THE BEGINNINGS OF TOYNBEE HALL.[1]
By Mrs. S. A. Barnett.1903.
By Mrs. S. A. Barnett.
1903.
1From “Towards Social Reform”. By kind permission of Messrs. Fisher Unwin.
1From “Towards Social Reform”. By kind permission of Messrs. Fisher Unwin.
“Howdid the idea of a University Settlement arise?” “What was the beginning?” are questions so often asked by Americans, Frenchmen, Belgians, or the younger generations of earnest English people, that it seems worth while to reply in print, and to trundle one’s mind back to those early days of effort and loneliness before so many bore the burden and shared the anxiety. The fear is that in putting pen to paper on matters which are so closely bound up with our own lives, the sin of egotism will be committed, or that a special plant, which is still growing, may be damaged, as even weeds are if their roots are looked at. And yet in the tale which has to be told there is so much that is gladdening and strengthening to those who are fighting apparently forlorn causes that I venture to tell it in the belief that to some our experiences will give hope.
In the year 1869, Mr. Edward Denison took up his abode in East London. He did not stay long nor accomplish much, but as he breathed the air of the people he absorbed something of their sufferings, saw things from their standpoint, and, as his letters in his memoirs show, made frequent suggestions for social remedies. He was the first settler, and was followed by the late Mr. Edmund Hollond,to whom my husband and I owe our life in Whitechapel. He was ever on the outlook for men and women who cared for the people, and hearing that we wished to come Eastward, wrote to Dr. Jackson, then Bishop of London, when the living of St. Jude’s fell vacant in the autumn of 1872, and asked that it might be offered to Mr. Barnett, who was at that time working as Curate at St. Mary’s, Bryanston Square, with Mr. Fremantle, now the Dean of Ripon. I have the Bishop’s letter, wise, kind and fatherly, the letter of a general sending a young captain to a difficult outpost. “Do not hurry in your decision,” he wrote, “it is the worst parish in my diocese, inhabited mainly by a criminal population, and one which has I fear been much corrupted by doles”.
How well I remember the day Mr. Barnett and I first came to see it!—a sulky sort of drizzle filled the atmosphere; the streets, dirty and ill kept, were crowded with vicious and bedraggled people, neglected children, and overdriven cattle. The whole parish was a network of courts and alleys, many houses being let out in furnished rooms at 8d. a night—a bad system, which lent itself to every form of evil, to thriftless habits, to untidiness, to loss of self-respect, to unruly living, to vicious courses.
We did not “hurry in our decision,” but just before Christmas, 1872, Mr. Barnett became vicar. A month later we were married, and took up our life-work on 6 March, 1873, accompanied by our friend Edward Leonard, who joined us, “to do what he could”; his “could” being ultimately the establishment of the Whitechapel Committee of the Charity Organization Society, and a change in the lives and ideals of a large number of young people, whom he gathered round him to hear of the Christ he worshipped.
It would sound like exaggeration if I told my memories of those times. The previous vicar had had a long and disablingillness, and all was out of order. The church, unserved by either curate, choir, or officials, was empty, dirty, unwarmed. Once the platform of popular preachers, Mr. Hugh Allen, and Mr. (now Bishop) Thornton, it had had huge galleries built to accommodate the crowds who came from all parts of London to hear them—galleries which blocked the light, and made the subsequent emptiness additionally oppressive. The schools were closed, the schoolrooms all but devoid of furniture, the parish organization nil; no Mothers’ meeting, no Sunday School, no communicants’ class, no library, no guilds, no music, no classes, nothing alive. Around this barren empty shell surged the people, here to-day, gone to-morrow. Thieves and worse, receivers of stolen goods, hawkers, casual dock labourers, every sort of unskilled low-class cadger congregated in the parish. There was an Irish quarter and a Jews’ quarter, while whole streets were given over to the hangers-on of a vicious population, people whose conduct was brutal, whose ideal was idleness, whose habits were disgusting, and among whom goodness was laughed at, the honest man and the right-living woman being scorned as impracticable. Robberies, assaults, and fights in the street were frequent; and to me, a born coward, it grew into a matter of distress when we became sufficiently well known in the parish for our presence to stop, or at least to moderate, a fight; for then it seemed a duty to join the crowd, and not to follow one’s nervous instincts and pass by on the other side. I recall one breakfast being disturbed by three fights outside the Vicarage. We each went to one, and the third was hindered by a hawker friend who had turned verger, and who fetched the distant policeman, though he evidently remained doubtful as to the value of interference.
