High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  This hard-line approach may or may not have affected the figures for paupers in London during the 1870s, or there may have been other factors: in 1871 there had been 44.2 paupers per thousand of the London population, but by 1878 the figure had fallen to 23.4 per thousand. Given the economic downturn after 1873, those figures are all the more remarkable.67 The COS’s history outlines some specimen ‘undeserving’ cases, which show just how hard the line was. A widow with a broken collarbone was unable to work because of her injury, and unable therefore to buy her ten-year-old son some boots for his work. The committee made inquiries and found she was in her local pub every evening, and had broken her collarbone falling over while drunk. A married couple with four children was refused help when the father was unemployed because inquiries showed he was ‘very lazy’ and he and his wife were both drunks.68 Such people would be referred to the workhouse where, it was deemed, life would be so unpleasant that they would soon mend their ways. The COS had no qualms about the sins of the parents being visited upon their children. The moral question cut both ways: when a woman with four children came to the COS in distress because her husband had deserted her, the COS had the husband arrested and sent to prison for three months. By the 1880s, the COS had modified its language for fear of being branded unduly judgemental. Those who had been ‘undeserving’ now became ‘not assisted’.69

  VIII

  Octavia Hill would be celebrated for establishing sanitary housing for the poor. However, she began her work among the destitute when her mother decided to befriend poor women from their neighbourhood, and invite them to her house once a week for a sewing evening, accompanied by a conversation. This not only gave the women subtle instruction in how to conduct their lives, but also helped establish a sense of community, and the type of ‘friendship’ the COS would argue was the best form of philanthropy. It was another attempt to recreate in the urban environment that sense of duty from the better-off towards the poor that continued, to an extent, to exist in the countryside.

  Octavia was born in 1838, and was so named because she was the eighth daughter of James Hill, a Cambridgeshire corn merchant and proto-socialist disciple of Robert Owen, the utopian. Her father went bankrupt when she was two, and abandoned his responsibilities for his family. Her mother, his third wife, brought up her five daughters with help from her father, Thomas Southwood Smith, a celebrated doctor, Unitarian, vigorous campaigner against children working in mines and an advocate of slum clearance. Smith worked among the poor in London’s East End, was a close friend and collaborator of Ashley, and another stimulus to his granddaughter’s sense of philanthropy. She spent most of her formative years in his house at Highgate. She had no formal education.

  In 1852, when Hill was fourteen, her mother became manager of the Ladies Guild, a cooperative crafts workshop in Holborn whose aim was to provide an occupation for working-class women, and whose existence had been inspired by the Christian Socialist movement of F. D. Maurice. Another of Maurice’s disciples who had done social work in Holborn was Thomas Hughes, who would write Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Maurice preached in Lincoln’s Inn chapel, and the Hills were often in his congregation. Octavia had grown up in a dissenting family, but under Maurice’s influence moved to the Church of England, with two of her sisters, and Maurice stood godfather when she was baptised. Octavia became her mother’s assistant, and looked after girls from the local Ragged School who made toys in the workshop. She became aware of the dreadful conditions in which the girls lived in the rookeries of Holborn.

  Maurice encouraged Hill in social work. However, the greatest influence of her philanthropic career was John Ruskin, whom she met through the Guild, and whose writings she read avidly. In 1856 the Guild failed commercially, and Maurice rescued her by offering her the job of secretary, at 10s a week, to the women’s classes at the Working Men’s College in Holborn, of which he had been principal since 1854.The vice-principal was Llewelyn Davies, a clergyman and brother of Emily. The classes were never intended for working-class women, and operated in the afternoon when the men were at work: they came in the evening. Ruskin also taught there, and engaged Hill as a copyist, working for him in the Dulwich Art Gallery and the National Gallery, making copies of pictures for him to use as teaching aids. Hill started to teach at the Working Men’s College too. Her consciousness of women’s disabilities was raised through this work, and in 1856–7 she collected 24,000 signatures for a petition in favour of a married women’s property Act. She also volunteered to teach at Barbara Bodichon’s secular, coeducational school in Paddington.

