... when fear and guilt were making people acutely conscious of lower-class suffering, the role of the philanthropist took on an importance, even a necessity, which called for the rhetoric of heroism — Houghton 320.
A glittering imperial capital, a sprawling, congested metropolis, a source of pride, anxiety, fear and wonder all intermixed: London was the great laboratory of late-Victorian charitable activism. — Ginn 6
"The Philanthropists," by Sol Eyting, illustrates the episode in Dickens's A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge turns the philanthropists away.
Philanthropists
- George Peabody (1795–1869)
- Thomas Holloway (1800-1883)
- Anthony Ashley Cooper, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (1801-1885)
- Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906)
- Sybil Oldfield (1828-1877)
- William Booth (1829-1912), founder of the Salvation Army
- Octavia Hill (1838-1912)
- Thomas John Barnardo (1845–1905)
- Margaret MacDonald (1870-1911)
Topics
- Philanthropy in Victorian Hastings
- Mary Augusta Ward's Philanthropy and Public Life
- Dickens, Philanthropist or Moralist?
- Class and Condescension in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh
- Felicia Skene, Josephine Butler and William Acton and their views on similar reformatories
- The Ragged School
- Philanthropy and the Workhouse
- The Charity Market and Humanitarianism in Britain, 1870-1912, by Sarah Roddy, Julie-Marie Strange and Bertrand Taithe (review by Pat Thane)
Bibliography
Briggs, Asa. The Age of Improvement, 1783-1867. London: Routledge, 2014.
Burdett-Coutts, ed. Woman's mission; a series of congress papers on the philanthropic work of women, by eminent writers. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons / London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., (?)1893. (Available in the Internet Archive)
Burk, Kathleen. "Peabody, George (1795–1869), merchant banker and philanthropist." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed.
Curtis, Merle. Foreword. George Peabody, A Biography. By Franklin Parker. Rev. ed. Nashville and London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995. ix-x.
Darley, Gillian. "Hill, Octavia (1838–1912), housing and social reformer." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed.
_____. Octavia Hill: A Life. London: Francis Boutle, 2010.
Ginn, Geoffrey A. C. Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London. London: Routledge, 2017.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians. New York: Vintage, 1991.
Houghton, Walter E. The Victorian Frame of Mind 1830-1870. New Haven and London: Yale, 1957/
Oldfield, Sybil. Jeanie, an "Army of One": Mrs Nassau Senior, 1828-1877, The First Woman in Whitehall. Brighton and Portland: Sussex University Press, 2008 (review).
Owen, David. English Philanthropy, 1660-1960. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1965.
Prochaska, F. K. Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980 (rpt. 2003).
Roddy, Sarah, Julie-Marie Strange and Bertrand Taithe. The Charity Market and Humanitarianism in Britain, 1870-1912. London: Bloomsbury, 2019 [Review.]
Last modified 24 May 2019