George Offor was a biographer who started in business as a bookseller. He learnt Hebrew, Greek and Latin and he had a extensive knowledge of theology. He was an admirer of John Bunyan and gathered together a unique collection of Bunyan's scattered writings. He also contributed to biblical literature. Offor died on 4 August 1864.
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Born 1906; educated Sussex Grammar School and University College London; Lecturer in History, University College London, 1926-1934; Rockefeller Fellow in USA, 1929-1930; Organising Secretary, Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology, 1931; Secretary, Academic Assistance Council, 1933-1938; Secretary, London School of Economics, 1938-1946; Deputy Head, British Political Warfare Mission, USA, 1942-1944; Assistant Deputy Director-General, Political Intelligence Department, Foreign Office, 1945; OBE, 1945; Secretary, Inter-University Council for Higher Education in the Colonies, 1946-1955; CMG, 1952; Principal, University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1955-1967; Director, London School of Economics, 1967-1974; Kt, 1970; died 1975.
Publications: joint-editor of The Diary of Robert Hooke, 1672-1680 (Taylor & Francis: London, 1935).
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Samuel Vyvyan Trerice Adams was born on 22 April 1900 and was drowned at Helston in Cornwall on 13 August 1951. He was educated at the Kings School, Cambridge and then went on to Kings College, Cambridge, where he took the Classical Tripos, parts 1 and 11. He was called to the Bar in 1927 and worked as lawyer until 1931 when he was elected as the Conservative MP for the Leeds West Constituency, defeating a large Liberal majority. During World War II he was in the army, reaching the rank of major and continuing his duties as an MP. After being defeated in the 1945 elections he worked as a manager in industry for some time and then became the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for the East Fulham Constituency 1947 - 1950. After failing to win election he worked as a political researcher for Conservative Central Office and was prospective candidate for Ormskirk, Lancashire and Darwen, Lancashire. He also supplemented his income by writing articles reviews and books. Under the pseudonym "Watchman" he wrote Right Honourable Gentlemen.
Born 1906; educated Sussex Grammar School and University College London; Lecturer in History, University College London, 1926-1934; Rockefeller Fellow in USA, 1929-1930; Organising Secretary, Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology, 1931; Secretary, Academic Assistance Council, 1933-1938; Secretary, London School of Economics, 1938-1946; Deputy Head, British Political Warfare Mission, USA, 1942-1944; Assistant Deputy Director-General, Political Intelligence Department, Foreign Office, 1945; OBE, 1945; Secretary, Inter-University Council for Higher Education in the Colonies, 1946-1955; CMG, 1952; Principal, University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1955-1967; Director, London School of Economics, 1967-1974; Kt, 1970; died 1975.
Publications: joint-editor of The Diary of Robert Hooke, 1672-1680 (Taylor & Francis: London, 1935).
Born 1834; educated Marlborough College and Exeter College, Oxford University, 1853-1856, where he met Edward Coley Burne-Jones; entered Oxford office of the gothic revivalist architect, George Edmund Street, 1856; financed first 12 monthly issues of The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856; persuaded by Dante Gabriel Rossetti to give up architecture for painting, and joined a group painting the walls of the Oxford Union with scenes from Arthurian legend, 1856; shared a studio in Red Lion Square with Burne-Jones, 1856-1859; married Jane Burden, 1859; commissioned Philip Speakman Webb to build the Red House at Bexleyheath, 1859-1860; founded the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, 1861, which included Ford Madox Brown, Rossetti, Webb and Burne-Jones and produced fine art furniture, stained glass and embroideries; moved to Bloomsbury, 1865; published various works of poetry, including The defence of Guenevere, 1858, the Death of Jason, 1867, The Earthly Paradise, 1868-1870, and the Book of Verse, 1870; moved to Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, 1871; visited Iceland, 1871 and 1873; reorganised the firm under his sole proprietorship as Morris and Co, 1874, and began revolutionary experiments with vegetable dyes; gave first public lecture on 'The Decorative Arts', 1877, and published Hopes and fears for Art, 1882; founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, 1877; moved to Kelmscott House, Hammersmith, 1878; moved the firm to Merton Abbey, Surrey, 1881; joined the Democratic (later Social Democratic) Federation, 1883; formed the Socialist League and the Hammersmith Socialist Society, 1884; started the Kelmscott Press, 1891; died 1896.
The Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) was founded in 1946 with the following objectives: to promote the study and teaching of social anthropology; to hold periodical meetings; to present the interests of social anthropology and to maintain its professional status; to assist in any possible in planning research; and to collate and, if possible, publish information on social anthropology and a register of social anthropologists. The founder members were Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown as President, Professor Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard as Chair, and Professor Sir Raymond William Firth as Secretary.