  Hill longed to provide better housing for the very poor, especially unskilled labourers whom she felt had not been assisted by various Acts and charitable endeavours that looked after more accomplished artisans. However, not only did she lack the means of a Burdett-Coutts or a Peabody, her family had never recovered from her father’s bankruptcy and were themselves living only a little above the breadline. Her opportunity came, however, after the death of Ruskin’s father in 1864. The following year he used part of his £120,000 inheritance to buy three houses in Paradise Place, Marylebone, for the working classes to live in under Hill’s management. ‘One day he and Miss Octavia Hill were having a friendly chat,’ one of Hill’s friends recalled in 1905, ‘and he lamented the dreariness of life without an object other than the usual daily round . . . “One longs to do something more satisfying”.’ Hill agreed, and when Ruskin asked her what she would like to do, she replied: ‘something to provide better homes for the poor.’ Ruskin ‘turning sharp round in his seat’ asked: ‘How could it be done? Have you a business plan?’70 Hill quickly gave him a plan. For Ruskin this was a business venture rather than a straight act of philanthropy, something the hard-minded Hill not only understood, but welcomed: he lent the money with the promise of a 5 per cent return through rents on the freehold property, and 3 per cent on the leasehold.

  Ruskin described in Time and Tide how the plan worked, allowing himself at the same time a swipe at Mill, of whom he had – not least under Carlyle’s influence – become an adversary.

  The most wretched houses of the poor in London often pay ten or fifteen per cent to the landlord; and I have known an instance of sanitary legislation being hindered, to the loss of many hundreds of lives, in order that the rents of a nobleman, derived from the necessities of the poor, might not be diminished. And it is a curious thing to me to see Mr J S Mill foaming at the mouth, and really afflicted conscientiously, because he supposes one man to have been unjustly hanged, while by his own failure (I believe wilful failure) in stating clearly to the public one of the first elementary truths of the science he professes, he is aiding and abetting the commission of the cruellest possible form of murder on many thousands of persons yearly, for the sake simply of putting money into the pockets of the landlords. I felt this evil so strongly that I bought, in the worst part of London, one freehold and one leasehold property, consisting of houses inhabited by the lowest poor; in order to try what change in their comfort and habits I could effect by taking only a just rent, but that firmly.71

  Hill initially tried to buy some houses around where she lived in Nottingham Place, Marylebone, only to find potential vendors changing their minds when they learned what she intended. She found some squalid ones a short walk away that would, once repaired, serve her purpose. Paradise Place had been built in the 1830s and was home to many working-class families, packed far too many to a room and living in utterly insanitary conditions. The new landlord allocated two rooms to each family rather than one. Hill could see that the women who lived there under the previous regime were forced into such impossible squalor that they had simply given up caring. She hoped that by allowing them to have accommodation of which they could be proud, they would take better care of it, and feel responsibility towards themselves and their families. The houses were redecorated and their drains cleaned out; they were given improved ventilation and put into good repair. ‘I have long been wanting to gather near us my friends
among the poor,’ Hill wrote to a friend, ‘in some house arranged for their health and convenience, in fact a small private model lodging-house, where I may know everyone, and do something towards making their lives healthier and happier.’72

  At the core of her ideology was the idea that the poor had to help themselves as much as possible. She was a devotee of Samuel Smiles, and sought to put his example into practice. Those who broke her rules by not paying their rents, or damaging the property or causing disturbances, were thrown out. She or one of a small, hand-picked and carefully trained group of lady assistants visited weekly to collect rents, and to monitor matters. They continued that ‘friendship’ with her tenants that gave her landlordism an aspect of social work, and which would put her in tune with the aims and policies of the COS. In particular, Hill and her colleagues could watch the children in her cottages, and see they were set an example and steered towards an education that would help make them responsible and respectable adults. Hill believed the small family unit was the basis of social improvement, not least because of the ability to teach an example and the requirement of the acceptance of responsibility, and the houses in which her families were brought up were ideal for this purpose.

