florence Nightingale, " saved the British 
 Army " ; he stood forth as the champion of the 
 women and children of India who were suffering 
 under grinding oppression in the Bombay factories, 
 under a system as barbarous as that which once 
 existed in this country, and aggravated by the heat 
 of the climate and the disregard of a weekly day of 
 rest; it was he who, in 1861, after a famine had 
 desolated a large part of India, moved an Address to 
 
Protection of Young Girls. 187 
 
 the Crown praying Her Majesty to take into her 
 immediate and serious consideration the means of 
 extending throughout India, as widely as possible, 
 the best system of irrigation and internal navigation, 
 and thus became the "first man in Parliament to 
 apprehend and demonstrate that the wealth of India 
 depended upon its waters, that its wealth was wasted 
 by neglecting them, and that it might be indefinitely 
 augmented by utilising them. He was, moreover, the 
 pioneer of that policy, long since adopted, of not 
 depending only on one source of cotton supply." 
 
 When Lord Ashley was a young man of twenty- 
 seven he wrote in his diary : 
 
 "August ^rd y 1828. . . . Am happy to have had the 
 means of spending 5 in a good cause nothing less 
 than a subscription to a fund which may educate a 
 young girl, and save her, perhaps, from misery and 
 prostitution. Taste and inborn vice will take enough 
 to that career without the number being swollen by 
 the victims of treachery and distress. I shall give 
 any money that may be wanted." 
 
 Nearly sixty years later that same subject lay very 
 near to his heart, and occupied much of the time of 
 his last working days. On July 30th, 1880, he sup- 
 ported " a strong Bill, almost a fearful Bill, and 
 capable no doubt of enormous abuse," to prohibit 
 little girls under fourteen from living in houses of 
 ill-fame. A year later he took up the case of girls 
 ensnared into foreign lands, and Brussels especially, 
 for immoral purposes. In 1883 he supported a Bill 
 
1 88 Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. 
 
 in the House of Lords for the protection of young 
 girls ; later in the same year he was defeated upon an 
 amendment to protect helpless women and defenceless 
 girls from insults and dangers in the streets, and in 
 1884 he spoke at the Mansion House in aid of a new 
 society for protection of children against cruelty. 
 
 On October 1st, 1885, Lord Shaftesbury ceased 
 from his labours and entered into rest. His name 
 stands out pre-eminently, and will live for ever, as 
 the Social Reformer of the Victorian era. 
 
 We have given elsewhere the full story of his 
 public, domestic, and inner life, and our estimate of 
 his character and work. We therefore conclude this 
 survey of his career as philanthropist and social 
 reformer in the words of another : 
 
 " His heart was green and vigorous to the last. 
 No chills of age could lessen the passionate warmth 
 of his pity for the poor and suffering ; no invading 
 feebleness of voice or limb hold him back from advo- 
 cating the cause of the defenceless and oppressed. 
 For these his zeal burnt with an unquenchable fire ; 
 for these he toiled as long as the faculty to do 
 anything remained to him ; for these he could have 
 wished still to live and labour, even when the infirmities 
 of fourscore-and-four years had made life a burden. 
 1 I cannot bear,' he said in his last days, ' to leave the 
 world with all the misery in it.' It is this unreserved, 
 this absolute sacrifice of himself, body and soul, to 
 the work of alleviating that misery, which encircles 
 
" Love, Serve." 189 
 
 his name with a glory. . . . His career is the national 
 inheritance of the English-speaking race, as an im- 
 mortal protest against a life of self-seeking, and a 
 noble lesson how worldly rank and station may be 
 redeemed from moral insignificance, and consecrated 
 to the best interests of humanity. ' Love, serve,' was 
 his ancestral motto ; to love and serve was the para- 
 mount, abiding law of his existence, till death gently 
 brought him the rest which, living, he would never 
 seek for himself."* 
 
 * Quarterly Review, No. 327, January 1887. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Agricultural Gangs, 108. 
 
 Labourers and the 
 
 Franchise, 117. 
 Labourers as Skilled 
 
 Artisans, 117. 
 Althorp, Lord, 25, 26. 
 Ameers of Scinde, 186. 
 Apprentice System, 21. 
 Arnott, Dr. Neil, 128. 
 Ashley, Lady, 17. 
 Ashley, Lord. (See Shaftesbury, 
 Seventh Earl of.) 
 