The first conference of Societies Registered for Adoption was held in 1949 and the Standing Conference of Societies Registered for Adoption was formed in 1950. In 1958 the Adoption Act transformed the legal framework for adoption services giving local authorities the power to act as adoption agencies. In 1965 the British Adoption Project was launched, a four year project to help find new families for non-white children and stemming from this the Adoption Resource Exchange was set up in 1968. In 1969 the Standing Conference of Societies Registered for Adoption was represented on the Houghton Committee to consider legal policy and procedure on adoption. In 1970 the Standing Conference of Societies Registered for Adoption became ABAA (Association of British Adoption Agencies), and in 1975 ABAA became ABAFA (Association of British Adoption and Fostering Agencies). In 1978 Adoption Resource Exchange was formed by: Lucy Faithfull, M M Carriline, Louise Hancock, R Hughes, Mary Sugden, Anna Martin and Joan Lawton, with registered offices at 40 Brunswick Square, London, WC1N 1AZ. ABAFA and ARE began to share premises at Southwark Street in March 1980, and in November 1980 they merged to form the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering. The company changed its name from British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering to British Association for Adoption and Fostering in 2001. A full account of the history and development of BAAF and its predecessor bodies can be found in file BAAF/120
Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell Beaver was born in Johannesburg in 1890. He was educated at Wellington College, after which he spent two years in the Indian Police force before joining Alexander Gibb and Partners, Engineers. In 1931 the firm was commissioned by the Canadian government to conduct a survey of its national ports. Sir Hugh spent seven months in Canada, during which time he was asked to supervise the rebuilding of the Port of St John in New Brunswick, which had been destroyed by fire. He was a partner of the firm, 1932-1942, and Director General and Controller General of the Ministry of Works,1940-1945. In 1946, he became a managing director of Arthur Guinness, Son and Co Ltd and stayed there until he retired in 1960. He was much involved in the efforts to rebuild the country and the Empire after World War II, and was a co-opted member of Lord Reith's Committee on New Towns 1946-1947, a member of the Building Industry Working Party 1948-1950, Director of the Colonial Development Corporation 1951-1960, and the chairman of the Committee on Power Station Construction 1952-1953. Sir Hugh Beaver was also interested in the promotion and application of science, and was chairman of the committee on Air Pollution 1953-1954, chairman of the Advisory Council on Scientific and Industrial Research 1954-1956, and chairman of the Industrial Fund for the Advancement of Scientific Education in Schools 1958-1963. He was knighted in 1943 and awarded a KBE in 1956. He also received honorary degrees from the University of Cambridge, Trinity College Dublin, and the National University of Ireland, and was made an honorary fellow of the London School of Economics in 1960. He died in 1967.
No information available at present.
The British Hospitals Contributory Schemes Association was formed in 1930 in the aftermath of the report of the Cave Committee of 1921. The aim of the committee was to rationalise the various health contributory schemes established to fund voluntary hospitals, prior to the introduction of the National Health Service, in different regions at the end of the nineteenth century. The BHCSA was essentially an instrument for dealing with the territorial spheres of the operation of the schemes, and gave guidelines and advice on contributions and benefits. The association continued to act as the national organising body for the regional schemes until it was disbanded with the inception of the National Health Service in 1948.
The National League for Hospital Friends (now the National Association of Leagues of Hospital Friends) was founded in 1949. The association represents voluntary workers supporting patients and their carers in hospitals and in the community, and provides services such as group insurance and deposit schemes, grants, fund-raising, advice, goods, information and publications, and opportunities for national and regional networking.
The British International Studies Association is a charitable trust which was founded in 1975 at a meeting of the British Coordinating Committee on International Studies 'to promote the study of International Studies and related subjects through teaching, research and facilitating contact between scholars'. It is the world's leading such organisation outside the USA, with a membership of around 750, and aims to represent all of those professionally engaged in International Studies in Britain. It produces a journal entitled the Review of International Studies, and organises conferences, meetings, research and study groups.
Charles Booth was born in Liverpool on the 30th of March 1840, the son of Charles Booth and Emily Fletcher. Charles attended the Royal Institution School in Liverpool.
In 1862, Charles joined his eldest brother Alfred establishing the firm was Alfred Booth and Company which specialised in shipping skins and leather, they set up offices in both Liverpool and New York.
Booth campaigned unsuccessfully for the Liberal parliamentary candidate in the election of 1865. In 1866, he joined Joseph Chamberlain's Birmingham Education League.
On 29 April 1871 Booth married Mary Macaulay, daughter of Charles Zachary Macaulay and Mary Potter, and niece of the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. In the early days of their marriage Booth was facing mental exhaustion from years of overwork. In 1875, they settled in London. Mary was an invaluable advisor in the business and an active contributor to Booth's survey into London life and labour.
In 1884 Charles Booth assisted in the allocation of the Lord Mayor of London's Relief Fund, by analysing census returns. He later served on the official committee in charge of the 1891 census and make a number of recommendations for its improvement. The first meeting to organise the inquiry into poverty in London was held on 17 April 1886: the work would last until 1903, resulting in the publication of three editions of the survey, the final edition of Life and Labour of the People in London (London: Macmillan, 1902-1903) running to seventeen volumes. The work would absorb both Charles and Mary Booth and employ a team of social investigators including, at various times, Beatrice Webb, Arthur Baxter, Clara Collett, David Schloss, George Duckworth, Hubert Llewllyn Smith, Jesse Argyle, and Ernest Aves. There were three areas of investigation undertaken in the survey: poverty, industry and religious influences. The poverty series gathered information from School Board visitors about levels of poverty and types of occupation amongst families in the locality. The industry series investigated trades in London. Trades of interviewees include conventional trades such as tailors and wood workers and more unusual trades such as organ grinders and chorus girls. Statistics, graphs and charts were compiled form the considerable mass of data gathered by questionnaire, from employers of all types and industry. The religious survey includes reports of visits to churches and interviews with Church of England and Non-conformist ministers. The investigation also incorporates a description of the social and moral influences on Londoner's lives.
