RJ Morris on voluntary societies

Roberts talks about there being three framing narratives for the discussion of moral reformers and voluntary societies - seeing it as an aspect of the development of capitalist industrial society; a "civil society" approach looking at the emergence of a "social sphere"; and one looking at its role in terms of mediating or resolving conflict, which he associated with R J Morris (and Brian Harrison?). This third narrative is one that is particularly useful when looking at the role of immigrant charities as a mediating space between host society (and power structures and elites) and immigrant communities (ie bridging and linking social capital).

Morris' Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites" includes various useful discussions in relation to this. He sees voluntary societies as mediating spaces which could help the "organization of consent" and in which different groups could come together to achieve (or at least try to achieve) some common aim but in which they could avoid the resolution of inherent contradictions between different groups of the middle class. These contradictions could be a barrier for state or local action, where the need to allocate official resources could lead to conflict (eg "evangelical and utilitarian competition for middle-class attention took place between rival voluntary societies, not as a disruptive contest for the resources of the state"). One might also use this to look at whether the notion of charity (or voluntary action) as inherently a good thing (a "public benefit") could mean that "reactionaries" could come to support what might be seen as a "progressive" cause. Was this true for immigrant charities?

Morris also places the development of voluntary societies in the context of the creation of a middle class mission and identity. They asserted their authority within the new society and sought to defend their place in that society by their voluntary endeavours on behalf of the whole community. But the middle class was also widely varied and involvement allowed for hierarchies within the middle class, with an elite assuming certain roles and titles in a system that ensures outside trust and confidence in the society, encouraged participation and sought to maximise donations ("the need for financial support, and in many cases for men of property and probity to act as trustees, in whom the property of the society could be vested, meant that patronage was welcomed by many members of lower status").

"The organization of consent which they continually sought was not only the consent of the subordinate classes to a beneficial domination but the consent of fragments of a potential middle class to cooperate with each other in seeking and sustaining this domination".

On the effect of voluntary societies on the working class, Morris like Roberts does not come down conclusively on one side or the other. He talks about late nineteenth century clerks and lower middle class as symbolizing the mixture of "defence and proud independence" that these societies sought but he also discusses the way in which the working class was able to take "items from the cultural package" offered them and to turn them to their own advantage "without compromising their own class identity or interest".

Capitalist models for charities

Charities could be seen to have adopted two aspects of capitalist organisation - the voluntary society as joint stock company and the division of labour within the charity.

Charities set up in the eighteenth century and after are often seen to have adopted the joint stock model in their development as subscribing charities (eg Roberts: "investors in works of charity were to be entitled to make their decisions on the basis of full information as in any other area of market choice"). But Morris says that the major organisational sources were the non-conformist chapel and the pub (Southwark Living Streets meets monthly in the Royal Oak Tavern in Tabard St). So is this true for Jewish and Irish charities? Which organisational source did they look to?

On the division of labour, charities were often an attempt to reinforce direct social relations that were being weakened in the face of the separation of classes in work environments and the spatial separation of rich and poor. So charities aimed at being volunteer led to create that contact and to reflect ideals of voluntary service. But their history tends to often demonstrate a weakness to keep this ideal in the face of variable enthusiasm by volunteers and the difficulty for volunteers to make the detailed decisions needed. So for instance the Mendicity Society was forced to employ a full-time manager and introduce a standard work test. So even charities could not avoid the division of labour in their own work.

Reasons for formation or action by voluntary societies

Simple crisis followed by response? - eg Sierra Leone project response to "the black poor", Polish refugees in 1830s, fever hospital in Leeds set up following 1799-1800 typhus outbreak, etc. But (quoting RJ Morris) what these incidents did was "concentrate anxieties about disease, street begging, radicalism and poverty which already existed. Such incidents provided a motive for selecting from the variety of ideas and examples of action by voluntary societies which were current at any given time." (eg ideas about promoting settlement in Sierra Leone were already current as the black poor crisis developed).

Morris quotes the comparison between towns which encouraged the development of new societies and how examples of other towns were used to justify action (evidence based policy making?). This was also true with different denominations and ethnic groups (see Prochaska on different female visiting societies). Immigrant groups could also be used to highlight "mainstream" attitudes and actions - eg "if even the Jews are so charitable that they have set up a charity to...".

Definitions of charity / voluntary societies (ongoing)

The posting on "moral reform" mentions a C19 distinctinction between moral reform organisations and charities (the original quote in Roberts is from a temperance society member) but others didn't see a difference - eg Edward Baines in 1843 lumps "mechanics institutes, literary societies, circulating libraries, youth's guardian societies, friendly societies, temperance societies, medical charities, clothing societies, benevolent and district visiting societies" as all bodies "for the diffusion of knowledge and for the dispensing of every kind of good" (quoted in RJ Morris Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites).