 Baker, Mr. Robert, 104. 
 Ballot, The, 13, 14. 
 Bethlem Hospital, 52. 
 Bible in Schools, The, 124. 
 Bicetre Hospital, Paris, 52. 
 Board of Health, The, 131, 137. 
 Brewster, George, Chimney Sweep, 
 
 80. 
 Brickfields, Children in, 103. 
 Bright, John, 16, 47. 
 British and Foreign School Society, 
 
 120 
 Brotherton, Mr., 25. 
 Brougham, Lord, 47, 172. 
 Bull, Rev. G. S., 23. 
 
 Burritt, Elihu, 105. 
 Butler, Dr., 7. 
 
 Calico-Printing, 97. 
 Canning, Lady, 10. 
 Catholic Emancipation, 164. 
 Chadwick, Sir Edwin, 128. 
 Children in Agricultural Gangs, 107. 
 
 ,, Brickfields, 103. 
 
 Calico-Print Works, 97 
 
 Factories, 33. 
 
 Mines and Collieries, 
 
 83-95. 
 Workshops, 107. 
 
 Children's Employment Commis- 
 sion, 86, 96. 
 
 Chimney Sweepers, 69-82. 
 
 Cholera, Outbreak of, 131. 
 
 Church Pastoral Aid Society, 
 167. 
 
 Church Patronage, 176. 
 
 Climbing Boys, 69-82. 
 
 Coal-bearing, a Cruel Slavery, 90. 
 
 Cobden, Richard, 16, 47. 
 
 Commissioners in Lunacy, 55, 56. 
 
 Compton, Earl, 160. 
 
 Condition of the Agricultural La- 
 bourer, 117. 
 
192 
 
 Index. 
 
 Condition of the Working Classes, 
 
 1 14-127. 
 Conventicle Act, The, 170. 
 Corn Laws, The, 17, 41. 
 Costermongers' Movement, 180. 
 Crime, Juvenile, 15 1, 154- 
 Crimea, Sanitary Commission to 
 
 the, 186. 
 Criminal Lunatics, 65. 
 Crippled Children, 161. 
 Cross, Lord, 44. 
 
 Derby, Lord, 31, 172. 
 Dickens, Charles, 138, 144, 145. 
 Donkey Clubs, 182. 
 Dungannon, Lord, 174. 
 Dunraven, Lord, 179. 
 Dwellings of the Poor, 125. 
 
 Early Closing Movement, 179. 
 Ecclesiastical Appointments, 176. 
 
 Tithes Bill, 166. 
 
 Education of the Working Classes, 
 
 121. 
 Emigration, 123. 
 " Emily " Loan Fund, 183. 
 English Madhouses, 54. 
 Exeter Hall, 172. 
 
 Factories, State of, 20. 
 Factory Legislation, 20-49. 
 
 Slaves, 28. 
 
 System, Evils of, 33. 
 Field Lane Ragged School, 144, 155. 
 Fielden, Mr., 25, 42. 
 Forster, Mr. W. E., 124. 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., 16, 47 
 Gordon, Mr. Robert, 50. 
 Graham, Sir James 31, 34-40, 46. 
 
 Greville's Journal, 38. 
 Grey, Sir George, 47, 79. 
 
 Hanway, Jonas, 70-74, 81. 
 Harrow School, 7. 
 Health of Labouring Classes, 128 
 Hill, Mr. Robert Gardiner, 53. 
 Holloway, Mr. Thomas, 66. 
 Home, Dr. Thomas, 5. 
 Household Suffrage Act, 13. 
 Housing of the Poor, Commission 
 
 on, 140. 
 Howard, George, 8. 
 
 Impure Literature, 184. 
 
 India Board of Control, II. 
 
 India, Irrigation and Internal Navi- 
 gation in, 187. 
 
 Industrial Classes and Refuges, 
 156, 158. 
 
 Insane of Middle Classes, 65. 
 
 Irrigation in India, 187. 
 
 " Jack Cade " Legislation, 39. 
 " Jack Ketch's Warren," 144. 
 Juvenile Crime, 151. 
 Juveniles in Workshops, 107. 
 