In 1893 Booth served on the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor. In 1904 he was made a Privy Councillor, and in 1907 served with Beatrice Webb on the Royal Commission on the Poor Law. In 1908, many years after he first began writing and speaking about the need for state pensions to alleviate poverty amongst the elderly, the Liberal government passed the Old Age Pensions Act in 1908. Although Booth had argued for a universal old age pension rather than the means tested system which the act introduced, he was recognised by many as one of the progenitors of the pension. He was also made a fellow of the Royal Society and awarded honorary degrees by the Universities of Cambridge, Liverpool and Oxford.
Early in 1912 Booth handed over the chairmanship of Alfred Booth and Company to his nephew, but in 1915 returned to work under wartime exigencies despite growing evidence of heart disease. On 23 November 1916 he died following a stroke, at his country home of Gracedieu in Thringstone, Leicestershire.
Sir Henry (Harry) Ernest Brittain, 1873-1974, was educated at Repton and Worcester College, Oxford, where he obtained at BA and an MA in law. He was called to the Bar in 1897 but only practiced for a week before retiring from law in favour of business and journalism. He worked on the staff of both the Standard and the Evening Standard, was secretary to Sir C Arthur Pearson, owner of the Evening Standard, and also worked with him in the formation of the Tariff Reform League and the creation of the tariff community. Sir Harry became Director of numerous daily and weekly newspapers and other business concerns. He was president of the British International Association of Journalists 1920-1922, Patron of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists from 1925, and was the originator and organiser of the first Imperial Press Conference, 1932.
He was always keen to build links with America. During World War One, when he was the British representative on the American Citizens Emergency Committee, 1914, serving on special mission throughout the USA, 1915, on the staff of General Lloyd as captain of the London Volunteer Regiment, 1916, as Director of Intelligence National Service Department, and as the founder and Chairman of the American officers club in London, 1917-1919. After the war he was the originator and honourary life member of the Association of American Correspondents in London, 1919 and the president of the Anglo-American delegation to Holland for the celebration of the Pilgrim Fathers tercentenary, 1920. He was a member of the Anglo-American Brains Trust, 1942-1944 and was awarded the Silver Medal of Merit and Diploma by the Poor Richard Club of Philadelphia for his lifelong services to Anglo-American fellowship and understanding in 1958.
Sir Harry Brittain was also a Conservative MP for Acton 1918-1929. As an MP he was a members of the executive of the Empire Parliamentary Association, 1919-1929 and a member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, from 1929. He was also committed to the protection of British birds, and steered the Brittain Act for the protection of British birds through Parliament in 1925. Amongst his other honours, he was created KBE for public services in 1918, and CMG in 1924.
The Review Committee (or 'Younger Committee') of the Greater London Citizen's Advice Bureau Service Limited was appointed in June 1973 to examine the role of Citizen's Advice Bureaux in London. It was also charged with making suggestions regarding the functions, organisation and finances of Citizen's Advice Bureaux in the Greater London boroughs. The Committee was chaired by Sir Kenneth Younger and conducted research amongst all the CABs in London, as well as looking at local authority advice and information services. The Committee reported its findings to the Greater London Citizen's Advice Bureau in 1975.
Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders, 1886-1966, was born in Reigate and educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained a first in zoology in 1908. He was awarded the Naples Table, a scholarship in Biology, and returned to Oxford for a year as a demonstrator. He left Oxford for London in 1910 and, after studying biometrics under Karl Pearson, decided that he did not want a career as a natural scientist and therefore read for the Bar. He became the secretary of the Eugenics Education Society and lived at Toynbee Hall, in the East End of London, where he was a sub-warden from 1910 to 1914. He also took an interest in local politics, becoming a member of Stepney Borough Council. When war broke out in 1914, he attempted to join the London-Scottish Regiment, but the standard of his spoken French was such that he got a commission in the Royal Army Service Corps and was posted to a ration depot at Suez, where he stayed for the duration of the war. After World War One, he returned to Oxford to work in the Zoology department, taking a particular interest in the issue of population. He served on the Royal Commission on Population, 1944-1949. The success of his publication The Population Problem led to his appointment to the Charles Booth Chair of Social Science at the University of Liverpool in 1923. Here he established a reputation for the teaching of social sciences, and furthered the role of social science as a University discipline. In 1937, he was invited to succeed Sir William Beveridge as Director of the London School of Economics, a post that he held until his retirement in 1955. Carr-Saunders was also involved in the Colonial Office's plans to found universities in British colonial territories and the Sudan, chairing a number of committees and commissions between 1947 and 1962. He was knighted in 1946, and created FBA in 1946 and KBE in 1957. He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Glasgow, Columbia, Natal, Dublin, Liverpool, Cambridge, Malaya, Grenoble and London, and was made honorary fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, the University College of East Africa, and LSE.
The Commission on the Future of the Voluntary Sector was initiated [in 1994] by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations with the objective of identifying the distinctive nature of voluntary organisations and determining the range of work which they might be expected to achieve, and thus allowing the Commission to influence public policy. A Commission of 12 individuals with experience in the voluntary sector was appointed, with Jane Kershaw as the secretary. It collected written and oral evidence and also arranged local meetings and visits. Meeting the challenge of change: voluntary action into the 21st century was published in Jul 1996.
