The Settlement House Movement Revisited: A Transnational History 9781447354253

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The Settlement House Movement Revisited A Transnational History

Edited by John Gal, Stefan Köngeter and Sarah Vicary

Research in social work

 THE SETTLEMENT HOUSE MOVEMENT REVISITED A Transnational History Edited by John Gal, Stefan Köngeter and Sarah Vicary

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2021 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​5423-​9 hardcover ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​5426-​0  ePub ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​5425-​3  ePdf The right of John Gal, Stefan Köngeter and Sarah Vicary to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editors and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design by Policy Press Front cover image: iStock / kamisoka Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of boxes, figures and tables Notes on contributors Acknowledgements

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1 Introduction John Gal, Stefan Köngeter and Sarah Vicary Part I: The transnational transfer of the settlement house idea 2 A brief transnational history of the Settlement House Movement Stefan Köngeter 3 Berlin’s municipal socialism: a transatlantic muse for Mary Simkhovitch and New York City Barbara Levy Simon 4 The French maisons sociales, Chicago’s Hull-​House scheme and their influence in Portugal Francisco Branco 5 Settlement houses and the emergence of social work in Mandatory Palestine John Gal and Yehudit Avnir

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Part II: The interface between the Settlement House Movement and other social movements 6 University extension and the settlement idea 91 Geoffrey A.C. Ginn 7 Between social mission and social reform: the 109 Settlement House Movement in Germany, 1900–​30 Jens Wietschorke 8 To be an Englishman and a Jew: Basil Henriques and the 129 Bernhard Baron Oxford and St George’s Settlement House Hugh Shewell 9 The English settlements, the Poor Man’s Lawyer and 145 social work, circa 1890–​1939 Kate Bradley Part III: Research in settlement houses and its impact 10 Putting knowledge into action: a social work perspective on settlement house research Dayana Lau

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11

Animating objectivity: a Chicago settlement’s use of numeric and aesthetic knowledges to render its immigrant neighbours and neighbourhood knowable Rory Crath

Part IV: Final reflections 12 ‘The soul of the community’: two practitioners reflect on history, place and community in two community-​ based practices from 1980 to 1995: St Hilda’s Community Centre in Bethnal Green and Waterloo Action Centre in Waterloo, South London Jeanette Copperman and Steven Malies 13 Conclusion Sarah Vicary Index

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List of boxes, figures and tables Box 10.1

Settlement house research by subject

167

Figures 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4

The Boundary Estate facing north, 2020 St Hilda’s Community Centre, Club Row, 2020 The Waterloo Action Centre building Two women unveiling the plaque at the Waterloo Action Centre

206 210 212 216

Table 4.1

Milestones of the centros sociais in Portugal

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Notes on contributors Yehudit Avnir, PhD, is a social worker who has practised in the

Jerusalem social services agency. She is Emerita of the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, where she served as the head of the Field Practice Unit and the Bachelor of Social Work programme. Her professional and research interests are social work agencies, social work education, and social work history. Kate Bradley is a social historian in the School of Social Policy,

Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. Her work focuses on the history of social policy between c.1890 and the present day, examining settlement houses, juvenile welfare and justice, youth work and legal advice. She has published two monographs with Manchester University Press: Poverty, Philanthropy and the State: Charities and the Working Classes in London, 1918–​79 (2009) and Lawyers for the Poor: Legal Advice, Voluntary Action and Citizenship in England, 1890–​1990 (2019). Francisco Branco holds a PhD in social work, with a specialisation

in social policy and social movements. He is Associate Professor at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal, where he teaches social work history, social research and social policy, and coordinates the PhD in Social Work. Professor Branco is a member of the Católica Research Centre for Individual, Family and Social Wellbeing at the university and a member of the Board of European Social Work Research Association. His research interests include the development of social work as a profession; social work history; policy practice in social work; and public policies, especially social assistance and social minimum policies. Jeanette Copperman currently lectures in social work at the Open

University, UK. She trained originally as a community development worker and practised in a variety of voluntary sector settings including Waterloo Action Centre before becoming a research and policy worker. She was a founder member of the Women’s Mental Health Network and has campaigned and written about women’s mental health issues. She is currently researching the history of women’s mental health activism in the UK and her research interests include social inclusion, social inequalities within mental health, and women and violence. She

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Notes on contributors

has a particular interest in participatory research methods that involve service users. Rory Crath, MA, PhD, is Assistant Professor at Smith College,

Massachusetts, US. The overarching analytical scope of his research programme is a critical examination of the consolidation and mediation of knowledges in governance practices targeting the social lives and health of urban youth, immigrant communities and queer men. He is invested in interrogating how differently raced, classed, gendered and sexually lived lives come to be made meaningful or not, and are contested or accommodated through the exercise of circulating regimes of knowledge. Rory Crath has more than 15 years of community-​ based experience working in the areas of homelessness, sexual health promotion and anti-​poverty mobilisation with queer, racialised, immigrant, two-​spirit and transgender youth. John Gal is full Professor and former Dean at the Paul Baerwald

School of Social Work and Social Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He heads the welfare policy programme at the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel. His fields of interest include social policy in Israel and in the Mediterranean region; policy practice in social work; and the history of social work. Geoffrey A.C. Ginn is an historian at the University of Queensland,

Australia, with interests in 19th century social policy and urban history, public history, museums and heritage. His book Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-​Victorian London was published by Routledge in the UK and US in 2017 (paperback edition 2019), following his biography of the English antiquarian, museums pioneer and religious mystic J.S.M. Ward, which appeared in 2012. He is presently working on the intimate politics of the Edwardian ‘New Liberals’ and the Queensland Atlas of Religion, the latter a major digital humanities project funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (2019–​22). Stefan Köngeter, Dr. phil. habil., is Professor of Social Work and co-​

head of the Institute of Social Work and Social Spaces at FHS St. Gallen University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland. His research interests comprise a broad range of topics in social pedagogy, social work and sociology:  transnational history of social work, transnationalisation of social welfare, child and youth care, professionalisation of social pedagogy and social work.

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Dayana Lau, Dr. phil., studied education and social pedagogy and

works as lecturer and research associate at Alice Salomon University, Berlin, and Martin Luther University, Halle, Germany. Her research interests are the relationship of social work and social movements and the history of research, professionalisation and gender studies in social work. Barbara Levy Simon, Professor Emerita, studied social work at the

Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US. She has worked in sexual assault prevention and treatment and in community mental health. She recently retired after 33 years of teaching at the Columbia University School of Social Work, New  York, US. Currently, Levy Simon is conducting research for a book on the social and cultural movements that have helped shape over time the profession of social work in a variety of Anglophone countries. Steven Malies graduated in social work at Birmingham University,

UK, in 1979. He worked as a social worker in London local authorities, most recently specialising in adult mental health. For some ten years, he worked for the Open University as an associate lecturer supporting students on practice placements. Since 2000, he has worked as a lecturer in social work for the same university. He is interested in social work history and its evolution in London. Hugh Shewell, MSW, PhD, is Professor and former Director of the

School of Social Work, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. In 1967–​68, he worked briefly as the Assistant Boys’ Club Leader of the Oxford and St. George’s Settlement House. He is the great nephew of social reformer Sir Basil Henriques. Sarah Vicary is Associate Head of School, Nations, in the School of

Health, Wellbeing and Social Care, Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies of the Open University, where she holds strategic and operation responsibility for all staff delivering qualifications across the UK. She is a qualified registered social worker and has worked primarily in mental health services, including as a frontline practitioner, an approved social worker, manager of a multidisciplinary mental health crisis service and a senior manager for inner-​city emergency mental health services. She is widely published in social work and mental health.

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Notes on contributors

Jens Wietschorke studied European ethnology/​cultural studies,

German literature and philosophy in Tübingen, Vienna and Berlin. He gained a doctorate from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany (2009) and a habilitation degree and appointment as a private lecturer from the University of Vienna, Austria (2015). He has been Assistant Professor at the Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, since 2015. From 2016–​21, he was Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation at the University of Vienna. His research interests include urban studies, history of knowledge, the cultural analysis of class relations and social inequality, and the history of social reform movements.

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Acknowledgements As social work academics with an overwhelming interest in social work history, this volume has been an exciting and rewarding project. It has provided us with an opportunity not only to delve into a crucial aspect of the history of the profession, but also to work with excellent scholars from diverse disciplines who have similar interests. The source of most of the chapters in this book is an event organised by the Social Work, History and Research Special Interest Group that we jointly coordinate. The group, which is part of the European Social Work Research Association (ESWRA), held a pre-​conference meeting on the Settlement House Movement at the 8th European Conference for Social Work Research in Edinburgh in 2018. The success of the event and quality of the papers presented there encouraged us to compile this volume. Apart from the chapter authors, who all responded admirably to our requests and deadlines and contributed original and extremely interesting chapters, we are especially grateful to our wonderful editorial assistant, Avi Abood, and to the people at Policy Press who facilitated the publication of the book. In particular, we wish to thank our commissioning editors –​Isobel Bainton and Sarah Bird –​for their continuing support, and for the editing. The book is published as part of a series on social work research that is a joint initiative of Policy Press and ESWRA. Our thanks go to the leadership of both organisations and to the past and present editors of the series –​Ian Shaw, Anna Gupta and John Gal –​for enabling us to bring settlement houses and historical research in social work to the attention of a wide readership. We hope that the chapters in The Settlement House Movement Revisited: A Transnational History will encourage more scholarly efforts to explore the under-​researched, rich and ultimately relevant history of social work. John, Stefan and Sarah

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Introduction John Gal, Stefan Köngeter and Sarah Vicary Settlement houses are a staple in any historical account of the development of social work and the dominant approaches and enduring practices within this profession. Indeed, there appears to be wide consensus that the Settlement House Movement has played a crucial role in the development of social work and social work research internationally. Yet, there is often a sense that a more nuanced appreciation of the Settlement House Movement and its intersect with social work is missing in much of the social work discourse. This volume seeks to address this lacuna by adopting a cross-​national historical perspective. Evidence of the initial association between social work and settlement houses can be found in the latter part of the 19th century in the United Kingdom (UK). The term ‘social worker’ was initially employed to describe individuals from the ‘educated classes’ who engaged in social service in order to address social problems and to alleviate their impact on individuals (Brewis, 2009; Chapter 6 in this volume). Prominent among these were the residents of the first settlement houses being established at that time (Attlee, 1920). The subsequent advent of social work as a profession occurred, not surprisingly, parallel to the emergence of the Settlement House Movement. As Stefan Köngeter notes in Chapter 2 in this volume, in the decades following the establishment of Toynbee Hall, the first settlement house, in London in 1884 (Pimlott, 1935; Meacham, 1987), the settlement house idea enjoyed exceptionally strong growth in the UK and elsewhere. During the same period, the first schools of social work were established in Amsterdam, London, New York, Chicago and Berlin (Kendall, 2000; Leighninger, 2000) and the social work profession took hold in Europe, North America and beyond (Katz, 1986; Hauss and Schulte, 2009). The expansion of the Settlement House Movement, the rapid process of professionalisation and internationalisation of social work and the overlap between the two with regard their goals, values and the social groups that they served led to an increased presence of professional social workers in settlement

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The Settlement House Movement Revisited

houses. Moreover, it enhanced the impact of the Settlement House Movement on the way that social work defined itself and the practices that its practitioners adopted. After the founding of initial settlements in the United States (US) (in particular, the Henry Street Settlement in New York (Wald, 1991) and Hull-​House in Chicago (Addams, 1920), the settlement house model was adopted across the world (Johnson, 2001). Indeed, by 1911 there were 49 settlements in the UK and another 400 settlement houses in the US (Carson, 2001; Matthews and Kimmis, 2001). This period also saw the creation of a federation of settlement houses in the US (Reinders, 1982) and, later on, the International Federation of Settlements (Wagner, 2006). Social activists founded settlements in European countries, including Austria, Finland, Russia and Germany (Wagner, 2006). Settlements were established in Moscow and in the German cities of Dresden, Berlin and Hamburg during the early 1900s (Lees, 2002; Jenkins, 2003; Valkanova and Brehony, 2006; Chapter 7 in this volume). Similarly, settlement houses emerged in diverse countries across the globe, among them Canada, France, Portugal, Japan and Palestine (James, 2001; Ogawa, 2004; Perkins, 2019; Chapters 4 and 5 in this volume). The settlement house model typically consisted of the establishment of a building-​based community in a low-​income urban neighbourhood in which social workers resided and sought to work with the residents of the neighbourhood and to engage in the community in order to further the wellbeing of its members. Often, the populations of these neighbourhoods were immigrants. The activities undertaken by the settlement residents comprised diverse educational, welfare, public health and cultural endeavours often alongside efforts to organise and empower the community and engage in advocacy on behalf of its members, to advocate for social rights, and to induce social reforms (Davis, 1967; Stebner, 2006). The motivations for the establishment of settlement houses, the values that they adhered to and the scope of their activities differed both within and across nations. Thus, for example, religion was one major source of motivation for the establishment of settlement houses in various countries, particularly by socially aware Christians (see Chapter  6 in this volume). This was the case for Toynbee Hall in London (Abel, 1979) and other settlements in the UK (Scotland, 2007) but it was also that for many of the settlement house founders in the US (Kalberg, 1975; Stebner, 1997; Carson, 1990; Scales and Kelly, 2011), in Canada (Allen, 1968) and in Europe (Varsa et al, 2009; Chapter 7 in this volume). Similarly, ethnicity often played an important role in

2

Introduction

settlement houses (Kogut, 1972), an example being those established for Jewish immigrants in the US and the UK (Rose, 1994; Schwartz, 1999; Tananbaum, 2014; Chapter 8 in this volume). Finally, the influence of women within the Settlement House Movement cannot be ignored as female founders, residents or volunteers are documented as exceeding the numbers of men (Woods and Kennedy, 1911 in Lengermann and Niebrugge-​Brantley, 2002). Indeed, the impact of women goes far beyond statistics alone, resonating with other developments such as the emergence of sociology, as Bystydzienski (2002) summarises in her reflections on the work of Mary Jo Deegan, and feminism. In particular, commentators contend that this has been a hidden voice now made visible (Lengermann and Niebrugge-​Brantley,  1998). The Settlement House Movement had a crucial impact on the emerging social work profession, particularly in the period before the First World War when its impact peaked, serving as a site for developing practices and for the training of future social workers (Axinn and Levin, 1975; Stuart, 1999; Dybicz, 2012). Settlement houses provided opportunities for social workers to research, work and improve urban conditions. Social workers settled in these areas in order to share, receive and create knowledge with their neighbours as independent communities. Initial efforts to engage in applied social research were also relevant to the social justice goals of the social work profession and these were undertaken in settlements, especially those affiliated with universities (Herrick, 1970; Andrews, 1997; MacLean and Williams, 2012; Shaw, 2017). Research was, indeed, another important aspect of the impact of the Settlement House Movement. Scholars and contemporary observers have underscored the contribution of so-​called ‘settlement sociology’ to the development of sociology and social work during this formative period in both of these interrelated disciplines (Lengermann and Niebrugge-​Brantley, 2002; Shaw, 2014; Williams and MacLean 2015). Innovations in the research methods adopted by settlement house residents (see Chapter  11 in this volume) and their explicit goal of influencing policy and practice through this research (see Chapter 10 in this volume) were crucial elements of this contribution of settlement research. In social work historiography, the Settlement House Movement has often been depicted as a progressive alternative to the Charity Organisation Society (Trattner, 1974). The settlement houses were associated with an emphasis on the impact of environment on individuals and a change-​oriented, community-​based, social reform

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The Settlement House Movement Revisited

agenda that sought to address the negative impact of this. By contrast, the Charity Organisation Society tended to focus on individual failings as a cause of poverty and deprivation and thus adopted an individual-​ oriented, case-​work, interventionist approach. These two approaches have been seen as typifying the dominant approaches in social work, with that emerging from the Charity Organisation Society focusing on ‘case’ while that of the Settlement House Movement emphasising ‘cause’ and its redress (Davis, 1967; Abramovitz, 1988; Haynes, 1998; Gilchrist and Jeffs, 2001; Kam, 2012; Malekoff and Papell, 2012; Abramovitz and Sherraden, 2016). However, this tendency to distinguish between two supposedly clear-​cut visions of the development of the social work profession has been challenged and regarded as over-​simplifying the discourse within it (McMillen et al, 2004; Jarvis, 2006). Certainly, the identification of settlement houses with a social reform agenda overlooks the more varied form that settlements have often taken, the values that have sometimes guided them, and the practices that have been adopted in them (Shpak-​Lisak, 1989; Yan, 2004). Indeed, a more methodological analysis of the development of settlement houses reveals that at the height of their popularity in the early decades of the 20th century, settlement houses diversified into several models and operated in distinctive social, cultural and national settings across the world (see Chapter 2 in this volume). Yet, while this rich diversity has been the subject of a limited number of scholarly articles (Stebner, 2006; Haustein and Waller, 2009; Köngeter, 2015), monographs on specific cities and countries (Kraus, 1980; Trolander, 1987; Carson, 1990; Crocker, 1992; Irving et al, 1995; Beauman, 1996; Lindner, 1997; Wietschorke, 2013) and one single edited volume (Gilchrist and Jeffs, 2001), it has rarely been the subject of comparative study. Moreover, there have been only a few efforts to examine the interconnections between the Settlement House Movement and other social or professional movements, in particular social work, or the salience of the development of the Settlement House Movement across national, cultural and social boundaries (Carson, 1990; Köngeter, 2017). Our aim in The Settlement House Movement Revisited: A Transnational History is to employ an historical approach to the study of the Settlement House Movement, which adopts a critical and transnational perspective in examining this important historical development in social work and social welfare. Thus, alongside chapters that explicitly seek to identify cross-​national trends and developments, included in the book are also case studies of settlement houses from diverse national

4

Introduction

settings. Some of these explore the intersect between individuals and movements and settlement houses, others focus on the direct impact of settlement houses on the lives of the people they served or their indirect impact through research or advocacy, while still others explore the transnational translation of knowledge, ideas and practices on settlement houses. We believe that the chapters in this volume will contribute to the body of social work history by introducing a more complex picture of the Settlement House Movement than that which usually depicts it as the epitome of progressivism in social work (Specht and Courtney, 1995). A critical review of settlement house history, however, will also reveal the conflicting ideas and ideologies that had an impact on the settlement houses and the contested developments of this reform movement. In order to achieve these goals, the reader will find here contributions from a range of leading international scholars from varied disciplines –​ social work, history and sociology. The authors of the chapters adopt historical research methodologies in order to explore facets of the Settlement House Movement (Howell and Prevenier, 2001; Danto, 2008; Špiláčková, 2012). The subjects of the chapters diverge in time and they included settlements in Europe, North America and the Middle East. As is common in historical research, the sources for most of the chapters are typically documentary but some of the authors also draw on interviews, focus group discussions and visual sources. Following this Introduction, the transnational transfer of knowledge is the focus of the first part of the book. This includes an overview of the development of the Settlement House Movement and the role of these transnational transfers on it (Chapter 2), in addition to case studies from the US (Chapter 3), France and Portugal (Chapter 4) and Mandatory Palestine (Chapter 5). The second part of the book explores the interface between the Settlement House Movement and other social movements. Chapters on the role of religion in the establishment of settlement houses in Germany (Chapter 7), the Jewish effort to establish settlement houses in the UK (Chapter  8), and the impact of university extension on settlement houses in the UK (Chapter 6) are included here. In addition, the influence of the Settlement House Movement on ‘poor man’s lawyer’ services (Chapter 9) is also examined. Research in settlement houses and the effect of this on social work and the social sciences is discussed in the third part of the book by Dayana Lau, who looks at the subjects of this research and the methodologies employed in it (Chapter 10), and by Rory Crath (Chapter 11), who focuses on the use of numeric and aesthetic knowledge at Hull-​House.

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In a final part, two social work practitioners, Jeanette Copperman and Steven Malies, offer a more contemporary perspective on the recent development of the Settlement House Movement (Chapter 12), while Sarah Vicary revisits the themes in the book’s chapters and explore the implications of the studies of these diverse aspects of the history of Settlement House Movement in the concluding chapter of the book. As social work scholars engaged in historical research, we are confident that this book offers scholars and practitioners new insights into the rich history of the Settlement House Movement. Even when the subject of some of the research precedes the formal professionalisation of social work, the findings in it should shed new light on the development of social work from an historical and transnational perspective. It is hoped that this collection also provides examples of the ways in which historical research can be undertaken in social work (Fisher and Dybicz, 1999; Skehill, 2007), and underscores why the past of this profession, and particularly that which took place within the settlement house world, has resonance for its present and its future. References Abel, E.K. (1979) ‘Toynbee Hall, 1884–​1914’, Social Service Review, 53(4): 606–​32. Abramovitz, M. (1988) ‘Social work and social reform: An arena of struggle’, Social Work, 43(6): 512–​26. Abramovitz, M. and Sherraden, M.S. (2016) ‘Case to cause: Back to the future’, Journal of Social Work Education, 52(Suppl 1): S89–​S98. Addams, J. (1920) Twenty Years at Hull-​House. New York, NY: Macmillan. Allen, R. (1968) ‘The Social Gospel and the reform tradition in Canada’, Canadian Historical Review, 46(4): 381–​99. Andrews, J. (1997) ‘Helen Hall and the Settlement House Movement’s response to unemployment’, Journal of Community Practice, 4(2): 65–​75. Attlee, C.R. (1920) The Social Worker. London: G. Bell & Sons. Axinn, J. and Levin, H. (1975) Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need. New York, NY: Dodd, Mead & Co. Beauman, K.B. (1996) Women and the Settlement Movement. London and New York, NY: Radcliffe Press. Brewis, G. (2009) ‘From working parties to social work: Middle-​class girls’ education and social service 1890–​1914’, History of Education, 38(6): 761–​77. Bystydzienski, J.M. (2002) ‘Reflections on Mary Jo Deegan’s “An American Dream”: The Historical Connection between Women, Humanism and Sociology 1890–​1920”’, Humanity and Society, 27(3): 390–​2.

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Carson, M. (2001) ‘American settlement houses:  The first half century’. In R. Gilchrist and T. Jeffs (eds) Settlements, Social Change and Community Action:  Good Neighbours. London:  Jessica Kingsley Publishers, pp 34–​53. Carson, M.J. (1990) Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885–​1 930. Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press. Crocker, R.H. (1992) Social Work and Social Order:  The Settlement Movement in Two Industrial Cities, 1889–​1930. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Danto, E.A. (2008) Historical Research. New  York, NY:  Oxford University Press. Davis, A.F. (1967) Spearheads for Reform:  The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–​1914. New  York, NY:  Oxford University Press. Dybicz, P. (2012) ‘The ethic of care: Recapturing social work’s first voice’, Social Work, 57(3): 271–​80. Fisher, R. and Dybicz, P. (1999) ‘The place of historical research in social work’, Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 26(3): 105–​24. Gilchrist, R. and Jeffs, T. (eds) (2001) Settlements, Social Change and Community Action. London: Jessica Kingsley. Hauss, G. and Schulte, D. (2009) Amid Social Contradictions: Towards a History of Social Work in Europe. Opladen: Budrich. Haustein, S. and Waller, A. (2009) ‘Jüdische settlements in Europa: Ansätze einer transnationalen sozial-​, geschlechter-​und ideenhistorischen Forschung [Jewish Settlements in Europe: Approaches of transnational research on social history, gender history, and the history of ideas]’, Medaon, 3(4): 14. Haynes, K.S. (1998) ‘The one-​hundred year debate:  Social reform versus individual treatment’, Social Work, 43(6): 501–​9. Herrick, J.M. (1970) ‘A holy discontent: The history of the New York City social settlements in the inter-​war era, 1919–​1941’, PhD thesis, University of Minnesota. Howell, M. and Prevenier, W. (2001) From Reliable Sources:  An Introduction to Historical Methods. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Irving, A., Parsons, H. and Bellamy, D. (1995) Neighbours: Three Social Settlements in Downtown Toronto. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. James, C. (2001) ‘Reforming reform:  Toronto’s settlement house movement, 1900–​20’, The Canadian Historical Review, 82(1): 55–​90. Jarvis, C. (2006) ‘Function versus cause:  Moving beyond debate’, Praxis, 6(3): 44–​9.

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Jenkins, J. (2003) ‘Social patriotism and left liberalism: The Hamburg People’s Home, 1901–​1914’, German History, 21(1): 29–​48. Johnson, C. (2001) ‘Strength in community: Historical development of settlements internationally’. In R. Gilchrist and T. Jeffs (eds) Settlements, Social Change and Community Action:  Good Neighbours. London: Jessica Kingsley, pp 69–​91. Kalberg, S. (1975) ‘The commitment to career reform: The Settlement Movement leaders’, Social Service Review, 49(4): 608–​28. Kam, P.K. (2012) ‘Back to the “social” of social work: Reviving the social work profession’s contribution to the promotion of social justice’, International Social Work, 57(6): 723–​40. Katz, M.B. (1986) In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America. New York, NY: Basic Books. Kendall, K.A. (2000) Social Work Education:  Its Origins in Europe. Alexandria, VA: Council on Social Work Education. Kogut, A. (1972) ‘The settlements and ethnicity: 1890–​1914’, Social Work, 17(3): 22–​31. Köngeter, S. (2015) ‘The translation of knowledge across the Atlantic:  Constructions of the “immigration problem” in the settlement movement’. In S. Köngeter and W. Smith (eds) Transnational Agency and Migration: Actors, Movements and Social Support. London: Routledge, pp 87–​108. Köngeter, S. (2017) ‘Surveilling and surveying slums. The transnational translation of the city as a social problem’. In L.G. Gingrich and S. Köngeter (eds) Transnational Social Policy: Social Welfare in a World on the Move. London: Routledge, pp 21–​42. Kraus, H.P. (1980) The Settlement House Movement in New York City, 1886–​1914. New York, NY: Arno Press. Leighninger, L. (2000) Creating a New Profession:  The Beginnings of Social Work Education in the United States. Alexandria, VA: Council on Social Work Education. Lengermann, P.M. and Niebrugge-​Brantley, J. (1998) The Women Founders:  Sociology and Social Theory, 1830–​1930. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill. Lengermann, P.M. and Niebrugge-​Brantley, J. (2002) ‘Back to the future: Settlement sociology, 1885–​1930’, The American Sociologist, 33(3): 5–​20. Lees, A. (2002) Cities, Sin, and Social Reform in Imperial Germany (1850–​ 1929). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

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Introduction

Lindner, R. (ed) (1997) ‘Wer in den Osten geht, geht in ein anderes Land’: Die Settlementbewegung in Berlin zwischen Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik [‘Those who move to the east, move into a different country’: The Settlement House Movement in Berlin between the German Empire and the Weimar Republic]. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. MacLean, V.M. and Williams. J.E. (2012) ‘ “Ghosts of sociologies past”:  Settlement sociology in the Progressive Era at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy’, American Sociologist, 43(3): 235–​63. Malekoff, A. and Papell, C.O. (2012) ‘Remembering Hull-​House, speaking to Jane Addams, and preserving empathy’, Social Work with Groups, 35(4): 306–​12. Matthews, J. and Kimmis, J. (2001) ‘Development of the English Settlement Movement’. In R. Gilchrist and T. Jeffs (eds) Settlements, Social Change and Community Action: Good Neighbours. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers pp 34–​68. McMillen, J.C., Morris, L. and Sherraden, M. (2004) ‘Ending social work’s grudge match: Problems versus strengths’, Families in Societies, 83(3): 1–​9. Meacham, S. (1987) Toynbee Hall and Social Reform, 1880–​1914: The Search for Community. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ogawa, M. (2004) ‘ “Hull-​H ouse” in downtown Tokyo:  The transplantation of a settlement house from the United States into Japan and the North American missionary women, 1919–​1945’, Journal of World History, 15(3): 359–​87. Perkins, C. (2019) ‘From the ashes of the Great Kantō Earthquake: The Tokyo imperial university settlement’, Japan Forum, 31(3): 408–​33. Pimlott, J.A.R. (1935) Toynbee Hall, Fifty years of Social Progress, 1884–​ 1934. London: J.M. Dent. Reinders, R.C. (1982) ‘Toynbee Hall and the American Settlement Movement’, Social Service Review, 56 (1): 39–​54. Rose, E. (1994) ‘From sponge cake to “Hamentashen”: Jewish identity in a Jewish settlement house, 1885–​1952’, Journal of American Ethnic History, 13(3): 3–​ 23. Scales, T.L. and Kelly, M.S. (2011) ‘ “To give Christ to the neighbourhood”:  A corrective look at the Settlement Movement and early Christian social workers’, Social Work and Christianity, 38(3): 356–​76. Schwartz, A. (1999) ‘Americanization and cultural preservation in Seattle’s Settlement House:  A Jewish adaptation of the Anglo-​ American model of settlement work’, Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 26(3): 25–​47.

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Scotland, N. (2007) Squires in the Slums:  Settlements and Missions in Late-​Victorian London. London: I.B. Tauris. Shaw, I. (2014) ‘Sociology and social work: In praise of limestone?’. In J. Holmwood and J. Scott (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Sociology in Britain. London: Palgrave, pp 123–​54. Shaw, I. (2017) Research and the Social Work Picture. Bristol: Policy Press. Shpak-​Lisak, R.S. (1989) Pluralism and Progressives:  Hull House and the New Immigrants, 1890–​1919. Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press. Skehill, C. (2007) ‘Researching the history of social work: Exposition of a history of the present approach’, European Journal of Social Work, 10(4): 449–​63. Specht, H. and Courtney, M.E. (1995) Unfaithful Angels: How Social Work has Abandoned its Mission. New York, NY: Free Press. Špiláčková, M. (2012) ‘Historical research in social work –​theory and practice’, ERIS Web Journal, 3(2). Stebner, E.J. (1997) The Women of Hull House: A Study in Spirituality, Vocation, and Friendship. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Stebner, E.J. (2006) ‘The Settlement House Movement’. In R.S. Keller and R.R. Ruether (eds) Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp 1059–​69. Stuart, P.H. (1999) ‘Linking clients and policy: Social work’s distinctive contribution’, Social Work, 4(4): 335–​47. Tananbaum, S.L. (2014) Jewish Immigrants in London, 1880–​1939. London: Routledge. Trattner, W.I. (1974) From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America. New York, NY: Free Press. Trolander, J.A. (1987) Professionalism and Social Change:  From the Settlement House Movement to Neighborhood Centers. New  York, NY: Columbia Univ. Press. Valkanova, Y. and Brehony, K. (2006) ‘The g ifts and “contributions”: Friedrich Froebel and Russian education’, History of Education, 35(2): 189–​207. Varsa, E., Szikra, D. and Juhász, B. (2009) ‘Building the “social state” in Hungary:  The Hungar ian Settlement Movement between the two wars’. In G. Hauss and D. Schulte (eds) Amid Social Contradictions:  Towards a History of Social Work in Europe. Opladen: Barbara Budrich, pp 131–​48.

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Introduction

Wagner, A.R. (2006) ‘The International Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers: Celebrating 80 years and committing to a new future’, Keynote Address, International Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers Conference, UfaFabrik, Berlin, 6 October. Available at: http://​datenbank.spinnenwerk.de/​ vska/​ifs06/​tony.pdf Wald, L.D. (1991) The House on Henry Street. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Wietschorke, J. (2013) Arbeiterfreunde: Soziale mission im dunklen Berlin 1911–1 ​ 933 [Friends of the Working-​Class: Social Mission in Dark Berlin, 1911–​1933]. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag. Williams, J.E. and MacLean, V.M. (2015) Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years:  Faith, Science, and Reform. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Yan, M.C. (2004) ‘Bridging the fragmented community: Revitalizing settlement houses in the global era’, Journal of Community Practice, 12(1/​2): 51–​69.

11

Part I The transnational transfer of the settlement house idea

2

A brief transnational history of the Settlement House Movement Stefan Köngeter

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world’s market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-​established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.… In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-​sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-​dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-​sidedness and narrow-​mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. (Marx and Engels, 1908 [1848]: 12–​13) Cosmopolitanism and globalisation, as described by Marx and Engels in this quote from their Manifesto of the Communist Party, have changed the world in a sweeping way. Production and consumption are organised globally and are no longer bound to the local conditions of the various countries. Knowledge production has also outgrown its ‘narrow-​mindedness’ (Marx and Engels, 1908 [1848]) and became global. It is striking to see how this clear-​sighted diagnosis published in 1848 is a prophecy that has proven true 172 years later. Yet, though both knowledge production and the production of goods have become more and more global, the prophecy of the communist manifesto failed because, as this chapter argues, it underestimated other social developments during that period. The Settlement House Movement played an important role within these social developments. It contributed to the discourse and the work on the social question, translated the Christian idea of welfare into the

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social constellation of modern industrial capitalism, made visible and analysed social issues in a scientific way, propagated social reforms and, finally, strengthened the idea of dealing with these social issues within the nation as a welfare state. These contributions were relevant globally since these social processes –​as described by Marx and Engels (1908 [1848]) –​affected the entire industrialising world. The interpretations and the solutions, however, were developed within national contexts, and, ultimately, strengthened the nation in the form of the modern national welfare state. In this chapter, this brief transnational history of the Settlement House Movement seeks to develop the seemingly contradictory finding that the globalisation of industrial capitalism and knowledge production, which at first glance weakened the meaning of the nation, eventually strengthened its role in dealing with these global processes. The Settlement House Movement contributed to this transnational advancement of the nation (in form of the national welfare state) by interpreting and tackling the social question as a crisis of a (national) community. In the following sections I will refer to various settlement house models in different countries, but will exemplify my argument particularly by reference to my studies on settlement houses in Berlin and Toronto (Köngeter, 2012a, 2012b, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2015, 2017; Köngeter and Schröer, 2013; Chambon et al, 2015).