RJ Morris also has a useful also has a useful definition of voluntary societies as "organized groups of people formed to further a common interest. Membership was neither mandatory nor acquired by birth".

Should the definition in my study be "voluntary society" rather than "charity"?

The moral reform tradition

Roberts (in Making English Morals) talks about the creation of a "moral reform tradition" in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The modern inheritors are probably those organisations working on behaviour change campaigns (like Living Streets' Walk to School and Walking Works campaigns. In the nineteenth century this was seen as linked to but separate from more direct charity, a division that still continues to some extent.

In the nineteenth century, these were more likely to be campaigns for observation of the Sabbath, to stop animal cruelty (or at least working class animal cruelty), or to promote domestic life rather than the attraction of gin palaces or other distractions about trying to get the working class to accept and adjust to market values of self-control and self-reliance but was also a reaction to the unsettling nature of the market economy and its ability to corrupt (particularly for those whose viewpoint was more evangelical Christian). It was a form of "compensatory investment in ccultural stabilisation on behalf of the class most self-consciously 'implicated'" in the rise of the market. "Middle class society depended for its collective peace of mind on being able to recognise a limit to the legitimate operation of market forces and to patrol that limit on behalf of all classes".

Roberts also discusses the effect of these moral reform organisations in ways which I want to explore in relation to charities helping immigrants at this time. He concludes that the effects of technology, work routines, urban commercial leisure activity, a more stable economy and more reliable wage and employment prospects resulted the rise of "working class respectability" but that "volunteer experimental effort at the very least eased the transition from a predominantly rural face-to-face society to a predominantly urban, class segrated one". He also says that these groups also gave an opportunity to working people to "transform themselves" from being the objects of moral reformers to being its practitioners.

As well as the effect on those who were the targets of their work, those involved also built for themselves a sense of community which helped create both a middle class cultural mission and a cross-class, cross-regional "national opinion". It will be interested to see the extent to which the actions of those involved in Jewish or Catholic/Irish organisations helped create "Jewish" or "Catholic" opinion.

Psychological reasons for individual motivation (ongoing list)

Some thoughts on individuals' motivation for donating time or money to charity:

"psychic strain" caused by recently acquired or precarious social rank (from Robert's Making English Morals)

Charities and the Poor Law (Alan Kidd book)

Just finished reading Alan Kidd's book State, Society and the Poor in Nineteenth Century England, which I should have read at the beginning of all this reading rather than one year in. It's a pretty useful overview. The main points for my studies are:

not having a teleological approach to welfare to avoid seeing everything as anticipating the welfare state leading to too much emphasis being placed by historians on the Poor Law (but if you're looking at immigrant communities in this period you're unlikely to do so as they were largely outside the Poor Law's remit)

that charity was placed somewhere between the safety net of the Poor Law and self-help organisations (like friendly societies) and the support of family, friends and neighbours (though again, this might be less true for immigrants who could not access the Poor Law and who might have more difficulties accessing support from kin and connections - ie less social capital - so might therefore be more reliant on charity if they were in need. They would also need to locate themselves very near friends and family if they were to get help from them in an era before public transport and rapid communications. And high population movements "interfered with kinship networks" so that there was a need for stability in an area before kinship systems could work. Which ties in with the suggestion that immigrants would tend to live in areas which allowed them “to strengthen internal ties for self-support as well as to start to create external links with their host society” (from Laura Vaughan and Alan Penn on immigrant quarters in Leeds and Liverpool. See “Jewish Immigrant Settlement Patterns in Manchester and Leeds 1881” in Urban Studies, Vol 43, no 3, 653-671, March 2006)

the link between evangelical and "classical political economy" ideas on charity - the comparison with immigrant charities would help highlight this, and it's interesting to see how they are affected by these ideas (eg Jewish Board of Guardian's use of language of the Poor Law) - and that all welfare (charity and Poor Law) was a gift and recipients should not expect to be entitled to it

refers to the idea of those applying for charitable help getting used to the "theatre of charity" and acting the right part (see Mandle, the Uses of Charity) though he doesn't explore the ways in which this might be internalised into day to day behaviour (check Goffman's Presentation of Self)

the role of friendly societies in creating and reinforcing a shared culture (rituals and tests for membership - Gorsky's fictive kin) and supportive social network but lower middle class distate for this and preference for chequebook style societies

role of women in financial management of household and "supportive and regulative" social networks

and he also says that welfare systems are a "cultural construct": discuss