Robert Samuel Theodore Chorley, 1895 - 1978, was born in Kendal and educated at Kendal School and Queens College, Oxford. During World War I, he served in the Foreign Office and Ministry of Labour. Although he was called to the Bar in 1920 he spent most of his early life teaching law. He was a tutor at the Law Society's School of Law 1920 - 1924 and Lecturer in Commercial Law 1924 - 1930, the Sir Ernest Cassel Professor of Commercial and Industrial Law at the London School of Economics 1930 - 1946, Dean of the Faculty of Laws at the University of London 1939 - 1942, and was made an honorary fellow of the London School of Economics in 1970. He was involved with the Association of University Teachers from 1938 to 1965. After the war he contested Northwich Division for Labour in the 1945 General Election. He became interested in penal reform and was a vice president of the Howard League for Penal Reform in 1948, president of the National Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty 1945 - 1948, chairman of the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency, 1950 - 1956 and president 1956 - 1976. His other main interest was the countryside, serving as vice-chairman of the National Trust, honorary secretary of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England 1935 - 1967, vice-president and president of the Fell Rock Climbing Club of the English Lake District, and a member of the Friends of the Lake District.
Born 1860; educated at the Stationers' School, London; entered the civil service, 1878, in the legal department of the Local Government Board; established a correspondence society for manuscript exchange called the MS Club, [1881]; member of the Progressive Association, 1882; founder member of the Fabian Society, 1884; joined the London branch of the Fellowship of the New Life, an intellectual discussion and study group dedicated to developing models of alternative societies, 1884-1889; member of the Ethical Society, 1886; emigrated to the USA, 1889; Lecturer at Thomas Davidson's School of the Cultural Sciences, Farmington, Connecticut; Lecturer, Brooklyn Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1890-1892; Head of English, Brooklyn Manual Training High School, 1893-1897; Principal of the Second Grade, New York Society's Ethical Culture School, 1897; Lecturer at the Pratt Institute and New York University, New York; Associate Leader, Society for Ethical Culture of New York, [1897-1910]; married his second wife, Anna Sheldon, the widow of Walter Sheldon, the founder of the St Louis Ethical Society; Leader of the St Louis Ethical Society, 1911-1932; President, Drama League of America, 1915-1920; retired 1932; President of the American Ethical Union, 1934-1939; died 1960. Publications: editor of Dryden's Palamon and Arcite; or the Knight's Tale from Chaucer (New York, 1908); On the religious frontier: from an outpost of ethical religion (Macmillan Co, New York, 1931); The teaching of English in the elementary and secondary school (Macmillan Co, new York, 1902); introduction to Select writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1888); editor of Essays of Montaigne (1893).
The Commission on Citizenship was set up in 1988 by the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Rt Hon Bernard Weatherill, in order to consider how to 'encourage, develop and recognise Active Citizenship within a wide range of groups in the community, both local and national, including school students, adults, those in full employment, as well as volunteers'. The Chair was Maurice Stonefrost, and the Secretary Frances Morell. The Commission's report was published as Encouraging citizenship (HMSO, 1990).
Walter McLennan Citrine, 1887-1983, left school at 12 to work in a flour mill. He soon became an electrician holding a variety of jobs. He joined the Electrical Trades Union in 1911, becoming Mersey District Secretary, 1914-1920, and General Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, 1920-1923. He was Assistant Secretary of the TUC, 1924-1925, and General Secretary, 1926-1946. From 1928 to 1945 he was President of the International Federation of Trade Unions. He was also a Director of the Daily Herald Ltd, 1929-1946. During World War Two, Citrine was a member of the National Production Advisory Council, 1942-1946 and 1949-1957, and a trustee of the Imperial Relations Trust, 1937-1949,and the Nuffield Trust for the Forces, 1939-1946. He was also a member of the Cinematograph Films Council, 1938-1948, and served on the Executive Committee of the Red Cross and St John War Organisation, 1939-1946. He was chairman of the Production Committee on Regional Boards (Munitions)in 1942. After the war, he returned to the electrical industry, becoming President of the British Electrical Development Association, 1948-1952, Chairman of the Central Electricity Authority, 1947-1957, and President of the Electrical Research Association, 1950-1952 and 1956-1957. He was also a member (and President in 1955) of the Directing Committee, Union Internationale des Producteurs et Distributeurs d'Energie Electrique. He was a part time member of the Electricity Council, 1958-1962, and a part time member of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, 1958-1962.
No information available at present.
Publications: editor of Anatomy of decline: the political journalism of Peter Jenkins (Cassell, London, 1995); David Astor and the Observer (Deutsch, London, 1991); editor of My dear Max: the letters of Brendan Bracken to Lord Beaverbrook, 1925-1958 (Historians' Press, London, 1990); Twilight of truth: Chamberlain, appeasement, and the manipulation of the press (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1989).
No information available at present.
Richard Trevithick, a Cornish engineer, built the first steam locomotive for a railway, in 1804. The Manchester to Liverpool railway of 1830 was the first to convey passengers and goods entirely by mechanical traction. By 1852 nearly all the main lines of the modern railway system in England were authorised or completed.
Sir John Parnell (1744-1801), Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, was a student of Lincoln's Inn 1766, and a bencher at King's Inns, Dublin, 1786. From 1761 to 1768 he was MP for Bangor in the Irish Parliament, and for Inistioge 1776-1783. He became Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer in 1785. He opposed the liberal policy of the English government, and in consequence of his opposition to the Union was removed from his post in 1799. In 1801 he entered the first parliament of the United Kingdom as MP for Queen's County.