We began our work very quietly and simply: opened the church (the first congregation was made up of six orseven old women, all expecting doles for coming), restarted the schools, established relief committees, organized parish machinery, and tried to cauterise, if not to cure, the deep cancer of dependence which was embedded in all our parishioners alike, lowering the best among them and degrading the worst. At all hours, and on all days, and with every possible pretext, the people came and begged. To them we were nothing but the source from which to obtain tickets, money, or food; and so confident were they that help would be forthcoming that they would allow themselves to get into circumstances of suffering or distress easily foreseen, and then send round and demand assistance.
I can still recall my emotions when summoned to a sick woman in Castle Alley, an alley long since pulled down, where the houses, three stories high, were hardly six feet apart; the sanitary accommodation—pits in the cellars; and the whole place only fit for the condemnation it got directly Cross’s Act was passed. This alley, by the way, was in part the cause of Cross’s Act, so great an impression did it make on Lord Cross (then Mr. Cross) when Mr. Barnett induced him to come down and see it.
In this stinking alley, in a tiny dirty room, all the windows broken and stuffed up, lay the woman who had sent for me. There were no bedclothes; she lay on a sacking covered with rags.
“I do not know you,” said I, “but I hear you want to see me.”
“No, ma’am!” replied a fat beer-sodden woman by the side of the bed, producing a wee, new-born baby; “we don’t know yer, but ’ere’s the babby, and in course she wants clothes, and the mother comforts like. So we jist sent round to the church.”
This was a compliment to the organization which represented Christ, but one which showed how sunken wasthe character which could not make even the simplest provision for an event which must have been expected for months, and which even the poorest among the respectable counts sacred.
The refusal of the demanded doles made the people very angry. Once the Vicarage windows were broken, once we were stoned by an angry crowd, who also hurled curses at us as we walked down a criminal-haunted street, and howled out as a climax to their wrongs “And it’s us as pays ’em”. But we lived all this down, and as the years went by reaped a harvest of love and gratitude which is one of the gladdest possessions of our lives, and is quite disproportionate to the service we have rendered. But this is the end of the story, and I must go back to the beginning.
In a parish which occupies only a few acres, and was inhabited by 8,000 persons, we were confronted by some of the hardest problems of city life. The housing of the people, the superfluity of unskilled labour, the enforcement of resented education, the liberty of the criminal classes to congregate and create a low public opinion, the administration of the Poor Law, the amusement of the ignorant, the hindrances to local government (in a neighbourhood devoid of the leisured and cultured), the difficulty of uniting the unskilled men and women, in trade unions, the necessity for stricter Factory Acts, the joylessness of the masses, the hopefulness of the young—all represented difficult problems, each waiting for a solution and made more complicated by the apathy of the poor, who were content with an unrighteous contentment and patient with an ungodly patience. These were not the questions to be replied to by doles, nor could the problem be solved by kind acts to individuals nor by the healing of the suffering, which was but the symptom of the disease.
In those days these difficulties were being dealt withmainly by good kind women, generally elderly; few men, with the exception of the clergy and noted philanthropists, as Lord Shaftesbury, were interested in the welfare of the poor, and economists rarely joined close experience with their theories.
“If men, cultivated, young, thinking men, could only know of these things they would be altered,” I used to say, with girlish faith in human goodwill—a faith which years has not shaken; and in the spring of 1875 we went to Oxford, partly to tell about the poor, partly to enjoy “eights week” with a group of young friends. Our party was planned by Miss Toynbee, whom I had met when at school, and whose brother Arnold was then an undergraduate at Pembroke. Our days were filled with the hospitality with which Oxford still rejoices its guests; but in the evenings we used to drop quietly down the river with two or three earnest men, or sit long and late in our lodgings in the Turl, and discuss the mighty problems of poverty and the people.