The secularisation of Christian welfare In social work literature, the Settlement House Movement is regarded as a social movement that paved the way for social reform and social professions, particularly social work and community work. Although many of its pioneers were clergy or had a close link to churches, the Christian impact on this movement is barely discussed in historical research (but see Scotland, 2007; see also Chapters  4 and 7 in this volume). The strong emphasis on the secularity of the settlement houses is based on claims by seminal protagonists at the time, such as Samuel Barnett, who emphasised that, “a Mission has for its object conversion. A Settlement has for its object mutual knowledge. A Mission creates organisations, institutions, and machinery. A Settlement uses personal influence and tends to human contact” (Barnett and Barnett, 1909: 6–​ 275). Similarly, scholars linked to the development of the Settlement House Movement claimed that the influence of churches was limited to the initial stages of the settlements (Mead, 1907–​1908: 108). These assertions, however, obscure the influence of religious convictions and the churches on the development of the settlements that still endured half a century after the foundation of the first

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A brief transnational history

settlement. During the Fourth International Conference of Settlement Houses in Berlin in 1932, the country reports reveal the continuous ‘ecclesiastical’ connections of parts of the Settlement House Movement. The Finnish delegation claimed that the establishment of settlement houses in Finland in 1918 were due to the ‘alienation of the industrial workers from the church’ (own translation from Evangelisches Zentralarchiv [Protestant Central Archive], EZA 626, I, 7.2). The goal was to gain a foothold again among the workers. During the same conference, the Dutch delegation stated that their settlements used to be rationalistic or even anti-​religious. But the delegates observed a revival of religious sentiments among settlement workers (EZA 626, I, 7.2). These two examples show that long after the establishment of the Settlement House Movement as a driving force in social reform the influence of churches remained strong. This finding is also valid for the Settlement House Movement in the US. A  study by William Bliss (1906), for example, shows that the majority of staff in associated charities (92%) and in settlement houses (88%) were active members of church communities. In other social reform organisations, these numbers were lower (72%). These empirical data are not surprising considering the pivotal leitmotifs of the settlements: the ‘neighbour’, the ‘community’, as well as the idea of settling where the poor people live, are deeply rooted in Christian philosophy. The settlement protagonists did not regard the social question (only) as a conflict between two classes, but rather as a conflict within a community. The ‘two nations’ –​a phrase coined in 1845 by the later British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli –​was a widespread description of the social question in the Settlement House Movement (Rodgers, 1998). Embeddedness in Christian reform networks was a driving force for the transnational dissemination of the settlement idea. The emergence of settlement houses in Toronto and in Berlin indicate how these networks worked at the time. In Canada, the Presbyterian church played a major role in the establishment of the Settlement House Movement (Irving et al, 1995; James, 2001). James A. Macdonald, who later became a minister of the Presbyterian church and a well-​known journalist of the Globe, a predecessor of the nationwide Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, reported in 1889 on Toynbee Hall. Macdonald was a convinced ‘social gospeller’, who was certain that the (Protestant) churches had to develop a social response to the social frictions at the end of the 19th century: ‘The social gospel addressed the whole problem, not just individuals, not just of informal social groups, but of institutions and institutional relationships in society’

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(Allen, 1975:  4). Although Macdonald and others were convinced that the church had to search for new ways to approach the poor and the workers, the first accounts of settlement houses in Canada were sceptical towards the secular approach developed in London (see Macdonald, 1889: 24). Macdonald was not the only Protestant social gospeller who was hesitant about recommending the translation of the settlement idea to Canada (Melville, 1899; Jordan, 1908). This idiosyncratic translation of the settlement from the UK and from the US has to do with the role of the Presbyterian Church at the time and the notion of Toronto (‘Toronto, the Good’) as a city in the tradition of Victorian England. The Presbyterians observed the influx of non-​Protestant migrants with great concern. Twenty years after the first report on Toynbee Hall, the Presbyterians finally decided to engage in the Settlement House Movement. Their major goal was to civilise and to Canadianise (see Macdonald, 1909) the inhabitants of the slums in Toronto and other Canadian cities (Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal). The Presbyterian chain of settlements was established as a contribution to the Anglo-​Saxon tradition of Canada, particularly against the background of the influx of Catholic and Jewish migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe as well as migrants from Asia (primarily on the East coast). After the decision to establish St. Christopher House, a church settlement with a ‘positive definite aggressive evangelistic propaganda’ (Minutes of the Executive on Moral and Social Reform, 16 November 1910, in United Church Archives [UCA], Fonds 124), in 1912, the Presbyterian Church looked for an experienced person to supervise the project of establishing five settlement houses in Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Montreal and found Sara L. Carson. She was an obvious choice as she visited Toronto in 1897 for the first time at the invitation of the Toronto Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) (James, 1998), was co-​founder of Christodora House in New York, an interdenominational settlement house with a definitely ‘Christian standpoint’ (“Young Women’s Settlement”, 1897) , sustained her close connections to Toronto’s YWCA and founded together with Mary L. Bell Evangelia House in 1902, the first settlement house in Toronto (Irving et al, 1995: 71). This close connection to Christian motives was not only prevalent in Canada, but can be observed in Germany as well (see Chapter 7 in this volume). The founder of the most influential settlement in Germany, Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze, was a Protestant Church priest. He had close international connections, particularly to the Protestant churches in England. In his position as the executive secretary of the committee

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A brief transnational history

for the exchange between the Protestant churches in the UK and Germany, he had the chance to visit Toynbee Hall in 1908 (Siegmund-​ Schultze and Grünberg, 1990). As many other social reformers, his visit to Toynbee Hall had a long-​lasting effect on him. Like Jane Addams, but 20 years later, he decided to commit his further professional life to the establishment of a German Settlement House Movement. Similar to the Presbyterians in Toronto, Siegmund-​Schultze felt that industrialisation and urbanisation threatened the role of the churches in society. But, contrary to the Torontonian brothers and sisters in faith, he believed that class conflicts made it impossible for churches to reach out to workers. Accordingly, he did not imagine a church settlement, but a secular community that would collaborate across class boundaries. The name of this German settlement underlines this idea:  Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-​Ost (SAG Berlin-​Ost) (Berlin East Social Working Group) (Wietschorke, 2013). Together with his wife, he moved to Friedenstrasse in the east of Berlin in 1912. He also gathered students and other social reformers to join his settlement and to work towards the reconciliation of the classes. Bourgeois social activists were motivated by a sense of guilt over the poverty of worker: ‘We have to admit the omissions of the church towards the workers. Likewise, we have to admit our contribution to the collective guilt of the “ruling class”: it is a fact that the inhumane conditions of the industrial population prevailed when we prevailed’ (Siegmund-​Schultze and Grünberg, 1990: 333). Siegmund-​Schultze drew on his transnational expertise not so much to strengthen the Christian influence on the social service sector as the Presbyterians did in Toronto, but rather to change the consciousness of the ruling bourgeois class. He emphasised the idea of reconciliation and upheld the educational approach of Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, who regarded the settlement as an educational space not only for workers, but also for bourgeois students. These differences aside, clearly the Christian influence on the Settlement House Movement was critical and cannot be underestimated in assessing the transnational impact of this approach to reform. It was an important channel for the Christian churches to gain influence on the establishment of ‘the social’ as a constituent part of modern society.

Scientisation of the social in the transatlantic space The Settlement House Movement is a reform movement that contributed to ‘the surveying and the surveilling’ (Köngeter, 2017) of the social realm in an unprecedented way. ‘The social’ became ‘a new

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landscape’ (Deleuze, 1979:  9) that emerged during the Progressive Era, uplifted by a myriad of actors, surveyed in a scientific way, and institutionalised by legislation that made social services accessible by social professions that provided services on the basis of scientific education and evidence. The social divide was not a given thing, but a multifaceted phenomenon, interpreted in varied ways, as an economic divide (classes), a geographical divide (slum districts within urban cities), and, in the Settlement House Movement discourse, a knowledge divide. Jane Addams framed this approach as follows: It is frequently stated that the most pressing problem of modern life is that of a reconstruction and a reorganisation of the knowledge which we possess; that we are at last struggling to realize in terms of life all that has been discovered and absorbed, to make it over into healthy and direct expressions of free living. (Addams, 1899: 34) The settlements were not only social loci, where knowledge was brought together by gathering well-​educated bourgeois individuals, but were also conceptualised as knowledge hubs to generate knowledge on the social conditions of life in these slum areas and to create new solutions for the social questions that emerged beyond the idiosyncratic places where they were located (see Chaper 10 in this volume). The close ties between Hull-​House and the University of Chicago, in particular, coined our understanding of how settlements conceptualised the connection of knowledge and social reform (Shaw, 2015; Williams and MacLean, 2015). Jane Addams refers to a pragmatist notion of knowledge that was developed by the Chicago academics William James and John Dewey. At a central point in her 1899 article, she refers to Dewey, ‘when a theory of knowledge forgets that its value rests in solving the problem out of which it has arisen, that of securing a method of action, knowledge begins to cumber the ground’ (Addams 1899: 34). Her pragmatist understanding of knowledge provided the settlement residents with an important starting point for connecting social work research, professional action and solving social problems. By providing scientific, but at the same time, intimate knowledge (see Chapter 11 in this volume) of the social issues faced by marginalised groups in society, the settlements created an urgency of dealing with the social question that was unique in the field of social reform at the time. Knowledge on the social question and the constitution of social question was equiprimordially from this point of view.

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A brief transnational history

Addams demanded of her fellow settlement residents that they connect academic knowledge production with the continuous application of knowledge in favour of the people who are affected by the disruptive developments of industrialisation and urbanisation. The critique of telescopic philanthropy (Dickens, 1852) by the university settlements in the UK was consistently extended to the critique of telescopic social research. Instead, research was conducted in order to understand the life of the urban districts from within and to use the production of intimate knowledge to demand and to legitimise social reform. An ethnographic approach, as reflected in the Hull-​House Maps and Papers (Residents of Hull-​House, 1895), corresponded to the notion of knowledge that prevailed in the Settlement House Movement. This kind of research was disseminated and translated to other settlements in the US and beyond, including Canada (Hunt, 2002) and Germany (Wietschorke, 2007). Although the Settlement House Movement was not the only actor in the emerging process of what can be described as the ‘scientization of the social’ (Raphael, 2012: 41), it was one of the major driving forces during the Progressive Era (Rodgers, 1998). Therefore, the settlements promoted the social question transnationally by creating and applying powerful research tools. Lutz Raphael (2012) notes that during this time period, experts on social issues emerged, among them social reformers, sociologists, psychologists and economists, who constantly spread their arguments and research findings in administration, in enterprises, parliaments and, finally, among diverse groups in society. The Settlement House Movement and its social scientists gained influence in universities and over politicians seeking solutions for the social issues at stake. Daniel Rodgers (1998) has shown that developments in the US were influenced by academia in the UK and in Germany (see also Chapter 3 in this volume). In Germany, particularly, the Verein für Socialpolitik, which was established in 1873, was a central node for reform-​ oriented scholars and activists. The Verein opposed the laissez-​faire policy of Manchester capitalism and searched for an alternative to the revolutionary socialist movements. Gustav Schmoller, who headed the Verein between 1890 and 1917, sought to raise, educate and reconcile the lower class in order to integrate it into the existing social order. In doing so, he represented many settlement residents who searched for new, inspiring knowledge in continental Europe, and particularly in Germany. Stanton Coit, for example, established the first settlement house in the US in 1886, only three years after the establishment of Toynbee Hall and three years before Hull-​House came into being. He

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was a student of Felix Adler, the founder of the New Yorker Society for Ethical Culture and later Professor at the Columbia University. Adler encouraged Coit to travel to Germany and to study at Humboldt University. His further trips led him to the UK and he visited Toynbee Hall, which he considered to be insufficiently oriented towards real social reform. He finally founded the Neighbourhood Guild, the first settlement house in the US (Coit, 1892). Florence Kelley, a later resident of Hull-​House, was also strongly influenced by developments in continental Europe (Sklar, 1995). She represents another strand of the transatlantic connections that was established through socialism and communism. After she completed her studies at Cornell University in 1882, she went to Europe with her brother and stayed there for four years. She decided to study in Zurich and became acquainted with many socialist activists who gathered there, after fleeing prosecution due to the anti-​socialist laws in Germany. She married a Russian medical student, Lazare Wischnewetzky, and started translating Friedrich Engels’ study The Condition of the Working Class in England, originally published in 1845, in 1884 (Engels, 1887). The translation process enabled her to delve into socialism and was a major stepping stone to her conversion to German socialism, which heightened her ‘tensions between idealism and materialism’ (Sklar, 1995: 102). After her return to the US together with her husband she finally entered Hull-​House in 1891, also as a way to escape her abusive husband. At Hull-​House she continued her social scientific approach to social reform and employed her materialist knowledge in order to fight for a broad range of social reform. The Settlement House Movement protagonists were not only knowledgeable about new developments in theories on social policy, economy and social welfare, but were also engaged in empirical research, for example (Williams and MacLean, 2015) in the social survey movement –​a social movement that only appears on the margins of historical research on social work (Shaw, 2008). Both movements have common roots in Victorian England, whereby reform-​oriented, middle-​class women and men studied the evolving slums of large Western cities. The first social survey in London by social reformer Charles Booth (1891) was conducted with the help of residents of Toynbee Hall, and one of the most well-​known surveys, the Hull-​House Maps and Papers, was undertaken by the residents of Hull-​House (1895) with close references to Booth’s survey in London. Those surveys, however, were not only important steps towards the establishment of social science, but also vehicles for furthering moral conduct through scientific means. In Canada, the Presbyterian and

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A brief transnational history

Methodist churches played a particularly important role, collaborating closely on this issue from 1907 onwards, and jointly founding a Moral and Social Reform Council of Canada. They initiated a series of social surveys; in 1913 alone, surveys were carried out in Winnipeg, Vancouver, London (Canada), Fort William, Sydney (Canada) and Regina (Hunt, 2002). The surveys were informed by the so-​called Vice Commissions, which were established in American cities from 1902 onwards, mainly to document moral aberrations such as prostitution, compulsive gambling, and other ‘vices’. Thus the ‘social question’ was seen also as a ‘moral question’ carved out with the methods of social survey research to reveal the social background for the identified ‘moral failings’ of city dwellers (Hunt, 2002). The Report of the Social Survey Commission, Toronto, published in 1915, offers a particularly vivid illustration of this mix of social and moral questions. At first glance, it is similar to Vice Commissions reports in the US. In the introduction, for instance, explicit reference is made to the report’s mandate: to investigate in detail the problem of prostitution, and ‘white slave traffic’, a term used for the forced prostitution of white female immigrants, in particular. But on closer examination by far the biggest section deals with the socio-​structural living conditions in Toronto, which goes far beyond the problem of prostitution and explores issues of poverty, housing conditions, sanitation, migration, urban leisure facilities and education. In a similar way, research undertaken by the SAG Berlin-​Ost linked moral and social questions (Lindner, 2004; Wietschorke, 2007, 2013). One of the three research commission within the Berlin settlement focused on the behaviour of church visitors. The psychological mentality of those church visitors is studied as well as their socio-​structural characteristics and their class consciousness (see Lindner 2004:  104). Another research commission was, like the Vice Commissions in North America, interested in all kinds of entertainments that aroused the suspicion of Protestants at the time (Wietschorke, 2007, 2013). To sum up, the Settlement House Movement, together with other social movements, such as the social gospel movement, the socialist movement, the women’s movements and others, employed social science and social research in order to generate an infrastructure of knowledge production and to gain common knowledge of the social questions at the time. This infrastructure included statistics about the occupations and incomes of those living in urban districts, maps that depicted this information geographically, photographs giving a visual impression of poverty, ethnographic reports documenting

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The Settlement House Movement Revisited

everyday life, and investigative documentation attempting to uncover exploitation. This infrastructure empowered these movements to jointly propagate social reform, although their ideological background was hardly compatible. The Settlement House Movement was a crucial node within this infrastructure as it benefitted from the knowledge produced as well as contributing to it. This model proved to be successful for a long time. At the Fourth International Settlement House Conference in 1932, the conference participants praised the successful and timely investigations into the unemployment crisis during the Great Depression and stressed how important it was to conduct research into the needs of unemployed families (see the studies of Clinch Calkins and Marion Elderton in Box 10.1 of this volume; see also EZA 626, I, 7.2).

Translations of the model into the various social contexts The Settlement House Movement is often described as an approach that aims at overcoming the social divide between the rich and the poor. However, within the discourse on ‘the social question’, its causes, conditions, contexts, effects and, particularly, solutions are highly contested. The famous ‘spectre’ of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx and Engels, 1908 [1848]) is the prototype of such a constitution of ‘the social’. It describes the problem (‘the social’ as a phenomenon) as a history of class conflicts and its solution (the proletarian revolution as a solution to ‘the social’ as a problem). The Settlement House Movement not only suggests different interpretations and solutions of the social question, but it is also a central piece of creating ‘the social’ within society as a distinct but integral part of a capitalist society. However, it is far from presenting one question and one answer. Instead, the analysis up until now shows that the Settlement House Movement provides several questions and at least as many solutions to the question. All those questions and solutions revolve around the imaginations of the community and the nation. It is often stated that the settlement model differs according to the national context. With reference to the English Settlement House Movement, Allen F.  Davis points out, ‘[it] was part of the larger Romantic revolt against the vulgarisation of society, and its ultimate goal was the spiritual reawakening of the whole man –​and not just the worker, but the university man also’ (Davis, 1967: 7). Hull-​House and its social settlement model, on the other hand, matches the social questions raised within the immigration country that was the US (Davis, 1967). Furthermore, the less developed Settlement House

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A brief transnational history

Movement in continental Europe is ascribed to the social contexts in the respecting nation states. George H. Mead, for example, explains: It is an interesting fact that settlements have flourished only where there has been a real democracy. Neither France, with its layers of society, its social castes, nor Germany, with its fundamental assumption that the control of society must take place from above through highly trained bureaus, have offered favourable soil for the growth of settlements. In France it is mutually impossible for men in different social groups to domesticate in other groups. In Germany nobody out of his own immediate milieu undertaking to enter into relations with others is at ease unless he has on a uniform indicating by what right he seeks information, gives advice, or renders assistance. (Mead, 1907–​1908: 9–​10) These explanations, however, neglect the complexity and the many variegations of the settlement houses within a nation state. The three major settlements, which were established in Toronto  –​University Settlement (1910), Central Neighbourhood House (CNH) (1911), and St. Christopher House (1912)  –​represent the broad spectrum of settlement models. CNH resembled Hull-​House with its secular, reform-​oriented approach and University Settlement borrowed much from Toynbee Hall, while St. Christopher was established as a variation of the old-​established church missions in the secular cloak of a settlement and, eventually, became more like a social settlement only after its first decade (Irving et al, 1995), being finally renamed a hundred years later. In Berlin, the SAG Berlin-​Ost was close to the idea and the ideals of Toynbee Hall but also adopted much from the Chicago Commons (see the analysis in Köngeter, 2012a), which was established by Graham Taylor, a pastor of the Hopewell Dutch Reformed Church, professor at the Chicago Theological Seminary and closely linked to Hull-​House (see Stockwell, 1996). In the 1920s, Carl Mennicke, a former friend and collaborator of Siegmund-​Schultze, established a progressive variation of SAG Berlin-​Ost in the northern part of Berlin and emphasised the reform-​oriented approach that was epitomised in the social settlement model (Köngeter and Schröer, 2013). And, finally, there was also the important Jewish settlement, which served as an intellectual hub for many progressive, Jewish and non-​Jewish, reformers in Germany (Haustein and Waller, 2009). More importantly, these arguments assume that the nation and the nation state were a fixed contextual factor to which the settlement

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needed to be adapted. Yet, historical research on the development of the nation state in the 18th and 19th centuries shows that nation states were in fact a result of modernity (Gellner, 1983) and took shape only during this time period. The emergence of nation states as we know them today was a process that included the homogenisation of culture, the standardisation of language, the bureaucratisation of state administration, the establishment of a nationwide educational system, and, particularly relevant for the Settlement House Movement, the establishment of social welfare institutions and the imagination of a nation as a community (Anderson, 1983). The Settlement House Movement played an important role in this process as it sought to not only create productive citizens as agents, as described for the educational system by Popkewitz (2001), but also to overcome the divides within the population of a nation state (or a nation state to be). The social divide, however, was interpreted by the Settlement House Movement differently: Samuel Barnett, for example, viewed the disparity in society as a result of spatial segregation and a lack of education and knowledge. Thus, he considered the divided nation as a crisis of the nation as an educated community. The lack of education affected both the bourgeoisie and the working class and only joint efforts could lead to an educated community. This, he believed, was an appropriate goal for the Settlement House Movement. Jane Addams adopted an approach associated with the work of pragmatic academics such as John Dewey. She advocated for the application of social science knowledge to the benefit of poor people, migrants, and other marginalised groups. Social settlements were a means of building a nation as a knowledgeable community. Furthermore, the application of knowledge was intended to strengthen the American democratic system. In short, social settlements focused ultimately on the political community. Friedrich Siegmund-​S chulze describes yet another crisis in community. In his unpublished account, Zwei Völker, he describes the bourgeois as old people who emerged through wars, proud of their power and tradition (EZA 626, I, 6.2). By contrast, the workers emerged through the peaceful development of industry, without any relationship to history and culture, or to the soil of the nation states, and perceived that the world was their home. The SAG Berlin-​Ost sought to reconcile the best parts of the two groups: the internationalisation with national tradition, the peaceful aspiration to end poverty with the pride of a cultural heritage. Thus, Friedrich Siegmund-​Schulze’s settlement idea is focused on the imagination of a nation as a cultural community (see also Chapter 7 in this volume).

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A brief transnational history

Finally, Sara L. Carson, who founded Evangelia, the first settlement house in Toronto, was charged by the Presbyterian Church to establish a chain of church settlements in Canada and indeed founded ten settlement houses altogether, seven in Canada and three in the US (Irving et  al, 1995:  23). Working across national boundaries, she was focused on reconstructing a moral community and, in doing so, connected the social services delivered in St. Christopher House with the Christianising efforts of the funding Presbyterian Church (James, 1997). All these variations in the interpretation of the social question and the solution for the social question were related to the abstract idea of the community. This idea included the immediate surrounding of the settlement but transgressed beyond these narrow boundaries and was extended to the nation as an imagined community and –​in some cases –​to the international community. The community was a joint reference point, a boundary object (Star and Griesemer, 1989), that was able to bridge the very different streams within the Settlement House Movement. As such, the Settlement House Movement was able to contribute to the establishment of ‘the social’ as a constitutive factor in modern capitalist society.

Conclusion The historiography of the Settlement House Movement has endeavoured to reconstruct a coherent history of the Movement and its ideas. The historical narrative emphasised its philosophical roots, major protagonists, the social conditions that led to the foundation of the first settlement in London, the transfer and adaptation of the model to the US, and its successful dissemination across that nation, and, finally, to major capitals in continental Europe and beyond. It enabled social work to establish an identity as a progressive profession, but missed its broader meaning for the transnationalisation of social welfare. Seeking to define the essential characteristics of the settlement approach, Walter I. Trattner’s (1989) wrote: Interested in people rather than in doctrine, in action rather than theory, Residence, Research, and Reform were the 3Rs of the movement. And in attaining their goals, the settlements had an enviable record. Accepting forces of urbanisation and industrialisation, they went about their task of eliminating the causes of poverty and making the city a better place in which to live. (Trattner, 1989: 171)

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However, the emphasis on these three facets veils the impalpable and multifaceted nature of this reform movement. Instead of determining characteristics that changed over time and across the variations of the settlement approach, I suggest –​in a kind of ironic twist –​to describe the Settlement House Movement as transcendent, transformative and transnational. The prefix ‘trans’ emphasises not essential characteristics, but the hybrid structure of the Settlement House Movement that enabled the inclusion of a broad array of different interests and reform strategies. The first characteristic underscores the fact that in almost all contemporary depictions of the Settlement House Movement a more or less explicit reference to the Christian idea of transcendence is made. This is transcendence in the more philosophical sense of something that lies beyond the possibility of one’s own experience. By transcending district boundaries, class boundaries, knowledge boundaries and so on, the residents of settlements did something that is deeply anchored in the Christian belief system. This transcendent connection linked settlement protagonists across the Atlantic and furthered the idea’s cross-​national dissemination. Second, the Settlement House Movement was transformative. Clearly, the settlements initiated social reforms that eventually led to the establishment of social work as an integral part of social welfare. More important, however, the Settlement House Movement can be seen as one of the pivotal components that contributed to the transformation of society to a knowledge society that reflects and reacts to its own developments. ‘The social’ and the ‘social question’ were made visible, problematised, and, eventually, processed through an ongoing process of scientisation. The settlements were home for sociologists, psychologists, social workers and scholars who changed society in a fundamental way. The Settlement House Movement reached its peak of influence exactly at the end of the ‘long 19th century’ (Hobsbawm, 1989) when nation states began to establish themselves as welfare states in many countries of the transatlantic sphere. Finally, the term transnational refers both to the translation of the settlement idea across national boundaries and, more importantly, to the fact that the nation was a pivotal reference point, social imaginary in the sense of Castoriadis (1997), for the settlement protagonists. Their approach transcended the actual crisis within society that was considered to be a crisis of the community and the nation. Although we can identify different interpretations of the crisis, they converge in the idea of reconstructing the nation. The ‘trans’ prefix, therefore, refers not only to the spatial dissemination, but also to a temporal translation

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A brief transnational history

into a desirable future of the nation as a reunited community that will overcome the social divide. It is an alternative narrative to that of Marx and Engels (1908 [1848]), which so powerfully coined history as a global history of class conflict. The settlement story is instead less clear-​cut, more diffuse, and focused on small changes. However, it proved to be socially transformative in a profound way by transcending the legacy of Christian welfare and transnationalising ‘the social’ as a constitutive part of modern societies. Archival sources Evangelisches Zentralarchiv (EZA), Berlin United Church Archives (UCA), Toronto References Addams, J. (1899) ‘A function of the social settlement’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 13(3): 33–​55. Allen, R. (1975) The Social Gospel in Canada. Ottawa:  National Museums of Canada. Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Editions. Barnett, S.A. and Barnett, H. (1909) Towards Social Reform. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Bliss, W.D.P. (1906) ‘The Church and social reform workers’, The Outlook, 82: 122–​5. Booth, C. (1891) Labour and Life of the People. Volume I: East London. London: Williams and Norgate. Castoriadis, C. (1997) The Imaginary Institution of Society (reprint edition). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chambon, A., Johnstone, M. and Köngeter, S. (2015) ‘The circulation of knowledge and practices across national borders in the early twentieth century: A focus on social reform organisations’, European Journal of Social Work, 18(4): 495–​510. Coit, S. (1892) Neighbourhood Guilds. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Davis, A.F. (1967) Spearheads for Reform:  The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–​1914. New  York, NY:  Oxford University Press. Deleuze, G. (1979) ‘Foreword: the rise of the social’. In J. Donzelot (ed) The Policing of Families. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, pp ix-​xvii. Dickens, C. (1852) Bleak House. Leipzig: Tauchnitz. Engels, F. (1887) The condition of the working-​class in England in 1844. Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky. New  York:  John W. Lovell Company.

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Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism: New Perspectives on the Past. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Haustein, S. and Waller, A. (2009) ‘Jüdische settlements in Europa: Ansätze einer transnationalen sozial-​, geschlechter-​und ideenhistorischen Forschung [Jewish Settlements in Europe: Approaches of transnational research on social history, gender history, and the history of ideas]’, Medaon, 3(4): 14. Hobsbawm, E.J. (1989) The Age of Empire, 1875–​1914. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Hunt, A. (2002) ‘Measuring morals:  The beginnings of the Social Survey Movement in Canada, 1913–​1917’, Histoire Social/​Social History, 35(69): 171–​94. Irving, A., Parsons, H. and Bellamy, D. (1995) Neighbours: Three Social Settlements in Downtown Toronto. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. James, C.L. (1997) ‘Gender, class and ethnicity in the organisation of neighbourhood and nation: The role of Toronto’s settlement houses in the formation of the Canadian state, 1902 to 1914’, PhD thesis, University of Toronto. James, C.L. (1998) ‘ “Not merely for the sake of an evening’s entertainment”:  The educational uses of theater in Toronto’s settlement houses, 1910–​1930’, History of Education Quarterly, 38(3): 287–​311. James, C.L. (2001) ‘Reforming reform: Toronto’s Settlement House Movement, 1900–​20’, The Canadian Historical Review, 82(1): 55–​90. Jordan, L.H. (1908) ‘Institutional churches and social settlements’, The Presbyterian (Toronto), IX, 27 February: 262–​4. Köngeter, S. (2012a) ‘Paradoxes of transnational production of knowledge in social work’. In A.S. Chambon, W. Schröer and C. Schweppe (eds) Transnational Social Support, London: Routledge, pp 187–​210. Köngeter, S. (2012b) ‘Transnational roots of St. Christopher House’, Transnational Social Review, 2(2): 43–​7. Köngeter, S. (2013a) ‘Die Erforschung der Slums:  Transnationale Grenzobjekte der Settlement-​ und Social-​S urvey-​B ewegung [Researching Slums:  Transnational Boundary Objects of the Settlement House and the Social Survey Movement’. In R. Hörster, S. Köngeter and B. Müller (eds) Grenzobjekte [Boundary Objects]. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp 233–​56.

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Köngeter, S. (2013b) ‘ “The immigrant problem”:  Transnationale Problemkonstruktionen in der Settlement-​Haus-​Bewegung [‘The immigrant problem’: Transnational constructions of a social problem in the Settlemen House Movement’. In A. Herz and C. Olivier (eds) Transmigration und Soziale Arbeit: Theoretische Herausforderungen und Gesellschaftliche Praxis [Transmigration and Social Work: Theoretical Challenges and Social Practice]. Baltmannsweiler:  Schneider Verlag Hohengehren, pp 21–​44. Köngeter, S. (2013c) ‘Transnationales Wissen in der Geschichte der Sozialen Arbeit:  Zur Bedeutung religiöser Verbindungen für die grenzüberschreitende Verbreitung der Settlement-​Bewegung [Transnational knowledge in the history of Social Work:  On the meaning of religious interconnections for the border-​crossing dissemination of the Settlement House Movement]’. In D. Bender, A. Duscha, L. Huber and K. Klein-​Zimmer (eds) Transnationales Wissen [Transnational Knowledge]. Weinheim: Juventa, pp 80–​97. Köngeter, S. (2015) ‘The translation of knowledge across the Atlantic:  Constructions of the “immigration problem” in the Settlement Movement’. In S. Köngeter and W. Smith (eds) Transnational Agency and Migration: Actors, Movements and Social Support. London: Routledge, pp 87–​108. Köngeter, S. (2017) ‘Surveilling and surveying slums: the transnational translation of the city as a social problem’. In L. Good Gingrich and S. Köngeter (eds) Transnational Social Policy: Social Welfare in a World on the Move. London: Routledge, pp 21–​42. Köngeter, S. and Schröer, W. (2013) ‘Var iations of social pedagogy: Explorations of the transnational Settlement Movement’, Education Policy Analysis Archives, 21(42): 1–​17. Lindner, R. (2004) Walks on the Wild Side:  Eine Geschichte der Stadtforschung [Walks on the Wild Side: A History of Urban Research]. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag. Macdonald, J.A. (1889) ‘East London and the Universities’ Settlement’, Knox College Monthly, 8: 17–​24. Macdonald, J.A. (1909) ‘The Christianization of our civilization’. In Canadian Council Laymen’s Missionary Movement (ed) Canada’s Missionary Congress. Toronto: Canadian Council, pp 115–​21. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1908 [1848]) Manifesto of the Communist Party. New York, NY: New York Labor News Company. Mead, G.H. (1907–​1908) ‘The social settlement: Its basis and function’, University of Chicago Record, 12: 108–​10. Melville, K. (1899) ‘An Eastside settlement’, The Westminster: A Paper for the Home, 5: 429–​30.

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Popkewitz, T. S. (2001) ‘Rethinking the political:  Reconstituting national imaginaries and producing difference’, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 5(2/​3): 179–​207. Raphael, L. (2012) ‘Embedding the human and social sciences in Western societies, 1880–​1980’. In K. Brückweh, D. Schumann, R.W. Wetzell and B. Ziemann (eds) Engineering Society:  The Role of the Human and Social Sciences in Modern Societies, 1880–​1980. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 41–​56. Residents of Hull-​House (1895) Hull-​House Maps and Papers:  A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, Together with Comments and Essays on Problems Growing out of the Social Condition. New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell. Rodgers, D.T. (1998) Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Scotland, N. (2007) Squires in the Slums:  Settlements and Missions in Late-​Victorian London. London: I.B. Tauris. Shaw, I. (2008) ‘Merely experts? Reflections on the history of social work, science and research’, Research, Policy and Planning, 26(1): 57–6​ 5. Shaw, I. (2015) ‘The archaeology of research practices: A social work case’, Qualitative Inquiry, 21(1): 36–​49. Siegmund-​Schultze, F. and Grünberg, W. (ed) (1990) Friedrich Siegmund-​ Schultze: Friedenskirche, Kaffeeklappe und Ökumenische Vision: Texte 1910–​ 1969 [Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze: Peace Church, Coffee House and the Ecumenist Vision: Texts 1910–​1969]. Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag. Sklar, K.K. (1995) Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work:  The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–​1900. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Star, S. L. and Griesemer, J. (1989) ‘Institutional ecology, “Translations”, and boundary objects:  Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–​1939’, Social Studies of Science, 19: 387–​420. Stockwell, C.E. (1996) ‘Graham Taylor:  Urban pioneer’, Chicago Theological Seminary Register, 86(1): 1–​23. Trattner, W.I. (1989) From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America (4th edn). New York, NY: Free Press. Wietschorke, J. (2007) ‘Stadt-​und Sozialforschung in der Sozialen Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-​Ost [Urban and Social Research in the Berlin East Social Working Group]’. In H.-​E. Tenorth, R. Lindner, F. Fechner and J. Wietschorke (eds) Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze (1885–​ 1969): Ein Leben für Kirche, Wissenschaft und Soziale Arbeit [Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze (1885–​1969): A Life for Church, Science and Social Work]. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, pp 51–​68.

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Wietschorke, J. (2013) Arbeiterfreunde: Soziale Mission im Dunklen Berlin 1911–​1933 [Friends of the Working-​Class: Social Mission in Dark Berlin, 1911–​1933]. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag. Williams, J.E. and MacLean, V.M. (2015) Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years:  Faith, Science, and Reform. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Young Women’s Settlement (1897) Chicago Commons 17: 13–​14.

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3

Berlin’s municipal socialism: a transatlantic muse for Mary Simkhovitch and New York City Barbara Levy Simon ‘Municipalisation’, the transferral to city ownership of previously private, corporate assets, was a major component of Bismarck’s social welfare state in urban settings, beginning in the 1870s. Such pivotal municipally owned resources as mass transportation, water systems, parks, utilities that provided gas and electricity, and housing were key components of municipalisation, which is also known as municipal socialism (Prisching, 1997). Mary Simkhovitch (referred to as ‘Mary’ throughout the rest of this chapter) learned about municipalisation when attending lectures as a graduate student at the Free University of Berlin during academic year 1895/​96 (Simkhovitch, 1938). Through daily exploration of the city over two semesters, Mary studied and admired municipalisation’s widespread implementation in Berlin. Born in 1867 and raised as a Republican Yankee on a farm near Boston in Newton, Massachusetts, US, Mary shaped a career in early social work and city planning that extended for almost five decades (1897–​1946). She soon became a nationally prominent social welfare leader recognised for generating innovative approaches to settlement house programming and outreach, sponsoring social science research and publication at the neighbourhood level, institutionalising the arts as a core settlement house legacy, and advocating and lobbying in municipal and national arenas. For example, as a key actor during President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Mary worked closely with Harry Hopkins to launch public house projects in multiple US cities as part of the Works Progress Administration and, from 1939 onwards, the Works Projects Administration (McDonnell, 1957; Hubbard, 2018). One of a group of young native-​born women and men who had grown to adulthood in a US dominated throughout the second half of the 19th century by leaders who adhered to an unapologetic version of laissez-​faire politics and economics, Mary spent her first 28 years

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surrounded by formal and informal lessons about the necessity and cultural superiority of American political devotion to individualistic self-​reliance. Nonetheless, during the Progressive Era in the US, Mary turned into an urban reformer who advocated steadily and forcefully throughout her long adult life for creating an expansive set of free municipal services and institutions in New York City that, she hoped, would one day resemble and equal those of Berlin. What transformed her thinking and actions? Daniel T.  Rodgers’ influential book, Transatlantic Crossings:  Social Politics in a Progressive Age, provides an indispensable clue for answering this question (Rodgers, 1998). Mary’s early socialisation concerning the wisdom of a political economy rooted in laissez-​faire economic theory was upended at first by her direct exposure as a young adult volunteer in Boston’s settlement house world to the crushing poverty and precarity of the city’s immigrant and black poor (Simkhovitch, 1938). Soon thereafter she sought greater understanding of European experiments in addressing poverty by graduate study in Berlin and close observation of Berlin’s social safety net and ample municipal resources available to all its residents. She was a representative of a cohort of intellectually curious and economically comfortable young Americans born soon after the end of the US Civil War (1865) who were encouraged by their undergraduate professors of history and the emergent social sciences to seek postgraduate education in Germany because of that country’s leadership in empirical social and economic research and social welfare activities (Rodgers, 1998). Following the argument of intellectual historian Daniel T. Rodgers, one must look eastward from the US, across the Atlantic Ocean to Berlin, Heidelberg, Hamburg and Frankfurt, among other cities, to find European muses for young adults who came of age in the US during the 1880s and 1890s who sought to tame the cruellest aspects of industrial capitalism or, for some, to replace capitalism altogether. By exploring the life and work of Mary, one can gain insight into the inspirational force of Prussian and German political ideas, social welfare programmes, and municipal improvements on New York City progressives in the 1890s during the quarter century that constituted the American Progressive period (circa 1890–​1917). Mary was one of the ‘scholar-​activists’ whom historian John Louis Recchuiti identified as being part of the core of New  York City’s Progressive Era urban reformers (Recchuiti, 2007). She was a key member of an informal network of young male and female social advocates and social scientists, some of whom, like Florence Kelley, John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois and Lillian Wald, became and remain

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internationally recognised for their work and thought. Members of New York City’s progressive activists’ hub hoped in the early days of the 20th century to eliminate the excesses of capitalism and make, in Mary’s words, ‘a passionate attempt to realise democracy’ (Greenwich House Records, 1915).