In 1846 three companies, London and Birmingham, Grand Junction Railway and Manchester and Birmingham amalgamated to form the London and North Western Railway. The amalgamation created 247 miles of railway that linked London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Preston. The London and North Western Railway continued to expand and by 1868 the company had added links to Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, Swansea and Cardiff. However, attempts to amalgamate with Midland Railway ended in failure. By 1871 the London and North Western Railway employed 15,000 people.
Daniel Asher Alexander (1768-1846) was educated at St Paul's School. He was a silver medallist, Royal Academy. He was also surveyor to London Dock Company (1796-1831) and to Trinity House. Alexander designed lighthouses at Harwich and Lundy Island, and prisons at Dartmoor and Maidstone. William Vaughan (1752-1850) was a merchant and author. He was a director of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation, London, 1783-1829. He advocated canal extension, 1791; published pamphlets urging extension of London Docks, 1793-1797. His publications include: "Answer to objections against the London-docks" (1796); "A collection of tracts on wet docks for the Port of London: with hints on trade and commerce and on free-ports" (1797); "A comparative statement of the advantages and disadvantages of the docks in Wapping and the docks in the Isle of Dogs" (1799); "A letter to a friend on commerce and free ports and London-docks" (1796).
John Francis Bray (1809-1897) was born in Washington in the United States, the son of a singer and comedian who was descended from West Riding farmers and cloth manufacturers. In 1822 the Bray family returned to Leeds. When his father died a few days following the family's return to Yorkshire Bray stayed with his aunt who was a milliner. During the 1820s he became apprenticed to a printer and bookbinder in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. He later moved to Selby, North Yorkshire to complete his apprenticeship. In 1832 Bray returned to Leeds and in the following year worked on the "Voice of the West Riding" periodical. He then moved to York and contributed to the "Leeds Times" until 1837 when he moved back to Leeds. He became involved in the town's working class movement and helped to set up the Leeds Working Men's Association. He became its treasurer and delivered a number of lectures on its behalf. Bray returned to the United States in 1842 and became a printer in Detroit. From 1856 to 1865 he ran a daguerreotype gallery in Pontiac, Michigan. In the following decade Bray became involved in the Young American Socialist Movement. He helped draft a number of political tracts, addressed public meetings in parts of the mid-West and was a correspondent on economic and social questions. By this time Bray was living on a farm near Pontiac, Michigan, where he spent the rest of his life producing corn and fruit for market. He joined the Knights of Labour in 1886 and the Pontiac branch of the knights subsequently took the name the "John F Bray Assembly". Bray died on 1st February 1897 at his son's farm in Pontiac.
His publications include: "Labour's wrongs and labour's remedy" (1839); "Government and society considered in relation to first principles" (1842); "The coming age devoted to the fraternisation and advancement of mankind through religious, political and social reforms. No. 1 Spiritualism founded on a fallacy" (1855); "No. 2 The origin of mundane and human energies unfavourable to spiritualism" (1855); "American destiny what shall it be? Republican or Cossack? An argument addressed to the people of the late Union North and South" (1864); "God and man a unity and all mankind a unity; a basis for a new dispensation social and religious" (1879).
Richard Potter MP (1778-1842) was the brother of Sir Thomas Potter (1773-1845), MP and first Mayor of Manchester (1838). They grew up on their father's farm at Tadcaster, North Yorkshire and collaborated both in business and politics in Manchester. They helped found the Manchester Guardian newspaper in 1821, which became The Guardian in 1959 to reflect its national distribution and news coverage. The Potter brothers also founded the Times(Manchester), later called the Examiner and Times, and established the wholesale house in Manchester trade which became known as "Potter's". This place became a rendezvous for political and philanthropic reformers. In 1830 Richard Potter joined a group campaigning for parliamentary reform. The group proposed that the seats of rotten boroughs convicted of gross electoral corruption should be transferred to industrial towns. In 1831 Absalom Watkin (fl 1807-1861) drew up a petition asking the government to grant Manchester two Members of Parliament. As a result of the 1832 Reform Act Manchester had its first two Members of Parliament. Richard Potter was returned as Liberal MP for Wigan in 1832, 1835 and 1837. He later unsuccessfully contested Gloucester. His political views earned him the nickname "Radical Dick". Richard Potter's son, also called Richard, was President of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada and Chairman of the Great Western Railway (1817-1892),and his granddaughter Beatrice Webb (1858-1943), daughter of his son Richard, was a prominent social reformer and wife of fellow reformer Sidney Webb, Baron Passfield (1859-1947). His publications include: "To the independent inhabitants of the Borough of Wigan" (1831).