How vividly Canon Barnett and I can recall each and all of the first group of “thinking men,” so ready to take up enthusiasms in their boyish strength—Arnold Toynbee, Sidney Ball, W. H. Forbes, Arthur Hoare, Leonard Montefiore, Alfred Milner, Philip Gell, John Falk, G. E. Underhill, Ralph Whitehead, Lewis Nettleship! Some of these are still here, and caring for our people, but others have passed behind the veil, where perhaps earth’s sufferings are explicable.
We used to ask each undergraduate as he developed interest to come and stay in Whitechapel, and see for himself. And they came, some to spend a few weeks, some for the Long Vacation, while others, as they left the University and began their life’s work, took lodgings in East London, and felt all the fascination of its strong pulse of life, hearing, as those who listen always may, the hushed, unceasing moansunderlying the cry which ever and anon makes itself heard by an unheeding public.
From that first visit to Oxford in the “eights week” of 1875, date many visits to both the Universities. Rarely a term passed without our going to Oxford, where the men who had been down to East London introduced us to others who might do as they had done. Sometimes we stayed with Dr. Jowett, the immortal Master of Balliol, sometimes we were the guests of the undergraduates, who would get up meetings in their rooms, and organize innumerable breakfasts, teas, river excursions, and other opportunities for introducing the subject of the duty of the cultured to the poor and degraded.
No organization was started, no committee, no society, no club formed. We met men, told them of the needs of the out-of-sight poor; and many came to see Whitechapel and stayed to help it. And so eight years went by—our Oxford friends laughingly calling my husband the “unpaid professor of social philosophy”.
In June, 1883, we were told by Mr. Moore Smith that some men at St. John’s College at Cambridge were wishful to do something for the poor, but that they were not quite prepared to start an ordinary College Mission. Mr. Barnett was asked to suggest some other possible and more excellent way. The letter came as we were leaving for Oxford, and was slipped with others in my husband’s pocket. Soon something went wrong with the engine and delayed the train so long that the passengers were allowed to get out. We seated ourselves on the railway bank, just then glorified by masses of large ox-eyed daisies, and there he wrote a letter suggesting that men might hire a house, where they could come for short or long periods, and, living in an industrial quarter, learn to “sup sorrow with the poor”. The letter pointed out that close personal knowledge of individuals among thepoor must precede wise legislation for remedying their needs, and that as English local government was based on the assumption of a leisured cultivated class, it was necessary to provide it artificially in those regions where the line of leisure was drawn just above sleeping hours, and where the education ended at thirteen years of age and with the three R’s.
That letter founded Toynbee Hall. Insomnia had sapped my health for a long time, and later, in the autumn of that year, we were sent toEaux Bonnesto try a water-cure. During that period the Cambridge letter was expanded into a paper, which was read at a college meeting at St. John’s College, Oxford, in November of the same year. Mr. Arthur Sidgwick was present, and it is largely due to his practical vigour that the idea of University Settlements in the industrial working-class quarters of large towns fell not only on sympathetic ears, but was guided until it came to fruition. The first meeting of undergraduates met in the room of Mr. Cosmo Lang now (1908), about to become Archbishop of York. Soon after the meeting a small but earnest committee was formed; later on the committee grew in size and importance, money was obtained on debenture bonds, and a Head sought who would turn the idea into a fact. Here was the difficulty. Such men as had been pictured in the paper which Mr. Knowles had published in the “Nineteenth Century Review” of February, 1884, are not met with every-day; and no inquiries seemed to discover the wanted man who would be called upon to give all and expect nothing.
Mr. Barnett and I had spent eleven years of life and work in Whitechapel. We were weary. My health stores were limited and often exhausted, and family circumstances had given us larger means and opportunities for travel. We were therefore desirous to turn our backs on the strain, the pain, the passion and the poverty of East London, at leastfor a year or two, and take repose after work which had aged and weakened us. But no other man was to be found who would and could do the work; and, if this child-thought was not to die, it looked as if we must undertake to try and rear it.