 Kay, Dr. (afterwards Sir J. Kay- 
 Shuttleworth), 128. 
 
 Labourers' Friend Society, 129. 
 Labouring Classes, Society for 
 
 improving Condition of, 129. 
 Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 155. 
 Liverpool, Lord, 10. 
 London City Mission, 153, 168. 
 Lodging-house, A, 135 
 Lord's Day Observance Society, 178. 
 Low Church Party, 164. 
 
Index. 
 
 193 
 
 Lunacy and Lunatic Asylums, 50-68. 
 Lyndhurst, Lord, 39. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 16, 47. 
 MacGregor, John (Rob Roy), 155. 
 Mackenzie's "Man of Feeling," 51. 
 Madhouses, English, 54. 
 Maynooth Grant, 165. 
 Millis, Maria, 3, 4. 
 Moody & Sankey, Messrs., 170. 
 Morpeth, Lord, 8, 24. 
 Mundella, Mr., 104. 
 
 National Refuges for Homeless and 
 
 Destitute Children, 158. 
 National School Society, 120. 
 Nightingale, Miss Florence, 186. 
 
 Oastler, Mr. Richard, 25. 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 39, 47. 
 Open-Air Mission, 169. 
 Opium Question, II, 186. 
 Orsman, Mr. W.J., 181. 
 Overcrowding in Cities, 143. 
 Oxford Movement, 163. 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 175, 176. 
 
 Papal Aggression of 1850, 165. 
 
 Payment of Wages in Public- 
 houses, 122. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 16, 30, 31, 34, 42. 
 first Sir Robert, 21. 
 
 Physical Exercise, 180. 
 
 Pinel, M. Philippe, 52. 
 
 Ponsonby, Hon. "William, 12. 
 
 Population, Increase of, 115. 
 
 Post Office, Sunday Labour in, 178. 
 
 Protection of Young Girls, 187. 
 
 Protestant Alliance, 167. 
 
 Public Health Act, 133. 
 Pure Literature Society, 184. 
 
 Ragged Race, The, 149. 
 
 School Union, 148, 1 60. 
 
 Schools, 144-162. 
 Reform Bill 1832, 13. 
 
 1867, 14. 
 
 Refuges and Industrial Classes, 156. 
 Religious Services in Theatres, 173. 
 
 Tract Society, 185. 
 
 Worship Bill, 172. 
 
 Roebuck, Mr., 43, 46. 
 Russell, Lord John, 27, 29, 39, 47. 
 
 Sadler, Mr. Michael Thomas, 22. 
 
 Salt Monopoly in India, II. 
 
 Salvation Army, The, 170. 
 
 Sanitary Legislation, 128-143. 
 
 Scientific Corporations, II. 
 
 Scinde, Ameers of, 186. 
 
 Selborne, Lord, 55. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Seventh Earl of: 
 His Ancestry,'; 1 ; Birth, 1 ; Early 
 Career, 3 ; Home Influence, 3 ; 
 Qualifications, 2 ; School, 5 ; 
 Harrow, 7 ; Starting-point of 
 Career, 7 ; Oxford, 8 ; Love of 
 Humour, 9; M.P. for Woodstock, 
 9 ; Refuses Office, 10 ; Commis- 
 sioner of India Board of Control, 
 1 1 ; First Speech in Parliament, 
 12; M.P. for Dorsetshire, 12; 
 Political Principles, 14; Con- 
 sistency, 16; Religious Views, 
 17; Factory Legislation, 20-49; 
 The Ten Hours Bill, 25; De- 
 feated, 27 ; Select Committee, 
 29 ; Visits Cotton Districts, 29 ; 
 
 13 
 
194 
 
 Index. 
 