  After Paradise Place a network of houses grew up. Hill was de facto landlady and mentor to the tenants, to whom she taught the basics of household management and thrift. Her tenants were usually casual or seasonal workers and therefore ineligible for the new model dwellings – but not necessarily because of problems of character. Part of the social work aspect to her and her assistants’ roles was to seek employment for those willing to work, so they could avoid falling behind on rent. Although Hill had little money – she depended on her work at the WMC and from Ruskin to keep solvent – she underestimated the struggle so many of her tenants had to meet their obligations.

  She had, in 1869, at the inception of the COS, argued in a paper of the same name ‘the importance of aiding the poor without alms-giving’.73 That was the basis upon which she ran the properties. She also wrote at this time that ‘where a man persistently refuses to exert himself, external help is worse than useless.’74 Her views were strongly influenced in this, as in so much else, by Ruskin, who became a vice-president of the COS. But she also took the idea of friendship, or setting an example, to new lengths. She started singing classes and sewing classes and made playgrounds for the children. She asked children from her Ragged School to befriend and mentor a child from her dwellings. She arranged educational outings for the children, to open their eyes to a world outside their apartments. She made the tenants responsible for the maintenance of the properties and for keeping them clean, paying some to act as cleaners when they could not find work to pay their rents. Once Ruskin had had his 5 per cent return, the tenants could use any surplus to improve their surroundings. They – guided by their landlady – decided how it was spent, increasing their sense of responsibility.

  By 1874 Hill had fifteen schemes with 3,000 tenants. The success attracted more investors, which meant more properties could be acquired, and more volunteers could train, effectively, as social workers. Ruskin put more capital up and bought more cottages for Hill. Members of the Royal Family and the aristocracy subscribed, as did businessmen. Some volunteers, such as Beatrice Webb, went on to develop a philanthropic career elsewhere, having learned much by Hill’s example. Hill was a superb public speaker and travelled widely, describing to other groups of social reformers and philanthropists her system and how it could be replicated. As, indeed, it was: not just in cities all over Britain, but abroad.

  The personal service provided in her schemes, and by her volunteers, would in later years cause her to harden her heart against impersonal, publicly subsidised schemes. Once she had established better homes, she set about making facilities that gave a sense of community, and allowed for the improvement of the lives and minds of its members – rather as Salt had done in Saltaire, but without the focus of a common place of work. She built halls for musical evenings and the production of plays. London was growing rapidly and open space was at a premium: and Hill fought to preserve what was there, not always successfully, though the survival of Parliament Hill Fields was partly down to her. Her belief in preserving nature and beauty was not least what compelled her to take an active role in the formation of the National Trust in the 1890s; in her work in providing better housing for the poor, she sought also to bring a standard of aesthetic pleasure into their lives, instinctively sharing as she did the Arnoldian view that a sight of perfection was possible for everyone.

  Such was Hill’s reputation that she was, in 1872, offered the position of a Poor Law inspector, a job never before given to a woman. She turned it down, partly because of her determination to remain involved with the lives of her tenants, and partly because of regular bouts of ill health. Her most significant collapse was in 1877, when she was ill for many months. A number of events conspired to bring this about, not least a failed engagement to an MP, Edward Bond, a volunteer with her charity, and the death of a close friend, Jane Nassau Senior, who had become the first female Poor Law inspector.