Henry Solly, 1813-1903, was born in London, the son of a businessman. His family were radical Protestant Dissenters, and Solly was educated at schools run by Unitarian ministers. He was one of the first students to attend University College, London (1829-1831), where he studied classics and mathematics. In 1840 Solly became minister at the Unitarian Chapel at Yeovil, Somerset. He became involved with the Chartist movement and several of the working class gropus in the town. After he served as a representative at the Birmingham chartist conference of 1842, Solly was forced out of his ministry. He was then minister at Tavistock 1842-1844, Shepton Mallet 1844-1847, Cheltenham 1847-1851, Carter Lane, London 1852-1857. In 1862 Solly founded the Working Men's Club and Institute Union in London. The aim of the organisation was to encourage the formation of clubs by working men "where they can meet for conversation, business, and mental improvement, with the means of recreation and refreshment, free from intoxicating drinks". He became its first paid secretary in 1863. When Solly opposed the clubs' practice of selling alcohol he was forced to resign. He returned in the 1870s but left again following disputes about his salary. By the time of solly's death in 1903 there were 992 clubs with 380,000 members in Britain. In 1869 Solly was instrumental in founding the Charity Organisation Society. Its aim was to better administering charity relief while emphasising the need for self help, and accompanying it with personal care. In 1884 Solly also established the Society for the Promotion of Industrial Villages. The society's purpose was to provide good-quality housing for working people. In 1868 Solly's daughter Emily Rebeecca married the Unitarian minister and temperance camaigner Philip Wicksteed (1844-1927). Solly died at Wicksteed's home in 1903. His publications include: 'Facts and fallacies connected with working men's clubs and institutes' (1865); 'Destitute poor and criminal classes: a few thoughts on how to deal with the unemployed poor of London, and with its roughs and criminal classes?' (1868); 'Re-housing of the industrial classes; or, village communities v town rookeries' (1884); 'The condition of the English working class: the papers of the Reverend Henry Solly' (1990).
Beatrice Webb, 1858-1943, was born Martha Beatrice Potter at Standish House near Gloucester, she was the eighth daughter of the railway and industrial magnate Richard Potter (1817-1892). Beatrice was educated privately and became a business associate of her father after her mother's death in 1882. She became interested in reform and began to do social work in London. Beatrice investigated working-class conditions as part of the survey 'Life and Labour of the People in London' (1891-1903), directed by her cousin Charles Booth (1840-1916).
In 1892 she married Sidney Webb (1859-1947), later Baron Passfield, a member of the socialist Fabian Society. Sidney and Beatrice Webb served on many royal commissions and wrote widely on economic problems. In 1895 they founded the London School of Economics and Political Science. After a tour of the United States and the Dominions in 1898, they embarked on their massive ten-volume work, 'English Local Government' (1906-1929). Beatrice Webb also served on the Poor Law Commission (1906-1909) and was joint author of its minority report. During World War I Beatrice Webb was a member of the War Cabinet committee on women in industry (1918-1919) and served on the Lord Chancellor's advisory committee for women justices (1919-1920), being a justice of the peace herself from 1919 to 1927.
Sidney Webb became an MP in 1922 and held ministerial office in both the early Labour governments. In 1932, after he had left office, the Webbs visited the Soviet Union. They recorded their views in 'Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation' (1935). The Webbs retired to their home in Hampshire in 1928. Beatrice Webb produced two volumes of autobiography: 'My Apprenticeship' (1926) and 'Our Partnership' (1948), which was published after her death. Her publications include: 'The co-operative movement in Great Britain' (1891); 'The history of trade unionism' (1894) (co-author with Sidney Webb); 'The case for the Factory Acts' (1901); 'English Local Government' (1906) (co-author with Sidney Webb); 'The charter of the poor' (1909); 'The break-up of the Poor Law: being part one of the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission' (1909); 'The coming of a unified county medical service and how it will affect the voluntary hospital' (1910); 'Complete national provision for sickness: how to amend the insurance acts' (1912); 'The abolition of the Poor Law' (1918); 'Wages of men and women-should they be equal?' (1919); 'A constitution for the socialist commonwealth of Great Britain' (1920); 'Decay of capitalist civilisation' (1923) Co-author with Sidney Webb; 'My apprenticeship' (1926); 'Soviet Communism: a new civilisation' (1935); 'Our partnership' (1948).
The Independent Labour Party: The activities of the Manchester Independent Labour Party (established in 1892) inspired Liberal-Labour MPs to consider setting up a new national working class party. The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was consequently formed in 1893 under the leadership of James Keir Hardie (1856-1915). The chief objective of the ILP would be "to secure the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange". The ILP had 35,000 members at the time of the 1895 General Election, and put forward 28 candidates, but only won 44,325 votes. The party had more success in local elections, winning over 600 seats on borough councils. The ILP joined the Social Democratic Federation in 1898 to make West Ham the first local authority to have a Labour majority. On 27th February 1900 representatives of all the socialist groups in Britain (the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian Society, joined trade union leaders to form the Labour Representation Committee.
The Alice Patterson Foundation Program (formerly known as the Alice Patterson Fund) makes awards to USA journalists to study in a foreign country. It was established in 1965 in memory of Alicia Patterson (1906-1963), who was editor and publisher of "Newsday" for nearly 23 years before her death in 1963. One-year grants are awarded to working journalists to pursue independent projects of significant interest and to write articles based on their investigations for the "The APF Reporter", a quarterly magazine published by the Foundation. Winners are chosen by an annual competition. Applicants must have at least five years of professional journalistic experience. The website for the Foundation can be found at: http://www.aliciapatterson.org.
The collection is based on that assembled by David Collis and recorded in the printed bibliography British Birth Control Ephemera 1870 to 1947: A catalogue. by Peter Fryer (Barracuda Press, Leicester, 1947). Some of the material listed in the bibliography is missing but there is also additional material not recorded in the bibliography.