Mary’s formal education Mary graduated from Newton High School near Boston, Massachusetts, in 1886 and then chose to commute daily seven miles by train back and forth from her family’s Newton farm to Boston University in order to study and earn an undergraduate college degree. There, the professors she remembered most vividly in one of her books, Neighbourhood, My Story of Greenwich House, ‘were trained in German universities and had known the solid workmanship required in the old days of German scholarship’ (Simkhovitch, 1938: 36). While an undergraduate, Mary volunteered at Denison House, a settlement house in Boston’s South End run by Helena Dudley. In recalling her time spent at Denison House, Mary noted that Boston University offered her a formal pursuit of knowledge and exposure to research methods that were necessary in that quest. She found Denison House to be an equally important learning laboratory, one that exposed her to the harsh urban living conditions faced by many Bostonians and to myriad people different from those who had raised her during childhood and adolescence (Simkhovitch, 1938: 37–​41). On graduating from Boston University in 1890, Mary taught Latin for two years at Somerville High School not far from Boston. She then went to Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to undertake graduate studies in economic history and sociology (Harvard University at that time did not permit women to attend lectures or earn undergraduate or graduate credits). On the basis of her academic record at Radcliffe, Mary was granted a scholarship by the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union that enabled her to continue graduate studies in economics and history at the University of Berlin (Simkhovitch, 1938:  46). The Women’s Educational and Industrial Union was a non-​profit organisation founded by women in 1877 to advance the overall cause of Boston-​area women and, more specifically, to reduce the exploitation of women factory workers in New England (Bliss, 1909: 1307). During the academic year 1895/​96, Mary made her own ‘transatlantic crossings’. Her mother accompanied her throughout the trip and shared a suite with her during two academic semesters, since travelling and

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living alone in a foreign country was not yet an acceptable activity for a respectable young woman of middle-​class status. Together with her mother, Mary first went for the summer to expand her German language skills in Weimar, Germany. For the fall and spring semesters, she attended lectures at the Free University of Berlin as an auditor, since women were not yet permitted there to matriculate as part-​time or full-​time graduate students. She wrote: Those were the days of [Gustav von] Schmoller and [Adolf] Wagner. Schmoller was the best-​known exponent of the ‘historiche Methode’ … No one is above detail. The person who has no detailed knowledge has no knowledge at all, and in this respect for meticulous care Schmoller grounded us day by day. (Simkhovitch, 1938: 50) The Free University of Berlin featured public lectures open to all. Adolf Wagner was an especially popular lecturer on politics and economics. According to Mary, ‘… his lectures were crowded with students from all over the world. Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, Italians, English, Japanese, and Americans flocked to hear him’ (Simkhovitch, 1938:  51). At Adolf Wagner’s public lectures, she met her husband-​to-​be, the future economic historian, Vladimir Simkhovitch, a young Russian scholar. Professor Adolf Wagner had, by 1895, become internationally recognised for his scholarship on and advocacy of ‘municipalisation’, the transformation of private corporate resources concerning utilities, water, parklands, transportation systems and housing into city-​owned and municipally run systems. Opponents called it ‘sewer socialism’; allies of the concept thought of it as ‘municipal socialism’ (Sheldrake, 1989; Blear, 2003). Part of Wagner’s worldwide appeal was his visibility and clout as a political consultant to Otto van Bismarck, the first Chancellor of the German Empire between 1871 and 1890. Bismarck, after achieving the unification of the German Empire in 1871, had sought to undermine the popularity of socialism and communism and to respond to demands from grassroots political movements and labour unions by instituting forms of state socialism through social welfare entitlements. At the same time, Bismarck encouraged economic capitalism in industry, agriculture and trade. He and his allies understood that substantial taxation of German corporations and citizens was necessary in order to fund unemployment insurance, veterans’ benefits, disability insurance, social security for aged Germans, and public welfare subsidies for citizens who were poor, ill, or living with disabilities (Prisching, 1997).

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Wagner helped conceive of, and enact, this groundbreaking work through assisting in the shaping of legislation at both national and municipal levels. He was an elected member of the bicameral Landtag of Prussia, a parliament of the German Reich that consisted of a First Chamber (or House of Lords) and a Second Chamber (or House of Representatives or House of Commons) (Lerman, 2004). Wagner, between 1882 and 1885, was elected to and served in the Second Chamber. Later, he served in the Prussian First Chamber from 1910 until his death in 1917. His political involvement as a political consultant to Bismarck, and to successive mayors of Berlin and as a legislator, was concomitant with his professorial duties at the Free University of Berlin. There, his lectures emphasised the centrality of significant levels of taxation, of state socialism, and of economic capitalism if the new German nation and Empire were to thrive (Lerman, 2004). He also modelled a life in which one could be both a productive scholar and a hands-​on reformer at the same time. During his lectures, he frequently inserted lengthy vignettes of conversations he had had with mayors and city councillors of Berlin in which he had referred them to his published books and articles on the merits and strategies of municipal socialism. Also, he recited in his lectures the pointed suggestions he had made to Berlin officials regarding methods for securing municipal control of water, gas and electric utilities, for building and managing public housing, and for purchasing, monitoring and expanding trolley services and suburban railroad networks (Prisching, 1997). His intention, Mary inferred, was to encourage his student listeners to imitate his commitment to both rigorous scholarship and pragmatic advocacy (Simkhovitch, 1938). In between academic lectures, Mary and her mother took full advantage of the embodiments of Berlin’s version of municipalisation. They rode trolleys to inspect Berlin’s water works, baths, gas and electric company, and to visit museums, parks, lectures and concerts –​most of which were owned and maintained by the city. When she left Berlin in May of 1896, Mary was determined to foster municipal socialism in some city (yet to be determined by her) in the US. Her general desire was to help her homeland catch up with the municipal accessibility and quality of public services and culture, and to replicate the ample social welfare resources that she had studied and observed first-​hand in Berlin. For Mary, the municipal socialism of Berlin in 1895 and 1896 was visionary, exhilarating, imaginative and well worth copying. Mary returned home to Newton and then, in the autumn of 1896, moved to New York City in order to take further graduate studies in history, economics, politics, and the new social science of sociology

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with professors at Columbia University. Columbia University transcripts indicate that she studied in the School of Political Science, taking courses in statistics, economics and sociology (Recchuiti, 2007: 256). Being a female scholar, she could earn neither credits nor a degree at Columbia University at that time. Two semesters later, she decided to work and live at the College Settlement on New York City’s Lower East Side. It is likely that the complete absence of women professors at Columbia University or even of matriculated women graduate students encouraged her to seek a work life of action outside of the highly exclusionary male academy. At some time during academic year 1896/​97, Mary decided to become a full-​time community activist: I was drawn to the idea of plunging into life where it was densest and most provocative. There was no longer the divided allegiance in my mind to the University and the City. The city’s problems, and especially the life and fortunes of the great influx of Europeans to America, far outweighed in challenge and attraction the call to academic life. (Simkhovitch, 1938: 58) It was only one year later that Mary chose to offer formal lectures about social work in the community as part of the Russell Sage Foundation’s first graduate-​level coursework on social philanthropy (soon named ‘social work’) offered in the US in 1898 at the New York Summer School of Philanthropy. She became an adjunct professor of social economy at Barnard College, Columbia University and Teachers College in the first two decades of the 20th century when US sociologists began to make institutionalised distinctions between the discipline of sociology, which was understood to be anchored in theory and research, and the applied field of social economics –​also known as social work.

Mary’s settlement work: 1897–​1946 After an apprenticeship, Mary became headworker at the College Settlement on Rivington Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for a year, beginning in 1897. Soon, the founder of the Friendly Aid House, a project of the Unitarian Church on Manhattan’s East Thirty-​ Fourth Street, asked her to head up its settlement house. She then became head of the Friendly Aid House, which, much to her surprise, proceeded along Unitarian principles ‘in a practically

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100 percent Catholic neighbourhood’ (Simkhovitch, 1938: 82). While serving as headworker there between the years 1898 and 1901, she married Vladimir Simkhovitch, who moved into the Friendly Aid House with her. Joining forces with John Elliott, headworker of the Hudson Guild, a settlement house on Manhattan’s West Side, Mary and Elliott jointly formed the Association of Neighbourhood Workers in 1901. That coalition of settlement house leaders in the New York City area remains today, more than a century later, a robust network of 42 settlement houses and neighbourhood centres under a newer name, United Neighborhood Houses of New York (Smith-​Rosenberg, 1980; see also United Neighborhood Houses of New York website, www.unhny.org). It is worth highlighting that Mary was an institution builder, somebody who laboured to create organisations that would last over time amid changing political, demographic and environmental conditions. Nurturing leaders who could succeed her organisationally was one aspect of her strategic approach to establishing durable institutions. Notes on administration that Mary kept while serving as headworker at Greenwich House document her conscious commitments to carefully supervising administrative lieutenants and to networking steadily with people throughout the US who had ample capacity and experience to take over her position on her retirement (Greenwich House Records, 1932). While serving as headworker in 1898 at the Friendly Aid House, Mary arranged for a lecture to be given by Mr Edwin Doak Mead, the Boston editor of the New England Magazine and an outspoken opponent of US President William McKinley’s aggressive efforts to secure US control of Cuba and the Philippines through war with Spain. Much to her horror, she learned that the Board of Directors of the Friendly Aid House had cancelled Mead’s lecture without consulting her. The reason soon became evident:  members of the board viewed public challenges to the legitimacy of President McKinley’s militancy during the Spanish-​American War to be treasonous (Simkhovitch, 1938:  82). Mary reflected in writing much later: The Edwin Mead incident made it clear that the Friendly Aid House was thought of by the directors of the Society as a philanthropy rather than a social movement; as a mode of altruism for the church members, rather than as an attempt at social understanding and a cooperative effort for social betterment. (Simkhovitch, 1938: 87–​8)

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Mary, her husband, and selected others with whom she shared political commitments, soon began talking quietly among themselves about creating a new settlement that would reflect more closely their social movement ideal than the Friendly Aid House allowed. They wanted to launch an institution through which to learn from daily contact with immigrants the nature of their ambitions, problems and dreams. The settlement house staff they sought to create would earn the trust of poor and working-​class neighbours through shared neighbourhood experiences, conversations and projects: … that the settlement ought to be the matrix of a more adequate understanding of what goes on, and that its permanent value is not so much in the rendering of specific services (which necessarily change with a changing environment) as in the fruitful knowledge obtained through firsthand contact with the people of the neighbourhoods. To voice their wrongs, to understand their problems, to stand by their side in their life struggles, to welcome their own leadership, to reveal to others who have not had this opportunity of direct contact the inner character of situations that arise, is the primary task of the settlement. (Simkhovitch, 1938: 86–​7) In November of 1902, Mary, her husband Vladimir Simkhovitch, and a small group of young friends and activists, created Greenwich House, a neighbourhood house that continues to thrive in Greenwich Village in Manhattan in the 21st century (Greenwich House website, www.greenwichhouse.org). For the third time in her young career, Mary took the position of headworker. She, her husband, and their infant son moved into an apartment within Greenwich House. By living on the site of her workplace, Mary, like other founders of other neighbourhood centers, sought to locate their home and workplace in the heart of community residents’ areas, in contrast to the ‘friendly visitors’ of the period who dropped in from other parts of the city or suburbs as representatives of philanthropies, such as the Charity Organisation Society of New York and the Association for Improving the Poor of New York (Greenwich House Records, 1903). Greenwich Village neighbourhoods in 1902, the year Greenwich House was founded, were primarily made up of European immigrants –​ mostly Irish Italian, and German. A minority of Greenwich Village residents were African-​Americans (Ware, 1935:  10–​13). Caroline Ware, a trail-​blazing social historian, who later became a New Deal

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activist, wrote in her famous study of Greenwich Village, entitled Greenwich Village, 1920–​1930: A Comment on American Civilization in the Post-​War Years: In the last decade of the nineteenth century, and the early years of the twentieth, the blocks to the south of Washington Square were, one after another, rebuilt with six-​ and seven-​story tenements. By 1910, half of the inhabitants of the section were Italian-​born and over eighty per cent were of foreign birth or parentage.… During these years of transformation, the inevitable tenement appeared in the heart of the Village –​a single building here, a row of buildings there –​until scarcely a block remained without its six-​and seven-​story structures and its supply of two-​, three-​, and four-​room flats. By 1901, there were tenement accommodations in the Village for upwards of five thousand families, and an equal number in the immediate vicinity. (Ware, 1935: 12–​13) This extraordinarily dense concentration of people in Greenwich Village was highly heterogeneous and mostly poor in the early part of the 20th century. Mary and colleagues who moved into Greenwich House considered the density of the population, its diversity, the immigrant or migrant status of most of its residents, and their extreme economic deprivation as four magnets that drew Greenwich House founders to settle and work in Greenwich Village in 1901. The very aspects of urban life that drove some upper-​middle-​class white New Yorkers to move to suburbs newly reached by commuter trains had the opposite effect on idealistic reformers like Mary. They wanted to place themselves as close as possible to the churning changes wrought by the migration of black Americans from the rural South and the massive immigration surges from Europe brought to New York City. Mary wrote that: ‘The reason the poor like to live in New York is because it is interesting, convenient, and meets their social needs. They live there for the reason that I do; I like it’ (cited in Davis, 1967: 73). Judging from my close reading of her publications and her many letters, speeches and notes extant in the archives of Greenwich House, I have found that Mary found the pace and diversity of Greenwich Village to be bracing, enlivening and educative. The myriad social, economic and sanitation problems posed by the extreme concentration of people new to the city presented multiple opportunities for young urban reformers like Mary and her colleagues to test out their political ideals and

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social change approaches as they attempted to make life less harsh for individuals and families who lived and worked in the neighbourhoods immediately surrounding Greenwich House in the western portions of Greenwich Village near the Hudson River. For Mary, the work of a settlement house encompassed four levels of indispensable and interrelated activities. First, she and her staff worked to provide programmes, groups and services most urgently demanded by ‘neighbours’, the term preferred by settlement house founders to describe community residents living close to the settlement house. In response to direct requests, Greenwich House created a cluster of offerings: a free nursery school; a community garden (long before plots for planting became familiar and accessible to most urban New Yorkers); a summer camp for children and adolescents; a weekly maternal and infant health clinic; free legal counselling on immigration issues; English classes for newcomers to the US; preparation for the exam necessary to become a citizen; and a variety of evening groups that adolescents asked for  –​debate, drama, chess, cooking, current events, poetry and dance, among them. Second, Mary set up a committee of volunteer social scientists to supervise the systematic collection and interpretation of data on the social, political, cultural and economic problems faced at home, work and in public by Greenwich House neighbours. Books and pamphlets on social and economic conditions on the West Side of Greenwich Village and on immigrant and black residents’ ways of responding to those challenges were published by the Greenwich House Press. They were research publications supervised by sociologists, economists, political scientists and educators who volunteered to serve as research project directors at Greenwich House. Among the research supervisors, there were academic luminaries and public intellectuals of the period such as educator and philosopher John Dewey, sociologist Franklin Giddings, anthropologist Franz Boas, and economist Edwin Seligman. Third, she emphasised advocacy and lobbying, in concert with other leaders and organisations, for municipal, state and national reforms conceived in the light of social scientific and neighbourhood-​based research. Mary led staff and volunteers of Greenwich House in steady and successful advocacy to create indoor plumbing and improved ventilation in extant and emerging housing, a new neighbourhood public school, a free public bath for washing people and clothes, accessible neighbourhood parks, a nearby recreational pier on the Hudson River, and a local branch of the New York Public Library. Finally, Mary decided to make Greenwich House a cultural mecca, a centre for the arts. For her, the arts had two aspects: folk arts and crafts

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brought from diverse homelands by immigrants; and American cultural forms that were flourishing contemporaneously in Greenwich Village and other parts of New York City. This fourth dimension of settlement work, for Mary, was, in part, inspired by the free musical performances, lectures and art exhibits that she had cherished in Berlin and which Professors Schmoller and Wagner had deemed to be an essential part of municipal socialism (Greenwich House Records, 1917). As a testimony to the lasting success of her and her successors’ insistence on locating arts and crafts at heart of the settlement house project, a music school and pottery exhibitions and classes remain vibrant at Greenwich House in the 21st century. During her 44-​year tenure as headworker, Mary stimulated innovations in all four domains:  services, social science research, advocacy and lobbying, and the arts.

An advocate for municipal socialism beyond the realm of settlement houses National Consumers League One way in which Mary fought for the extension of public regulation of key industries, their working conditions, and products was through her participation as an Executive Board Member of the National Consumers League (NCL) from its founding in 1899 until 1917 (Smith-​Rosenberg, 1980:  649–​51). The NCL was chartered in 1899 by Jane Addams, headworker of Hull-​House in Chicago, and Josephine Shaw Lowell, founder of the Charity Organisation Society of New York, as a vehicle for expanding public awareness about the working and sanitary conditions of factory workers, especially women and children. Florence Kelley was appointed the first General Secretary (Executive Director) of NCL at its inauguration, which led her to move from her residence at Hull-​House in Chicago to the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side of New York City. Soon, Kelley and the NCL Executive Board and staff began lobbying for the creation of state laws and regulations for the protection of women and child workers and consumers of industrial goods (Sklar, 1995). Mary came to know Florence Kelley well through their shared settlement house and social reform circles. Despite their political differences –​Mary was a liberal reformer; Kelley was a socialist –​they developed a long and important partnership as activists. They were, for example, key initiators of a national consumer boycott of goods produced by companies that persisted in underpaying women and child labourers and subjecting them to harsh and unsafe working conditions.

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Tenement reform and public housing Probably the most important legacy of Mary’s municipal reform work was tenement reform and the creation of public housing in New York City. In 1907, she was appointed Chair of the New York City Committee on the Congestion of Population, a body that sought and won battles around slum clearance, city regulation of tenement construction and maintenance, and the planning and building of low-​ cost public housing. Public housing was an issue on which Mary sustained a focus throughout her career. For example, she was active in helping to shape US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Bill of 1933, which soon was passed into law. Her particular contribution to the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 was a provision that funded low-​income public housing. In 1934, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia appointed her Vice Chair of the New York City Housing Authority, a position in which she served until 1948. Another activity of Mary’s regarding New Deal legislation was her drafting of the public housing bill that became the Wagner-​ Steagall Housing Act 1937. This Act created a permanent public agency to fund, administer, monitor and upgrade low-​cost public housing. In particular, the Wagner-​Steagall Housing Act 1937 established a pattern of funding local construction of public housing at a much faster rate than previously (Stroup, 1986; Sternsher and Sealander, 1990). Public parks and public recreation Second only to her chief investments in Greenwich House and low-​ cost public housing at the local and national level was Mary’s devotion to the expansion of green spaces and recreational opportunities for children, adolescents and adults in New York City. Relying on the examples that the Greenwich House staff had created in working with Greenwich Village neighbours to create a community garden and play areas for children in the vicinity, Mary became an active member of the Public Recreation Department of New York City in 1911. She was appointed Chair of the New York City Recreation Committee in 1925. Her decades of work in support of public recreation followed four main approaches:  the creation and preservation of small and mid-​ sized neighbourhood public parks through city council legislation and funding; advocacy for public schools to build and maintain both inside and outside recreational facilities for students; encouragement

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of community-​based organisations in the non-​profit sector to create and sustain community gardens and recreational areas outside of their buildings and on top of their buildings; and the creation and sustenance of public beaches at no or low cost to city residents (Greenwich House Records, 1942). Understanding that her main opponents were property developers who sought profits by gaining ownership of as much of New York City property as possible, Mary and her allies marshalled public health data about the benefits of outdoor and indoor physical exercise for children, the public health dangers of congested living conditions, and the improvements to urban air quality contributed by the presence of green trees, bushes, lawns and ball fields. This advocacy approach that featured the foregrounding of public health data was one she had honed with her Progressive Era colleagues in 1907, when she chaired the New York City Committee on the Congestion of Population. Mounting public health data in support of green spaces was a strategy she learned about while auditing Professor Wagner’s public lectures much earlier in Berlin in 1895–​96 (Simkhovitch, 1938). Mary’s focus on the health benefits of exercise and public parks caught the attention of New York State officials. She was appointed to, and served on, the New York State Board of Welfare from 1929 to 1943, a body for which she also chaired the Committee on Housing. Additionally, she was a member of the New  York State Board of Health from 1929 to 1944. Moreover, as a headworker at a settlement house serving a neighbourhood in which black Americans lived and worked, Mary was intimately knowledgeable about the particular stigma, economic and workplace disadvantages, and health disparities experienced by her African-​American neighbours. Therefore, she served on the Board of the National Urban League for more than 30 years in an effort to join with others in expanding opportunities in the workplace and housing market for African-​Americans and reducing the kinds and degree of racial segregation in the City of New York and nation (Williams and MacLean, 2015).

Conclusion It is no surprise that a relatively provincial young woman from Boston was thoroughly transformed by a year of studies and observation in the Berlin of 1895–​96. That Mary immersed herself in the study of German and then pursued advanced studies in Berlin at the age of 28 is explained by the strong encouragement to do so from historians and early social scientists who were her professors while she was

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an undergraduate student at Boston University and by her family’s economic wherewithal and deep interest in education. Mary was far from alone. Germany was the acknowledged guide, teacher and muse for many academics in the central and eastern regions of the US during the mid-​and latter 19th century. When American philanthropists and educators sought to create the first comprehensive research-​based university in the US in 1876, these founders turned to the German universities for their model in shaping Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland (Sander, 2018). Many a person (usually male) during the 19th century who sought to build an academic career in the US chose to undertake doctoral study at one of the great German universities, whether in Berlin, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Rostock, Freiburg, Munich, or in other German sites of scholarship. A PhD earned in a prestigious German university was highly respected in the humanities, physical sciences, and the emergent social sciences in American colleges and universities of the 19th and early decades of the 20th century (Rodgers, 1998). That pattern of influence continued until the First World War when the US in 1917 became a formal enemy of Germany. Despite the bitter war and severe human costs of the First World War, North American academics, urban reformers and social welfare experts did not lose sight of Germany’s historic advances in the fields of social welfare, history and the social sciences. Consequently, a modified version of Germany’s municipal socialism flourished in the form of the widespread institutionalisation of city-​owned and city-​run services, such as transportation, utilities, housing, parks, schools, arts and recreation in such metropolitan areas as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans and Seattle. Mary proved to be a lifelong transmitter of the German message of municipalisation. References Blear, H. (2003) Communities in Control:  Public Services and Local Socialism. London: Fabian Society. Bliss, W.D.P. (1909) The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform: Volume 2 (new and enlarged edition). London: Funk & Wagnalls. Davis, A.F. (1967) Spearheads for Reform:  The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–​1914. New  York, NY:  Oxford University Press. Greenwich House Records (1903) Greenwich House Annual Report of 1903 [Corporate Records of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, Annual Reports]. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Bobst Library, New York University.

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Greenwich House Records (1915) Introductory Comments to Staff [Corporate Records of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, Subseries A, Box 9, File 18]. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, Bobst Library, New York University. Greenwich House Records (1917) Aims of Greenwich House Revisited [Corporate Records of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, Subseries C, Box 111, File 7]. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, Bobst Library, New York University. Greenwich House Records (1932) Reflections on Thirty Years of Leadership at Greenwich House [Corporate Records of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, Subseries A, Box 91, File 27]. Tamiment Library and Robert F.  Wagner Labor Archives, Bobst Library, New  York University. Greenwich House Records (1942) Reflections on the Fight for Public Recreation [Corporate Records of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, Speech by Mary Simkhovitch given on December 20 1941, to the Greenwich House Board of Directors and Staff, Subseries F, Box 125, Folder 17]. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, Bobst Library, New York University. Hubbard, J.P. (2018) Decent, Safe and Sanitary Dwellings:  The National Conversation about Public Housing, 1932–​1973. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company. Lerman, K.A. (2004) Bismarck, Profiles in Power. Harlow: Routledge. Available at: https://​search.ebscohost.com/​login.aspx?direct=true& db=e025xna&AN=687166&site=ehost-​live&scope=site [Accessed 6 January 2020]. McDonnell, T.L. (1957) The Wagner Act: A Case Study of the Legislative Process. Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press. Prisching, M. (1997) ‘The preserving and reforming state: Schmoller’s and Wagner’s model of the state’. In J.G. Backhaus (ed) Essays on Social Security and Taxation: Gustav von Schmoller and Adolph Wagner Reconsidered. Marbury: Metropolis Verlag, pp 173–​201. Recchuiti, J.L. (2007) Civic Engagement: Social Science and Progressive-​ Era Reform in New  York City. Philadelphia, PA:  University of Pennsylvania Press. Rodgers, D.T. (1998) Transatlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Sander, K.W. (2018) Mary Elizabeth Garrett: Society and Philanthropy in the Gilded Age. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Sheldrake, J. (1989) Municipal Socialism. Brookfield, VT: Avebury.

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Smith-​Rosenberg, C. (1980) ‘Simkhovitch, Mary Kingsbury’. In B. Sicherman and C.H. Green (eds) Notable American Women: The Modern Period: A Biographical Dictionary. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, pp 51–​649. Simkhovitch, M.K. (1938) Neighborhood, My Story of Greenwich House. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. Sklar, K.K. (1995) Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work:  The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–​1900. New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press. Sternsher, B. and Sealander, J. (eds) (1990) Women of Valor: The Struggle Against the Great Depression as Told in Their Own Life Stories. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee. Stroup, H. (1986) Social Welfare Pioneers. Chicago, IL: Nelson-​Hall. Ware, C.F. (1935) Greenwich Village, 1920–​1930:  A Comment on American Civilization in the Post-​War Years. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. Williams, J.E. and MacLean, V.M. (2015) Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years:  Faith, Science, and Reform. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill.

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4

The French maisons sociales, Chicago’s Hull-​House scheme and their influence in Portugal Francisco Branco Introduction The first Portuguese immigrants began arriving in the US in the middle of the 19th century and settled in Boston, Massachusetts (Baganha, 1991), as well as in Springfield, Illinois (Allers and Gochanour, 1984). However, according to some historical sources (Social Welfare History Project, n.d.), Portuguese immigrants were also among the nationalities present at the Hull-​House settlement, established in Chicago in 1889 by Jane Addams and her colleagues. Reports of the Portuguese presence at one of the first, and certainly the most prominent, settlement houses in the US, was the impetus for this research effort to track the Portuguese settlement experience. Due to the Francophone genealogy of Portuguese social work, this journey begins by initially focusing on the French settlement experience, which offers an opportunity to explore the unique features of this experience. Thus, apart from the Portuguese settlements, the chapter examines both the French maisons sociales and the Addams’ Hull-​House sociohistorical contexts and approaches as a contribution to the study of the Settlement House Movement through a transnational perspective. This chapter adopts as its analytical lens  –​ residence, research and reform –​the paradigmatic 3Rs of the Settlement Movement (Trattner, 1994: 171), as a key to the comparison of these international experiences. It draws on the author’s previous research (Branco, 2016, 2019), but also on the work of Williams and MacLean, which “presents a collective case studies approach … of some of the most prominent Progressive Era settlements” (2015: 16),1 and which underscores the impact of Hull-​House on the Settlement House Movement and its centrality to social work and social reform. With regard to the Settlement Movement in Portugal, the focus will be on the ‘centres

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sociaux’2 that developed in that country, under the Francophone inspiration along with other possible influences.

Hull-​House: residence, research and reform The 3Rs are a perfect synthesis of the praxis and expression of the Settlement Movement philosophy in the US. Residence The unique aspect of social settlements is that they brought middle or upper-​class volunteers, of varying motives, to live (settle) among the poor and usually foreign-​born populations. (Williams and MacLean, 2015: 44) Residence required the immersion of residents in the harsh context of their neighbours, and it was the foundation for the development of the settlement theory, or ‘scheme’, as Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, the founders of Hull-​House, preferred to call it (Cunningham, 2010: 98). As Williams and MacLean (2015: 45) emphasise, ‘theory, research, and action were truly inseparable to settlement workers who resided in neighbourhoods, observed daily life, collected data, and advocated for social reform. All of these endeavors were situated in a neighbourly relations paradigm.’ As several authors note (Muncy, 1991; Lengermann and Niebrugge, 1998; Sklar, 1998; Lengermann and Niebrugge, 2007; MacLean and Williams, 2012; Williams and MacLean, 2015), the American settlement experience was, in contrast to that in England, closely associated with feminist pragmatism. Women played a pivotal role in the Settlement Movement, whether in creation, leadership, or as settlement workers, establishing a locus for using their skills as college-​educated women and for social action. These functions, according to Williams and MacLean, are ‘conceptualized as the subjective and objective necessity of the settlement’ (2015:  51). This feature is also relevant for understanding the expression of religious faith in the Settlement Movement in the US. As Addams contends when she seeks to explain the motivations behind the establishment of Hull-​House, ‘the Christian movement towards humanitarianism’ (1990 [1912]): 75) was one such force. However, as Williams and MacLean (2015) show, the women leaders, despite their strong religious motivations being inspired by social gospel or social Christianity, promoted the social responsibility of the residents without religious or denomination affiliation. By contrast,

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the male founders were more motivated by a religious calling (Carson, 1990; Williams and MacLean, 2015). Research Settlements functioned as a vital link between the harsh realities of urban living and the populations around them, often recently-​arrived immigrants or rural migrants. They provided adult education…. They also collected data in the form of statistics and systematic observations to advocate for needed services and social reforms. (MacLean and Williams, 2012: 238, emphasis added) The use of research as a source of evidence to support social reform or the policymaking process is a distinctive feature of the approach of settlement house pioneers and can be seen as a contribution to the development of social welfare policies. The research activity carried out at Hull-​House had a set of very peculiar and relevant characteristics: it was conducted by residents or employees linked to the University of Chicago; it involved the residents in various dimensions; it sought to establish cooperation with government departments from different domains; it was understood as an essential support for social reform efforts; and it was longitudinal. It should also be stressed that research was perceived by Addams and other residents as one of the trajectories supporting the actions of social reform. Probably the most evident example of one such trajectory is the collective work of the Hull-​House residents, Hull-​House Maps and Papers (Residents of Hull-​House and Schultz, 2007[1895]). This was a compilation of maps of the nationalities and wages of the immigrant population and essays about sweatshops, wage-​earning children and cloak makers, and other social and public health problems in the settlement neighbourhood (Schultz, 2007). Also, Addams (1990 [1912]: Chapter 13 in particular) not only very clearly describes her vision of the place of research, but presents several examples of research activity covering a broad spectrum of issues, including the influence of health conditions in the environmental and living conditions of immigrants, and studies on children and young people in school settings and factory work, as well as many other areas such as housing conditions. Such research was understood as an essential foundation for social reforms. To be a successful advocate, settlement sociologists needed to build up, out of what they learned as neighbours,

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information that would be accepted by a wider public as valid. In this quest for accurate and graspable information, the settlement sociologists developed a rich methodology. They used multiple research and data collection strategies, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative techniques. They concretized social problems in terms of empirical experiences of human pain. They analytically demonstrated that that pain occurred not randomly but, in a pattern, caused by social structure.… And they concluded their research with proposals for change—​actions to be taken and policies to be enacted. (Lengermann and Niebrugge, 2007: 102–​3) In the same vein, MacLean and Williams (2012) note that Maps and Papers are the synthesis of the main features of the Settlement Movement. Reform The settlement, then, is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city.… It is an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the over-​ accumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other. (Addams, 1990 [1912]: 75) The engagement of Hull-​House residents, and especially Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop and Grace Abbott, in social reform is relativity well known and recognised. Social reform was one of the pillars of the Settlement House Movement, particularly at Hull-​House. As James Hurt notes in the introduction to the new edition of Twenty Years at Hull-​House (Addams, 1990 [1912]: ix), their action as social reformers had a significant impact. For Addams and Hull-​House residents, policy-​oriented practice was an intrinsic and central element of the settlement project albeit without it having a detrimental impact on other activity at the settlement. The experience of social work pioneers reveals a wide diversity of methods affecting public and social policies, with special emphasis on the forming of networks and coalitions, that brought together diverse actors and social movements. Addams was the central figure of the Chicago reforming cohort (Muncy, 1991; MacLean and Williams, 2012), developing an influential leadership in the constitution of a

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female dominion (Muncy, 1991) of policymaking. It was pivotal to the establishment of several public agencies at state and federal levels, including the Children’s Bureau (part of the federal Department of Commerce and Labor), an agency created by Congress in 1912 and headed between 1912 and 1920 by Julia Lathrop, and by Grace Abbott between 1921 and 1934 (Lengermann and Niebrugge, 1998: ­figure 7.1; Branco, 2019: 76–​80).

The maisons sociales movement in France Nous avons reçu la visite d’un reporter anglais. Trois jours après nous arrive un Américain, curieux, disait-​il d’étudier le Toynbee Hall de Paris. Depuis, il ne se passe pas vingt-​quatre heures sans que nous soyons ‘interviewées’. (Dessertine et al, 2004: 83) (We received a visit from an English reporter. Three days later, a curious American arrived, saying that he was studying the Toynbee Hall in Paris. Since then, not a day passes without being ‘interviewed’.) (Dessertine et  al, 2004: 83) As in the US, the influence of the English Settlement Movement, and especially Toynbee Hall, was felt also in France. Some years after the opening of the Neighbourhood Guild (later the University Settlement) in England in 1896, in France Marie Gahéry (1855–​1932) founded the Œuvre Social (Charity Initiative) in Popincourt, Paris, later the Maison Sociale de Popincourt (Popincourt Social Centre). One of the leading advocates for the development of the Settlement Movement in France in response to the social and urban question was the Marquis Costa de Beauregard. A member of the French Academy, in 1896 he published a pamphlet entitled Social Charity in England, where he describes the movement of the ‘college settlements’ launched by young academics (Dessertine et al, 2004: 82). As Dessertine and colleagues (2004) argue, based on Mari-​Jeanne Bassot’s archives: The introduction in France of this method of action took place at the end of the nineteenth century through the voices of the Marquis Costa de Beauregard and Marie Gahéry. The Marquis became a propagandist of the model

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and through his writings launched the initiative based on the idea of settlements, which came from England. From the outset it was a success, and the founding principles that would inspire the future social centre were already stated: settle neighbourhoods, go to the people, exercise the neighbourhood. (Dessertine et al, 2004: 81) Though clearly inspired by the English settlement experience, the French literature (Dessertine et al, 2004; Durand, 2006 [1990]) indicates that Jane Addams and the pioneers of the French movement met several times. For example, after a religious experience in the Convent of the Carmelites of Lisieux, Marie Gahéry stayed several years in the US and the UK, which allowed her to get to know the settlement experience and its principles, particularly the idea of residence in the neighbourhoods. Later, in 1919, Marie-​Jeanne Bassot (1878–​1935), one of the most influential pioneers of the French movement, also visited the US in order to deepen her knowledge and learn from the American experience and explore its possible application in the French initiatives. Her visit was also designed to obtain donations to finance the Levallois-​Perret social residence. As Fayet-​Scribe (1990b:  177–​ 9) describes, this project was supported by Marie-​Jeanne Bassot’s American friends, such as Esther Lovejoy,3 the American Women’s Hospital and Jane Addams. The international conferences of the Settlement Movement, the first of which took place in London in 1922, were also opportunities to network and share experiences between different national leaders and residents. Despite the evidence of the Anglo-​Saxon impact on the French settlements,4 scholars note that there were also other influences on this historic movement. Historian Fayet-​Scribe (1990a:  Chapter  1), for example, argues that despite the founders’ knowledge of the Settlement Movement and the fact that they probably replicated its methods such as residence, it was the female leaders, and especially Mércèdes Le Fer de la Motte,5 whose thought and vison in the context of social Catholicism, inspired them. The establishment of maisons sociales in France seems not, at least at the beginning, to be indebted to the example of English and American settlements, even if it did become a model for Marie-​Jeanne Bassot, the follower of Le Fer de la Motte, after the First World War: The founders of the Œuvre Social [of Popincourt] were familiar with the settlement movement…. At the same

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time, Le Fer de la Motte was informed of the Belgian experience of the ‘maisons du peuple’ and the French initiative ‘secrétariats du peuple’. Nevertheless, if she adopts the method: residences in popular neighbourhoods, it is she who forges the spirit and organises the means.… (Fayet-​Scribe, 1990a: 30–​1, emphasis added)6 In order to establish the Maison Sociale de Popincourt, Marie Gahéry sought the collaboration of Mércèdes Le Fer de la Motte. Due to disagreement with the Patronage Committee, Marie Gahéry retired at the end of 1898 but Le Fer de la Motte decided to continue the movement of the maisons sociales, which included, at the time, in Paris Popincourt, Montrouge and Montmartre. In 1905, two more settlements were added (Avenue d’Italie and the Bastille) and, in 1908, Levallois-​Perret, under the leadership of Marie-​Jeanne Bassot and Mathilde Girault. But the development of the maisons sociales movement was interrupted as a result of a trial between Marie-​Jeanne Bassot and her parents in 1909 (Dessertine et al, 2004: 81–​2). Following the settlement experience, Le Fer de la Motte entrusted the leadership of the maisons sociales to the ‘social residents’, all of whom were young girls and young women from bourgeoisie and aristocratic backgrounds who followed her in a way of life that some of their parents considered unacceptable. In the specific case of Bassot, the impact of the conflict was considerable (Bouquet, 2004: 29). Bassot’s parents disapproved of her intention to become a resident of the maison sociale, seeking to dissuade her and questioning the influence of Le Fer de la Motte. The conflict unfolded between 1903 and 1908, including one attempt by Bassot’s parents to enforce compulsory internment at a psychiatric clinic. But in March 1909, Bassot filed a legal action against her parents for arbitrary confinement and violence. While Bassot won the action, the trial eroded the credibility of the maisons sociales, which had difficulty afterwards in securing funding and support for their activities. On October 1909, this led to their closure. After the trial, Bassot, along with Mathilde Girault, returned to Levallois-​Perret in the Paris suburbs. Secretly, at first, the Résidence Sociale Levallois-​Perret (RSLP) was recreated as a new ‘locus’ of her project (see Jovelin and Bouquet, 2005: 28–​9). Different annexes and subsidiaries would be added over the years to host a wide range of activities from medical services to a nursery school, an unemployed women’s workshop, a vocation service for young people, lifelong education, a library, a multifunctional gymnasium, and intellectual,

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cultural and artistic activities, along with other kind of services. In 1919, the École d’Action Sociale (School of Social Welfare) was opened, with the goal of offering a high standard of training in the social professions. Bassot established local, national and international networks to support her new initiative, and a four-​month trip in 1919 to the US contributed to this (see Fayet-​Scribe, 1990b: Introduction and Chapter 5). In April 1920, the association La Résidence Sociale was officially established and it was recognised by the state as a public utility in 1922. After that, Bassot became involved in the creation of the Fédération des Centre Sociaux Français (Federation of French Social Centres [FCSF]), that was founded in the same year. Levallois-​Perret became the headquarters of FCSF and Bassot served as the Federation’s secretary. In 1926, the residence hosted the Second International Settlements Conference. In 1927, Bassot, with Marie Diémer,7 authored a report on social centres (Dessetine et  al, 2004), which is considered to be the first doctrinal text on social centres in France, a movement that reached its peak before the Second World War with 140 centres. In 1928, the RSLP saw its first expansion: a social centre was created in Saint-​Denis, then another in Saint-​Ouen in 1931. Bassot received the Legion of Honour three years before her death in 1935 (Fayet-​Scribe, 1990a, 1990b; Maguin, 2004; La Résidence Sociale, n.d.).