We went to the Mediterranean to consider the matter, and solemnly, on a Sunday morning, made our decision. How well I recall the scene as we sat at the end of the quaint harbour-pier atMentone, the blue waves dancing at our feet, everything around scintillating with light and movement in contrast to the dull and dulling squalor of the neighbourhood which had been our home for eleven years, and which our new decision would make our home for another indefinite spell of labour and effort. “God help us,” we said to each other; and then we wired home to obtain the refusal of the big Industrial School next to St. Jude’s Vicarage, which had recently been vacated, and which we thought to be a good site for the first Settlement, and returned to try and live up to the standard which we had unwittingly set for ourselves in describing in the article the unknown man who was wanted for Warden.
The rest of the story is soon told. The Committee did the work, bought the land, engaged the architect (Mr. Elijah Hoole), raised the money, and interested more and more men, who came for varying periods, either to live, to visit, or to see what was being done.
On 10 March, 1883, Arnold Toynbee had died. He had been our beloved and faithful friend, ever since, as a lad of eighteen, his own mind then being chiefly concerned with military interests and ideals, he had heard, with the close interest of one treading untrodden paths, facts about the toiling, ignorant multitude whose lives were stunted by labour, clouded by poverty, and degraded by ignorance. He had frequently been to see us at St. Jude’s, stayingsometimes a few nights, oftener tempting us to go a day or two with him into the country; and ever wooing us with persistent hospitality to Oxford. Once in 1879 he had taken rooms over the Charity Organization Office in Commercial Road, hoping to spend part of the Long Vacation, learning of the people; but his health, often weakly, could not stand the noise of the traffic, the sullenness of the aspect, nor the pain which stands waiting at every corner; and at the end of some two or three weeks he gave up the plan and left East London, never to return except as our welcome guest. His share of the movement was at Oxford, where with a subtle force of personality he attracted original or earnest minds of all degrees, and turned their thoughts or faces towards the East End and its problems. Through him many men came to work with us, while others were stirred by the meetings held in Oxford, or by the pamphlet called the “Bitter Cry,” which, in spite of its exaggerations, aroused many to think of the poor; or by the stimulating teaching of Professor T. H. Green, and by the constant, kindly sympathy of the late Master of Balliol, who startled some of his hearers, who had not plumbed the depths of his wide, wise sympathy, by advising all young men, whatever their career, “to make some of their friends among the poor”.
The 10th of March, 1884, was a Sunday, and on the afternoon of that day Balliol Chapel was filled with a splendid body of men who had come together from all parts of England in loving memory of Arnold Toynbee, on the anniversary of his death. Dr. Jowett had asked my husband to preach to them, and they listened, separating almost silently at the chapel porch, filled, one could almost feel, by the aspiration to copy him in caring much, if not doing much, for those who had fallen by the way or were “vacant of our glorious gains”.
We had often chatted, those of us who were busy planning the new Settlement, as to what to call it. We did not mean the name to be descriptive; it should, we thought, be free from every possible savour of a Mission, and yet it should in itself be suggestive of a noble aim. As I sat on that Sunday afternoon in the chapel, one of the few women among the crowd of strong-brained, clean-living men assembled in reverent affection for one man, the thought flashed to me, “Let us call the Settlement Toynbee Hall”. To Mr. Bolton King, the honorary secretary of the committee, had come the same idea, and it, finding favour with the committee, was so decided, and our new Settlement received its name before a brick was laid or the plans concluded.
On the first day of July, 1884, the workmen began to pull down the old Industrial School, and to adapt such of it as was possible for the new uses; and on Christmas Eve, 1884, the first settlers, Mr. H. D. Leigh, of Corpus, and Mr. C. H. Grinling, of Hertford, slept in Toynbee Hall, quickly followed by thirteen residents, some of whom had been living in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel, some for a considerable length of time, either singly or in groups, one party inhabiting a small disused public-house, others in model dwellings or in lodgings, none of them being altogether suitable for their own good or the needs of those whom they would serve. Those men had become settlers before the Settlement scheme was conceived, and as such were conversant with the questions in the air. It was an advantage also, that they were of different ages, friends of more than one University generation, and linked together by a common friendship to us.