The Fellowship of Reconciliation was founded in Cambridge 1914 by a group of pacifist Christians. During the summer of 1914 an ecumenical conference of Christians who wanted to avert the approaching war was held in Switzerland. However, war broke out before the end of the conference and, at Cologne station, Henry Hodgkin, an English Quaker, and Friedrich Siegmund-Schulze, a German Lutheran, pledged themselves to a continued search for peace with the words, "We are at one in Christ and can never be at war". Inspired by that pledge, about 130 Christians of all denominations gathered in Cambridge at the end of 1914 and set up the FoR, recording their general agreement in a statement which became 'The Basis' of the FoR, namely:
1) That love as revealed and interpreted in the life and death of Jesus Christ involves more than we have yet seen, that is the only power by which evil can be overcome and the only sufficient basis of human society.
2) That, in order to establish a world-order based on Love, it is incumbent upon those who believe in this principle to accept it fully, both for themselves and in relation to others and to take the risks involved in doing so in a world which does not yet accept it.
3) That therefore, as Christians, we are forbidden to wage war, and that our loyalty to our country, to humanity, to the Church Universal, and to Jesus Christ our Lord and Master, calls us instead to a life-service for the enthronement of Love in personal, commercial and national life.
4) That the Power, Wisdom and Love of God stretch far beyond the limits of our present experience, and that He is ever waiting to break forth into human life in new and larger ways.
5) That since God manifests Himself in the world through men and women, we offer ourselves to His redemptive purpose to be used by Him in whatever way He may reveal to us.
The FoR supported conscientious objectors during World War I and was a supporter of passive resistance during World War II. In 1919, representatives from a dozen countries met in Holland and established the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, which now has many branches in all five continents.
The Independent Labour Party: The activities of the Manchester Independent Labour Party (established in 1892) inspired Liberal-Labour MPs to consider setting up a new national working class party. The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was consequently formed in 1893 under the leadership of James Keir Hardie (1856 - 1915). The chief objective of the ILP would be "to secure the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange". The ILP had 35,000 members at the time of the 1895 General Election, and put forward 28 candidates, but only won 44,325 votes. The party had more success in local elections, winning over 600 seats on borough councils. The ILP joined the Social Democratic Federation in 1898 to make West Ham the first local authority to have a Labour majority. On 27th February 1900 representatives of all the socialist groups in Britain (the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian Society, joined trade union leaders to form the Labour Representation Committee.
The Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff was founded in 1890 when about a dozen men met in an office in the Strand and decided to form the Clerk's Union. As membership increased and spread across the country, the name was changed to the National Union of Clerks. In 1920, after rapid growth and the absorption of a number of other unions, the membership figure was around 40,000 and the name was again changed to the National Union of Clerks and Administrative Workers (NUCAW). In 1940, the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries transferred to NUCAW and a new title was agreed: the Clerical and Administrative Workers Union. Then, in 1972, arising from the spread of the union's influence, changes in office skills and the growing ability of the union to represent staff at all levels, it changed its title to the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff (APEX) and they joined GMB in 1989. More recently, APEX accepted the Transfer of Engagements of the Automobile Association Staff and the General Accident Staff. Since the amalgamation, the Greater London Staff Association, who earlier transferred to GMB, have joined the APEX Partnership and the National Union of Labour Organisers and Legal Aid Staff Association have also transferred to APEX.
The Stapletons were an old landed family in Carlton, North Yorkshire. Their seat was Carlton Hall. Thomas Stapleton's son Miles claimed the title of Baron Beaumont in 1840.
The Independent Labour Party: The activities of the Manchester Independent Labour Party (established in 1892) inspired Liberal-Labour MPs to consider setting up a new national working class party. The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was consequently formed in 1893 under the leadership of James Keir Hardie (1856 - 1915). The chief objective of the ILP would be "to secure the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange". The ILP had 35,000 members at the time of the 1895 General Election, and put forward 28 candidates, but only won 44,325 votes. The party had more success in local elections, winning over 600 seats on borough councils. The ILP joined the Social Democratic Federation in 1898 to make West Ham the first local authority to have a Labour majority. On 27th February 1900 representatives of all the socialist groups in Britain (the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian Society, joined trade union leaders to form the Labour Representation Committee.
The posters were produced by the Ministerstvo Edravookhraneniia of Russia in 1930.
The British Association for Labour Legislation was a small group of people who were attached to the London School of Economics. The association dealt with issues such as the health and welfare of workers, education and the implementation of a National Health Service.
The Joint Board consisted of three representatives and the secretaries from the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress, the General Federation of Trade Unions and the Labour Party. The Joint Board met to:
- consider and report as whether new societies connected with trades already covered by existing organisations should be encouraged or otherwise.
- consider and agree upon joint political or other action when such is deemed to be advantageous or necessary.
3.use its influence to bring about a settlement in cases of trade disputes, provided it had the concurrence of the Executive of the union or unions affected.