The French settlements and the Hull-​House scheme An analysis of the French experience of résidences sociales, particularly that of the RSLP, employing the paradigmatic three Rs of the Settlement Movement (residence, research and reform) reveals aspects of convergence and divergence between these two components of the international Settlement House Movement. The principle of residence is clearly shared by settlements in both the US and France. Residence in the settlements was demanding. It required the immersion of residents in the context of their neighbours. Nonetheless it was the basis for the development of the settlement scheme. As Williams and MacLean (2015: 45) emphasise, the settlements established a neighbourly relations model. In the French case, ‘the residence settles in a neighbourhood to act on the neighbourhood: its action is primarily an action of presence, and the residents begin to live simply in the environment that they aspire to transform; they are there like neighbours, like good neighbours’ (Gourlet, 1947: 6, cited in Fayet-​Scribe, 1990a: 68).

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Despite this common basic principle, clear differences emerge regarding the other two core elements of settlements, particularly the social reform-​oriented approach. While research is present in both cases, French residents were influenced by Le Play’s8 school of thought, which advocated the transposition of natural sciences methods into the study of social phenomena by employing empirical observation based on the monographic method and survey. Residents acted on the basis of the systematic knowledge obtained from the surveys, but the use of science-​based methods was not regarded as a tool to support social reform. At Hull-​House, on the other hand, research was conducted by residents or academics of the University of Chicago. It involved the residents in a variety of ways: it sought to establish cooperation with different government departments, and it was understood as an essential support for social reforms (see Addams, 1990 [1912]: Chapter 13). This very different approach to the role of research is at the heart of the more distinctive feature of Hull-​House in comparison to the French model. On the one hand, RSLP and Hull-​House were similar in that they engaged in social and cultural health and educational activities. As Durand (2006 [1990]: 57) notes regarding the French experience:  ‘the center helps residents cope with their current difficulties and expectations, but the action is limited to what can be done within the territory served and with the resources of the resident community’ (Durand 2006 [1990]: 57). By contrast, the Hull-​House residents, especially Jane Addams, Ellen G. Starr, Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop and Grace Abbott, conceptualised social reform not only at the local or community level, but as a public policymaking process at state and federal level, one of the pillars of the Settlement Movement. This particular difference between Hull-​House and RSLP in their specific approach to social reform, and the French settlement experience in general, is highlighted by Fayet-​Scribe, who underlines the invisibility of the French pioneers: Based on their [Hull-​House] experience in the field, they will propose at the local level, then to the political authorities of the States, draft reform. This is not happening so directly in France. Among the young students who have their first experience in the settlements, some of them then find themselves in positions of responsibility namely close to the President Roosevelt, author of the New Deal. In France, the beginnings will be more modest and slower, the pioneers are not national heroes or heroines like Jane Addams. On the contrary, they are being forgotten, and the

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laws they inspired take firstly the names of their legislators. (1990b: 132) An experience common to both RSLP and Hull-​House was their involvement in professional education and training. Hull-​House and the Chicago network led to the creation of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and social work education in US, particularly under the leadership of Edith Abbott (see Branco, 2019: 80–​4). Similarly, the French pioneers of the social centres, Bassot and Marie Diémer, also actively participated in the creation of the first social work schools by hosting internships. They employed representatives of the various specialised professions that were created:  visiting nurses and social workers, kindergarten teachers, home economists, physical education teachers and instructors (Durand, 2006 [1990]: 61), and, as mentioned, they created the École d’Action Sociale. The evidence reveals that the Settlement Movement in France was indeed influenced by the British and American experiences, but a deeper understanding of its nature and dynamics indicates that it cannot simply be reduced to replication. One relevant key to interpreting this historical process must be sought in the social question and in the different societal movements that reacted to this complex understanding of social problems. Reporting on the French context post-​1 850, Bouquet and Garcette (2005: 31) identify four main movements: solidarism, social Catholicism, the labour movement and the feminist movement. Social Catholicism and the feminist movement had the most direct relevance to the development of the settlements in France. Social Catholicism With the promulgation of the encyclical Rerum novarum in 1891, the Catholic Church refused both liberalism, as responsible for the workers’ misery, and Marxist materialism. This opened up a third way:  the initiative of people and intermediate bodies aimed at concord between social classes. The encyclical urged Catholics to engage in social action: The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the

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human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labour, nor labour without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvellous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice. (Leo XIII, 1891: 19, emphasis added) As Durand argues, French settlements adopted this common objective of solving the social question. The residents did not address the poor in general, but the workers. The inventors of the ‘social centre’ want to contribute to the solution of the social question…. The social question is not only the question of the workers’ misery and its consequences. It does not consist solely in misunderstanding between classes, nor in the resentment of the working class towards the dominant class. The essential problem is that of the exclusion of the working class as a whole from the exchanges and relationships that make up the life of a democratic society. (Durand, 2006 [1990]: 41, emphasis added) The feminist movement The feminist movement saw social action as an opportunity for personal emancipation, an alternative to marriage or the convent, while contributing in its own way to the fight against poverty and other social problems. The activities of some of the settlement women, who had strong religious convictions but were not oriented towards a convent life, indicate that for them social action was both an inclination and a pathway for emancipation: These initiatives are part of the intense feminine associationism that characterised early social Catholicism,

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but they break with it on several points: they are independent of any parallel male action, contrary to what was required by an unwritten rule; they settled in the middle of the popular district, without confessional character and without ecclesiastical control; they were interested in the primary needs of this population, without any direct concern to ‘help’ them, even less to ‘convert’ them; they are organised, structured and developed according to the internal logic of these needs. (Poulet, in Fayet-​Scribe, 1990b: 11–​12, emphasis added) As Fayet-​S cribe (1990b) points out in her book Associations Féminines et Catholicisme (Female Associations and Catholicism), these initiatives emerge at the intersection of three articulated dynamics: the Catholicism sociale, the female emancipation movement and the French sociocultural movement of education populaire. Her argument is that this movement embodies a new characteristic facing the other female associations: While the other female associations openly called themselves ‘Catholics’, the ‘maisons sociales’ movement adopted a totally neutral character from its inception before 1914.… And these associations are not only places for the people’s education. They are also a place for the promotion of women, and for some—​especially those who created them—​an opportunity to emancipate themselves and claim the right to equality. (Fayet-​Scribe, 1990b: 17, emphasis added) Analysing the Bassot case, Bouquet (2004) suggests that it is very illustrative of several representations and issues at the time and encompassed in the French Settlement Movement: the issue of freedom and female emancipation, of secularity against confessionalism, of modern Catholicism against traditional Catholicism, of new conceptions and forms of social intervention against a traditional conception of charity. Clearly, Bassot made a lifestyle choice that was contrary to the social environment from which she came. Her decision to refuse to settle the increasingly violent quarrel as a family affair and to take the case to the public sphere was revolutionary for her time (Bouquet, 2004: 33), an issue that is clearly related to the conflict of generation and mentality within the same social class and the same spiritual family around feminine emancipation in the French context.

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The influence of the Settlement Movement in Portugal The form that the Settlement Movement in Portugal took was that of the centros sociais (social centres). Two distinct strands can be considered in the first generation of centros sociais in Portugal: the centres established by the Institute of Social Work of Lisbon (ISS, 1935) and those created as part of the initiative of the Obra das Mães para a Educação Nacional (Mother’s Organisation for National Education) (OMEN, 1936–​71). Following initial attempts to introduce social work education in Portugal aiming to train staff linked to juvenile justice and juvenile psychology services (Martins, 1999: 207–​12), it was the first congress of the National Union (the political body of a single-​party state of the regime of the Estado Novo9) in 1934 that approved a recommendation to establish the ISS in the cities of Lisbon, Oporto and Coimbra. The ISS was implemented in 1935, with the school in Lisbon becoming the first social work school in Portugal, through the initiative of the Catholic Church. OMEN was created in 1936 at the instigation of the Minister of National Education. Its goal was to stimulate the educational activities of the family and ensure cooperation between families and schools (see Decree No. 26 893 of 15 August 1936) in order ‘to rebuild the good, legitimate Portuguese family, so constrained, so shaken by the destructive wind of materialism and Bolshevik theories’, this according to OMEN’s Chair in a letter sent to Prime Minister Salazar in 1936 on the guidelines and purposes of OMEN10 (Archive of Oliveira Salazar, ANTT.AOS/​CP-​69: 6–​7). Despite the relationships and links between OMEN and the ISS, which reflected the sociopolitical Portuguese context of the period, and were also due to the impact of some major players on both organisations and the material support provided by OMEN to the ISS (see Pimentel, 2001; Silva, 2017; Branco, 2018), their projects and activities were, in fact, characterised by considerable differences. As Pimentel (2001: 143) argues, if OMEN was effectively “influenced by the French and Belgian Catholic family movement which the Countess of Rilvas knew and from which she was inspired to create the ISS and the first social and family education centres”, the strongest influences on OMEN were the Opera Nazionale per la Maternità e Infanzia and Sección Femenina de la Falange Española (Nation Organisation for Maternity and Childhood and Women’s Section of the Spanish Falange), the Italian and Spanish female fascist organisations, which had a clear presence in the period from its foundation to the end of the Second World War (Pimentel,

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2001: 142–​6). It is in this context that OMEN created its first centro social in Cascais, a municipality in the Lisbon region in 1940. The centro social consisted of a childcare centre, medical consultation, social assistance, and a school for mothers’ and family visitors’ training (Pimentel, 2001: 151). By contrast, the ISS maintained its links with its original francophone influences and social Catholicism. This was reflected in the ISS’s relationship with the Union Catholique Internationale de Service Sociale (International Catholic Union for Social Service); its first academic head, the French social worker Marie Thérèse Leveque; its participation in the international conferences on social work; and the exchange of one branch of the RSLP with the Fédération des Centre Sociaux Français (Federation of French Social Centres) and the Maison Sociale de Saint-​ Denis (see Table 4.1). Table 4.1: Milestones of the centros sociais in Portugal Date

French and international events

1908

Establishment of the sixth Maison Social Levallois-​Perret

1909

Trial between Marie-​Jeanne Bassot and her parents (April–​May) Closing of the maison sociales (October)

1910

Return of Bassot to Levallois-​Perret

1919

Creation of the École d’Action Sociale on the initiative of Bassot

1920

Résidence Sociale Levallois-​ Perret was officially established

1922

First International Settlement Conference in London Constitution of the Fédération des Centre Sociaux Français

1926

Second International Settlement Conference at the Résidence Sociale Levallois-​Perret

1928

Establishment of Résidence Sociale de Saint-​Denis, first branch of RSLP

National events

Fall of constitutional monarchy –​First Portuguese Republic proclamation

Fall of First Republic –​military dictatorship

(continued)

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Influence of French and US schemes in Portugal Table 4.1: Milestones of the centros sociais in Portugal (continued) Date

French and international events

1931

Establishment of Résidence Sociale Saint-​Ouen, second branch of RSLP

National events

1933

Estado Novo regime

1935

Creation of Institute of Social Work, Lisbon by church initiative

1936

Creation of Obra das Mães para a Educação Nacional (OMEN, women’s organisation of Estado Novo)

1940

Opening of OMEN’s centros sociais in Cascais, Lisbon and Coimbra

1942

Establishment of Centro Social da Bempostinha as an ISS experimental centre

1946

International study visits by members of the ISS board, providing contact and exchange with the experience of the RSLP and Maison Sociale de Saint-​Denis

1948

Establishment of the new ISS Centro Social do Beato in a working-​class neighbourhood. The International Settlement Association asks the Social Centre of Bempostinha to establish the Portuguese Federation of Social Centres.

1954

ISS participation in meeting of the International Settlement Association in Naples. Visit to the ISS in Portugal by Madame Noblemaire, President of the International Settlement Association.

Sources: Fayet-​Scribe (1990a, 1990b); Pimentel (2001); Silva (2017)

In 1942, the ISS opened the Centro Social da Bempostinha, which was conceived as a component of its educational project, providing a venue for students’ final internship, and a social service for the population of the Lisbon neighbourhoods of Anjos and Pena (Silva, 2017: Chapter 5). In 1950, the ISS established a second centre in a working-​class district, the Centro Social do Beato. An insight into the orientation of the ISS social centres is provided by primary sources that document their activity and proposals (see Silva, 2017). Thus, a report of a study visit by members of the ISS board in 1946 to Belgium, France and Switzerland is particularly important, underscoring their contact with the experience of the Maison Sociale de Saint-​Denis:

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… installed for many years in the middle of the ‘banlieu rouge’ by the generous idealism of the great apostle of the popular classes Mlle. Marie-​Janne Bassot, this Social Residence seems to us to correspond entirely to the proposal of such institutions—​to be permanently at the service of the population that surrounds them thanks to the constant presence of resident social workers. Their mission is to welcome at all times those who wish to go there to ask for help, information or friendly advice, to maintain, in a constant effort of adaptation to the needs and aspirations of the environment, those activities that seem necessary or useful for their well-​being and perfection, to develop among all of them the spirit of closeness and of loyal collaboration. The achievement of these objectives, which constitutes the essence of the Social Centres, and is the origin of their current success in so many environments, leads to greater flexibility of action. (Cited in Silva 2017, Volume 2, Annex O: 26) This statement, and the similarities between a wide spectrum of activities of the ISS social centres and those of the résidences sociales, as documented by Silva (2017), offer evidence of the points of convergence between the ISS social centres’ orientation and the French experience of the résidences sociales. But this argument does not offer sufficient support for Silva’s (2017: 297) thesis that the ISS social centres project was strongly influenced by the thoughts of Jane Addams and the Hull-​House experience. This is especially the case considering that, in the Portuguese experience of ISS centros sociais, the principle of residence by the settlement workers is not present in the same way, despite being metamorphosed by social workers in the logic of proximity to neighbours. The same applies to the orientation regarding social problems at the time (the principle of social reform), conceived in this case as the provision of social, medical and educational services but not as a public policymaking process.

Conclusion Focused on the Settlement House Movement and its transnational development, this chapter examines the American experience, particularly Hull-​House, the French résidences sociales movement, and the influence of both in Portugal. While the chapter clearly shows the international character of this social movement, in contrast to the idea of

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its exclusive Anglo-​Saxon character, it also underscores different points of convergence and divergence between these historical experiences. Both the American and the French experience were influenced by the dynamics of a progressive spirit seeking social reform embodied in civil society at the time; a social compromise as an expression of religious faith, present in the social Gospel movement in the US case and in social Catholicism in France; and by the feminist movement. Viewed through the analytical lens of the Settlement Movement three Rs, these experiences share as core features a neighbourly relations model and research. However, they differ substantially in their approach to the social question. While the French settlements favoured an orientation based on the provision of social, medical and cultural services to the poor and/​or migrant neighbours, American settlements –​and particularly Hull-​House –​transcended the French services-​oriented approach with a special emphasis on social advocacy, developing their own social reform-​oriented approach. Considered from the perspective of transnational processes, this research reveals that the French experience is unique and cannot be explained solely by the impact of international influences. The same can be observed in the Portuguese case, where, despite the clear evidence of its French-​speaking genesis, the emergence of settlements was influenced by the specific Portuguese sociopolitical context despite the résidences sociales being the inspiration for the ISS’s social centres experience. Notes The cases are Hull-​House, the University of Chicago and the Chicago Commons settlements, Boston’s South End House, the College Settlements Association settlements (including the New York Settlement, Denison House of Boston and the Philadelphia College Settlement), and the Henry Street and Greenwich House settlements in New York. 2 The term centre social became usual in France after 1922 in lieu of the designation maisons sociales or résidences sociales. 3 Esther Lovejoy (1869–​1967), American physician and public health pioneer, suffragist and political activist; see American Medical Women’s Association website (www.amwa-​doc.org) and The Oregon Encyclopedia website (https://​ oregonencyclopedia.org). 4 See the work of Dissertine and colleagues (2004), which supports the thesis of the Anglo-​Saxon influence based on the archives of La Résidence Sociale de la Levallois-​Perret. 5 Mercédès Le Fer de la Motte (1862–​1933) embraced religious life, first in the Congregation of the Daughters of Mary and, in 1895, in the Congregation of the Sisters of the Oratory at Saint-​Philippe-​Néri in Brest (French Brittany). In 1896, she was charged with forming a community of this religious order in Paris. Le Fer de la Motte then developed, from her childhood friends, a wide network of 1

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The Settlement House Movement Revisited relationships with personalities from the political milieu, from the philanthropic field and from Catholic organisations, from the feminist movement and so on. The density of this network of relations leads Vilbrod (2004) to characterise her as ‘a woman of network’. It is through this network that Le Fer de la Motte met Marie Gahéry, with whom she would start the Maison Sociale de Popincourt, and also Marie-​Jeanne Bassot, who would become one of her followers (See Vilbrod, 2004: 49–​51). 6 Vilbrod (2004:  50), analysing Mercédès Le Fer de la Motte’s influence on the development of the maisons sociales movement, asserts that these women have knowledge of English experiences, already relayed in Belgium by what were called there Maisons du Peuple (Houses of the People). But this initiative is very different from the Settlement House Movement. The Maison du Peuple had its roots mainly in the working-​class movement under the cooperative or mutuality modalities, in working parties or, to a lesser extent, in philanthropic initiatives (Cossart and Talpin, 2012). 7 Marie Diémer (1877–​1938). In 1914, she founded the Association des Infirmières Visiteuses de France (French Association of Health Visitors), influenced by the settlement model with which she had contact in her visit to the UK. She took part in the foundation of the École des Surintendants d’Usine et de Services Sociaux (School of Ladies’ Superintendents) and the Pro Gallia École d’Action Social, which later became the School of Social Action (1926), a branch of the RSLP. Her relationship with Marie-​Jeanne Bassot dates from 1915, when she presented at the RSLP the work of sanitary visitors (Dessertine et al, 2004: 36–​46). 8 As a sociologist, Le Play opposed the then-​fashionable notion of society’s continuous evolutionary progress. He viewed the family as the chief agent of social stability and moral authority in the face of industrialisation and its accompanying social conflicts, and he propounded a theory of cyclic changes in society that were related to rises or declines in family morale. In the course of gathering data for his theories, Le Play developed what is now known as the case-​study method, in which a field-​worker lives with a family for a period of time, gathering data on the family members’ attitudes and interactions and on their income, expenditures, and physical possessions. The development of statistical sampling, fundamental to social survey methodology, was influenced by Le Play’s method of collating data that he obtained through field research. Le Play published his findings on family and society in the six-​volume study Les Ouvriers européens (1855; “European Workers”), in La Réforme sociale en France, 2 vol. (1864; “Social Reform in France”), and in L’Organisation du travail (1870; “The Organization of Labor”) (in Frédéric Le Play -​French sociologist. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 26, 2020 from https://​www.britannica.com/​biography/​Frederic-​Le-​Play). For a more comprehensive overview of Le Play’s contribution to sociology see “Le Play, Frédéric” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Retrieved June 26, 2020 from Encyclopedia.com: https://w ​ ww.encyclopedia.com/​social-​sciences/​ applied-​and-​social-​sciences-​magazines/​le-​play-​frederic 9 The Estado Novo was the political regime established in Portugal in 1933, after the fall of the First Portuguese Republic through a military coup in 1926. The Estado Novo was a system of corporatist and authoritarian nature that was averse to public intervention in the social sphere and the notion of a welfare state. 10 The OMEN was part of the triad of female organisations of the Estado Novo, jointly with the Portuguese Female Youth and the National Organisation for the Defense

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Influence of French and US schemes in Portugal of the Family, to which was entrusted the function of nationalist indoctrination of Portuguese youth and a conservative vision of women’s social role.

Archival sources Archive of Oliveira Salazar, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, ANTT.AOS/​CP-​69; Letters from Countess of Rilvas to Salazar, 1936–​48. References Addams, J. (1990 [1912]) Twenty Years at Hull-​House. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Allers, W. and Gochanour, E. (1984) The Gathering of the Portuguese, 4th Presbyterian Church, Springfield, Illinois. Springfield, IL: W.W. Allers. Baganha, M. (1991) ‘The social mobility of Portuguese immigrants in the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century’, International Migration Review, 25(2): 277–​302. Bouquet, B. (2004) ‘L’Œuvre sociale: Analyse des représentations et des enjeux à travers le procès de Marie-​Jeanne Bassot [The social charity organisation: Analysis of the representations and the issues through the trial of Marie-​Jeanne Bassot]’. In D. Dessertine, R. Durand, J. Eloy, M. Gardet, Y. Marec and F. Tétard (eds) Les Centres Sociaux 1880–​1980: Une Résolution Locale de la Question Sociale?. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, pp 29–​36. Bouquet, B. and Garcette, C. (2005) ‘Historique de la profession d’Assistante Sociale’ [History of the profession of social worker]. In B. Bouquet and C. Garcette (eds) Assistente Sociale Aujourd’hui. Paris: Maloine, pp 31–​45. Branco, F. (2016) ‘The circle of social reform: the relationship social work—​social policy in Addams and Richmond’, European Journal of Social Work, 19(3–​4): 405–​19. doi:10.1080/​13691457.2015.1084272 Branco, F. (2018) ‘Social work education: The Portuguese story in a local and global perspective’, Practice, 30(4): 271–​91. Branco, F. (2019) ‘Social reform in the United States: Lessons from the Progressive Era’. In U. Klammer, S. Leiber and S. Leitner (eds) Social Work and the Making of Social Policy. Bristol: Policy Press, pp 71–​87. Carson, M. (1990) Settlement Folk: Social Thought and American Settlement Movement, 1885–​1930. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Cossart, P. and Talpin, J. (2012) ‘Les Maisons du Peuple comme espaces de politisation. Étude de la coopérative ouvrière la paix à Roubaix (1885–​1914)’ [The People’s Houses as spaces for politicisation: Study of the workers’ cooperative La Paix in Roubaix], Revue française de science politique 62(4): 583–​610. doi:10.3917/​rfsp.624.058.

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Cunningham, E. (2010) ‘Preserving with purpose:  Narratives of settlement women and the historic interiors at Hull-​House and on Henry Street’, PhD thesis, University of Florida. Dessertine, D., Durand, R., Eloy, J., Gardet, M., Marec, Y. and Tétard, F. (2004) Les Centres Sociaux 1880–​1980: Une Résolution Locale de la Question Sociale? [The Social Centres 1880-​1980: A Local Resolution of the Social Question?]. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. Durand, R. (2006 [1990]) Histoires des Centres Sociaux: Du Voisinage à la Citoyenneté [History of the Social Centres: From Neighbourhood to the Citizenship]. Paris: La Découverte. Fayet-​Scribe, S. (1990a) La Résidence Sociale de Levallois-​Perret (1896–​ 1936). Toulouse: ERES. Fayet-​Scribe, S. (1990b) Associations Féminines et Catholicisme. Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières. Jovelin, E. and Bouquet, B. (2005) Histoire des Métiers du Social en France [History of Social Professions in France]. Paris: Éditions ASH. La Résidence Sociale (n.d.) ‘L’Association’, La Résidence Sociale [Online]. Available at:  www.laresidencesociale.org/​lassociation [Accessed 7 July 2019]. Lengermann, P. and Niebrugge, G. (1998) The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory, 1830–​1930. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Lengermann, P. and Niebrugge, G. (2007) ‘Thrice told: Narratives of sociology’s relation to social work’. In C. Calhoun (ed) Sociology in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Leo XIII (1891) ‘Rerum Novarum:  Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on capital and labour’, Vatican [Online]. Available at: http://​w2.vatican. va/ ​ c ontent/​ l eo-​ x iii/​ e n/​ e ncyclicals/​ d ocuments/​ h f_​ l -​ x iii_​ e nc_​ 15051891_​rerum-​novarum.html [Accessed 7 July 2019]. MacLean, V. and Williams, J. (2012) ‘ “Ghosts of sociologies past”:  Settlement sociology in the Progressive Era at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy’, The American Sociologist, 43(3): 235–​63. Maguin, P. (2004) ‘Une histoire des centres sociaux’ [A history of social centres], Memoires Vives  –​Centres Sociaux [Online]. Available at:  https://​memoiresvives.centres-​sociaux.fr/​files/​2010/​ 11/​2004paulmaguinunehistoire-​correction-​BD.pdf [Accessed 2 March 2018]. Martins, A. (1999) Génese, Emergência e Institucionalização do Serviço Social Português [Genesis, Emergency and Institutionalisation of the Portuguese Social Work]. Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Muncy, R. (1991) Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform 1890–​1935. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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Pimentel, I. (2001) História das Organizações Femininas do Estado Novo [History of Women’s Organisations in the New State]. Lisbon: Temas e Debates. Residents of Hull-​House and Schultz, R.L. (2007 [1895]) Hull-​House Maps and Papers. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Schultz, R.L. (2007) ‘Introduction’. In Residents of Hull-​House and R.L. Schultz (2007 [1895]) Hull-​House Maps and Papers. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Silva, T. (2017) ‘A primeira escola de Serviço Social em Portugal: O projeto educativo fundador e a configuração do campo de conhecimento (1935–​1955). Volume 1’ [The first social work school in Portugal: The founding educational project and the configuration of the field of knowledge (1935–​1955)], PhD thesis, Lusíada University, Lisbon. Sklar, K.K. (1998) ‘Hull-​House Maps and Papers:  Social sciences as women’s work in the 1980s’. In H. Silverberg (ed) Gender and American Social Science: The Formative Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp 127–​55. Social History Welfare Project (n.d.) ‘Hull House’, Virginia Commonwealth University [Online]. Available at:  https://​ socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/​settlement-​houses/​hull-​house [Accessed 7 October 2017]. Trattner, W. (1994) From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America (5th edn). New York, NY: Free Press. Vilbrod, A. (2004) ‘Mercédès Le Fer de la Motte et les siens: Élements pour l’histoire d’un resaux singulièrement féconde’. In D. Dessertine, R. Durand, J. Eloy, M. Gardet, Y. Marec and F. Tétard (eds) Les Centres Sociaux 1880–​1980: Une Résolution Locale de la Question Sociale? [The Social Centres 1880-​1980: A Local Resolution of the Social Question?]. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, pp 47–​54. Williams, J.E. and MacLean, V.M. (2015) Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years:  Faith, Science and Reform. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill.

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Settlement houses and the emergence of social work in Mandatory Palestine John Gal and Yehudit Avnir In historical accounts of social work, it is commonplace to identify two competing approaches within the profession. Casework, with its focus on individual change and psychosocial treatment, emerged from the Charity Organisation Society, while the social reform movement, with its emphasis on social change and the use of community social work methods, was anchored in the Settlement House Movement (Abramovitz and Sherraden, 2016). However, this dichotomous divide between ‘case’ and ‘cause’ was, and perhaps remains, far from clear-​ cut (Jarvis, 2006). This was certainly the case in the settlement houses established in Mandatory Palestine. The founders of the Palestine settlements integrated casework fully into the daily activities of the institutions they founded and, in one of the cases described in this chapter, the settlement itself was established by the social services department and functioned as an extension of it, thereby blurring even more the distinction between the two approaches in social work. Moreover, the tendency to identify the Settlement House Movement with social reform is also questioned in the cases described here. Despite their evident efforts to address poverty and exclusion at the community and individual levels, the settlement houses in Mandatory Palestine were generally not perceived by their founders as vehicles for bringing about social change. Rather, the change that was sought was anchored in an explicitly nation-​building agenda that reflected the aspirations of the Jewish community to create the conditions for establishing a Jewish state in that country. The settlements were established in poor neighbourhoods populated by religious Jews with origins in Arab countries who were not party to the dominant Western, secular, Zionist vision of the primarily European-​born elite. The professionals and volunteers, Jews who predominantly originated from Central or Eastern Europe, sought to instill in the residents of the neighbourhoods

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in which the settlement houses existed, the values, norms and cultural artifacts central to the dominant Zionist narrative and in doing so, incorporate them into the state-​building project. The point of departure for the historiography of the emergence of social work in the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine (1920–​ 48), which preceded the State of Israel, has been traditionally the formal establishment of the Department of Social Work by the Jewish National Council in 1931 (Loewenberg, 1991; Weiss et  al, 2004). The department adopted the casework approach, with its emphasis on individuals and families, that was dominant at the time in social work in the US (Deutsch, 1970). Social work training and practice were also strongly influenced by the German social work tradition, brought to pre-​state Palestine by Jewish social workers, exiled from Nazi-​dominated Germany (Gal and Köngeter, 2016). While distinctive from American social work, this tradition also favoured casework and theories of individual change over social reform or community work. The community social work approach and its distinctive institutional form –​the settlement house –​is absent from this literature. Our research challenges this accepted wisdom in two ways. First, it reveals that the origins of organised social work in Mandatory Palestine preceded the formal establishment of the Department of Social Work and in fact can be found in an earlier period, during the mid-​1920s. Second, it shows that, despite the assumed centrality of casework to social work practice and education, professionals also sought to introduce the settlement house model of social work into social work practice during that period.

Settlement houses around the world The Settlement House Movement’s beginnings can be traced to the founding of Toynbee Hall in London’s East End in 1884 (Briggs and Macartney, 1984; Meacham, 1987). Toynbee Hall’s establishment generated excitement among socially conscious members of the middle classes, not only in the UK but also elsewhere (Reinders, 1982). Visitors to Toynbee Hall inspired the establishment of settlements in Western and Eastern Europe, North America and Japan (Johnson, 2001). The economic and social plight of Jews, both in Eastern Europe and in the places to which they migrated in Germany, Great Britain and the US, made settlements an attractive option for the Jewish community leadership. In London, for example, several settlement houses based on the Toynbee Hall model were founded in the late 19th century for Jewish immigrants (Tananbaum, 2014). The concept

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was also implemented by Jewish communities in Central Europe and in American cities that had become destinations for the Jews then emigrating en masse from Eastern Europe (Wertheimer, 1987; Rose, 1994). In Eastern Europe, Toynbee Halles (a Yiddish formulation of the original English term) were founded as part of Zionist activity in the Galicia region, in which there was a large Jewish presence (Gelber, 1958: 451). In 1901, the National Committee of Zionists in Galicia sought to improve the situation of the Jews through vocational training, the forming of trade unions, social welfare systems and cooperatives aimed at improving the economic and cultural situation. In addition, the settlements were seen as a way of reinforcing the cultural and national consciousness of community members. It was in Lvov (Lemberg), the main city in which Jewish communal leadership was active, that the first Jewish Toynbee Halle was established. In it, activities similar to those found in other settlement houses were organised. Yet, unlike settlement houses established in other countries during that period, Toynbee Halle in Lvov did not operate on a live-​ in basis, but rather as a community centre. Similar institutions were organised in other cities as well –​Brody and Ternopol among them. These centres were very active and they housed Saturday lectures on Jewish topics, as well as evening classes and concerts that were attended by hundreds of people from all walks of life (Gelber, 1958: 556). The Jewish Toynbee Hall resembled other settlement houses in that an educated and socially conscious cadre sought to benefit underprivileged people. Here, however, there was also an overlap between the educated public and the Galician Zionist leadership. This being the case, the systematic effort to educate the populace served as a platform for Hebrew language instruction and, more broadly, for transmitting Zionist ideas.

The Thon family and the first settlement house in Jerusalem Galician-​Jewish awareness of the ideas of the Settlement Movement eventually led to the establishment of two settlement houses in Jerusalem. This Galicia-​Jerusalem odyssey is associated with the story of the Thon family. While still in Galicia, Dr Ya’akov Thon was a key figure in the establishment of the Toynbee Halles (Thon, 1996: 18–​21). A Zionist activist, both in Eastern Europe and later in Palestine, Thon was born in 1880 in Lvov, studied law and founded the first Zionist student

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union in 1897. In Lvov, Thon recruited students for Toynbee Halles. He later moved to Berlin, where in 1904 he was awarded a Doctor of Law degree and was appointed secretary of the Committee for Bezalel, the art school then being established in Jerusalem. In Berlin he also met Dr Arthur Ruppin, Secretary General of the city’s Bureau for Jewish Statistics and Demography, with whom he would remain in contact for the rest of his life. In 1907, Thon migrated to Palestine with his first wife, Sarah, and served as Ruppin’s deputy in the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organisation. When Ruppin was deported by the Turks in 1916, Thon was appointed Director of the Palestine Office. He held a series of important posts in the Jewish community institutions until his death. Sarah Thon, Ya’akov’s first wife, was born in Lvov in 1881. During her first year in Palestine, Thon represented the Women’s Association for Cultural Work in Palestine, which was founded in Germany in 1907 to provide education for young women in Palestine, to support the means of establishing hospitals, and to combat the human trafficking to which the region’s young women were vulnerable. The organisation ran embroidery workshops. Sarah Thon also founded a school for handicrafts in Ahuzat Bayit (later Tel Aviv) (Thon, 1996: 37). Other Zionist women helped her teach lace making, including Hadassah Perelman-​Kalvary, who was to play an important role in the first settlement house several years later (Ben-​Reuven, 2008). Sarah Thon died in 1920 at the age of 39. A year later, Ya’akov Thon married Hannah Helena Cohen, who was later to found the Shimon HaTzadik and Nachlat Achim settlement houses. As with Sarah Thon’s workshops, handcraft-​based employment would be a major focus of the Shimon HaTzadik settlement house. Born in Dresden in 1886, Hannah Helena Cohen moved to Berlin aged 11, after her father’s death. Although she did not receive a Jewish education, she developed a sensitivity to Jewish issues. After completing her studies, she worked as a secretary. In 1907, at age 21, she went to London and spent a year there. During this period, she visited the Jewish immigrant communities in the city’s slums and apparently became acquainted first-​hand with the settlement houses that were active in them (Hirsch, 2011). Returning to Berlin, Cohen took part in Zionist activity and in 1911 was sent to New York as a correspondent for the Zionist Organisation journal. In 1913, she returned to Berlin, and was asked to manage the Zionist Organisation secretariat in Jerusalem. Cohen took up on the offer, but as a non-​subject of the Ottoman Empire was obliged to return to Germany during the First World War. She took part in Zionist

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Organisation activity, editing a Zionist Organisation publication, while the headquarters of the Organisation was in Copenhagen due to the war. After the war, she proceeded to London and helped found the Women’s International Zionist Organisation (WIZO). She was chosen to serve as the Organisation’s chairwoman in Germany. In 1921, she returned to what was now Mandatory Palestine, this time to prepare for the establishment of WIZO’s local branch (Berlovitz, n.d.). That year she married Dr Ya’akov Thon. Like Sarah, Hannah Helena Thon (née Cohen) was active in the public arena. She was a leading figure in the Hebrew Women’s Organisation in Palestine, edited the first women’s journal in Palestine  –​HaIsha  –​was active in Jewish communities in Jerusalem’s old city and its newer neighbourhoods, and engaged in teaching and research on social work and Oriental Jews (Zmora, 2002). Thon focused much of her activity on two Jerusalem neighbourhoods:  Shimon HaTzadik and Nachlat Achim (Hirsch, 2011: 279–​80). Not surprisingly, given her experiences in London and those of her husband and his first wife in Galicia, when discussing her efforts in these areas, she used the term ‘settlements’ to describe the institutions that she founded in them (Thon, 1953).