  But Ruskin dealt the hardest blow of all. Those who knew him well (and this included Hill, who was under no illusions) knew he was unstable. His failed marriage to Effie Gray and his bizarre infatuation with Rose La Touche were testament enough to that. He had also engineered, in the 1860s, a ridiculous feud (subsequently made up) with Carlyle; and much of his writing on aesthetics reveals an absolutism, and an intolerance of the opinions of others, that suggest an uneasy relationship with the rest of the world. He had sought to change the basis of his dealings with Hill, by making his stake in the houses over to the St George’s Guild, his charitable trust established to do good works in Sheffield, though with the properties still under her management. He chose to announce this in the pages of Letter LXXVI of Fors Clavigera, his series of pamphlets and letters addressed to working men, published throughout the 1870s. He explained himself by saying that ‘I have already had the value of it back in interest, and have no business now to keep it any more.’75

  Hill had her doubts about Ruskin’s business sense, based on what she had witnessed of his attempts to run a tea-shop in Paddington, staffed by a couple of his mother’s maids. It was aimed at providing somewhere civilised for the local poor to meet, and its wares were relatively cheap, being run at his insistence on a non-profit-making basis. However, it also at his insistence sold tea of such a refined taste – and did not sell either sugar or coffee – that the local proletariat hardly went there. Hill feared that a change in the management of his money would put his continued ownership of the properties at risk. Ruskin wanted the Guild to buy farmland and establish a utopian farming system. Hill’s father had tried something similar in the 1840s and it had led to his ruin, so she had reason to be nervous that the properties she managed were about to be put into such a venture. Ruskin had wind of her views, and they infuriated him.

  He then wrote, in Fors Clavigera, that ‘for the last three or four years it has been a matter of continually increasing surprise to me that I never received the smallest contribution to St George’s Fund from any friend or disciple of Miss Octavia Hill’s.’ Ruskin felt Hill had an obligation towards the St George’s project: but she was not prepared to engage. He described himself as ‘utterly disappointed’, and continued: ‘To my more acute astonishment, because Miss Hill was wont to reply to any more or less direct inquiries on the subject, with epistles proclaiming my faith, charity, and patience, in language so laudatory, that, on the last occasion of my receiving such answer, to a request for a general sketch of the Marylebone work, it became impossible for me, in any human modesty, to print the reply.’76 He confessed that what had upset him most was that a potential benefactor to the Guild had been dissuaded from giving funds ‘by hearing doubts expressed by Miss Hill of my ability to conduct any practical enterprise successfully.’77 Hill denied the accusation, in a passionate letter to Ruskin: which he then printed in Fors, t
ogether with an extended correspondence between them that illustrates the mistake Hill made, in her innocence, in seeking to argue with a very sick mind: such as ‘I know not a single piece of business I have ever undertaken, which has failed by the fault of any person chosen by me to conduct it. Tell me, therefore, of two at least. Then I will request one or two more things of you; being always, Affectionately yours, J R.’78 In an even more hysterical postscript, he added: ‘Of all injuries you could have done—not me—but the cause I have in hand, the giving the slightest countenance to the vulgar mob’s cry of “unpractical” was the fatallest.’

  Ruskin should not have published this correspondence: it is a further sign of his instability that he did. He was months away from his first full-scale mental collapse, which silenced him for over two years. He did not attempt to tone down the sentiments when he revised Fors in 1888, but did admit that he wished to ‘ask forgiveness’ for his ‘anger and pride’.79 Given how much of his fortune, by his own admission, Ruskin had frittered away through poor investments, gifts and other indulgences, Hill – who shared the COS’s determination to see funds spent to the maximum moral effect – had a point. Once Hill recovered from her breakdown she built a cottage in Sussex, where she could rest; and she acquired a female companion, Harriot Yorke, who shared the administrative burdens with her until Hill’s death in 1912.

  The breakdown was not the end of Hill’s philanthropic work, but she did move into a different gear. In the 1880s the Church Commissioners asked her to take over the improvement of many of their urban properties, having discovered the Church had become a slum landlord. It was too much for volunteers, and a cadre of trained and salaried women housing officers was established. She gave evidence to a Royal Commission on Housing in 1885, having been vetoed by Sir William Harcourt, the Home Secretary, to serve on it; but served on one for three years from 1905 that investigated reform of the Poor Law. Yet it was her pioneering work in the 1870s that stands out, and which in an age that did not so readily discount the achievements of women would have had her covered with the honours and official regard she unquestionably merited.