The present Dean of Ripon had for many years lent his house at No. 3, Ship Street, for our use, and so had enabled us to spend some consecutive weeks of each summer atOxford; and during those years we had learnt to know the flower of the University, counting, as boy friends, some men who have since become world-widely known; some who have done the finest work and “scorned to blot it with a name”; and others who, as civil servants, lawyers, doctors, country gentlemen, business men, have in the more humdrum walks of life carried into practice the same spirit of thoughtful sympathy which first brought them to inquire concerning those less endowed and deprived of life’s joys, or those who, handicapped by birth, training, and environment, had fallen by the way.
As to what Toynbee Hall has done and now is doing, it is difficult for any one, and impossible for me, to speak. Perhaps I cannot be expected to see the wood for the trees. Those who have cared to come and see for themselves what is being done, to stay in the house and join in its work, know that Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel, is a place where twenty University men live in order to work for, to teach, to learn of the poor. Since 1884 the succession of residents has never failed. Men of varied opinions and many views, both political and religious, have lived harmoniously together, some staying as long as fifteen years, others remaining shorter periods. All have left behind them marks of their residence; sometimes in the policy of the local Boards, of which they have become members; or in relation to the Student Residences; or the Antiquarian, Natural History, or Travelling Clubs which individuals among them have founded; or by busying themselves with classes, debates, conferences, discussions. Their activities have been unceasing and manifold, but looking over many years and many men it seems to my inferior womanly mind that the best work has been done by those men who have cared most deeply for individuals among the poor. Out of such deep care has grown intimate knowledge of their lives and industrialposition, and from knowledge has come improvement in laws, conditions, or administration. It is such care that has awakened in the people the desire to seek what is best. It is the care of those, who, loving God, have taught others to know Him. It is the care of those who, pursuing knowledge and rejoicing in learning, have spread it among the ignorant more effectively than books, classes or lectures could have done. It is the care for the degraded which alone rouses them to care for themselves. It is the care for the sickly, the weak, the oppressed, the rich, the powerful, the happy, the teacher and taught, the employed and the employer, which enables introduction to be made and interpretation of each other to be offered and accepted. From this seed of deep individual care has grown a large crop of friendship, and many flowers of graceful acts.
It is the duty of Toynbee Hall, situated as it is at the gate of East London, to play the part of a skilful host and introduce the East to the West; but all the guests must be intimate friends, or there will be social blunders. To quote some words out of a report, Toynbee Hall is “an association of persons, with different opinions and different tastes; its unity is that of variety; its methods are spiritual rather than material; it aims at permeation rather than conversion; and its trust is in friends linked to friends rather than in organization”....
It was a crowded meeting of the Universities Settlements Association that was held in Balliol Hall in March, 1892, it being known that Dr. Jowett, who had recently been dangerously ill, would take the chair. He spoke falteringly (for he was still weakly), and once there came an awful pause that paled the hearers who loved him, in fear for his well-being. He told something of his own connexion with the movement; of how he had twice stayed with us in Whitechapel, and had seen men’s efforts to lift this deadweight of ignorance and pain. He referred to Arnold Toynbee, one of the “purest-minded of men,” and one who “troubled himself greatly over the unequal position of mankind”. He told of the force of friendship which was to him sacred, and “some of which should be offered to the poor”. He dwelt on his own hopes for Toynbee Hall, and of its uses to Oxford, as well as to Whitechapel; and he spoke also of us and our work, but those words were conceived by his friendship for and his faith in us, and hardly represented the facts. They left out of sight what the Master of Balliol could only imperfectly know—the countless acts of kindness, the silent gifts of patient service, and the unobtrusive lives of many men; their reverence before weakness and poverty, their patience with misunderstanding, their faith in the power of the best, their tenderness to children and their boldness against vice. These are the foundations on which Toynbee Hall has been built, and on which it aims to raise the ideals of human life, and strengthen faith in God.
Henrietta O. Barnett.
Henrietta O. Barnett.