The Shimon HaTzadik settlement house During the 1920s, when the first settlement house was established in Jerusalem, the country was ruled by the British Mandate of Palestine, a mandatory government that had been set in place by the League of Nations following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. During this period, 660,000 Arabs and 85,000 Jews lived in Palestine. The country attracted a growing number of Jewish immigrants, drawn to it by Zionist ideology. Relations between these two national groups were often conflictual and grew more so over time. With the support of the British Mandate of Palestine, the two communities established separate political and social institutions. Jerusalem itself was the country’s largest city and was populated by Arabs and Jews (Horowitz and Lissak, 1978). Due to the mandatory government’s reluctance to invest in social services, the existing social welfare services were provided primarily by either religious organisations and, in the case of the Jewish community, also by philanthropy from abroad, often affiliated with the Zionist movement, and local Zionist organisations (Gal and Ajzenstadt, 2013). The Jewish community in Jerusalem, like that in much of the country, comprised diverse ethnic and cultural groups. The growing numbers of secular, Zionist Jewish immigrants from primarily Eastern

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and Central Europe were transforming society and formed the political and economic leadership in the country. In places like Jerusalem, there could also be found older, primarily religious, communities, often originally from the surrounding Middle Eastern countries. The members of these groups had migrated to Palestine for religious reasons and, with the exception of a small, more established elite in Jerusalem, were far less educated than their secular European counterparts, and they tended to be poor. Traditionally, many of these Jews did not engage in regular work but rather depended on religious institutions as their main source of livelihood. Shimon HaTzadik, where Jerusalem’s first settlement house was founded in 1925, was one of the poorest and most isolated Jewish quarters of the city. The first residential buildings in the area, which lay outside the Old City walls, were built in the late 19th century near a cave traditionally identified as the burial place of the Jewish High Priest Shimon HaTzadik (Simon the Just), from which the neighbourhood’s name is derived. The land at the site was purchased by the Joint Sephardi-​Ashkenazi Committee in the 1880s, and the buildings were occupied by Jews of Yemenite origin, who had emigrated to Palestine for religious reasons at that time (Shapira, 1948). During the mid-​to late 1920s, the neighbourhood was home to 120 impoverished families, with no healthcare or education services and painfully lacking in sources of income (Zmora 2002: 92). A report published during that period in HaIsha noted that, ‘there is virtually no family in which 8–​9 children have not died’, and although the children who have survived ‘attend … school, [those] familiar with the conditions in which this neighbourhood’s inhabitants live, cannot find satisfaction in this favorable fact, as the schools are attended here for only a year or, at most, two years’ (Halsha, 1926: 32). The initiative for the establishment of the settlement house came from the Hebrew Women’s Organisation, one of the key organisations involved during that period in developing social services in the Jewish community as a whole, and in Jerusalem in particular. At that time, the organisation sought to increase its social impact and to professionalise its efforts in the social work sphere (Zmora, 2002: 90–​109). Hannah Helena Thon spearheaded these efforts and was a key figure behind the decision by the organisation’s Jerusalem branch to establish the settlement house in Shimon HaTzadik. The aim was to address the social ills and disenfranchisement suffered by the area’s residents by expanding employment options for local women, promoting the local children’s education and health, and integrating the residents into Jewish society and its Zionist ethos (Thon, n.d.).

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Hannah Helena Thon rented a two-​room apartment to serve as a base for activity in Shimon HaTzadik. In a departure from settlement house tradition, Thon herself did not take up residence, although a social worker was hired to coordinate activity at the site (Zmora, 2002: 94). The apartment served as a base for wide-​ranging activity in the neighbourhood. In one room, Thon placed the local women who engaged in handicrafts, while the other room housed an improvised kindergarten that kept the women’s children occupied. The mothers took turns caring for their children while the other mothers were studying their craft. The children received one meal prepared by their mothers, as well as clothing…. This house, with its two rooms and courtyard, was for years the only place where the neighbourhood mothers and children could find a sympathetic ear …. (Bat Mordechai-​Rosenblit, 1948: 96) The workshop established at the site was intended to provide the neighbourhood women with a source of income and vocational training. Hadassah Kalvary, who had prior experience in advancing Jewish women’s employment, was involved in developing the settlement’s handicraft operation. Kalvary scoured the women’s homes in order to discover the type of craft that would suit their skills. She found works of embroidery, and these were the foundation for a commercial enterprise based on the local women’s unique store of knowledge (Bat Mordecahi-​Rosenblit, 1948). Kalvary obtained initial funding from her father and founded a company, Shani, to market the products. Six months later, 20 women were already employed at the site (Shani, 1930; Guilat, 2006). Their work was marketed successfully to tourists in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and, later, was exported to Europe and the US. Eventually the Shani workshop terminated its connection with the settlement house and moved to another site in Jerusalem; additional workshops were later founded in other locations around the country. At Thon’s request, the Hadassah Organisation agreed to establish an infant health centre in Shimon HaTzadik, where infants were weighed and checked, and milk was distributed. At the same time, vegetarian meals began to be distributed daily to the neighbourhood children, while Hebrew lessons were given to the local women by female activists on behalf of the Culture Committee of the Hebrew Women’s Organisation (Zmora, 2002: 95).

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Establishing a kindergarten for the local children was a major goal of Thon’s activity at the settlement. However, the endeavour met with delay due to insufficient funding and the difficulty of finding a suitable site. After a year and a half of effort, Thon was obliged to make do with a shed in the workshop courtyard. A year later, Thon reports that, ‘one of the esteemed residents, Georgie, had by his own means made a good and spacious apartment available to the Committee –​nearly the most attractive apartment in the neighbourhood –​with a large balcony …’ to house the kindergarten (Halsha, 1928: 19). In addition to their community work, Thon and her colleagues also incorporated casework methods into the settlement’s activity. Thon believed that combining individual casework with community development was crucial to improving the wellbeing of the residents of the Shimon Hazadik. A social worker was recruited for this task. A  survey of neighbourhood resident characteristics and needs was conducted and Zipporah Bloch, the social worker employed at the settlement, drew on the findings of the survey and began providing social care to some of the local families. This type of intervention was fully integrated into the regular activities of the settlement house staff and was apparently the first time that social casework was employed by professionals in Palestine (Zmora, 2002: 95; Halpern, 2019). Zipporah Bloch’s experiences in Shimon HaTzadik are documented in various issues of HaIsha. In an issue published in 1928, the author describes the types of marriage that she sees as inappropriate –​alluding to the custom of marrying young girls to older men (Bloch, 1928: 19). Bloch also writes about folk remedies used by the local residents, complaining about the ‘ “primitive” customs they involve’ (Bloch, 1928: 20). The events that occurred in Palestine during those years had a direct impact on the Shimon HaTzadik settlement. The economic crisis of the second half of the 1920s had a marked negative impact on the residents’ livelihoods and led the Hebrew Women’s Organisation to expand its activity to other places around the country, and within Jerusalem itself. The flare-​up of Jewish-​Arab hostility in 1929, and the deteriorating security situation in the Jewish neighbourhoods, caused Shimon HaTzadik to be abandoned by its Jewish residents, who moved to other areas. A consequence of this was the closing of the settlement house (Cohen, 2015). Despite the closure, Hannah Helena Thon and her colleagues regarded the Shimon HaTzadik experience as a successful model to be emulated. In an article in a German Jewish publication in 1929, Thon notes that the settlement activity had given the local women a better

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understanding of how to keep their homes and children clean, and how to prepare simple meals instead of the uncooked fare on which their families had formerly subsisted (Loewenberg, 1989).

The Nachlat Achim settlement house Convinced that the settlement house concept could potentially advance impoverished populations in the Jewish community and help them integrate into society, Hannah Helena Thon continued promoting the idea in Jerusalem after the Shimon HaTzadik settlement shut its doors. Within a few years, she succeeded in realising her goal, this time as part of the Jerusalem Social Services Department that had been founded in May 1932 following the establishment of a national Department of Social Work in the Jewish National Council (Cohen-​Hattab, 1996). In the winter of 1935, a group of social workers founded a new settlement house in the western part of Jerusalem (Thon, 1937). The Nachlat Achim settlement began operation in 1936 (Thon, 1938). The area was then home to 2,000 people, occupying 200 buildings (Shapira, 1948:  108). Most of the residents were Jews of Kurdish descent. A survey administered by the settlement staff attested to the poverty that prevailed in the area. Most (90%) of the parents were immigrants, while a majority of the children (66%) had been born in Palestine. A quarter of the men and 55% of the women were illiterate, as were a third of the children. A majority of the parents were jobless (temporarily or permanently). The most common occupation of those men who did work was ‘unskilled labourer’, while most of the women were housewives. Housing density was very high, with half of the families living in a single room (in most cases, this ranged from five to seven people) (Bolog, 1939). Initially a three-​room apartment was rented in the neighbourhood to serve as the settlement house. One of the rooms housed a social worker employed by the Social Services Department, while the other rooms were used for a variety of activities, most of them run with the aid of volunteers. A year later, this apartment was exchanged for a slightly larger one in the neighbourhood. The social worker left the house but remained in the neighbourhood (Bolog, 1939: 28). The settlement activity in Nachlat Achim was extensive and led by the social worker, two social work students and 20 volunteers. While the social worker’s salary and the apartment rent were funded by the Jerusalem Social Services Department, the rest of the settlement activity was based on diverse sources. A Friends of the Neighbourhood Center organisation recruited volunteers and raised funds (Bolog,

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1939:  31). Various organisations, first and foremost the American-​ Zionist organisation, Hadassah, provided assistance. The mandatory government also helped fund what, in the early 1940s, it defined as an ‘excellent little institution’ (Social Welfare Advisor to the Mandate Administration, 1943). The settlement house, referred to by the Jerusalem Social Services Department as ‘Station 1’, served the city’s western neighbourhoods. The social worker who worked on site treated the families in the area employing family casework methods, and reported that during the first year and a half she and the social work students handled 800 cases (Thon, 1937: 175). Reports on the settlement’s activity depict a very detailed picture of the Nachlat Achim institution and of the local residents. The descriptions refer mainly to the first few years after the settlement was founded. The centre’s daily schedule was clearly very full. The morning hours were devoted to individual work with local residents. The social worker conducted home visits. At the same time, one of the settlement rooms served as a study hall for girls who had ‘no chance of being admitted to school’, while in the other room a certified teacher prepared another group of girls (who had yet to be admitted to school) to join Grade 2 (Thon, 1938). The array of activities conducted in the framework of the settlement during the second half of the 1930s is impressive (Bolog, 1939: 29). Thirty-​five girls participated in two sewing groups (Thon, 1938). The girls sewed dresses for themselves and for other female members of their households; some instructional time was even devoted to altering garments and undergarments. Although the work was not systematic and materials were lacking, the dresses were ‘stylishly executed’. In order to participate in the sewing groups, the Nachlat Achim girls were required to attend courses intended for their ‘intellectual enrichment’ –​ in Hebrew, mathematics and Bible studies. They reportedly displayed great interest in the classes given by Rabbi Bergman, where they studied Jewish and general history, geography, current events and Judaism (Bolog, 1939: 50). Exercise classes were held for neighbourhood girls. Dressed in sport pants, the girls ‘tried hard’ even if they were unfamiliar with the required exercises. It was also reported that the girls would rush back from work to take part in these classes, despite the objections of some of the parents. With the help of the Hadassah Organisation and a volunteer doctor, the neighbourhood residents benefited from upgraded healthcare. All the children who participated in the centre’s morning activities

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received a daily mug of cocoa. Hadassah staff also battled the lice and trachoma, prevalent among the neighbourhood’s children. The volunteer physician received patients at the settlement several times a week, and also visited ailing locals in their homes (Bolog, 1939: 50). Children’s cultural activities were held at the settlement as well. Films were screened weekly and there were performances of various kinds, including a puppet theatre. During Jewish festivals, tables were laid with colourful paper tablecloths, the rooms were decorated, and the participants sang, played and ate. Excursions into and outside the city were organised. For some of the children, these were their first trips outside the neighbourhood. The settlement also initiated the establishment of a club for local abandoned children. An empty lot was purchased and a playground constructed, as well as a shed for handicraft and study activities. The club was made possible by donations and municipal funding. Fifty children participated; the staff consisted of a counsellor and two assistants. It was reported that, ‘[a]‌t first the work was not easy. A spirit of rebellion prevailed among these neglected children. Now they look upon the playground as their own enterprise; they keep it in order responsibly and make sure nothing bad happens to it’ (Bolog, 1939: 30). A classroom was also organised for instruction in handcrafts for children with disabilities; the Society for Handicapped Children aided in this endeavour. The goal of the activity was ‘to train the handicapped girls to earn a little money’ (Bolog, 1939: 30). Activity in the public sphere was reported as well. The Jewish Agency Institute for Economic Research conducted a study of the state of young people in the area, and a lecture was given to neighbourhood residents on social and sanitation-​related topics (Bolog, 1939:  50). Additionally, Thon reported that the settlement staff had contacted municipal personnel and informed them of the litter-​filled state of the neighbourhood’s streets (Thon, 1938). Efforts to enhance the participation of the residents of the Nachlat Achim neighbourhood in the settlement’s activity included social events such as the wedding of the daughter of a custodial worker, which was attended by the centre staff and local residents (Bolog, 1939: 29). In addition, regular weekly meetings to discuss social and health issues in the community included social workers and the neighbourhood residents, who are referred to in a document sent to the Friends of the Neighbourhood Center, as ‘our neighbours’ (Thon, 1942a). There is no documentation of the settlement’s closing, but clearly it continued to function through the early 1940s, eight years after it was founded (Thon, 1942c). During this period, children received

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daily hot meals and medical care. Classrooms were also active during the morning hours, and girls working elsewhere were also instructed in handicrafts during the evenings. The staff included a paid social worker, four teachers and a [male] counsellor. In addition, there were three social work students, a nurse, a [female] counsellor, five teachers and additional volunteer social workers (Thon, 1942b). Activity at the site did not cease, but rather it eventually turned into a regular social services office, and its activities were incorporated into those of the regular work of the office (Vaad HaKehila, 1943).

Conclusion The establishment of two settlement houses in Mandatory Palestine was an attempt to address acute poverty and to enhance processes of integration within the Jewish community in Jerusalem. While the settlement houses in Palestine drew on cross-​national knowledge, the transnational translation of ideas and practices common to settlement houses in other countries was very much influenced by the emerging form that social work took in Palestine and the specific context in which these initiatives were undertaken (Chambon et al, 2015). This context was one in which the Jewish community was engaged in an all-​ encompassing, nation-​building effort that was the source of an ongoing conflict with the Arab majority in Palestine. All this took place under a political regime in which the British Mandatory authorities distanced themselves from issues of social welfare and relegated responsibility for addressing the needs of the members of the two national communities to the institutions of these communities. The settlement houses were a response by the Jewish community to these needs. Within the context of Mandatory Palestine, the settlement houses were a unique approach to addressing the severe distress and poverty suffered by Jewish immigrant communities in Jerusalem. Thon and her partners founded the Jerusalem settlement houses in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods, and professional staff and volunteers provided diverse services designed to address existing social ills. The settlement house founders also worked closely with voluntary and formal services that included health and educational professionals. The fact that these Jerusalem activists and professionals were able to connect with the neighbourhood residents, and to identify the unique and positive elements of the immigrant cultures they encountered (as reflected in the project of developing women’s handicraft skills), aligns them with the ethos of the international Settlement House Movement.

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Despite the impact of transnational knowledge on the introduction of the settlement concept to Palestine, the initiators of the settlement houses in Jerusalem and, in particular, Hannah Helena Thon, were professionals rooted in the social and political elite of the Jewish community. They did not perceive of the settlements as efforts to challenge existing concepts or values; nor did they seek to engage in social reform in a society that was already in flux. Organisationally, the settlements were firmly embedded in the evolving institutional structure of the Jewish social services and in the emerging social work professional project in Palestine that was strongly influenced by American and German social work thinking and practice of the time. This was clearly reflected in the fact that, in contrast to the international norm in settlement houses and in social work at the time, the founders of the settlement houses in Jerusalem consciously combined community interventions with casework focused on individuals (particularly women and children) and families. The embeddedness of the settlement houses is also reflected in the fact that the founders were motivated by the goals of the Zionist movement, the underlying justification for the Jewish presence in Palestine. They were an integral part of a nation-​building effort by the Jewish community in Palestine. The community building efforts and the psychosocial interventions to deal with disadvantage and material need were couched in an effort to better integrate the residents of the neighbourhoods in which the settlements were established into the dominant Zionist narrative. References Abramovitz, M. and Sherraden, M.S. (2016) ‘Case to cause: Back to the future’, Journal of Social Work Education, 52(Suppl 1): S89–​S98. Bat Mordechai-​Rosenblit, H. (1948) ‘Shani’. In Y. Yeshayahu and A. Zadok (eds) The Yemenites’ Return. Tel Aviv: MiTeiman l’Zion, p 96. [Hebrew] Ben-​Reuven, S. (2008) Hadassah and the Scarlet Thread. Jerusalem: Ariel. [Hebrew] Berlovitz, Y. (n.d.) ‘Hannah Thon’, Jewish Women’s Archive [Online]. Available at:  http://​jwa.org/​encyclopedia/​article/​thon-​hannah-​ helena [Accessed 13 April 2016]. Bloch, Z. (1928) ‘From the diary of a public worker in one Jerusalem neighbourhood’, HaIsha, 5: 19–​20. [Hebrew] Bolog, A. (1939) Social Settlements (Neighbourhood Centers) and Their Importance for Palestine, A148/​70, Central Zionist Archive, Jerusalem.

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Briggs, A. and Macartney, A. (1984) Toynbee Hall: The First Hundred Years. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Chambon, A., Johnstone, M. and Köngeter, S. (2015) ‘The circulation of knowledge and practice across national borders in the early Twentieth Century: A focus on social reform organisations’, European Journal of Social Work, 18(4): 495–​510. Cohen, H. (2015) Year Zero of Arab-​Israeli Conflict 1929. Walthan, MA: Brandeis University Press. Cohen-​Hattab, K. (1996) ‘Jerusalem’s “Va’ad Hakehilla” and the development of Jerusalem, 1917–​1948’, Cathedra, 82:  111–​34. [Hebrew] Deutsch, A.V. (1970) ‘The development of social work as a profession in the Hebrew Jewish community in Palestine’, PhD thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. [Hebrew] Gal, J. and Ajzenstadt, M. (2013) ‘The long path from a soup kitchen to a welfare state in Israel’, Journal of Policy History, 25(2): 240–​63. Gal, J. and Köngeter, S. (2016) ‘Exploring the transnational translation of ideas: German social work education in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s’, Transnational Social Review, 6(3): 262–​79. Gelber, N.M. (1958) History of the Zionist Movement in Galicia, 1875–​ 1918, Volume 2. Jerusalem: Reuven Mass. [Hebrew] Guilat, Y. (2006) ‘Between Lulu and Penina: The Yemenite woman, her jewelry, and her embroidery in the new Hebrew culture’, Nashim, 11(1): 210–​12. Halper n, A. (2019) ‘Jewish social workers in Mandator y Palestine: Forgotten traditions by forgotten women’. In J. Gal and R. Holler (eds) Justice Instead of Charity. Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University, pp 61–​102. [Hebrew] Halsha (1926) ‘Social statistics in Jerusalem’s Shimon HaTzadik neighbourhood’, HaIsha, 3: 32. [Hebrew] Halsha (1928) ‘The success of social work’, HaIsha, 4: 19. [Hebrew] Hirsch, D. (2011) ‘Gender and ethnicity in the Zionist nation-​building project: The case of Hannah Helena Thon’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34(2): 275–​92. Horowitz, D. and Lissak, M. (1978) Origins of the Israeli Polity: Palestine under the Mandate. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Jarvis, C. (2006) ‘Function versus cause:  Moving beyond debate’, Praxis, 6(3): 1–​6. Johnson, C. (2001) ‘Strength in community: Historical development of settlements internationally’. In R. Gilchrist and T. Jeffs (eds) Settlements, Social Change and Community Action:  Good Neighbours, London: Jessica Kingsley, pp 69–​91.

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Loewenberg, F.M. (1989) ‘Documents from the history of social welfare in Eretz Yisrael:  Helene H.  Thon (1885–​1953) on social work in Palestine in the 1920s’, Journal of Social Work and Policy in Israel, 2: 111–​22. Loewenberg, F.W. (1991) ‘Countries and colonial societies: The Social Service Department of the Palestine Jewish Community in the 1930s’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 20(4): 415–​28. Meacham, S. (1987) Toynbee Hall and Social Reform, 1880–​1914: The Search for Community. New Haven, CT: Yale University. Reinders, R.C. (1982) ‘Toynbee Hall and the American Settlement Movement’, Social Service Review, 56(1): 39–​54. Rose, E. (1994) ‘From sponge cake to “Hamentashen”: Jewish identity in a Jewish settlement house, 1885–​1952’, Journal of American Ethnic History, 13(3): 3–​24. Shani (1930) ‘Financial statement’, 12 July, S49/​9, Central Zionist Archive, Jerusalem. [Hebrew] Shapira, Y. (1948) Jerusalem: Outside the Wall, Jerusalem: Eretz-​Israel Publishing. Social Welfare Advisor to the Mandate Administration (1943) ‘A report on a visit to the Nachalat Achim settlement’, 9 November, 5162/​49, Israel State Archive, Jerusalem. Tananbaum, S.L. (2014) Jewish Immigrants in London, 1880–​1939. London: Routledge. Thon, H.H. (1937) ‘Social work at neighbourhood stations’, News of Social Work in Eretz-​Israel, 2(9–​10): 172–​6. [Hebrew] Thon, H.H. (1938) ‘A lecture in the Minutes of a Meeting of the Social Assistance Office’, 6 November, A148/​45/​1, Central Zionist Archive, Jerusalem. [Hebrew] Thon, H.H. (1942a) ‘A letter from Hannah Helena Thon to the Friends of the Neighbourhood Centre’, J1/​14387, Central Zionist Archive, Jerusalem. [Hebrew] Thon, H.H. (1942b) ‘A report on the Nahlat Achim settlement submitted to the Mandate administration’, 8 February, 5162/​49, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem. Thon, H.H. (1942c) ‘A report on the Nahlat Achim settlement submitted to the Mandate administration’, 23 February, 5162/​49, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem. Thon, H.H. (1953) Untitled, A148/​41, Central Zionist Archive, Jerusalem. [Hebrew]

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Thon, H.H. (n.d.) Social Work at Neighbourhood Stations. Report submitted to Henrietta Szold, the head of the social work department in the Jewish National Council, JI/​1752/​3, Central Zionist Archive, Jerusalem. [Hebrew] Thon, R. (1996) The Struggle for Women’s Rights:  The Life of Sarah Thon, self-​published. Vaad HaKehila (1943) ‘Our centre in the neighbourhoods’, Magen Yerushalayim, The Jerusalem Municipal Archives. [Hebrew] Weiss, I., Spiro, S., Sherer, M. and Korin-​Langer, N. (2004) ‘Social work in Israel: Professional characteristics in an international comparative perspective’, International Journal of Social Welfare, 13(4): 287–​96. Wertheimer, J. (1987) Unwelcome Stranger: East European Jews in Imperial Germany. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Zmora, E. (2002) Hebrew Zionist Women. Tel Aviv: WIZO. [Hebrew]

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Part II The interface between the Settlement House Movement and other social movements

6

University extension and the settlement idea Geoffrey A.C. Ginn

Founded in late 1884 as a new centre of social work in Whitechapel, London’s most notorious slum, Toynbee Hall aimed to ‘link the Universities with East London, and to direct the human sympathies, the energies, and the public spirit of Oxford and Cambridge to the actual conditions of town life’ (Universities’ Settlement Association, 1884: 3). The proposal fused the social reformism then fashionable at the two universities with the improving parochial activities sponsored by Samuel and Henrietta Barnett at their impoverished East End parish of St Jude’s, Whitechapel since 1873. Educated young men would ‘settle’ there, to provide the civic leadership and social services the neighbourhood so evidently lacked and further the Barnetts’ ethos of ‘neighbourliness’. In tracing the origins of 87 of the first 100 or so residents at Toynbee Hall between 1884 and 1900, Meacham confirms that 90% arrived there directly from either Oxford or Cambridge (Meacham, 1987: 44). This chapter reconsiders this origin story, asking whether a paternalistic desire to engineer a new social elite in Whitechapel was indeed the driving purpose behind Toynbee Hall’s foundation. The fact that it was known as a ‘settlement’, with all the colonising implications of that term, certainly suggests it was; Scotland surmises Barnett’s initial proposal as ‘the idea of establishing a colony of university men in East London…. As he saw it, the key factor was to be good neighbours and this meant to live among the poor and demonstrate neighbourliness in practical action’ (Scotland, 2007: i–​xii). The standard account is that Barnett conceived this ‘settlement idea’ in June 1883, responding to an appeal from students at St John’s College, Cambridge for advice in commencing social work among the poor. In a letter that in his wife’s view arguably ‘founded Toynbee Hall’, Barnett urged the students to undertake personal residence among the poor as a direct social intervention across the barriers of class, wealth and education. ‘The letter pointed out’, Henrietta later recalled, ‘that close personal knowledge of individuals among the poor must precede wise legislation

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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 it was absent]’ (Barnett, 1909:  246–​7). Developing his notion, Samuel Barnett drafted an address in October 1883, the basis for one he delivered at another St John’s College, this time in Oxford, in November, in which he used the term ‘university settlement’ for the first time to describe what he had in mind (Barnett, 1883; Koven, 1987: 49–​54). Inspired, a bevy of Oxford undergraduates took up his cause: ‘the tinder took fire’, one of them later remembered, ‘and in a burst of general enthusiasm the “Universities Settlement Association” was formed to erect the necessary buildings –​Lecture Rooms and Residential Chambers –​and to provide funds to support the undertakings of the Residents’ (Gell, 1889: 59). But was it really this simple? In looking closely at the example of Toynbee Hall and its later imitator, the Bermondsey Settlement established in the early 1890s, this chapter explores the contribution made by university extension  –​ the reforming effort to develop university teaching into a more democratic social force  –​ to the inception and practical operations of the early settlements. Henrietta Barnett herself highlighted this contribution. Writing her memoir of her husband’s work after his death in 1913, she excavated an address to the 1879 extension students at a social conversazione in the St Jude’s schoolrooms by the financier, Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) and extension advocate G.J. Goschen. ‘We must bring about wider intercourse between those variously educated’, Goschen had urged, ‘[so] that the best system may be recognised. If some common room in connection with the classes could be established, the intercourse would be more possible.’ Writing nearly four decades later, Dame Barnett made a bold claim: ‘In this sentence –​1879 –​lies the seed from which sprang Toynbee Hall –​1884’ (Barnett, 1918, Vol. 1: 332–​3). In this spirit, this chapter supplies an account of the Settlement House Movement’s origins that draws the extension of university study as a liberal ‘education for the citizen’ to the centre of the story. By taking the settlements as experimental centres of democratic education, rather than as the intentionally hierarchical domicile of ‘settlers’ per se, we gain a richer and more nuanced sense of the settlement model, its origins and purpose beyond what earlier scholars called ‘enlightened urban paternalism’ (Meacham, 1987: 39). *** This is not to ignore entirely the ample evidence for ‘squirearchy’ paternalism in the settlement’s origins. ‘Come and be Squires of East

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London’, Henry Scott Holland declared famously in supporting the settlement scheme (cited in Scotland, 2007:  55), and this was not simply public rhetoric. With the proposal gathering momentum in early 1884, Samuel confided to a former co-​worker in Whitechapel, Kate Courtney: ‘More and more I feel called to preach the duty of a migration of the rich to dwell among the poor. There should be a kind of new Exodus’ (Barnett, 1918, Volume 1: 170). Indeed, he had already done this in proposing his nebulous, as-​yet unnamed scheme to the Oxford audience in November 1883. ‘Many have been the schemes of reform I have known’, he had explained then, ‘but, out of eleven years’ experience, I would say that none touches the root of the evil which does not bring helper and helped into friendly relations’ (Barnett, 1884b: 272). This motive never faded for the Barnetts, and certainly contributed significantly to the settlement model. As Davis, the first scholar to systematically consider the Settlement House Movement in comparative and transnational terms, put it: [In aiming] to bridge the gulf that industrialism had created between rich and poor, to reduce the mutual suspicion of one class for the other, and to do something more than give charity, university men would live in a poor neighbourhood of a great city. They would make their settlement in the slums an outpost of education and culture. (Davis, 1967: 6–​7) But historians have rarely scrutinised the complexities of this ‘deceptively simple’ idea, as Davis was careful to describe it. Most have been content to use its simplicity as a kind of shorthand (as when Judith Walkowitz, for example, talks of Samuel Barnett and ‘his new squirearchy of East London’ who were ‘imbued with [elitist] Arnoldian conceptions of culture’) rather than be too troubled by its deceptiveness (Walkowitz, 1992: 59). The key here is the language used, the circumstances of its deployment, and its rhetorical intent. We need to bear in mind the difference between settlement rhetoric as a language of social description (used to describe, recommend and justify these endeavours privately or to a wider audience –​this commonly had a flavour of ethical urgency and grand possibilities, a romanticised activism in the mode of a Disraeli or a Besant) and the more technical, semi-​professionalised vocabulary of social work manifested in the actual activity of the settlements, their proponents and co-​workers. As part of this ‘something more than charity’, education was central to this practical work; the cluster of ideas expressed in the first

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settlements overlapped with the university extension movement that was also gathering momentum as a reformist enterprise (see Evans, 1982: 117–​19; Koven, 1987: 249–​79; Goldman, 1995: 45–​50). My contention is that the contemporary momentum of the extension movement provided more than just the ‘fruitful soil’ for Barnett’s scheme at the universities. University extension had important ramifications for the character of the social work undertaken at the Whitechapel settlement, insofar as the latter manifested the same reformist version of liberal culture and democratic education found in university extension, as well as sharing its basic techniques and programme of work. By retelling the origin story with one eye on the decisive role played by university extension, we recognise that higher education was not simply one activity among many at the new settlements. Rather, university extension arguably provided both the ‘seed’ and the ‘fruitful soil’ at the universities for Barnett’s proposal, and was utterly critical to its success. *** As a movement, university extension emerged after 1850 to reform the anachronisms of Oxford and Cambridge, seeking to remake the universities as genuinely national institutions. It explored ways to extend university study beyond the old residential colleges, but with an imprecise sense of a new constituency for university study among young women (‘ladies of leisure’), men in full-​time employment and self-​improving artisans (Künzel, 1975: 43–​9; Goldman, 1995: 11–​36). Various proposals for university teaching, delivered in short courses without the traditional residential restrictions, matured in the late 1860s and early 1870s and led directly to the Cambridge Local Lectures scheme under James Stuart of Trinity College in 1873 (Roberts, 1891; Marriott, 1984). Together with later schemes at Oxford under A.H.D. Acland from 1878, extension teaching aimed to deliver short, affordable certificate courses for students unable to afford a three-​year residence at the old universities. At this time, the University of London (founded 1836) was merely an examining and degree-​awarding body, and so a Mansion House meeting in June 1875 resolved to extend the Cambridge extension principles to the metropolis. A  new voluntary society, the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching (LSEUT), was active by March 1876 and sought to provide extension lectures funded by local committees and operating under the joint sponsorship of the three universities (Burrows, 1976: 1–​27; Marriott, 1984: 35–​6). The LSEUT coordinated the classes offered through a number of long-​standing

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centres of local teaching such as the London Institution, the Birkbeck Institution and the Working Men’s College. Five such centres offered seven courses in 1876, growing ten years later to some 61 courses offered at 32 different centres across London. Enrolments leapt from 139 at the first session to 5,084 (Burrows, 1976: 7). In Whitechapel, Samuel Barnett had pre-​empted this effort, introducing his first extension-​style course in 1874 for around 50 students as an early initiative in his reforming plans for St Jude’s parish. He wanted ‘to be able to take a house somewhat further East, where such classes might be opened on a larger scale. The teachers would be men of knowledge and culture; they would thus give their pupils something better worth having than mere information’ (Barnett, 1918, Volume 1: 332–​3). In 1877, a local committee of the LSEUT was formed, chaired by Barnett. Its secretary was Frederick Rogers, the son of a dock labourer and a laundry worker, born in poverty in 1846, who had never attended elementary school and started physical work aged ten (Rogers, 1913; Rowbotham, 1981: 74–​6; Finch, 1992). By the late 1870s, he was a skilled bookbinder, later a journalist and trade unionist, who exemplifies for us the ‘idealism among worker scholars who sought spiritual transcendence through education’ (Goldman, 1995: 83). As Rogers later remembered it, this first committee for higher education in East London was … sufficiently broad in the character of its representation –​ university graduates, local clergymen, officials of workmen’s clubs, one or two tradesmen, and a group of young workmen whose qualifications were a little enthusiasm and an interest in the subject that brought them together…. None there, save perhaps the university men, knew exactly what University Extension meant. (Rogers, 1897: 203) The following year, a term’s worth of lectures on physiology, political economy, history and magnetism (as four separate courses) were delivered to a total of around 100 students in the dissecting theatre of the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road. But as Rogers recalled, only 12 of them were working men like himself: the sponsors’ hopes for a genuine working-​class education proved elusive (Rogers, 1913: 82). A debate on university extension in the East London Observer at this time saw arguments for utilitarian teaching suited to the demands of industrial employment arrayed against pleas for knowledge and intellectual effort to be valued as ends in themselves. Rogers’ contribution was to argue, in the language of civic liberalism, ‘that

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an educated man was a better citizen than a half-​educated man, and better citizens made a better State’ (Rogers, 1913: 83). The LSEUT’s secretary hoped that ‘the lectures and classes [in Tower Hamlets] may develop into a more systematic scheme, and this result would doubtless be greatly aided if some building … were placed in East London to serve as the headquarters of study and instruction there’ (Myers, 1879). By the early 1880s, then, the work of university extension in Whitechapel was set for expansion: all that was needed was a permanent centre. By this time, Oxford undergraduates were visiting the Barnetts to help their work in Whitechapel. This had begun with Samuel and Henrietta’s visit to Oxford in the spring of 1875, ‘partly to tell about the poor, partly to enjoy “eights week” with a group of young friends’, as Mrs Barnett candidly remembered nearly 30 years later. The gathering was organised by Gertrude Toynbee, whom Henrietta had known at school, and the introductions made to a group of earnest young Oxford undergraduates (most famously Miss Toynbee’s charismatic brother Arnold) proved significant. As Henrietta remembered, 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…. 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. (Barnett, 1909: 245) Such men, it seems, took up charity administration work and district visiting, gave lectures and contributed to the running of local clubs and societies  –​the characteristic social work that later occupied Toynbee Hall’s residents. In this interconnected circle of friends and acquaintances the fledgling conception that became the settlement proposal was nurtured. Although Arnold Toynbee was later mythologised as its tragic pioneer, given his unexpected death in March 1883 (Kadish, 1986), in reality it was enthusiasts in this circle such as Sidney Ball, a philosophy lecturer and young radical who hosted the November 1883 meeting in his rooms at St John’s College, who were the decisive personalities as the settlement proposal took shape. By this time, Ball was building his reputation as ‘Oxford’s socialist don’, a tireless reformer and advocate of modern social science and political economy as university subjects, and founder in 1895 of the

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Oxford University Fabian Society (Lee, 2004). As Henrietta Barnett remembered, it was to Ball … whose alert mind, wide sympathies, powers of organisation, and fervent practical idealism made him then, as ever since, a strong force for progress, that my husband increasingly turned to introduce thoughtful men. It was his discernment which discovered powers in undergraduates worthy of being put to public uses. It was his energy that organised innumerable meetings … it naturally followed that it was in his rooms that the meeting was held on November 17th, 1883, when Toynbee Hall was born. (Barnett, 1918, Volume 1: 308) We can imagine Sidney Ball and the East End bookbinder Frederick Rogers both looking on enthusiastically as Barnett delivered his proposal ‘to make men conscious of their brotherhood, to help them conceive of religion apart from sectarianism … [and] carry to the poor a share of the best gifts enjoyed in the University’ (Barnett, 1884a: 4). It is highly significant that we find, in every version that survives of this speech as it evolved, Barnett making direct references to the educational presence of university men in the new settlement proposal. In his unpublished notes outlining a ‘modern monastery’, he mused privately: There is a strange charm which the old universities exercise, the Oxford or the Cambridge man is still held to possess some peculiar knowledge…. The Head would thus find himself almost as closely related to his new surroundings as to his old. As his reputation would draw fellow scholars or pupils to come to the Settlement so the same reputation would enable him to discover the work and the thought going on around him. (Barnett, 1883: 40 ff.; see also Koven, 2004: 237–​9) In a synopsis of his talk published by the Charity Organisation Reporter, the reference to the universities’ ‘strange charm’ remains, along with a clearer statement of the educational work of the head as ‘the resident centre; other University men could use the guest-​chambers, the University Extension Society the reception-​rooms…. It is easy to imagine what might be done by a born leader of men, surrounded by a group of intelligent and earnest friends, face to face with the misery and apathy of such a district’ (Barnett, 1884a: 4). The Chronicle version

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explained how the head of the settlement’s ‘large rooms will have been offered for classes, directed by the University Extension or Popular Concert Societies, and for meetings of instruction or entertainment’ (Barnett, 1884b: 268). And finally, in the version published for the widest possible audience in the Nineteenth Century, the emphasis rings loud and clear as Barnett described how the head ‘would be the centre of the University Settlement’: Men fresh from college or old University men would come to occupy the chambers. Lecturers in connection with the University Extension Society would be his fellow-​lecturers in the reception rooms. As the head of such a Settlement he would be welcomed by all such classes in his new neighbourhood. (Barnett, 1884c: 258) And indeed, the Tower Hamlets university extension classes, which were immediately offered at Toynbee Hall when it opened in early 1885, expanded rapidly as a result of the settlement’s amenably collegiate environment. With on-​site teachers, custom-​made lecture rooms and an expanding reference library, the Toynbee extension classes were soon as successful as any in London (Burrows, 1976: 8; Evans, 1982: 117; Briggs and Macartney, 1984: 28–​30). Two points can be made in passing. The first is that, evidently, as Barnett first conceived things in the nebulous version of his scheme, university extension classes promised to deliver the transformative opportunities of higher education into neighbourhoods of poverty and social disadvantage. A perceptive American visitor, Edward Cummings, recognised that Toynbee Hall effectively concentrated this pre-​existing momentum into an institutional form: Toynbee [Hall] justly prides itself on having become ‘the home of the oldest centre of the London University Extension Society’. In this respect, as in many others, the best function of the settlement has been to facilitate rather than to originate; to furnish a convenient centre for enterprises which must otherwise have pursued their work under less favourable auspices; to concentrate and stimulate and educate enthusiasms which might otherwise have felt the chill of isolation. (Cummings, 1892: 267–​8) Second, while the settlement model might have been Barnett’s distinctive conception, it impressed and persuaded others primarily

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because they shared his views of the universities’ broader social obligations and the specific merits of university extension. Indeed, several characteristics of university extension work crystallised in Barnett’s proposal for how his settlement might work, and (as we see later) how it in fact did work in practice. In the first place, Barnett shared with the university extension movement at large an ardent commitment to broad-​based and comprehensive educational provision, in the humanities as well as the sciences, rather than the narrow and technical training typically proposed for popular education at this time. Second, settlement advocates such as Barnett constantly extolled the social benefits of student life and association as a theme in educational provision. These basic features of university extension were embodied in the settlement in Whitechapel, and also at the Bermondsey Settlement, built in direct imitation of Toynbee Hall six years later across the Thames in another impoverished neighbourhood. They were clearly significant in nurturing –​if not, indeed, actually instigating –​the settlements in their earliest form.