Edward Pease 1857-1945 was the sixth of fifteen children, was born at Henbury Hill, near Bristol on 23rd December, 1857. Edward was the grandson of Edward Pease (1767-1858) the railway entrepreneur. His parents were devout Quakers. Pease moved to London in 1874 where he found work as a clerk in his brother-in-law's textile firm. Later he became a partner in a brokerage company. The business was very successful, but Pease, who was gradually developing socialists ideas, became increasingly uncomfortable about his speculative dealings on the Stock Exchange. In the early 1880s Pease became friends with Frank Podmore (1856-1910), who invited him to join the Society for Physical Research. The following year, the two men, joined a socialist debating group established by Edith Nesbit and Hubert Bland. In January, 1884, the group became known as the Fabian Society. Podmore's home, 14 Dean's Yard, Westminster, became the official headquarters of the organisation. The success of "Fabian Essays in Socialism" (1889) convinced the Fabian Society that they needed a full-time employee. In 1890 Pease was appointed as Secretary of the Society. In 1894 Henry Hutchinson, a wealthy solicitor from Derby, left the Fabian Society £10,000. Hutchinson left instructions that the money should be used for "propaganda and socialism". Hutchinson selected Pease, Sidney Webb (1859-1947) and Beatrice Webb (1858-1943) as trustees of the fund, and together they decided the money should be used to develop a new university in London. The London School of Economics (LSE) was founded in 1895. Pease was also a member of the Independent Labour Party. On 27th February 1900, Pease represented the Fabian Society at the meeting of socialist and trade union groups at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, London. The Conference established a Labour Representation Committee (LRC). Pease was elected to the executive of the Labour Representation Committee (named the Labour Party after 1906) and held the post for the next fourteen years. Pease established the East Surrey Labour Party and served on local council.
Charlotte Wilson (1854-1944)was born in Kemerton, Overbury, Tewkesbury. Her father was surgeon to the Shrewsbury Union and to the Worcester Friendly Institution. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. Sometime between 1880-1883 she married Arthur Wilson, a stockbroker who became editor of "The Investors Review". In 1884 she met Edward Pease, who introduced her to the Fabian Society. Wilson was elected a member of the society on 17th October 1884 and on 7th November read a paper to the society on anarchism. When the executive was established on 19th December she was made one of its members. Wilson left the Fabian Society in 1915 on the grounds of ill health. She was honorary secretary to the Prisoner of War Fund, Oxford and Bucks Regiment 1918-1919, and died at Irvington-on-Hudson, New York in 1944.
Margaret Harkness (1854-c1921) was a relative of the social reformer Beatrice Potter, and was born at Upton-upon-Severn in 1854. Her father was an Anglican priest. In 1877 she went to London to train at Westminster Hospital. In January 1878 she began as an apprentice dispenser, but around 1881 decided to try to earn a living as a journalist and author. Her first known publication was an article entitled "Women as Civil Servants" in the liberal monthly journal "Nineteenth Century". At the same time she began writing books and novels. During the early 1880s she became interested in the social problems of London's East End. In January 1888 Harkness joined the group around Henry Hyde Champion (1859-1928), editor of the Social Democratic Federation's journal "Justice", for which she published several of her articles. She left the group in 1889. In 1906 she went to India, where she stayed for several years working as a writer and probably a journalist. Harkness appears to have died some time after 1921.
Amber Blanco White, nee Reeves (b 1887) was the eldest daughter of William Pember Reeves (1857-1932), High Commissioner of New Zealand, and Maud Pember Reeves (1865-1953), a member of the Fabian Society's executive and founder of the Fabian Womens Group. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, gaining a double first in moral sciences. She was involved in the suffrage movement and the Fabian Society.
John Robert Riding, 1902-1983, was born in Gateacre, near Liverpool, and lived at Newcastle-under-Lyme until he was three years old, when his parents moved to London. Ridings began his career as an office boy with Camberwell Metropolitan Borough Council in 1917. In September 1940 he became Assistant Solicitor for Camberwell Metropolitan Borough Council. Riding was appointed Solicitor and Deputy Clerk to Hayes and Harlington Urban District Council, Middlesex in July 1943. In October 1946 he was appointed Clerk and Solicitor to Willenhall Urban District Council, Staffordshire. He retired from this post in March 1966 on the re-organisation of local government in the West Midlands. He went on to become Clerk of Shifnal Parish Council, Shropshire in 1968. In October 1976 Riding was appointed Town Clerk of Shifnal when the Parish Council became a Town Council. In March 1977 Riding retired after sixty years in local government. In February 1926 Riding was appointed Secretary to the Joint Committee of the Peckham branch of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and Camberwell Local Communist Party. In 1930 Riding retired from this post as he was moving from the Borough following his marriage. In 1928 Riding became Acting Secretary to the ILP South London Federation. He became Propaganda Secretary for the Federation in 1930. He was Member of the National Executive Committee of the Society of Clerks of the Urban District Councils, 1952-1968; President of the Society of Clerks of the Urban District Councils, 1954-1966; Member of the Executive Council of the Urban District Councils Association, 1966-1967; Member of the National Executive Committee of the Society of Local Council Clerks, 1972-1975; Chairman of the Executive Committee, Shropshire Association of Parish & Town Councils, 1974-1977, and continued as a co-opted member of this Committee after his retirement.
The South Wales Miners' Federation (SWMF) or "The Fed" as it was sometimes known was founded in 1898. William Brac of the South Wales branch of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) became Vice-President, and the Lib-Lab MP for the Rhondda William Abraham (1842-1922), who was prominent within the Cambrian Miners' Association, became the President. Abraham was also Teasurer of the MFGB. He was often referred to as "Mabon" (Welsh for the bard) by miners. A few months after its founding the SWMF became affiliated with the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. In 1899 it had 100,000 members, and by 1914 it had 200,000, making it the largest group affiliated to the MFGB. It became the largest unit within British coalmining unionism. In 1912 the SWMF secured a minimum wage for coalminers by advocating the first Britain-wide coal strike. However, the failure of the 1926 General Strike saw a decline in the SWMF's membership from 136,000 to 60,000 by 1932. Relevant publications include: The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (1980) by Hywel Francis and Dai Smith.