 Again declines Office, 36; Fac- 
 tory Agitations, 35 ; Govern- 
 ment Stratagems, 37 ; Again 
 Defeated, 38; Resigns Seat on 
 Corn Law Question, 17, 41 ; Ten 
 Hours Bill passed, 43 ; Conduct 
 of the Factory Movement, 45 ; 
 Praise of Opponents, 46 ; Finan- 
 cial Difficulties, 47 ; Death of his 
 Father, 49 ; St. Giles' Estates, 
 49 ; Commissioner in Lunacy, 
 55 ; Lunacy Legislation, 50-68 
 Investigation of a Lunacy Case, 
 64 ; Legislation for Chimney 
 Sweepers and Climbing Boys, 
 69-82 ; for Children in Mines 
 and Collieries, 83-95 ; for Chil- 
 dren in Calico-Print Works, 96 ; 
 for Children in Brickfields, 103 ; 
 for Persons employed in Agri- 
 cultural Gangs, 107 ; Condition 
 of the Working Classes, 114-27; 
 Sanitary Legislation, 128; Dwell- 
 ings of the Poor, 129; Model 
 Lodging Houses, 130; Labour- 
 ers' Friend Society, 129; Out- 
 break of Cholera, 131 ; Chairman 
 of the Board of Health, 132; 
 Lodging-House Bills, 134; The 
 Working Man's Friend, 141 ; 
 Ragged School Movements, 144- 
 162 ; Life in the Slums, 147 ; 
 The Ragged Race, 149; Juvenile 
 Crime, 151 ; Emigration of Ragged 
 School Boys, 153; "Lord Ash- 
 ley's Boys," 154; Shoeblacks, 
 155; Refuges and Industrial 
 Classes, 156-8; Training Ships, 
 Chichester and Arethusa, 159; 
 Training Homes, 159; The Ragged 
 School Union, 160; Religious 
 
 Life, 163; High Church and 
 Broad Church, 164; Roman 
 Catholicism, 165 ; Protestant 
 Alliance, 167; Church Pastoral 
 Aid Society, 167 ; Open-Air 
 Mission, 169; Religious Worship 
 Bill, 172; Theatre Services, 173; 
 The "Bishop-Maker," 175; Sab- 
 batarianism, 178; Early Closing 
 Movement, 179; Young Men's 
 Christian Associations, 1 79 ; With 
 the Costers, 181 ; Donkey Clubs, 
 182; Watercress and Flower 
 Girls' Mission, 183; "Emily" 
 Loan Fund, 183 ; Anti-Vivisec- 
 tion, 183; Pure Literature, 184; 
 Labour for other Lands, 186; 
 Protection of Young Girls, 187 ; 
 Death, 188; Characteristics, 188. 
 
 Shoeblack Brigade, 155. 
 
 Smith, Dr. T. Southwood, 128. 
 
 Smith, George, of Coalville, 103, 106. 
 
 Social Philanthropy, 177. 
 
 Society for Promoting Christian 
 Knowledge, 185. 
 
 Somerset, Lord Granville, 57. 
 
 Sou they, Robert, 23, 76. 
 
 Starey, Mr. R. S., 148. 
 
 St. Giles', Dorsetshire, 6, 49. 
 
 Sunday Closing- of Public Houses 
 Act, 178. 
 
 Sunday Labour in Post Office, 178. 
 Opening of Museums, 178. 
 
 Suttee in India, 1 1. 
 
 Sweeping Machines, 75. 
 
 Sydenham, Lord, 26. 
 
 Tait, Archbishop, 169, 172. 
 Theatre Services, 173. 
 Thompson, Mr. Poulett, 26. 
 Town Populations, 142. 
 
Index. 
 
 195 
 
 Training Homes, 159. 
 
 Ships, 158. 
 u Trapper," Employment of a, 87. 
 Treatment of Lunatics, 50-68. 
 Truck System, The, 122. 
 
 Verney, Sir Harry, 7. 
 Vivisection, 183. 
 
 Watercress and Flower Girls' Mis- 
 sion, 183. 
 Wellington, Duke of, 10. 
 Wilberforce, Bishop, 172. 
 Wimborne St. Giles', 127. 
 Wiseman, Cardinal, 166. 
 
 Woodstock, 9. 
 
 Working Classes, Condition of, 1 14- 
 127. 
 Education of, 120. 
 ,, ,, Emigration of, 123. 
 Health of, 128. 
 Welfare of, 119. 
 Men's Lord's Day Rest 
 Association, 178. 
 Workshops, Labour of Juveniles 
 in, 107. 
 
 Young Girls, Protection of, 187. 
 Young Men's Christian Associa- 
 tions, 179. 
 
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