Foundation of the Bermondsey Settlement The inception of John Scott Lidgett’s Bermondsey Settlement in Farncombe Street, off Jamaica Road, is a much simpler story. Another dockside London neighbourhood of endemic poverty and miserable reputation, Bermondsey appalled bourgeois observers (just as Whitechapel did, albeit in less sensational terms) by its relentless urban grind. ‘Everything in Bermondsey is grey or black’, wrote one journalist visitor to the settlement’s neighbourhood in characteristic terms in 1897. ‘The air, the sky, the rows of dejected houses, the bare and ponderous factories, even the taverns, have taken the colour of the lives of the inhabitants’ (Anon., 1897: 6). Built in 1891 and opened early the following year, the Bermondsey Settlement was explicitly modelled on Toynbee Hall, with the key variation being the forthright statement by sponsors of the new settlement’s explicitly religious character. Lidgett was a liberal Methodist, part of Hugh Price Hughes’ ‘Forward Movement’, determined to expand Methodism beyond individual evangelism to fully embrace welfare measures and popular education as part of a genuine ‘social Christianity’. Attached to the Cambridge circuit from 1887, he became deeply involved in the university’s Wesley Society and preached constantly in chapels and nearby schools on the advantages of education, the deprivations of urban life for the labouring poor in inner-​city slums, and ‘the spiritual loss sustained by the well-​to-​do, educated and leisured from their

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failure to share their advantages and to co-​operate with the industrial classes in remedying these adverse and demoralizing conditions’ (cited in Ginn, 2017: 156). In late 1887, in a fit of characteristic energy and conviction, Lidgett resolved to go beyond conventional church work and dedicate the remainder of his life to Bermondsey’s social, spiritual and civic redemption. ‘It seemed to me’, he later recalled, ‘that I must endeavour to plant a colony somewhat on the lines of Toynbee Hall, in one of the poorest districts of London, to be carried on in a distinctively evangelical spirit, but with the broadest possible educational and social aims, and free from all merely sectarian or sectional ends’ (Lidgett, 1936: 62–​3; also Lidgett, 1890). He was to remain in Bermondsey until 1949, an energetic reforming presence locally and further afield on the London County Council, the London School Board, and the Senate of the University of London (Turberfield, 2003; Ginn, 2017: 152–7​ 2). Education was at the core of Lidgett’s vision. The aims listed in the Bermondsey Settlement’s fund-​raising literature and restated on the opening day included a desire ‘to give facilities for the study of literature, history, science and art’ (Anon., 1892: 1), and like Toynbee Hall it commenced with a shower of study groups, classes, clubs and concerts, exhibitions and excursions just like those manifested in Whitechapel in 1885. One early resident, Dr Charles Kimmins, was an experienced extension lecturer from the Cambridge system and took over as secretary for the LSEUT in 1895. We are not surprised, given this origin story and personnel, that an early notice promised that the ‘educational work [of the settlement] will include the delivery of courses of University Extension lectures and of occasional popular lectures, choral, and orchestral societies and classes in various branches of science, literature, and art’ (Anon., 1891: 4). In the first year, 220 students enrolled in the settlement’s inaugural extension course, offered by Vivien Lewes on chemistry, while over 1,500 took up various other classes ranging from music and languages, commercial skills such as book-​keeping, typewriting and shorthand, to arithmetic, biology, electricity and mechanics. Classes in music performance, Greek, Latin, Shakespeare and English parliamentary history provided the humanistic breadth that Lidgett had promised (Bermondsey Settlement, 1892: 13–​14). ‘We are teaching many to improve their gifts and then to use them for others’, he explained: Thus they are finding a higher temper and a wider range of interests. For the young artisan, shop assistant or clerk, to be called upon to assist in establishing University Extension Lectures, or in providing good music for his neighbours, to

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make a parish see how important it is that women should act as guardians of the poor, to enforce sanitary interests … what is this but to supply a liberal education in the practical duties of a Christian citizen? This is the supreme end of our educational work. (Bermondsey Settlement, 1893: 19)

University extension in practice In this brief assessment, we see that optimistic ambitions for higher education were a critical element in the settlements’ origins and early activities. But what of the challenges of the cross-​class encounter implicit to university extension: the face-​to-​face meeting of university lecturers with their working-​class audiences in Whitechapel and Bermondsey? Seth Koven contends that lecturers faced an ‘Arnoldian dilemma’: what was ‘the proper balance between upholding cultural standards and adapting them to the exigencies of working class life’? This arose, he suggests, from fundamental tensions between ‘democratic aspirations and elitist cultural assumptions’: The physical setting of the lecture room; the demand that audiences listen without participating; the structured and extended form of argument used in lectures; the written essay; the examination; the abstraction of the topics:  all conspired to make working people uncomfortable in extension classes. (Koven, 1987: 269–​70) If many working people were indeed uncomfortable in extension classes, such bald conclusions should nevertheless be challenged. A complexity of motive, experience and response is a more accurate characterisation, and contradictions abounded. Immersing herself in the extension movement’s documents and records, Sheila Rowbotham for one ‘never found the decisive political rejection [by students] I had imagined would occur. I found instead a discomfort expressed in many different ways, accompanied by an excitement and a sense of liberation almost like religious conversion’ (Rowbotham, 1981: 63). In a very real sense, ‘students and tutors [often] shared a common intellectual perspective’ (Goldman, 1995: 82). The notion that classes were rigidly structured, and that students in Whitechapel and Bermondsey were required to listen without participating, is particularly contestable. Both settlements offered tutorial-​style classes, discussion and small-​g roup reading alongside the formal lectures and examinations, a model that was not always

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replicated at other extension centres. But as early as 1887, Barnett was arguing the case: ‘It remains now for the University Extension Society to co-​ordinate its teaching, to give not only isolated lectures but to guide students in the choice of courses … in our centres of education the students must have not only the direction of the professor, but the constant care of the tutor’ (cited in Barnett, 1918, Volume 1:  335). In the broad history of university extension and its evolution via the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) to become a genuine force for modern adult education, Samuel Barnett was a lonely, persistent voice as he ‘argued that the extension system, lacking the means of intensive teaching, had forfeited its claim to be a university activity ….it was from him that the first real “tutorial” initiative came’ (Marriott, 1983: 286, emphasis in original). Tutorial work subsequently became the bedrock of workers’ education in the WEA, but it had been pioneered in the extension movement: James Stuart himself felt the evident success of the LSEUT courses ‘was altogether based on bringing the teacher into individual intercourse with his pupil’ (Stuart, 1883: 8). In formalising this idea in their class-​ work and related interactions between lecturer and students, extension advocates in the settlements attempted to create a community of learning, nurturing the very modern idea that university study should be a dialogue open to ‘the people’ at large, rather than an enclave of privilege and entitlement. Beyond the classroom, too, the annual reports of both settlements brim with enthusiasm as they reported how clubs, committees, reading groups, debating societies and special interest groups had sprung up with remarkable vigour. We have few written sources that encapsulate the student perspective, but the simple act of their active membership in these social outlets associated with extension study speaks volumes. One founding resident recalled that Toynbee Hall became: [w]‌ith extraordinary rapidity … a real industrial university, with a concourse of lecturers and class takers who came for the pleasure of sharing their knowledge, and a network of clubs of all descriptions such as arise and flourish in the Universities themselves  –​clubs in which persons of all degrees of personal and intellectual cultivation met and enjoyed one another’s society. (Nunn, 1942 [1913]: 37) Within a month of opening in January 1885, the Toynbee Hall students’ union hosted a social evening to welcome local extension students into their brand-​new Oxbridge college in the East End, with

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tea and coffee, a musical recital in the drawing room, a lecture on the physiology of food by a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, displays of microscopes and specimens, and recitations by an invited vocal performer (Boyle, 1884–​94). In the first year at Bermondsey, students’ parties and field excursions were organised during term, based on the settlement view that ‘it is essential to remedy –​so far as our influence extends –​that isolation and strangeness which is one of the greatest drawbacks and difficulties of London life’, while the students themselves organised clubs for swimming, chess, gymnastics and cricket (Bermondsey Settlement, 1892:  15). These initiatives set the model, and thereafter guest speakers, students’ conferences, exhibitions, social events and excursions featured constantly in the settlements’ extension work. If throwing ‘parties for the poor’ is easily seen as a patronising, paternalistic enterprise, the accounts we have in the settlement magazines  –​which admittedly were not exactly impartial –​suggest these social events were lively and popular affairs. Importantly, social events and the class offerings were increasingly organised by the extension students themselves through principles of self-​governance. In March 1889, for example, following a robust discussion at the Toynbee conference of university extension students, the Toynbee University Extension Society (as the governing entity was by then called) resolved that each year a third of the 24-​member committee should retire, to be replaced by individuals nominated by the membership and elected by all students that had been members for at least a year (Barnett, 1888–​1894; Anon., 1889: 74). *** All this suggests the ‘settlement idea’ is not self-​evident and thus easily grasped today. Late-​Victorian settlement work had a deeply moralised character, often couched in highly class-​conscious language but with a liberal emphasis on individual perfectibility that denied socioeconomic determinations of class difference. In this respect it was semi-​religious, and indeed the affinities between the new settlement model and existing parish ‘outreach’ prompted Barnett’s desire to distinguish carefully between the two (Koven, 1987: 54). A deeply religious man, Barnett frequently spoke in biblical terms of how the ‘leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations’ (Revelations 22:2), imagining the leavening effect of the ‘self-​sacrifice’ of young men of privilege newly immersed in the grim realities of metropolitan poverty. Frederick Rogers, as we have seen an avid supporter of this work from the other side of the class divide, had a similarly transcendent view, if expressed in more ‘secular’ terms. As he wrote in 1897:

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[Toynbee Hall] focuses and brings to a point the things that other organisations are moving towards; it stands in the forefront of the various forms of social activity; and its value lies in just this unconscious influence which spreads from it and from the movement for extending the influence of the universities, and touches and colours the lives of those who have never heard of either. (Rogers, 1897: 209) Such observations remind us how apparently ‘influential’ historical ideas are in fact parasitic on deeply ingrained (and less explicit) habits of evaluation and response (Collini, 1991: 4–​5). More broadly, we can take the ‘settlement idea’ as one expression of an outlook that underpinned a whole range of diffused practices coming into vogue in social theory and activism in the 1870s and 1880s. It was part of the framing conception of society, a diagnosis of its ills and strategies for reform that became visible in late-​Victorian social work and social theory, and in politics in the ‘New Liberalism’: a gathering tendency towards sustained social intervention, attempting collective solutions to endemic problems of poverty and social disadvantage that would ultimately be sponsored by the state in the public interest. José Harris argues persuasively that this ‘social idealism’ supplied the underlying vocabulary of social reform in the period from the 1880s to the 1940s, a moral consensus that ‘subordinat[ed] the analysis of specific social problems to a vision of reconstructing the whole of British society, together with reform of the rational understanding and moral character of individual British citizens’ (Harris, 1992: 126). This outlook, I suggest, galvanised the work of university extension gathering momentum through this period, just as it was important in new conceptions and practices clustered around notions of citizenship and social community. Alongside religious imperatives and paternalistic notions of class reconciliation through personal contact, the settlements also embodied a progressive commitment to education that could be endorsed across class divide, as Frederick Rogers’ example highlights. Following Harris, we can see the settlements as experimental enterprises to supply the ‘education of the citizen’ to all, starting with those who were seen by advocates to need it most. Aiming to universalise opportunities to study and develop critical intellectual capacity, with ambitions to build social capital through access to liberal education, the first settlements expressed a progressive reforming outlook and a programme of measured social intervention that together, arguably, made the 20th-​century welfare state possible.

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References Anon. (1889) ‘The past month,’ Toynbee Record, 1(7): 74–​80. Anon. (1891) ‘A Wesleyan Settlement in Bermondsey,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 13 July, p 4. Anon. (1892) ‘The Bermondsey Settlement’, South London Press, 9 January, p 1. Anon. (1897) ‘The Ber mondsey Settlement’, Standard, 27 December, p 6. Barnett, H.O. (1909) ‘The beginning of Toynbee Hall’. In S.A. Barnett and H.O. Barnett Towards Social Reform, London: T. Fisher Unwin: 239–​54. Barnett, H.O. (1918) Canon Barnett: His Life, Work, and Friends (two volumes). London: John Murray. Barnett, S.A. (1883) ‘A modern monastery’ [Draft address], Barnett Papers (MS 1466, 34–​41 ff.), Lambeth Palace Library, London. Barnett, S.A. (1884a) ‘University settlements in great towns’, Charity Organisation Reporter, 13 (3 January): 4–​5. Barnett, S.A. (1884b) ‘Settlements of university men in great towns’. In J.A.R. Pimlott (1935) Toynbee Hall: Fifty Years of Social Progress 1884–​1934, London: J.M. Dent. Barnett, S.A. (1884c) ‘The universities and the poor’, Nineteenth Century, 15 (February): 255–​61. Barnett, S.A. (1888–​1894) Toynbee Hall University Extension Scrapbook [Bound volume], Local Collection (L2665 830.1), Tower Hamlets Local History Library, London. Bermondsey Settlement (1892) First Annual Report. London: Bermondsey Settlement. B e r m o n d s ey S e t t l e m e n t ( 1 8 9 3 ) S e c o n d A n n u a l R e p o r t . London: Bermondsey Settlement. Boyle, A.V. (1884–​94) Toynbee Hall Annual Reports [Bound volume of printed reports and papers], Records of Toynbee Hall (A/​TOY/​5), London Metropolitan Archives, London. Briggs, A. and Macartney, A. (1984) Toynbee Hall: The First Hundred Years. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Burrows, J. (1976) University Adult Education in London: A Century of Achievement. London: University of London. Collini, S. (1991) Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cummings, E. (1892) ‘University settlements’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 6(3): 257–​79. Davis, A.F. (1967) Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–​1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Evans, R.A. (1982) ‘The university and the city:  The educational work of Toynbee Hall, 1884–​1914’, History of Education, 11: 113–​25. Finch, H. (1992) ‘Frederick Rogers (1846–​1915): Bookbinder and journalist’, East London Record, 15: 10–​14. Gell, P.L. (1889) ‘The work of Toynbee Hall’. In F.C. Montague Arnold Toynbee, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University: 57–​64. Ginn, G.A.C. (2017) Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-​Victorian London. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Goldman, L. (1995) Dons and Workers: Oxford and Adult Education since 1850. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Harris, J. (1992) ‘Political thought and the welfare state 1870–​1940: An intellectual framework for British Social Policy’, Past and Present, 135(1): 116–​41. Kadish, A. (1986) Apostle Arnold: The Life and Death of Arnold Toynbee, 1852–​1883. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Koven, S. (1987) ‘Culture and poverty:  The London Settlement House Movement 1870 to 1914’, PhD thesis, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Koven, S. (2004) Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Künzel, K. (1975) ‘The missionary dons: The prelude to university extension in England’, Studies in Adult Education, 7(1): 34–​52. Lee, F.S. (2004) ‘Ball, Sidney (1857–​1918)’. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Available at: https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​ref:odnb/​38749 Lidgett, J.S. (1890) ‘The proposed settlement for religious, social, and educational work in South-​East London’, The Wesleyan-​Methodist Magazine, 14: 72–​7. Lidgett, J.S. (1936) My Guided Life. London: Methuen. Marriott, S. (1983) ‘Oxford and working-​class adult education:  A foundation myth re-​examined’, History of Education, 12(4): 285–​99. Marriott, S. (1984) Extramural Empires: Service and Self-​Interest in English University Adult Education 1873–​1983. Nottingham:  University of Nottingham Department of Adult Education. Meacham, S. (1987) Toynbee Hall and Social Reform 1880–​1914: The Search for Community. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Myers, E. (1879) ‘Correspondence: University extension’, East London Observer, 5 April, p 6. Nunn, T.H. (1942 [1913]) Thomas Hancock Nunn: The Life and Work of a Social Reformer. London: Baines and Scarsbrook. Roberts, R.D. (1891) Eighteen Years of University Extension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Rogers, F. (1897) ‘Twenty years of a social movement’, Progressive Review, 9: 203–​10. Rogers, F. (1913) Labour, Life and Literature: Some Memories of Sixty Years. London: Smith, Elder and Co. Rowbotham, S. (1981) ‘Travellers in a strange country:  Responses of working class students to the university extension movement –​ 1873–​1910’, History Workshop Journal, 12: 62–​95. Scotland, N. (2007) Squires in the Slums:  Settlements and Missions in Late-​Victorian London. London: I.B. Tauris. Stuart, J. (1883) ‘Extension of university teaching’, The Times, 26 April, p 8. Turberfield, A. (2003) John Scott Lidgett: Archbishop of British Methodism?. Peterborough: Epworth Press. Universities’ Settlement Association (1884) The Universities’ Settlement in East London (printed pamphlet). Walkowitz, J. (1992) City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-​Victorian London. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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7

Between social mission and social reform: the Settlement House Movement in Germany, 1900–​30 Jens Wietschorke In an international comparison, the German Settlement House Movement represents a special case that can only be understood in the context of the social and cultural framework conditions of the late German Empire. In addition, the only notable settlement initiatives, the Volksheim Hamburg, founded in 1901, and the Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-​Ost (SAG Berlin-​Ost) (Berlin East Social Working Group), founded in 1911, were so deeply integrated into local and regional networks that a closer look at their contexts of origin as well as their specific connections in terms of personnel is necessary. This chapter provides an overview of the development and characteristics of the German Settlement Movement and traces both the currents of social reform as well as the actors to which they were linked. Using the example of the SAG Berlin-​Ost in particular, it will be shown that the social missionary approach of the German Settlement House Movement is due especially to its anchoring in the bourgeois youth movement and its strong Protestant character. Religious semantics were a constant presence both in the SAG Berlin-​Ost as well as in the Volksheim Hamburg, which repeatedly became evident both in the self-​ image of the settlement co-​workers as well as in the practice of social work. Another important aspect is the activities of the Berlin settlement in the area of social research, which helped to establish further professional networks. All in all, this creates a picture of a historical variant of community work that is both independent and unique in an international context, and in which fundamental theological-​ethical positions as well as certain currents of social reform, social research and social work converged in a specific way. The state of research on the German Settlement House Movement is inconsistent: while three scientific monographs with very different approaches (Weyer, 1971; Gerth, 1975; Wietschorke, 2013) and several other substantial publications (Grotefeld, 1995; Lindner, 1997a;

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Lindner, 2004: 97–​111; Tenorth et al, 2007) have appeared on the SAG Berlin-​Ost, the Volksheim Hamburg as an institution, by comparison, has not been well researched. The only complete overview published as a monograph dates back to 1924 (Günther, 1924). Amazingly, however, the Volksheim Hamburg repeatedly appeared in English language historical studies on bourgeois social reform (Hurd, 2000; Lees, 2002: 255–​86; Jenkins, 2003a: 88–​114, 2003b). The following overview is based on some of the questions raised there, but it also takes up approaches from urban research in cultural studies and the relational cultural analysis of cross-​class contact that took place in the Settlement House Movement. It relies primarily on my own archival research on the SAG Berlin-​Ost (Wietschorke, 2013), which focused on the question of the social missionary approach of the German Settlement House Movement.

The reception of the international Settlement House Movement in Germany and the founding of the Volksheim Hamburg In order to understand the adaptation of the settlement approach in Germany from 1900 onwards, two conditions of their contexts are of central importance. On the one hand, since the abolition of the Socialist Law in 1890, the German social democrats had steadily gained ground and increasingly forced parts of the conservative and liberal bourgeoisie to take a defensive stance. On the other hand, the German educated middle class in particular found themselves in a long-​term crisis of legitimacy; the social interpretive sovereignty of the traditional representatives of legitimate culture seemed to be threatened by the rise of new functional elites, the social opening of universities and the growing importance of a market-​based entertainment and mass culture. From this perspective, the German Settlement House Movement presents itself in a particular way as an enterprise in which the question of status and social role of the bourgeois intelligentsia was negotiated, especially in the confrontation with the emerging social democrats. From the idea of the social ‘bridging’ between the milieus, their actors hoped to be able to win new symbolic resources for the self-​understanding and self-​positioning of the educational elites that had fallen into crisis. The first articles and reports on the English settlements, particularly on Toynbee Hall, appeared in Germany as early as the 1880s. Mediators such as Wilhelm Bode and Gerhart von Schulze-​Gaevernitz, who closely followed the development of English social policy and popular

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education, made the programme of the university extension movement and the settlements more widely known (von Schultze-​Gaevernitz, 1890). A  preferred place of publication for this was, initially, the newspaper Der Arbeiterfreund published by the Centralverein für das Wohl der arbeitenden Classen (Central Association for the Welfare of the Working Classes). Further early contributions appeared in the vicinity of the Innere Mission (Inner Mission) and the Evangelisch-​Sozialer Kongress (Protestant Social Congress). Others were scattered in journals for social reform and social policy, art and education. After 1900, Alice Salomon became one of the most committed pioneers of the settlement idea, with a particular focus on social work undertaken by women. Walter Classen and Werner Picht published two books on the subject that continued to be considered relevant for a long time (Classen, 1900; Picht, 1913). In 1911, two handbook articles appeared –​a clear indication that the settlement idea had finally arrived in the German discussion on social reform (von Erdberg, 1911; Schreiber, 1911). The first attempt to establish a settlement in Germany was Walter Classen’s Volksheim Hamburg, founded in 1901.1 Hamburg industrialist and senator Heinrich Traun had sent the young theologian Classen on a study trip to England in 1899, where he visited Toynbee Hall. Following this trip, Classen wrote his book on Sociales Rittertum in England (Social Knighthood in England) (see Hering, 2005, for a biography). With the financial support of Traun and in cooperation with the district judge and later director of the Hamburg Youth Welfare Office, Heinrich Hertz, as well as the government councillor in the Welfare Office, Ernst Jaques, Classen set up several bases and apprentice associations in Hamburg’s port and working-​class districts over the following years. The first annual report of the Volksheim states, ‘in the branch to be founded, one wanted to create a place where member of the more affluent estates could associate amicably with the workers; thus, both parts would come to know and appreciate each other’ (Volksheim Hamburg, 1902: 6).2 Gerhard Günther attributes this initiative in his contemporary study not least to the ‘ “historical structure” of this unique city, to the proximity to England due to its geographical location and trade relations, as well as to a welfare tradition characterised by “Hamburg generosity” and “republican citizenship” ’ (Günther, 1924: 9–​10). The strong support of the citizens also made it possible to acquire their own, sometimes stately, ‘Volkshäuser’, with lecture halls for popular education work. Despite some parallels in motivation and fundamental concepts, the branches of the Volksheim Hamburg can hardly be described as settlements after the English university settlement model. Only a small number of academics could be persuaded to settle

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permanently in one of the port areas of poor repute (see Günther, 1924; Grolle, 2012). The contemporary commentator Werner Picht also criticised the work in Hamburg for the fact that there was too much organisation and not enough personal willingness to reside on site (Picht, 1913: 120–​9). According to Picht, three different currents of social activism that corresponded to the three main locations of the association overlapped in the Volksheim Hamburg: while the Volksheim in Hammerbrook stood in the Pietistic-​Protestant tradition, the Barmbek branch was run by a liberal pastor; Rothenburgsort, on the other hand, was characterised by a ‘social spirit’ without a ‘specific Christian aftertaste’ (Picht, 1913: 123). From a historical distance, Marcus Gräser also concludes that no real settlement had developed in this case but rather that German popular education was draped in an Anglo-​Saxon fashion (Gräser, 2009: 186).

Social mission and cultural substitution: SAG Berlin-​Ost Founded in October 1911 by pastor Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze, the SAG Berlin-​Ost had a different orientation right from the beginning. It defined itself precisely through the students who lived on site as residents in the East of Berlin, and initially also rejected the systematic development of an organisation. In 1911, the first social institution in Germany that could be called a ‘real’ settlement according to Picht’s criteria was established at 66 Friedensstraße in today’s district of Friedrichshain. The SAG Berlin-​Ost was still a long way from owning its own buildings; its financing was far more precarious than that of the Volksheim Hamburg, which was backed not only by Heinrich Traun but also by other powerful entrepreneurs. Thus, the work of the SAG Berlin-​Ost initially began based on individual donations and donations in kind, as well as the personal cooperation of a small circle of dedicated residents and a number of non-​residents. In his first call for cooperation, Siegmund-​Schultze had advertised the settlement as follows: As has been occasionally announced at the meetings of the DCSV [Deutsche Christliche Studentenvereinigung, German Christian Student Association], a number of adventurous young people will gather in a house in the East of Berlin from the next winter semester onwards in order to offer friendship and help to the local poor population and to study in contact with workers and Berlin boys…. Socially interested students and older men who would like to spend part of their time … for practical work of

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love are wanted as co-​workers. Cheap housing and board are available for some; scientific exercises, especially in the social and theological fields, are expected to be established. (Cited in Wietschorke, 2013: 64) The SAG Berlin-​Ost files contain numerous reports and timetables that show that the settlement was not only intended to be an agency for social work but also a comprehensive community and educational institution for the co-​workers. It was expected that, over time, a regular circle of like-​minded people would develop who would be able to maintain personal contact with the local workers’ families and, in the ideal case, constitute a supportive ‘neighbourhood’ with them. The sources also show to what extent the SAG Berlin-​Ost was a distinctly male enterprise in its early years. Particularly considering that the international Settlement House Movement was often connected with the networks of the women’s’ movements (see Bentley Beauman, 1996; Schüler, 2004), the Volksheim Hamburg and the SAG Berlin-​Ost, with their preponderance of male theologians and students, present themselves as special cases. At least in the SAG Berlin-​Ost, however, many women took on central areas of work as well as some key positions as early as during the First World War, so that in the 1920s –​in the course of the professionalisation of social work in Germany –​it is no longer possible to speak of a male-​dominated enterprise. The fact was that the actual social work was not intended to be done by volunteer welfare workers but by students points to certain precursory models:  the Sozialwissenschaftliche Studentenvereinigungen (social science student associations) that had existed at some German universities since the 1890s as well as the Sekretariat Sozialer Studentenarbeit (Secretariat of Social Student Work), founded in 1907 by the Catholic theologian Carl Sonnenschein in München-​Gladbach (Dowe, 2006:  139–​45). Even more important, however, was the influence of the bourgeois youth movement, especially the Freideutsche Jugend (Free German Youth), that the students brought in. Some of Siegmund-​Schultze’s first co-​workers went to the working-​class district with the pathos of departure and adventure –​and most of them who went to the First World War as volunteers in 1914 did not return from it. Letters and autobiographical sketches of these co-​workers convey a vivid picture of the ‘generation of 1914’ about which Robert Wohl once wrote:  ‘Youth suggested poetry, purity, friendship, creativity, Sturm und Drang, the blue flower of endless seeking, the striving for final ends, the search for the whole rather than the part, and early, hence unblemished, death’ (Wohl, 1979:  42). The first co-​workers

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at the SAG Berlin-​Ost were driven not least by this longing to break out of the study chambers of Wilhelmine society and gain first-​hand experience in the cross-​class project in the east of Berlin, and quite a few of them tried to realise the idea of settlement in the ‘trench community’ of the war (see Wietschorke, 2008: 235–​8). The social work of the SAG Berlin-O ​ st followed a specific substitution principle that was characteristic of its social and cultural missionary approach. According to this principle, one had to start in close proximity to the daily practices of the workers in order to be able to understand their life world. Above all, however, it was a matter of replacing the practices of consumption that had been recognised as deficient with ‘sophisticated’ consumption and various educational offers. The SAG Berlin-O ​ st social educators were particularly interested in the forms of urban pleasures of the lower classes:  going to the cinema and the pub, to the dance floor and the fairground; the Sunday excursion to the brewery garden; consuming stimulants and reading penny novels. The cinema was being countered by entertaining lecture and educational evenings, and the pub or distillery –​omnipresent in the east of Berlin –​by the so-​called ‘coffee flap’, where non-​alcoholic drinks were served. Via this venue, the proletarian pub-​goers were to be reached at the Schlesischer Bahnhof, as Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze wrote in a report entitled Aus der Sozialen Studentenarbeit (From Social Student Work): The section of the street in which our house is located contains only four houses in which there is no distillery. It goes without saying that under these conditions, means and ways must be found which intervene far more deeply in the life of the street, indeed the house in which the distillery attracts its unfortunate victims, than just through ridiculed associations. It is not enough for there to be a sign on some distant street: ‘Here, Blue Cross Club’, but people must be found who are able to come into closer contact with the patrons of the pubs. (Siegmund-​Schultze, 1990 [1912]: 305) This is also an example of the sociospatial approach to which the SAG Berlin-​Ost –​like the international Settlement House Movement in general  –​was committed:  the specific house, the specific street constituted the turning points of social work as it was understood in the SAG Berlin-​Ost. This principle becomes particularly vivid at the heart of settlement work in the east of Berlin –​youth work. At times, there were more than 30 youth clubs with hundreds of members within

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the framework of the SAG Berlin-​Ost. Later a Jugendvolkshochschule (community youth education centre) was added. Here, it is interesting to see how the youth clubs of the SAG Berlin-​Ost emerged from the examination of principles of territorial group formation of the proletarian youth. As settlement co-​worker Hans Windekilde Jannasch has pointed out, the SAG Berlin-​Ost deliberately borrowed this form of youth club from the free and mostly rather questionable club and gang formations of the Berlin street youth (Jannasch, 1928; 15). Rolf Lindner has pointed out that in this respect, Siegmund-​Schultze did not only follow theories from American developmental psychology, namely Stanley G. Hall’s recapitulation theory (Lindner, 1997b: 90), but that he also knew Chas S. Bernheimer’s and Jacob M. Cohen’s book about ‘Boys’ Clubs’, published in 1914 (Lindner, 2004: 217). In short, Siegmund-​Schultze’s club pedagogy was indeed oriented towards the results of contemporary social research. In the spirit of these theorems, the focus was to be on the specific life world of the young people so that the ‘the wild, disorderly mass … becomes something more solid and ordered, from which young people can develop bonds and obligations’ (Gramm, 1965: 89). The community in the club was intended to ‘reduce the bad influences of the environment as much as possible’ and ‘create positive substitutes’ (Sadler, 1929: 9–​10). Or, as the catchy formula of an SAG Berlin-​Ost educator put it, ‘The club is necessary as a consciously formed horde’ (Gramm, 1929; 121). With its youth social work, the SAG Berlin-​Ost thus decidedly addressed the everyday practices of young people in the working-​ class district  –​and it certainly interpreted these practices as, albeit deficient, instances of a working-​class culture. The educators Clemens Schultz and Walter Classen in particular advocated a similar position at the Volksheim Hamburg. However, they were also notorious for the disciplinary rigour of their pedagogy. In Berlin, it was the Jugendverein Nordwest (Youth Club North West), chaired by the progressive pastor Günther Dehn, which served as a model. In his congregation in Berlin-​ Wedding, Dehn tried to ‘win over young people who normally stay away from church and bourgeois youth associations’ and thus come into contact with the ‘actual and preferably socialist workers’ youth’ (Dehn, 1916:  190–​1). The class cultural sensitivity expressed here has its starting point, among other things, in the movement of the Religiöse Sozialisten (Religious Socialists), among whom Dehn is to be counted just as much as the social educator Carl Mennicke, who at times was active in the SAG. Ultimately, however, no one in the SAG Berlin-​Ost went so far as to acknowledge the political demands of social democracy, which was in large part due to the dominant personal

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position of Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze within the settlement. The cautious political and ideological opening in that can be observed in the SAG Berlin-​Ost during the 1920s thus has less to do with a fundamental change in political attitudes than with a learning process that practical social work underwent in the east of Berlin, particularly the links to currents in reform pedagogy and the adult education movement, but also the progressive international networking of settlement work contributed to this. SAG Berlin-​Ost co-​workers were always present at the international settlement conferences –​in London in 1922, in Paris in 1926, in Amersfoort in 1929, as well as at other conferences in the 1930s –​in particular, Alix Westerkamp, who had a doctorate in law and had lived and worked at Chicago Commons in 1913/​1914. She was responsible for international contacts within the SAG Berlin-​Ost and delivered regular reports on stays in the US and partner institutions of the international Settlement House Movement (Westerkamp, 1917–​19). The Protestant character of the German settlement house movement is clearly evident, even though, right from the beginning, the aim was not to appear as an appendix of any church or congregation. In a letter to a supporter, Siegmund-​Schultze wrote in 1913, ‘In order to win back the workers for the church here in the East of Berlin, one must first be able to strip off the church dress” (cited in Wietschorke, 2013:  111). In the specific networks, however, the church context is always palpable, and the first residents were recruited from the networks of the Deutsche Christliche Studentenvereinigung (DCSV) (German Christian Student Association). In its first years, the SAG Berlin-O ​ st was also directly and indirectly supported by Berlin parishes, and the founder Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze was a particular link between many threads of international and ecumenical church peace work (Grotefeld, 1995; Weiße, 2007). Very pointedly, Rolf Lindner even described the German Settlement House Movement as a pietistic movement (Lindner, 2004:  217). The basic social missionary idea, expressed in the desire to colonise an ‘unknown country’ and to help its inhabitants by means of a cultural uplift to a higher level of everyday life, oriented at the educated bourgeoisie, was in keeping with this Protestant trait. Its use of metaphors connected two interlocking figures that German historian Jürgen Osterhammel recapitulated in his theory of the mission of civilisation. Osterhammel speaks of a double spatial metaphor that links the horizontal dimension of expansion with the vertical dimension of elevation (Osterhammel, 2005: 363–​4). In this sense, the German Settlement House Movement, at least in the case of the SAG Berlin-​Ost, can be described as having a civilising missionary

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pattern of action that originated from the cultural superiority of the bourgeois self-​image as well as from the fundamental possibility of being able to make the ‘foreign terrain’ its own through intervention and influence.

