BOOK REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1953.tb01767.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1953 |
| Date | 01 March 1953 |
BOOK
REVIEWS
Charitable Efort
in
Liverpool
in
the Nineteenth Century
By
AW~~~
B.
SIMEY
(Liverpool University Press),
1951.
Pp.
150.
7s.
6d.
LIRS.
SIUY
has written a little classic,
&ich deserves to be read not only by
,rudents of Liverpool history or of social
Idministration but by all who are interested
in
the nineteenth century.
The origins of modern voluntary social
,xvices,
Mrs.
Simey points out, do not lie
LII
the countryside
or
in the small market
:owns of the pre-industrial era, but in the
growing industrial communities of the late
tighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Personal service rather than private
alms-
Ziving was a direct response to the special
Conditions of large-scale urban life. Liver-
pool
was one of the new cities, where from
:he start local conditions posed complex
jocial problems.
“
In Livcrpool, almost
;alone amongst the provincial cities of the
-xingdom,” wrote a contemporary in 1871,
“
rhe intercourse between masters and
men, between employers and employed,
desolate condition of honest, striving
:ndusuy, and bodes no good to the social
:iystem.” The exceptional situation
pro-
duced exceptional men and women to
i-ackle it.
“SO
often was Liverpool’s
txample a pioneer effort,”
Mrs.
Simey
writes,
“
that it becomes monotonous
10
mention the fact.”
The nature and purposes of local effort
1:aried considerably at different times in
the wurse of the nineteenth century.
-There was
no
single answer to the problems
of
the poor once the stable society of the
eighteenth century, with its clear con-
ception of the rights and duties of its
members, had broken down. In
a
city
like Liverpool, one
or
several of a wide
range of new responsibilities add take
the place of individual charity,
or
there
could be
no
responsibility at all but merely
an open class antagonism. The first
possible answer was provided by religion,
by
“
pure faith,” by the understanding of
a few Christians that the degeneration
of
the poor was due not to their inferior
moral qualities but to their isolation in an
inadequate society. The second answer
was reform of environment,
“
physical
civilisation,” the attempt to improve
material conditions and
to
narrow the
divide beiwecn the standards
of
living
of
the rich and the poor. Physical
reform
involved psychological as well as technical
problems.
“
We know little of the in-
ward consciousness of the toiling and the
suffering poor,” wrote an early reformer,
“
to be able
to
speak with any confidence
of their own view of their own existence.”
The attempt to narrow the divide pre-
occupied the mid-century reformers,
particularly the little group
of
women,
who found in social service a freedom from
personal dissatisfaction and frustration.
In the middle years of the century
regulation and administration were de-
manded rather than imagination
or
insight,
“
method
”
instead of
“
muddle.” The
setting up of the Central Relief Society
in
1863
reflected the changes in
mood
and
interest: with its foundation came the
new technique of case
work
and the
subordination of philanthropy to reason.
In
the later nineteenth century, in face
of
economic depression, emphasis shifted
again to the bigger
task
of improving the
condition of the poorer classes as a whole,
and reason
was
replaced by
or
at least
stirred into a somewhat restless activity by
a new sense of middle-class guilt. Even
the most degenerate of men, it was poinied
out, even the unworthy, left outside the
range Gf service of the Central Relief
Society, was still a human being
:
first his
character arid then
his
environment could
be re-shaped. In the last decade
of
the
century and at the beginning
of
the
twentieth century, the social worker
emerged, particularly the woman worker,
anxious
to combine the scientific approach
of the new social studies with the warmth
of individual affection. Ey that time there
were many cross currents in social welfare,
new socialist drives in politics, and a new
interest on the part
of
the state.
Mrs.
Simey has introduced method
and order into the history of social service
in Liverpool: she has throughout shown
equally valuable gifts of imagination and
sympathy. Whether
or
not her chronology,
with its tentative periods of social develop-
ment, will be of useful general application
will
only become clear after other local
G
8’7
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