Social research and social reform in the settlement The Volksheim Hamburg and the SAG Berlin-​Ost initially did not see themselves primarily as agencies of empirical social research. From the outset, however, it was one of the principles of their specific community work to gain as much insight as possible into the people and the conditions in the working-​class district in order to reduce mutual prejudices and to be able to take action in the context of everyday life. In the early years, however, this motive was still strongly linked to the civilising missionary approach and characterised by a demonstrative pathos of discovery; studying the other always served the authoritative programme of exerting influence on them. Jurisprudent Ernst Jaques, one of the most important supporters of the Volksheim Hamburg, writes in an essay about the experience of ‘living outside’ as a resident in the working-​class district: The heart of the worker has revealed itself to some of our outside residents when they have walked with him on the dike for a while at night, when they have listened to the sound of the Elbe river, admired the sparkling starry sky. Then, the property of the suburbs, the terraces and courtyards has also opened up for him, and the frowned upon scents of blood molasses or the herring salt works and the smoking chimneys out there in Rothenburgsort will no longer repel him but rather draw him out time and again in memory of the time in which he was granted the privilege of taking a look into the soul life of the workers. And the extent to which the outside residents can influence the workers to visit the Volksheim! How easy it is for the outside resident to pass by and enter the home of a friendly working-​class family here and there, and how gladly the young people in particular will come to his flat in order to be instructed by him and seek advice from him! How much more casually can the outside resident visit the people’s assemblies in the working-​class district to study the political judgement of our people; with how much joy will he be received at the gymnastics and dance festivals in the suburbs,

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and what insight into the minds of the workers will these festivals grant him! (Jaques, 1906: 19) What initially reads like an excerpt from a naturalistic social novel soon turns out to be a script for the paternalistic and quasi-​colonialist approach that was particularly widespread in the Volksheim Hamburg, which was sponsored by town dignitaries. While the ‘outside resident’ is captivated by the ‘poetry of the suburbs’ and gains insight into the ‘mind’ and ‘soul life’ of the workers and also studies the ‘political judgement of our people’, he is welcomed joyfully at workers’ festivals: this is the brief self-​description of the field researcher and the missionary who observes, studies and helps and in this way acquires the trust of the ordinary people. Incidentally, Jaques also advises, in true ethnographic fashion, to steer clear from one’s own bourgeois ‘compatriots’ during the stay in the workers’ district because this was the only way to ‘settle more easily into the customs and traditions of a foreign country’ (Jaques, 1906: 19). While the Volksheim Hamburg undertook more of a ‘romantic’ form of social research, the approach taken at the SAG Berlin-​Ost aimed more at a systematic recording of the social conditions in the vicinity of the settlement. Already in the first years, smaller social statistical studies and surveys on church attendance were carried out in the east of Berlin. In the 1920s, three larger social research commissions were founded within the SAG: a church commission, a housing commission and an entertainment commission. While the church commission devoted itself to the question of the sociological consequences of the ‘de-​churching’ of the district, the housing commission attempted to take as comprehensive an inventory as possible of the housing conditions in the district (see Wietschorke, 2013: 209–​16).3 Lastly, the entertainment commission was perhaps the most innovative branch of social research by the SAG Berlin-​Ost. A research sketch prepared in the late 1920s lists the various urban pleasures that were to be investigated: these ranged from taverns of all kinds to ‘hostess bars’, ‘homosexuals’ cafés’ and ‘cocaine dens’, cinema and theatre performances, fairgrounds and various festivities, circus performances and sporting events, peddlers, fortune tellers, horoscopes, magicians, toy sellers, advertisements, court music and barkers, animal voice imitators, acrobats, betting offices, jam shops and children’s games (see Wietschorke, 2013: 217–​20). Of course, only a small part of this planned research was actually carried out: SAG Berlin-O ​ st co-​workers produced detailed maps of the various taverns in the Fruchtstraße, research notes document visits by the staff members to various alehouses at the Schlesischer Bahnhof, and one text even

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reports conversations with prostitutes (Wietschorke, 2013: 221–​3). In several cinema studies, the social composition and behaviour of the audience was evaluated (Sabelus and Wietschorke, 2015). Other studies concern youth reading and reading behaviour. On the one hand, all these topics are to be seen in the context of the protection of minors and the Protestant struggle against ‘dirt and filth’ (Maase, 2012). On the other hand, they document a real ethnographic ambition to examine the concrete reality of life in all its facets. In addition to the work of the three research commissions, further field work was carried out by individual SAG Berlin-​Ost co-​workers –​ for example by Richard Lau, who for some time resided incognito in a Cologne journeyman’s home as well as a shelter for homeless people. A 20-​page research diary kept by another student, who was employed for several weeks in a lightbulb factory, was preserved and provides information about her unconventional research strategy. Her attempt not to attract attention among the proletarian workers by wearing a kitschy rose brooch with silk ribbons, speaking dialect and presenting herself as naive and uneducated, documents not only her insecurity in a foreign milieu, but also the picture she had about her colleagues. Like many other source texts from the SAG Berlin-​Ost, the diary is an informative document with regard to the mutual reflections of class-​ related cultural patterns between the educated middle class and the working class. Fascination and alienation alternate, for instance, when the student feels reminded of the world of old folk tales at one point in her conversation with a worker: On my left, I enjoy Miss W. She is full of stories, knows so many fates even though she claims that she is not interested in other people’s affairs –​she is not curious either –​the people who told the Icelandic sagas must have been similar to her. It’s exactly the same way. This, the Edda, the folk songs, all this belongs together. (Cited in Wietschorke, 2013: 242) The way in which the literary preferences of the educated middle class mix with a romantic image of the working class here characterises the approach of many SAG Berlin-​Ost staff members who were looking for the ‘real core’ of the ‘common people’ in the east of Berlin. For professional social research, such attempts were of course entirely insufficient; in comparison with the US settlement sociology (Williams and MacLean, 2015), social research in the German settlements appears as a downright unscientific and unsystematic enterprise. In its unique

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approach, however, it contributed to feeding social experience into the development of sociopedagogical concepts. In the course of the 1920s, the emphasis within the SAG Berlin-​Ost shifted in several respects. One of the most important changes was certainly that the pathos of the initial years was largely lost due to the First World War and that the original idea of the settlement, the cross-​ class contact of academics and members of the working-​class under the sign of neighbourhood and solidarity, took a back seat vis-​à-​vis the various branches of sociopedagogical and popular education practice. The keen observer Werner Picht has summed up this development in an article on settlement and adult education. In an exceptionally clear-​ sighted way, he recognised the social missionary claim to leadership that was inherent in the constellation of the settlements: while the ‘ethics of settlement’ was based on the ‘sense of responsibility of bourgeois leadership’, the concept of adult education was now trying to ‘make an emancipated working class capable of leadership of its own’. In this respect, it had ‘a bourgeois resignation as a prerequisite’. And further, summing up once more, he writes: ‘Social idealism, and settlement in particular, are expressions of the self-​contemplation of the upper class at the end of the century of the Industrial Revolution; the adult education centre (Volkshochschule) is an expression of the aspiration of the working class at the beginning of the century of the social revolution’ (Picht, 1926: 69). Not least the rapid inflation of the post-​war years and the loss of status of many academics had contributed to the fact that the experimental arrangement of the settlement, as conceived in the SAG Berlin-​Ost in 1911, no longer functioned as it did before. As a result, many SAG Berlin-​Ost co-​workers focused on the integration into the networks of the increasing professionalisation of social work. At least in Berlin, the settlement became widely known as a training centre for social professions in which a ‘social internship’ could be undertaken in the workers’ district. In the 1920s, many students of Alice Salomon’s Soziale Frauenschule (Social Women’s School) worked temporarily in the SAG Berlin-​Ost. Conversely, former SAG Berlin-​ Ost co-​workers had good chances of applying for care and welfare positions. In addition, many theologians with experience in the SAG Berlin-​Ost moved on to work as counsellors in problem districts and socially disadvantaged communities.

Conclusion In an international comparison, the picture of the German Settlement House Movement is ambivalent. Considering the strong anchoring

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of settlement work in Germany in the sociohistorical problems of the Empire and in particular of the German educated middle classes, one could agree with Christoph Sachße when he sees something ‘strangely untimely’ in the SAG Berlin-O ​ st and speaks of ‘the late implementation of a somewhat greying reform concept’ (Sachße, 2007: 46, 48). This applies in a similar way to Hamburg. The Volksheim Hamburg, too, was ultimately an attempt at linking popular education work with the pathos of both protestant religiosity and the settlement idea. The anti-​socialist and anti-​emancipatory trait of the settlements in Hamburg and Berlin, their anchoring in traditions of cultural Protestantism, and their far-​ reaching refusal to recognise the opportunities of modern mass culture with regard to the democratisation of society identified the Volksheim Hamburg as well as the SAG Berlin-​Ost as backward-​looking enterprises. Marcus Gräser has also attested a weak position, to the point of being insignificant, to the SAG Berlin-​Ost within the bourgeois social reform of its time, the mainstream of which had largely ignored the Berlin settlement (Gräser, 2009: 189). The significance of the German Settlement House Movement –​in particular the SAG Berlin-​Ost –​lies therefore less in its importance for the history and practice of international social work but rather in the many social and cultural-​historical questions it raises. Thus, the remarkable development of the SAG Berlin-​Ost in the years from 1911 to 1933 –​when the National Socialist policy brought an end to most of the SAG Berlin-​Ost work in the east of Berlin, although the settlement continued to exist formally until 1940 –​can be read as a narrative of the transformation of bourgeois identities between the Empire and the late Weimar Republic. Many of the SAG Berlin-​Ost co-​workers were peripheral figures themselves who were looking for their place in society: dissenters, dissidents and reformists who sat between the chairs of disciplines, parties and milieus. The SAG Berlin-​Ost was joined by students who were in search of something: prospective theologians who doubted the social competence of the church; prospective educators who wanted to break new ground; prospective lawyers who could not come to terms with a socially insensitive, bureaucratic and out-​of-​touch jurisprudence; and women who wanted to expand their social scope. Many were outsiders in church, science and politics who probably felt attracted to social work precisely because of this. In this sense, Erich Gramm is quite right about the marginal position of the SAG Berlin-​Ost co-​workers when he writes that in the bourgeois camp, they were often regarded as ‘defectors and traitors’, and by the workers as ‘invaders and spies’ (Gramm, 1965: 86). However, it was precisely this double demarcation that offered them the chance to see social

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conditions from a new perspective. Their attitude was determined by a characteristic combination of fascination and rejection, even though they were not always sure of their own position. Yet it was precisely this that made the SAG a social laboratory par excellence, in which the attempt at a cultural uplift of the working class was always linked with the negotiation and reorientation of bourgeois identities. In a somewhat different context  –​namely the discourse on the ‘underclass’ in US literature –​Mark Pittenger has raised the question of the formation of bourgeois identity through the mimetic approach to proletarian everyday life:  ‘In constituting the otherness of the lower classes through directly and “authentically” experiencing their lives, did these investigators establish more firmly their own middle-​ class, gendered, professional, distinctively “modern” identities?’ (Pittenger, 1997:  29). For the residents of the SAG Berlin-​Ost settlement, Pittenger’s diagnosis certainly applies. Countless letters and autobiographical sources prove in particular that the first co-​workers came to the SAG Berlin-​Ost in order to broaden their own horizons and gather experiences that were to help them find their place in a rapidly changing society. In this sense, the everyday contact to the ‘nahe Fremde’ (nearby foreign land) and the ‘Anderen im eigenen Land’ (others in one’s own country) (Lindner, 1985) indeed mobilised certain concepts of identity –​ideas of masculinity and femininity, of leadership, but also of civic responsibility and social conscience. The collaboration with the SAG Berlin-​Ost seems to have offered material for this that could not be obtained anywhere else, namely, unprotected insight into a foreign milieu. SAG Berlin-​Ost co-​worker Hermann Gramm once expressed this in a letter from 1922: ‘I know … only one ideal: to stand eye to eye with the most naked reality!’ (cited in Wietschorke, 2013: 163). From here, the ‘cross-​class neighbourhood’ in the east of Berlin proves to be, above all, a model of the production of experience. Its contribution to the history of social work was perhaps that of a social experiment that generated certain experiences and learning processes and fed them into the social reform discourse of its time. Ultimately, this is far too much to regard the German Settlement House Movement as insignificant or even as a failure. Notes Incidentally, the first Austrian settlement was founded in Vienna in the same year, mainly supported by representatives of the bourgeois women’s movement (see Malleier, 2005). 2 For better readability, direct quotations have been translated into English. 3 Within the framework of the SAG Berlin-​Ost housing commission in 1927/​28, among other things, some 600 questionnaires were collected, including highly 1

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Settlement House Movement in Germany, 1900–30 detailed information given by the residents on the location and state of the apartments, the housing conditions, and the use of living space as well as on the residents and their ancestors. Of these questionnaires, 374 have been preserved in the archive (see Wietschorke, 2013: 213).

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Sadler, E. (1929) ‘Kluberziehung  –​ eine Aufgabe der Sozialen Arbeitsgemeinschaft? [Education in Clubs  –​a task for the Social Working Group?]’, Neue Nachbarschaft, 12(1/​2): 9–​10. Schreiber, A. (1911) ‘Settlement’. In T. Heller, F. Schiller and M. Taube (eds) Encyklopädisches Handbuch des Kinderschutzes und der Jugendfürsorge [Encyclopedic Compendium of Child Protection and Youth Welfare]. Leipzig: Engelmann, pp 247–​50. Schüler, A. (2004) Frauenbewegung und soziale Reform:  Jane Addams und Alice Salomon im transatlantischen Dialog, 1889–​1933 [Women’s Movement and Social Reform:  Jane Addams and Alice Salomon in a Transatlantic Dialogue, 1889–​1993]. Stuttgart: Steiner. Siegmund-​Schultze, F. (1990 [1912]) ‘Aus der sozialen Studentenarbeit [On Students’ Social Work]’. In W. Grünberg (ed) Friedenskirche, Kaffeeklappe und die ökumenische Vision:  Texte 1910–​1969 [Peace Church, Coffee House and the Ecumenist Vision:  Texts 1910–​1969]. Munich: Kaiser, pp 302–​25. Tenorth, H.-​E ., Lindner, R., Fechner, F. and Wietschorke, J. (eds) (2007) Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze (1885–​1969):  Ein Leben für Kirche, Wissenschaft und soziale Arbeit [Friedrich Siegmund-​ Schultze (1885–​1969):  A Life for Church, Science and Social Work]. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Volksheim Hamburg (ed) (1902) Bericht des Vereins Volksheim über das erste Geschäftsjahr 1901/​1902 [Report of the Association Volksheim on the first year 1901/​1902]. Hamburg: Volksheim Hamburg. von Erdberg, R. (1911) ‘Settlements’. In Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften Bd. VII [Compendium of Political Sciences, Volume VII] (3rd edn). Jena: Fischer, pp 475–​84. von Schultze-​Gaevernitz, G. (1890) Zum socialen Frieden:  Eine Darstellung der socialpolitischen Erziehung des englischen Volkes im neunzehnten Jahrhundert [On Social Peace: A Description of Sociopolitical Education of the English People in the 19th Century] (two volumes). Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

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Westerkamp, A. (1917–​19) ‘Aus amerikanischen Settlements:  Briefe und Tagebuchblätter [From American Settlement Houses: Letters and Diaries]’. Published in serial form in Akademisch-​Soziale Monatsschrift, vol 1 no 1/​2 (April/​May 1917):  20–​24; vol 1 no 3/​4 (June/​July 1917): 47–​52; vol 1 no 5/​6 (August/​September 1917): 84–​7; vol 1 no 7/​8 (October/​November 1917) 120–​3; vol 1 no 9/​10 (December/​ January 1917/​18): 153–​6; vol 1 no 11/​12 (February/​March 1918): 184–​ 7; vol 2 no 1/​2 (April/​May 1918): 27–​30; vol 2 no 3/​4 (June/​July 1918): 54–​7; vol 2 no 5/​6 (August/​September 1918): 92–​4; vol 2 no 7/​8 (October/​November 1918): 122–​6; vol 2 no 9/​10 (December/​ January 1918/​19): 158–​62; vol 3 no 1/​2 (April/​May 1919): 25–​30. Weiße, W. (2007) ‘Einheit der Kirche und praktisches Christentum:  Impulse von Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze für die Ökumenische Bewegung [The unity of the Church and practical Christianity:  Impulses by Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze for the Ecumenist Movement]’. In H.-​E. Tenorth, R. Lindner, F. Fechner and J. Wietschorke (eds) Friedrich Siegmund-​Schultze (1885–​1969): Ein Leben für Kirche, Wissenschaft und soziale Arbeit [Friedrich Siegmund-​ Schultze (1885–​1969):  A Life for Church, Science and Social Work]. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, pp 23–​34. Weyer, A. (1971) Kirche im Arbeiterviertel [Church in Working-​Class Districts]. Gütersloh: Mohn. Wietschorke, J. (2008) ‘Der Weltkrieg als soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft. Eine Innenansicht bildungsbürgerlicher Kriegsdeutungen 1914–​1918 [World War I as a Social Working Group. An Inside View of the Educated Class on the War 1914–​1918]’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 34: 225–​51. Wietschorke, J. (2013) Arbeiterfreunde: Soziale Mission im dunklen Berlin, 1911–​1933 [Friends of the Working-​Class: Social Mission in Dark Berlin, 1911–​1933]. Frankfurt and New York, NY: Campus. Williams, J.E. and MacLean, V.M. (2015) Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years:  Faith, Science, and Reform. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Wohl, R. (1979) The Generation of 1914. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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To be an Englishman and a Jew: Basil Henriques and the Bernhard Baron Oxford and St George’s Settlement House Hugh Shewell The English Jew is a fortunate being.… because … he is a citizen of England and of the British Empire. To this country he can give his love, his strength, his life. … A citizen of England, and a Jew by religion! This is a real and workable combination. (Montefiore and Henriques, 1918: 5) In late Edwardian England, what would motivate a young Jewish gentleman, Basil Henriques, to abandon his life of wealth and privilege to live in London’s impoverished East End? This question is explored in the context both of social change in Great Britain and the dilemma of being Jewish in a non-​Jewish society. The Oxford and St George’s Jewish Settlement, founded as a Boys’ Club in 1914, arose not only as a response to the poverty and disenfranchisement of London’s East End but as a particular response to the perceived threat to the East End’s Jewish population and as a demonstration of applied Jewish theology. The settlement did not exist to evangelise but simply to protect and enhance a growing, impoverished Jewish community. The fear that young Jews would convert to Christianity through the Christian-​ based clubs and settlements was real –​despite the excellent work that these clubs performed and the inspiration they provided. It was to this threat and to his own convictions to an active Judaism that the young Henriques responded.

Family background and influences Basil Henriques was born on 17 October, 1890 in Bayswater, West London, the youngest of five children of David and Agnes Henriques. The family was descended from Sephardic Jews originally from

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Portugal but who, in the mid-​17th century, escaped Portugal during the Inquisition, eventually settling in Jamaica. His grandfather, Jacob Henriques, emigrated to England from Jamaica in the mid-​19th century where he re-​established the family’s trading company in London. The firm prospered and continued to do so under his son, David. At the same time the family became increasingly Anglified and integrated into England’s upper-​middle class (Loewe, 1976: 1). Raised in Reform Judaism, Henriques’ family was among the founding members of the West London Synagogue. While secular in daily life, they attended synagogue regularly and observed the major Jewish holidays. His mother was a dutiful Jew and, based on the significant correspondence between them, appeared to have had a significant impact on the importance of Judaism in his life. Thus, in many ways their relationship formed the moral and religious foundation of his secular pursuits (Henriques Family Correspondence, 1890s–​1914). During his early childhood, he became aware of those less fortunate than he. By the age of five, he gave sermons in the nursery including one, ‘On being kind to the poor’, in which he observed, ‘Well you are aware a Clergeman (sic) has to teach the poor and help them, that is how the poor know there is a God’ (cited in Loewe, 1976:  5). In 1901, while staying at a relative’s country home in Shropshire, he wrote to his mother that he had spent time visiting the poor which he had greatly enjoyed (Henriques, B., 1901a). Henriques’ education was typical of those of his class. He attended a preparatory day school in South Kensington, then a small boarding school in Elstree before continuing at Harrow. He finished at the University of Oxford in 1913 where he read modern history (Loewe, 1976: 10–​11). During his early adulthood, he frequently complained to his mother –​in their almost daily correspondence –​that the synagogue was boring and that the Sabbath sermons were especially dull. Although Reform Judaism was less prescriptive, proscriptive and literal in biblical interpretation than its more orthodox counterparts, it nevertheless conformed to the more passive form of Judaism, what Leibovitz (2014: 45), in his portrayal of poet and singer, Leonard Cohen, refers to as ‘waiting for the Messiah’. In this traditional construct of Judaism, Jews are to lead by example, to conduct their lives ethically and morally but not to challenge established order. Certainly, philanthropy figured importantly in how Judaic teachings were to apply in everyday life –​but it was a safe philanthropy that concerned itself mainly with established institutions and causes such as hospitals, orphanages and the alleviation of suffering.

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During the emancipatory periods for Judaism in Europe –​beginning in the 18th century –​many Jews began to question the idea of waiting for the Messiah; rather, they began to be drawn to notions of activism and recognised in emerging socialist ideologies connections with Jewish notions of justice and freedom that run consistently throughout the theology. ‘Why wait?’ became more commonly understood to mean that there was no reason not to act (Leibovitz, 2014: 46–​7). Thus, like Christian social reformers and the social gospel movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Mencher, 1967; Cook, 1985), Henriques was concerned that Judaism had become an abstract, transcendent theology, a set of beliefs rather than a living presence; Judaism, he thought, must have an applied purpose. This belief in Judaism as an immanent religion guided him all his life and he consistently wrote and spoke about it, together with his more secular writings. His mother mainly supported him or, at least, understood his argument that conventional Judaism could not simply be seen to make philanthropic donations to worthy causes. She also reminded him of the beauty of his religion and to be proud to be a Jew (Henriques, A., 1910a: 17–​18). Henriques was adamant that Judaism could not remain merely ritualistic in the way that he experienced it in his synagogue. Judaism had to have a transformative presence among its adherents and in society as a whole. This latter point introduces a central theme in Henriques’ understanding of the status of the Jew in English society. He grew up during a period of fierce debates about the future of the Jewish diaspora in Europe, largely driven by the brutal pogroms suffered by the Jews of Eastern Europe and resulting in their widespread migrations to the US, Canada and the UK. The founding congress of the World Zionist Organisation was held in Basel, Switzerland in 1897 when Henriques was not quite seven years old and, by the time he was nine years old, his mother was telling him about the Dreyfuss affair in France in which Alfred Dreyfuss, a Jewish, French army officer, was falsely accused of treason. The accusation caused a political scandal and raised the anti-​Semitic trope that a Jew’s loyalty to the state could not be trusted (Henriques, A., July 1899). While the Henriques were well established in England, the place of the Jew in a Christian country like England was always an issue. Nevertheless, Henriques grew up understanding his privilege was acquired through wealth and acculturation to English middle-​class life. He strongly identified both as a Jew and an Englishman while simultaneously rejecting Zionism. For him, the place of the Jew in England was that of a proud and loyal citizen while remaining faithful

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to the tenets of Judaism. He soon saw that his mission in life was to assist other Jews  –​mainly those immigrant Jews living in extreme poverty –​to become precisely that: proud Englishmen and proud Jews.

Oxford and the Settlement Movement Following Henriques’ entrance into Oxford University in 1909, two people entered his life who provided not only inspiration but helped him both to crystallise his thinking and to provide a way for harnessing Judaic thought into social action; these were Claude G. Montefiore, whose progressive thought and writing about the meaning of Judaism were key to Henriques’ Jewish renaissance and, Kenneth Leys, his history tutor whose weekly sessions with the young Henriques engaged him with the important social questions of the time –​poverty and inequality (Jeffs, 2003). Initially, his classes at Oxford did not enthral him but his extracurricular activities increasingly did. Although there was a small Jewish student population at the university he found its organised activities uninspired. His ideas about the possibilities for Judaism began to take root when he encountered other clubs at Oxford, especially Christian-​based clubs that were engaging Oxford students with the poor and working classes of London’s most impoverished boroughs. These Edwardian years were still part of the Romantic period in England, a period that, since the mid-​19th century, had witnessed a concerted effort to restore a sense of social order and reconciliation of the classes in England. The Industrial Revolution and rapid urbanisation, together with a devotion to political ideals of laissez-​ faire and liberal capitalism, had caused enormous social upheaval in English society. The concurrent neglect of the working classes by the upper classes most likely would have induced a civil revolution had there not been first, a growing recognition on the part of the state for social and political reforms and second, an intellectual and moral awakening by elements of the upper classes appalled by the vast socioeconomic inequalities created by the Industrial Revolution since the late 18th century (Mencher, 1967; Reinders, 1982). Young Oxford students formed a significant part of this awakening and constituted an important part of those who entered the slums of London to offer material support, personal and spiritual guidance. It was this Christian, moral imperative emanating from Oxford’s students that captured Henriques’ imagination. In correspondence to both his parents between 1910 and 1911, Henriques became increasingly critical of Judaism’s lack of presence

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among those who suffered. Instead, he extolled the nobility of Christ’s character and actions as he wrote to his mother: I think it was Jesus Christ who … with a heart full of charity saved those willing mortals whom money and education alone had prevented and does prevent from living better lives. What is preached to us every Saturday by those clockwork men at the synagogue? Is’nt (sic) [it…] always ‘ask god for forgiveness for what you have done –​god will do this for you –​god will do that for you?’ Have you ever heard them … exhorting us to follow the doings of such a man as Christ, to sacrifice ourselves a little for the good of others … [J]‌ust because we Jews do not believe in his divinity we are not allowed to look upon him as an ‘ideal man’…. I think that it is Christianity alone that has done the good that has been done to the poorer classes … –​not the crede (sic) and the divinity etc.: but the idealistic point of view of it. (Henriques, B., 1910, emphasis in original) His mother responded as follows: Look around you today and you will see the Jew giving freely generously to hospitals charities + [indecipherable] subscriptions or donations to everything regardless of creed or sects. Turn over the page and tell me do the [indecipherable] & followers of Christ do the same to all other creeds but their own ….’ (Henriques, A., 1910b) Her response encouraged him in his Jewishness and in service, and reminded him of the embrace of Judaism; that its philanthropy was intended for all persons and institutions regardless of religious affiliation. She also reminded him that there were ways of interpreting –​other than biblical –​Jewish charitable behaviour in the diaspora. Indeed, her underlying message was that acts of charity (tzedakah) were a mitzvah, a law, and the duty of all Jews to do what is right and just towards humanity (Henriques, A., 1910b). Nevertheless, it was his meeting with Claude Montefiore in the summer of 1910 and their continuing relationship thereafter that galvanised Henriques into action (Jeffs, 2003: 136). Montefiore was 32  years Henriques’ senior and was an eminent Jewish scholar and writer. He was a leader in Liberal Judaism, an anti-​Zionist and the founding president of the World Union for

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Progressive Judaism (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019). Like Henriques, Montefiore believed that Judaism should be made more relevant to new generations of Jews and should also be a force for an ethical life, for justice and for the life of a good citizen. Additionally, Montefiore’s own work did much to explore the relationship between Christian and Jewish theology. Montefiore’s inspirational writing and friendship prompted Henriques to set about reforming the near moribund Oxford Hebrew Congregation (OHC). Before long, Henriques, with Montefiore’s support, had completely revitalised the OHC (by 1912 membership had increased fourfold) and it undoubtedly served as a source of volunteers and funding for Henriques’ future club and settlement ambitions (Loewe, 1976:  13–​14; Jeffs, 2003:  136–​7). As though prophesising future intent, Montefiore developed a prayer in English peculiar to the OHC that focused on service to humanity and to God. In part the prayer stated: May we feel, O our Father, that the knowledge which we gain here should be given to thy service. In our daily intercourse with our fellows may we never forget the message of thy prophet that we and all Israel are thy servants, so that in every deed and thought we may be worthy of the name we bear. May we show charity and kindness to all men, especially to those who need our help and our love. For in our lives must we render thanks to thee, O God, and not only in words of prayer and in songs of praise. (Montefiore, n.d.) The prayer’s implication was clear: ritual and belief were not sufficient, and Judaism must be translated into direct action, into service. The prayer was at the core of where Henriques was headed and reflected not only his spiritual values but alluded to the heart of the Romantic movement –​the return to a kinder, mutually responsible society –​and of its outgrowths, such as the left-​wing, intellectual Fabian Society of which Henriques must have been aware. Through his history tutor, Kenneth Leys, Henriques found his way into London’s East End. Of Leys, Henriques wrote, ‘My private hours with him were a joy…. He was the Oxford representative of Toynbee Hall…. He succeeded in rousing my interest in political economy, social science and constitutional history, and made me think things out for myself. Social questions became a living problem and he made me try to work out the causes and cure of poverty’ (Henriques, 1937, cited in Loewe, 1976:  13–​14). Some of Henriques’ course lecture notes bear mentioning, for they impart a flavour of what was studied

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and understood about English society and class relations at the time. Additionally, they provide some insight into what informed the young Henriques and fed his desire to be active in pursuing social justice. The role of the state One of his class lecture notes reveals an appraisal of the reports of the Royal Commission of 1909 on English Poor Law policy, which famously included both majority and minority positions. From his notes was gleaned a fundamental discussion of the role of the state in intervening in both the economy and the private lives of individuals and consequently its role in the redistribution of wealth and the provision of services. The role of the state was a key question since, in London alone, annual charitable expenditures amounted to more than £10,000,000 –​ more than double that under the Poor Law. Yet, as Henriques’ notes recorded, poverty and its terrible effects on the condition of children persisted. According to Henriques’ notes, the Minority Report opined that the 1834 Poor Law was ‘a ghastly failure’. In another notation, Henriques writes, ‘The whole history of Poor Law since 1834 rests on one assumption that Distress (sic) is due to personal character and not to economic causes’ (Henriques, B., n.d., ‘The present day’, emphasis in original). This was the clear difference between the Majority and Minority Reports. The Majority recommended continuing to hold the individual primarily responsible for her/​his own destitution, while the Minority argued that the causes of poverty were embedded in the structure of the economy. It recommended stronger state measures to alleviate poverty while simultaneously working closely with charities. These differences of opinion –​scarcely changed to this day –​were reflected in the ultimate distinction between the underlying philosophies of the Charity Organisation Society and the Settlement House Movement. The former attributed poverty simply to the moral turpitude of the individual and essentially ignored the nature of an unfettered, exploitative, economic system. The latter attributed individual degradation to the deplorable social conditions in which people lived and blamed those conditions on the economic system and the extreme poverty it produced (Mencher, 1967). Socialism, political economy, John Stuart Mill and Robert Owen’s utopian socialism Henriques was also influenced by courses on political economy, socialism and the transformation in John Stuart Mill’s philosophical

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thought. At the height of laissez-​faire economics, some 40 years prior to the approximate date of his lecture notes (about 1870) socialism had been declared dead, ‘yet today [1910/​11] it has become academic, religious; has taken the form of legislation; the economists have become socialist ….’ According to Henriques’ notes, socialism was defined as ‘the movement to equalise social conditions by the aid of the state’. Political economy created socialism because it provided the counter-​narrative to the so-​called natural laws of economics –​that is, since these laws were actually human constructs, human agency could change them. For example, earlier economists were concerned only with production and thought distribution (of wealth) would happen naturally. Political economists –​socialists –​seeing this gap ‘came in and saw how to distribute wealth’ (Henriques, B., n.d., ‘Socialism’). Probably of some significance to Henriques’ thinking were his notes on the philosopher, John Stuart Mill, and on Robert Owen’s 19th-​ century experiments in utopian socialism. Mill, who originally had extolled liberal individualism, later rejected it in favour of a critique of laissez-​faire capitalism. According to Henriques, Mill argued against laissez-​faire because the assumption ‘that men judge best their own interests is flawed –​it could be said that these are not their true interests’. Additionally, men ‘did not include women and children whose interests must also be considered. The interests of the future cannot be left to men’ (Henriques, B., n.d., ‘The present day’). While cooperatives were not mentioned in his notes, Henriques would likely have been aware of their importance and centrality to Mill’s solution to the progress and wealth of the working classes (Macpherson, 1977). Robert Owen certainly experimented with ‘cooperative societies’ as forms of socialism not involving the state (Socialism, n.d.). Perhaps Henriques recognised in Mill and Owen the importance of building a sense of community, but there is no evidence to suggest anything beyond this conjecture.

Into the field: the beginnings of the settlement Henriques’ relationships with Montefiore and Kenneth Leys, his coursework and the overall Oxonian atmosphere of social reconciliation were capped in early 1911 by a meeting he attended of the Bishops of London and Oxford at which they spoke of social work in London’s East End (Loewe, 1976: 14). Henriques suddenly announced to his parents in February 1911 that, unless they objected, he wished to volunteer during the Easter break at Oxford House, Bethnal Green in London’s East End (Loewe, 1976: 14). His mother quickly replied:

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Yr proposal about going to the East End … was … sudden…. I don’t want in Father’s name or on my own part to raise obstacles in the way of yr intentions of carrying out v. philanthropic intentions –​but … Have you seen in the papers that in Stepney there are several persons with small pox and … [it] is virulent + easily caught …. (Henriques, A., 1911) Henriques’ father also responded: Now, as regard taking a few days at Oxford House. I am not against the idea and I do try to see ‘eye to eye’ with you …. The place is permeated with evangelism but I feel sure that you can and will take care of yourself …. (Henriques, D., 1911) His father also voiced concern about small pox and both parents worried that his foray into social work would distract him from his studies, the actual purpose of his being at Oxford. Henriques refused to be deterred and his parents reluctantly agreed to allow his request. In the end, Henriques did not go to Bethnal Green but to the Christian Oxford and Bermondsey Mission (OBM) in South-​East London, across the Thames from Whitechapel. Here he engaged in youth work with adolescent boys for the first time, and despite initial nervousness soon became popular and effective. The OBM experience not only convinced him that he had made the right career choice but further inspired him to begin planning to start a Jewish Mission in Whitechapel based on the OBM model. OBM was a paradigm for a ‘living religion’ and ‘for how a Jew might work with his co-​religionists’ (Jeffs, 2003:  138). The OBM approach, according to Henriques, ‘eradicated class distinction by sustaining a living brotherhood, where the undergraduate was called upon not so much to give as to receive, to learn even more than to teach’ (Henriques, 1937: 23, cited in Jeffs, 2003: 138). Further reflecting on his experiences at OBM, Henriques wrote, ‘I am to go among the lowest dregs of society, the down and outs, the prostitutes and the criminals, and share my life with them, I know I must do so as their equal, as their brother. It was no use doing this in theory if I could not do so in practice’ (Henriques, 1937: 27–​8, cited in Jeffs, 2003: 138). While still at Oxford, Henriques continued boys’ club work both at OBM and at a Jewish club in Fitzroy Square in the West End. His plans seemed to be progressing  –​that is, he was accumulating the

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experience and knowledge of club work that would be necessary in establishing a Jewish mission; he was gradually building support for a Jewish club in Whitechapel; and he continued reforming the OHC’s liturgy to make it contemporary and accessible in English rather than Hebrew. However, in July 1912, his father died suddenly of a double stroke. This loss greatly affected his mental health and he struggled to continue his studies until finally withdrawing from Oxford in 1913. He then visited an older brother with whom he was close, Ronald, a lieutenant in the British Army stationed in Bermuda. While the trip afforded him some respite and comfort, he returned to Oxford still in a state of deep depression and anxious about his final exams. Somehow, he scraped through and then, with the assistance of Kenneth Leys, secured a residence at Toynbee Hall on condition he perform home visiting. In this he would develop the casework skills needed to run a mission effectively. On 30 August 1913, just before Rosh Hashanah –​ the Jewish New Year –​he wrote to his mother, ‘I did C.O.S. work yesterday. The sec: is Miss Willis … I did some sad cases, with which I will “cheer” you up when I see you. I am going round again today’ (Henriques, B., 1913). London’s East End quickly exposed Henriques to a different world –​ the socioeconomic chasm between the East and West Ends of London was enormous; they were, in effect, two solitudes. Ironically, the ‘City’ –​ the heart of Britain’s financial world –​practically adjoined Whitechapel, the part of London where Henriques would eventually establish the settlement. Whitechapel had become the Jewish ghetto. By the early 20th century, it accommodated over 120,000 Ashkenazi Jews, mainly of Russian and Polish origins (Loewe, 1976: 19; Englander, 2010: 3). Jewish immigrants were London’s first experience of a population very different culturally from the existing Dutch, German and Italian communities. Not only was their clothing different but so were their languages, foods and religion. In a study of Tower Hamlets (including Whitechapel), the social reformer Charles Booth classified 75 per cent of Jews as ‘quite poor’ or ‘moderately poor’. Ten years later, Booth noted their living conditions ‘seem to have improved but little’ (Booth, 1887 and 1897, cited in Englander, 2010: 4). Despite their squalid living conditions, a Jewish criminal class never developed. Jewish crime was considered petty, and while the police considered it irksome, it was manageable. Jewish juvenile crime, while a serious problem, was perceived as an age-​specific rather than a permanent condition, unlike the native variant. As one policeman put it, ‘they seldom get an old Jew as a thief –​with the Englishman once a thief always a thief ’ (Booth Collection, cited in Englander, 2010: 8). Most problems in the Jewish

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ghetto arose either from internal disputes including occasional fights between secular (usually socialist) and religious, Orthodox Jews, or from anti-​Semitism arising from perceptions of Jews as political subversives, as degenerate, white slave traders threatening the moral and racial health of the nation or as taking away jobs and housing from the indigenous population. Serious tensions arose and bullying, ‘Jew-​baiting, and Jew-​beatings were common’ (Englander, 2010: 5–​8). Nevertheless, the main source of disorder in Whitechapel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was poverty and the ‘intolerable pressures which arose when … the volume of immigration exceeded the absorptive capacities of Jewish philanthropy’ (Englander, 2010: 7). At about the same time as Henriques began his work at Toynbee Hall, the United Synagogue (a union of Britain’s Orthodox congregations) issued a warning statement to all Jewish parents in the East End, alerting them to the dangers of the Christian missions and their conversionary intentions –​echoing his father’s earlier concern about evangelism in Bethnal Green (A Warning to Jewish Parents, 1913). The warning offered no alternative to parents except to forbid their children from attending the missions and to remain ‘loyal to the glorious traditions of our faith’ (A Warning to Jewish Parents, 1913). This warning seemed to have played right into Henriques’ plans. Over that year, despite his demanding casework at Toynbee Hall, he continued club work and worked assiduously to raise moral and financial support for a Jewish boys’ club in Whitechapel. Because he was convinced that the future of English and immigrant Jews was in England and that Judaism had to play an active role in making that so, his opponents arose from two camps: the Zionists and the more conservative Jews. The former admired his ideals but could not agree with his solution. They believed that Jews could only be free and flourish in a homeland of their own. More conservative Jews were uncomfortable with his associating Judaism with the idea of a club despite others that already existed outside the East End. Nevertheless, in the end he was successful, in part because of the revitalisation of the OHC, of its undergraduates and their orientation towards service. In addition, his connections both to his own West London Synagogue and to Montefiore’s Liberal Jewish Synagogue proved beneficial for both made critical financial commitments to supporting the club. On 3 March 1914 and with an official consecration by the Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, the Oxford and St George’s Jewish Boys’ Club opened its doors at 125 Cannon Street Road, E1. That Hertz, an Orthodox rabbi, consecrated the club together with Reform Rabbi Morris Joseph was remarkable. It perhaps spoke to Hertz’s fear that Judaism might

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languish completely if no ‘catholicizing’ form of Judaism was present (Loewe, 1976: 34). The club flourished. In 1915, Henriques’ future wife, Rose Loewe, started the Oxford and St George’s Jewish Girls’ Club at nearby Betts Street to complement the Boys’ Club’s goals and values (Loewe, 1976: 36). That year both clubs had a combined membership of about 140 boys and girls and, despite the interruption of the First World War, both continued to grow. The clubs spawned increased services, including a daytime infant welfare centre and outreach services to the members’ parents. By 1919, the clubs required larger premises to accommodate growing membership and to enrich the services and amenities they could provide. Consequently, the remainder of the Betts Street building was acquired and became the St George’s Jewish Settlement. Including a small synagogue and living quarters, it was officially opened by Stepney’s mayor, Clement Atlee, Britain’s future prime minister (Bernhard Baron St George’s Jewish Settlement, 1964:  12–​13). In 1930, as the settlement continued to thrive, it relocated to a former school on Berner Street, E1, purchased in 1927 through the donation of Bernhard Baron, a wealthy tobacco company owner. The settlement and its youth clubs served the East End London Jewish population until well after the Second World War. However, changing demographics (the Jewish population, integrated and more prosperous, moved to North London) combined with more universal social services provided by Britain’s welfare state led to its decline. Henriques was made Commander of the British Empire in 1948 and knighted in 1955. He died in 1961. The settlement closed in 1973 and the clubs relocated to North London. Eventually, they too closed and were replaced by the Oxford and St George’s Jewish Youth Trust, a funding body in support of Jewish youth activities.

Conclusion The late Rabbi Lionel Blue (whose first congregation was at the settlement’s synagogue) did not think the settlement could be separated from Henriques and, in a sense, did not conform to the Settlement House Movement. According to Blue, Henriques was ‘an Evangelical Christian who turned up in Progressive Judaism’ and he ‘was like a Moses leading them (immigrant Jews) into the real England. He turned them into English Jews. He took very many people off the street and got them going into a middle-​class life’ (cited in Shewell, 2008). Blue’s comments can be addressed in two ways. First, they suggest Montefiore’s influence on Henriques and raise the age-​old

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anti-​Semitic theme about the Jew and loyalty to the state. Henriques personally admitted to only one experience of direct anti-​Semitism, that at the hands of Henrietta Barnett at Toynbee Hall (Henriques, 1937: 95, cited in Jeffs, 2003: 140). Yet, implicitly, Henriques’ work was about combatting anti-​Semitism and defining the place of the Jew in what was then a predominantly Christian country. Henrietta Barnett thought Henriques would naturally prefer a country of his own (alluding to Palestine and the Balfour Declaration) and that he ought to be cognisant of the fact that ‘every nation in the world hates the Jews’ (Henriques, 1921, cited in Jeffs, 2003:  140). Henriques firmly rejected this assertion:  he did not believe that being Jewish equated with Zionism. Rather, he believed a person’s religion was one aspect of who they were, their nationality another. Just as a person could be Christian and English, so too could a Jew be both. Yet, for the Jew the dichotomy was –​and still is –​raised in public discourse. Henriques’ response was to reject Zionism and embrace England as a fully loyal citizen. In this sense, the settlement and its clubs became the testing ground, the model for demonstrating that it was possible to be both a proud Jew and a loyal Englishman. If settlements were intended to promote pride of self and origin, to promote community, social integration and unity among the classes, and to produce useful workers and stable homes, then Oxford and St George’s Settlement House did just that. A second response to Blue is a fundamental question particular to the early 20th century. Could settlements ultimately transform capitalist society or did they, in the end, simply reproduce class relations and integrate the more marginalised (in this case, working-​class, immigrant Jews) into the larger social system? The answer, I  think, is clear. Certainly, they were agents of social reform (Mencher, 1967) but they never became the locus of revolutionary movements. Indeed, if Henriques and the OSG settlement provide a suitable example, then Henriques’ own thoughts bear mentioning. ‘The two world wars have brought about a social revolution’, he wrote, ‘out of which has emerged a Welfare State. Money has to a large extent changed hands. I am glad that many of the poor have become comparatively rich, but I am equally sorry that many of the rich have become poor’ (Henriques, 1955: 15). In this excerpt can be detected what Blue referred to as ‘always the Harrovian in Basil’ (Shewell, 2008). Henriques admired the reforms of the welfare state but was not convinced that the erasure of class distinction was a good thing. The elevation of the lower classes to upper-​class standards of good citizenship was what mattered and, in the main, that is just what his and other settlements achieved.

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Henriques grew up in a privileged, Anglo-​Jewish family. Like other young, university-​educated persons of his generation, he became disillusioned by the inertia of his religion and by the poverty and class inequalities of which he was aware. Inspired by Christian social reform, Christian youth clubs and settlements such as the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission and Toynbee Hall, he established an equivalent Jewish mission in London’s Whitechapel to serve the impoverished and beleaguered Jewish community. Guided by his mother’s reminders of the meaning of Judaism and by the mentorship of Claude Montefiore and Kenneth Leys, Henriques established the Oxford and St George’s Boys’ Club in 1914. But the mission did more than address the social needs of Whitechapel’s Jewish population: it ensured that Jewish youth would not be lost to the evangelical Christian missions in London’s East End. Rather, they were encouraged to be proud Jews and proud British citizens. By ensuring the goal of the well-​integrated Jew, Henriques implicitly believed that anti-​Semitism could effectively be addressed by example, by the production of successive generations of loyal Jewish, British subjects. Despite the pernicious, sometimes violent anti-​Semitism of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the 1930s and the Nazi destruction of millions of highly integrated, European Jews during the Second World War, Henriques remained firm in his conviction: the settlement and the clubs provided the best path to be an Englishman and a Jew (Loewe, 1976; Jeffs, 2003). References ‘A warning to Jewish parents’ (1913) Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​6, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Bernhard Baron St George’s Jewish Settlement (1964) Fiftieth Anniversary Review, 1914–1​ 964. London: Bernhard Baron St George’s Jewish Settlement. Cook, R. (1985) The Regenerators:  Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Encyclopaedia Britannica (2019) ‘Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore’, Encyclopaedia Britannica [Online]. Available at:  www.britannica. com/​biography/​Claude-​Joseph-​Goldsmid-​Montefiore [Accessed 15 July 2019]. Englander, D. (2010) ‘Policing the ghetto: Jewish East London, 1880–​ 1920’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/​Crime, History & Societies, 14(1): 1–​24. Available at: http://​journals.openedition.org/​chs/​1141 [Accessed 1 July 2019]. Henriques Family Correspondence (1890–​1914) Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​1–​1/​7, Hartley Library, University of Southampton.

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Henriques, A. (1899) Letter to B. Henriques, July, Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​2, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Henriques, A. (1910a) Letters to B. Henriques, 17–​18 May, Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​3, 1/​5, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Henriques, A. (1910b) Letter to B. Henriques, 18 May, Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​5, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Henriques, A. (1911) Letter to B.  Henriques. February. University of Southampton. Hartley Library. Henriques Papers. MS 132, AJ 195,  1/​6/​1. Henriques, B. (n.d.) ‘The present day’ [Notebooks of Courses], Henriques Papers. MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​16, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Henriques, B. (n.d.) ‘Socialism’ [Notebooks of Courses], Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​16, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Henriques B. (1901) Letter to A. Henriques, April, Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​2, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Henriques, B. (1910) Letter to A.  Henriques, 16 May, Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​5, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Henriques, B. (1913) Letter to A. Henriques, 30 August, Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​6/​1, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Henriques, B. (1937) The Indiscretions of a Warden. London: Methuen. Henriques, B. (1955) The Home-​Menders: The Prevention of Unhappiness in Children. London: Harrap. Henriques, D. (1911) Letter to B. Henriques, 27 February, Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​6/​1, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Jeffs, T. (2003) ‘Basil Henriques and the House of Friendship’. In R. Gilchrist, T. Jeffs and J. Spence (eds) Architects of Change: Studies in the History of Community and Youth Work (1st edn). Leicester: National Youth Agency, pp 135–​160. Leibovitz, L. (2014) A Broken Hallelujah. New  York, NY:  W.W. Norton. Loewe, L.L. (1976) Basil Henriques: A Portrait. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Macpherson, C.B. (1977) The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Mencher, S. (1967) Poor Law to Poverty Program:  Economic Security Policy in Britain and the United States. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Montefiore, C.G. (n.d.) Prayer for the Oxford Hebrew Congregation, Henriques Papers, MS 132, AJ 195, 1/​8, Hartley Library, University of Southampton. Montefiore, C.G. and Henriques, B.L.Q. (1918) The English Jew and His Religion. Keighley: Wadsworth & Co. Reinders, R. (1982) ‘Toynbee Hall and the American Settlement Movement’, Social Service Review, 56(1): 39–​54. Available at: https://​ www.jstor.org/​stable/​30011537 [Accessed 1 July 2019]. Shewell, H. (2008) Interview with Rabbi Lionel Blue, 12 May.

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The English settlements, the Poor Man’s Lawyer and social work, circa 1890–​1939 Kate Bradley The Poor Man’s Lawyer evenings that were offered by settlement houses from the 1890s were a means by which men were afforded an opportunity to ‘respectably’ undertake a form of social work. With women excluded from the legal profession until the 1920s, those men engaged in social work at settlements or other charities required either access to those with the professional training to directly advise their clients, or reliable and appropriate training or resources on the law in relation to social work. Through Frank Tillyard, the Poor Man’s Lawyer and settlement houses had a key role to play in the formalisation of social work training in England, through their expectation that social workers would ‘do law’ in the course of their professional work. This also went the other way, with Poor Man’s Lawyer work enabling lawyers to ‘do social work’. The embedding of Poor Man’s Lawyer work in the burgeoning social work and activism networks between the First and Second World Wars allowed for campaigning around the key issues brought to legal advice evenings –​and, in due course for concrete results. The spread of the Settlement Movement enabled this, and the idea of offering legal advice as a public good became more entrenched. Examining pro bono legal services at settlement houses offers insight into the shifts in the relationship between individuals and the state over time. Prior to the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949, individuals on low incomes were reliant on charitable or mutual aid schemes for legal advice and aid in the lower courts (Bradley, 2019). However, the later 19th century was a period in which there were major shifts in both the administration and the scope of the law. Some of this was a shift to rules-​based welfare. As Hurren (2007), King and Jones (2016) and Jones and Carter (2019) demonstrate, those denied welfare under the Poor Laws were able to challenge decisions by asking those in good standing in the community to write letters on their behalf. As the 19th century progressed, ideas about systematically organising welfare

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emerged in reformist circles, being put into practice by the Charity Organisation Society (COS), and with it, a shift to rules-​based welfare. Whils rules allowed for consistency and fairness in application, this did not help those who fell victim to a bad decision or interpretation of a rule, or who were less able to make their case in the first place.1 Moses (2018) draws our attention also to the role of industrialisation and urbanisation in the growth of tort law, as people sought redress for deaths, injuries and illnesses caused by workplaces and public transport. Further, the by-​product of reformist legislation that tried to improve conditions of employment, housing and the like was the need to know about the law in the first place, followed by having the ability to understand the law and how to challenge breaches of it effectively (Jones, 1940: 8–​9; Bradley, 2014). The aim of modernising social welfare provision in this period was to ameliorate poverty and to improve the conditions of working-​class families; the need for a mechanism to effectively help people to navigate these provisions emerged as a secondary consideration.

The gendering of social work As women were prevented from qualifying as solicitors or barristers2 before the Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act 1919  –​if not from studying the law at university –​it is essential to consider the implications of the gendering of work around the law and social work. While middle-​class women were excluded from the professions that their male relatives and peers entered, voluntary ‘social work’ with working-​ class women and children was a different matter. Scholars have paid considerable attention to women’s participation in philanthropy and the ways in which women were able to use voluntary social work as a means of leveraging power outside of the domestic sphere in the 19th and early 20th centuries (for an introduction, see Prochaska, 1980; Vicinus, 1985; Koven and Michel, 1993). Toynbee Hall, the first settlement house in the UK, was explicitly set up as a space for male social work volunteering. As Meacham (1987: 7, 47–​9, 82–​5) has shown, the co-​founder of Toynbee Hall, the Reverend Samuel Barnett, was concerned that voluntary action in mid-​Victorian London was dominated by middle-​and upper-​class women, who were not resident in the areas they worked in. In contrast, Barnett wanted to bring ‘university men’ to the East End of London to learn something of what it was to be poor, as part of their preparation for elite careers in Britain or the Empire. Meacham (1987) also demonstrates how Toynbee Hall –​unlike other settlements –​moved away from its 1880s

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work in trying to change the working-​class men of the East End through friendships made with ‘university men’ to researching social problems and attempting to influence policy by the later 1890s and 1900s. Voluntary social work was not ‘respectable’ for the young men of the middle and upper classes, as can be seen in the case of William Beveridge, who had to overcome parental disapproval in order to take up the post of sub-​warden at Toynbee Hall (Harris, 1977). This shift into ‘social policy’ as an acceptable field for men does not, however, adequately explain the ways in which gender shaped the professional boundaries around social work and the law. However, examining the ways in which men –​and later, women –​applied their professional expertise to social work through pro bono legal advice, which was known from the 1890s until shortly after the Second World War as ‘Poor Man’s Lawyer’ work, does. The Settlement House Movement in Britain had its main period of growth in the 1880s and 1890s. Following the establishment of Toynbee Hall and Oxford House in 1884, the settlement model was reinterpreted in different ways. If perceived social need was the main factor in deciding where to base operations, denomination and gender shaped what those operations would look like –​broadly speaking. This was particularly important in London where many settlement houses had a strong connection to Oxford and Cambridge Universities, whose constituent colleges were divided on denominational and gender grounds. Legal scholars and would-​be lawyers were drawn to men’s settlements like Mansfield House, Cambridge House and Toynbee Hall, all of which launched ‘Poor Man’s Lawyers’ evenings in the 1890s. The settlement house would lend a lawyer or group of lawyers a room in which to meet with members of the public who came to the settlement with a question for them (Blott, 1911: 4–​6). With women excluded from professional legal practice, women’s settlements could not offer Poor Man’s Lawyer services that were run by their residents until the interwar period. Indeed, the attention paid to settlement residents masks the work done by the wider body of people connected to them, including paid staff members who volunteered in their spare time –​and also how the gender and class mix of the volunteer body was more diverse than the residential policy might suggest (Bradley, 2009: 34–​46).

Frank Tillyard and the establishment of the Poor Man’s Lawyer Frank Tillyard came to Mansfield House in 1891 after studying at Balliol College, University of Oxford. Balliol was very strongly

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connected with Toynbee Hall, and Tillyard taught a short course on the law at the settlement house. Tillyard also befriended Percy Alden during his time at Oxford. Alden set up Mansfield House as a Non-​ Conformist settlement house for men in Canning Town, East London, and Tillyard took up residence there, volunteering alongside his burgeoning career as a barrister (The Times, 1961). Shortly before the opening of Mansfield House, the leader of the Salvation Army, General William Booth, published his exposé In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890). Booth argued that the working classes unnecessarily suffered legal problems and struggled to assert their rights because they did not have ready access in their social circles to people with the relevant expertise. The solution, as Booth saw it, was a ‘Poor Man’s Tribune’, which would allow working-​class people the chance to seek advice on their legal problems without fear of incurring expenses they could not afford (Booth, 1890: 255–​62). The Salvation Army would solve this problem by paying a firm of solicitors to advise people in need (Gurney-​ Champion, 1926: 21). Having come across Booth’s book, Tillyard took the idea of being a ‘Poor Man’s Lawyer’ at Mansfield House, offering an evening a week from March 1891 when people could come into the settlement to seek his advice. To begin with, Tillyard and Arthur Blott (who later joined him as a Poor Man’s Lawyer) could expect 30 visitors on average per session, rising to 55 to 60 visitors by 1903, and 60 to 70 by 1911 (Blott, 1911: 2).While Tillyard provided the legal advice on his own to begin with, the settlement’s first annual report (Mansfield House University Settlement, 1891: 4–​5) noted that he was supported by a committee, whose members ‘investigate the various cases, and give practical help to their satisfactory settlement’, as part of a ‘Poor Man’s Friend and Lawyer, or Mutual Aid Society’. The report did not provide any detail on the composition of the committee, but –​given that a companion settlement, Canning Town Women’s Settlement, opened in 1892 –​it was possible that this work was picked up by female volunteers. This is supported by the highlighted work of the committee, which focused on dealing with abused women and children, and helping them to find work outside the area, along with emigration support and pressurising for better sanitation in the area. Certainly, there was a division of labour between the legal advice given by Tillyard and what was effectively casework offered by the committee. This early iteration of the work of a Poor Man’s Lawyer did not last. Within a few months, Tillyard was joined by Arthur Blott, who continued to volunteer at the Poor Man’s Lawyer for more than 20  years, until his death in 1912. Blott was also active in growing the network of Poor Man’s Lawyer evenings in London. Tillyard

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and Blott worked together until 1898, when Tillyard and his family moved to Sheffield (The Times, 1961). Tillyard also became active in voluntary social work in his new city, becoming involved in Sheffield’s Neighbourhood Guild, founded in 1897. The Guild combined voluntary social work with the encouragement of ‘self-​help’, through trying to imbue the very poorest members of the community with the skills the volunteers thought they needed. Tillyard was both the Guild’s Poor Man’s Lawyer and its honorary secretary.

Early social work training and legal guidance Tillyard and his family remained in Sheffield for nearly a decade, until he took up a lectureship in law at the University of Birmingham in 1908. By the end of the 19th century, Birmingham was a major centre for both commerce and philanthropy, with the former funding the latter, and considerable innovation and reform in urban governance. The Women’s University Settlement had been founded in Birmingham in 1899, with the University following in 1900 (Rimmer, 1980). This settlement was unusual in having very close links with the University (Glasby, 1999:  109); this was not the case with the majority of university settlements founded in the 1880s and 1890s. Rather than indicating that a university governed, funded or otherwise had a formal relationship with a settlement, the ‘university’ in ‘university settlement’ referred to its establishment by graduates and students of a particular institution, and residency was by no means restricted to that college or university. In contrast, the close relationship in Birmingham between university and settlement offered opportunities for collaboration and innovation. Tillyard was employed as a lecturer in commercial law, but his experiences at Mansfield House and in Sheffield, combined with his subsequent work with the COS in Birmingham, equipped him to also teach on the University’s diploma in social studies. He was the director of practical work, arranging for students to gain hands-​on experience of social work through placements at the settlement (University of Birmingham, 1912; Rimmer, 1980). Tillyard was also doing Poor Man’s Lawyer work, setting up a Poor Man’s Lawyer Association in Birmingham in 1908 (Glasby, 1999: 46–​7). On one level, Tillyard embodied the Birmingham ‘spirit’ of capitalistic behaviour with philanthropic return, of the ‘civic gospel’, and of ‘social entrepreneurism’, which sought reform more widely through demonstrating the successes of innovative projects (see Briggs, 1990; Bartley, 2000). Tillyard possessed expertise in commercial law, along with a record of innovation in legal volunteering and involvement

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in a range of other voluntary activities –​and he therefore served as a model of how a professional man could be successful in business and in serving the community. While the model established by Tillyard and his settlement colleagues was relatively successful in mobilising lawyers to volunteer in this way, it was based on a number of presuppositions. The first of these was that lawyers with expertise in commercial law, for example, were as able to advise people on matters of welfare legislation or landlord and tenant law. In many cases, basic advice was all that was needed, although increasing regulation and legislation would mean that more specialist knowledge would be required, particularly with the advent of the welfare state from the 1940s. Second, the needs of the poor could be accommodated in a lawyer’s spare time, and therefore the approach to this problem should be supply-​rather than demand-​ led. This had two dimensions. As Gurney-​Champion (1926: 19) noted of Poor Man’s Lawyer provision in the 1920s, lawyers were often very enthusiastic at the start of their volunteering, but increasingly found it hard to balance it with their commitments at home and work; enthusiasm waned along with the provision. Larger concerns –​ like the Poor Man’s Lawyer groups at Toynbee Hall and Cambridge House –​were less threatened by this. For working people, this model of volunteering also meant that advice could be had without taking time off work, albeit for those who worked a standard day. Attempts to reconcile these issues would occupy legal activists throughout the 20th century and beyond. However, one solution to the question of relevant legal expertise that could be accessed at different times and in different ways lay in the training of social workers in the law. The newer, ‘feminine’ professions of teaching and social work did not have the same restrictions on women’s participation, and also offered training through the growing number of colleges and universities that opened in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. University-​based social work training emerged in a diploma course at Birmingham before the First World War, as well as at Bristol, Liverpool and the London School of Economics, where there was also the same combination of a new university or college and a connection with a women’s settlement. The Birmingham social work diploma was one of the first offered to would-​be professional social workers and laid the foundations for the development of the social work profession in Britain (Glasby, 1999:  109–​11). In addition to teaching trainees about the practicalities of social work, Tillyard was concerned with guiding them on the relevant areas of the law. He also branched out into publishing training manuals in the law for social workers. Tillyard and Hamnett’s Legal Hints for Social Workers (1916) was an accessible, pocket-​sized

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booklet that ran to four editions. The various editions were published in conjunction with the National Union of Women Workers (later the National Council of Women), which was founded in 1895 to support women in both voluntary and paid social work (Covert, 2004). Legal Hints was akin to a triage manual for female social workers in this situation, providing some basic legal information and suggestions as to where clients could be sent for help, and outlining the specific legal jurisdictions of Factory and Sanitary Inspectors, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) Inspectors, Poor Law Relieving Officers and Medical Officers of Health, in addition to the police. All these agencies were established (or reformed in the case of the Poor Law) in the 19th century, reflecting the development of bodies of knowledge about health, safety and sanitation, awareness of child psychology and wellbeing, and the perceived need to rationalise and professionalise public order. They were also the fruits of successful campaigns to either create roles under a local or national state remit or, in the case of the NSPCC, to be a charitable organisation vested with state-​sanctioned powers (Berridge, 1990; Cooter, 1992; NSPCC, 2007). Voluntary social workers were themselves part of this world in which the role and remit of the state was expanding, along with rapidly developing professions. These legal responsibilities needed to be mapped out because they were recent and complex developments. They were also arenas in which middle-​class women were increasingly exerting power and carving out a role for themselves, particularly as these were areas that were less desirable to middle-​class men (Koven and Michel, 1990, 1993).

Spreading the Poor Man’s Lawyer In addition to Tillyard taking his model of a Poor Man’s Lawyer to Sheffield and Birmingham, his friends from Mansfield House transplanted it to other settlement houses. Following Mansfield House’s lead, Cambridge House in Camberwell set up a Poor Man’s Lawyer in 1894, and Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel followed in 1898 (Jones, 1940:14; Cambridge House, 2017). At Toynbee Hall, the explicit motivation for setting up such a project was because residents had ‘long … felt that the means of administering the law in the just interests of the poor, have been inadequate’ –​though their aim was to ‘advise, not prosecute’ (Toynbee Record, 1898). The Poor Man’s Lawyer here operated in the context of considerable activism around housing rights and conditions, with a Tenants’ Protection Committee being formed around the same time. The Tenants’ Protection Committee had the

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services of a solicitor and would try to take cases to court (Toynbee Record, 1899). The two merged in 1905 (Pimlott, 1935: 119). The spread of the settlement outside London also took the Poor Man’s Lawyer with it. The Manchester University Settlement was founded in 1895 and offered separate settlements for men and women (Eagles, 2009). It established a Poor Man’s Lawyer meeting in 1898, and then held a conference for all such services in Manchester and Salford to bring them into line with their practices in 1909 (Waller, 1953: 12–​13; Stocks and Rogers, 1956: 27). Liverpool University Settlement (for male residents) and the Liverpool Victoria Settlement (for women) both offered a Poor Man’s Lawyer service, but the settlements merged their legal offerings into one overseen by the Liverpool Personal Service Society in 1919 (BARS, 1938: 15; Jones, 1940: 33). When the short-​lived Croydon Settlement opened in 1905, a Poor Man’s Lawyer was the first service to be listed, followed by a Poor Man’s Doctor, educational classes, employment support, savings clubs and a soup kitchen (Nottingham Evening Post, 1905). Poor Man’s Lawyer work provided an opportunity for a different kind of ‘social justice’ work, and the cases presented by the early women lawyers provide some sense of what this could be at a settlement. Edith Berthen was one of the first ten women to qualify as a solicitor in 1922. Prior to this, she had worked as a school teacher, before taking a degree in philosophy and undertaking social work in Liverpool. After qualification, Berthen practised first in Liverpool before moving to London. She had a practice with Hector Munro, a solicitor who was then resident at Toynbee Hall and served as a Poor Man’s Lawyer there (Cruickshank, 2018). Berthen joined Munro in working at Toynbee Hall, but she also worked as a Poor Man’s Lawyer at a number of other East London settlements: Canning Town Women’s Settlement, Dame Colet House, and the Betts Street Jewish Settlement (Cruickshank, 2015; Lord Chancellor’s Office, 1926). In a 1927 profile piece (Vote, 1927), Berthen spoke of beginning her career as a school teacher. Berthen soon discovered that, while the legal knowledge that a teacher might acquire was important for helping working-​class families, the legal powers possessed by a lawyer were critical. Rather than having any particular passion for the law, Berthen became a solicitor because she felt she had the right kind of mind for legal work. Leaving school teaching behind for the law gave Berthen the opportunity to properly intervene in problems faced by East London families (Cruickshank, 2017). Berthen’s friend, Beatrice Honor Davy, ran a free legal advice clinic at the Peckham Settlement in South-​East London between 1924 and 1928 (Stephens, 2002: 49). Both Berthen and Davy were deeply

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committed to working on behalf of the needy. When writing for the Careers for Girls book in 1928 (Cairns, 1928), Berthen highlighted the possibilities for solicitors to incorporate social work into their practice, with Davy expressing her frustrations at the professional obstacles for barristers who wished to do more to benefit the poorest (Bourne, 2018). Issues around working-​class people’s access to the law began to shift from being something practical provided by settlement houses to informing both the campaigning and capacity-​building work of umbrella groups formed at the start of the 20th century. The National Council for Social Service (NCSS) was established in 1919, following the merger of the Guilds of Help, the Social Welfare Movement, and the Liverpool Council for Voluntary Aid, and it brought together a network of local Councils for Social Service (Brasnett, 1969; Smith, 2019). The British Association of Residential Settlements (BARS) was also established around the same time. The London Council for Social Service (LCSS) sought to bring Poor Man’s Lawyer work in the capital into closer cooperation with its own work. The LCSS had a legal and business advice standing committee: the committee was staffed by barristers and ‘laymen (assisted by a rota of solicitors)’, and could provide advice (LCSS, 1919, 1920: 23). The formation of the second Finlay Committee to examine the Poor Persons’ Rules for divorce in High Court cases prompted the LCSS to invite all the volunteers offering Poor Man’s Lawyer services to join this committee in order to collectively prepare a submission to the Finlay Commissioners. The networks of these umbrella groups offer a means of understanding the scale of Poor Man’s Lawyer work, through their own publications and through data given to the Finlay Committee, and, later, to J. Mervyn Jones, a researcher at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Around 1926, the LCSS found that at least 14,000 applications for advice at Poor Man’s Lawyer services were made each year. For most applicants, advice was all that was needed, though a very small proportion were taken to court and therefore incurred costs. These costs could usually be met through the local CSS branch or the COS, or from public donations made to individual Poor Man’s Lawyer services (LCSS, 1926: 23–​4). The NCSS presented data on ten Poor Man’s Lawyer services across England to the Finlay Committee: Sheffield; Birmingham; Leicester; Manchester; Halifax; Liverpool, Birkenhead and Wallasey; Chesterfield; Bristol; Leeds; and Brighton (Committee on Legal Aid for the Poor, 1928:  14–​17). Of these ten, only Leicester, Halifax, Brighton and Chesterfield did not have a current or historical link to Poor Man’s Lawyer work at a settlement. As the LCSS data demonstrated, activity

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in London was much greater, with 38 Poor Man’s Lawyer services, of which 12 were based at settlements, with the others based at local CSS groups, missions, chapels and a public library (Committee on Legal Aid for the Poor, 1928: 18). This activity continued to grow during the 1930s. In 1939, Jones found 125 Poor Man’s Lawyer evenings in operation in England and Wales, with 55 running in London (Jones, 1940:  13). The Poor Man’s Lawyer evenings at settlement houses continued to be the largest in terms of both demand and operation. At Toynbee Hall, where four or five lawyers came along on a Wednesday evening, 1,600 people were seen in 1938; Cambridge House’s Poor Man’s Lawyer welcomed 3,000 (Jones, 1940:  18). Although the settlements were no longer the only provider of Poor Man’s Lawyer services, this type of service had become firmly embedded within the wider sphere of voluntary action by the interwar period. As the eventual report of the Finlay Committee did not recommend any changes that would remove the need for Poor Man’s Lawyers, the LCSS decided to focus on improving access to aid for county court cases. In England, county courts deal with the majority of civil law cases; access to these courts was therefore critical for any working-​class clients with a case (LCSS, 1928: 30–​1). The result was the Bentham Committee, established in 1929, to offer financial support to pursue court cases where there was sufficient legal merit. Funds for this came from costs recovered by Poor Man’s Lawyers on the one hand, and regular fundraising activities on the other (Committee on Legal Aid and Legal Advice in England and Wales, 1945:  15). The Bentham Committee and its supporters continued to put pressure on the Law Society and the Lord Chancellor’s Secretary to create statutory provision for those working people who needed to go to the county courts (The Times, 1929). This campaign was eventually successful in that the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949 made provision for financial support for county court cases and for legal advice in a solicitor’s office. However, due to a poor economic climate, these provisions were not fully enacted until 1955, in the light of significant lobbying by the Society for Labour Lawyers and the Trades Union Congress (Bradley, 2019:  82–​3, 107–​8). Another campaign from the settlement house networks was more successful. As Tebbutt (1983) and Johnson (1985) have shown, hire purchase became a popular way for working-​class families to be able to afford consumer goods, as it allowed items to be taken home immediately and the payments spread out in affordable amounts over a longer period. However, hire purchase was unregulated, and –​as settlement houses increasingly heard –​people could experience significant problems if, for example, retailers changed the terms and

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conditions of the lease without warning, or customers were struggling to afford payments. Delegates to the 1932 BARS conference raised concerns about hire purchase, resulting in a resolution being passed to try to tackle these issues (BARS, 1938). A working group on hire purchase was formed, which consisted of J.J. Mallon, the warden of Toynbee Hall, and E.S. Watkins, a resident and Poor Man’s Lawyer at the settlement, with Ellen Wilkinson, the Labour MP for Jarrow in the north-​east of England. With support from the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, the team drafted what would become the Hire Purchase Act 1938, which offered greater protection to consumers (Haldane Society, 1938:  7; Vernon, 1982:  149; Bradley, 2019:  53). By the end of the 1930s, the impact of the Poor Man’s Lawyers and the sheer scale of demand for advice and information on a range of matters was increasingly recognised both by a range of agencies. National newspapers and the BBC offered advice columns and services to inform citizens of their rights (Bradley, 2014), while the NCSS and the government developed what would become the Citizens’ Advice Bureaux on its launch in the early days of the Second World War (Richards, 1989; Citron, 1990; Blaiklock, 2012).

Conclusion The early Poor Man’s Lawyer evenings at settlement houses allowed men with legal expertise to offer their services to the local community. On the one hand, this enabled middle-​class men to do voluntary social work, which was then strongly associated with middle-​class women. On the other hand, with women’s exclusion from the legal profession until the early 1920s, the Poor Man’s Lawyer was a means by which female social workers could access legal expertise. Accessing expertise took different forms: it could be through training in relevant law on a social work diploma or having a reference book to call on, or it could be through referring clients to a Poor Man’s Lawyer evening for help. Together, this enabled lawyers to ‘do social work’, while it also embedded the notion of social workers ‘doing law’. This professional exchange became embedded in the growing social work and activist networks of the 1920s and 1930s, and their campaigning for the rights of working-​class people before and after the advent of the welfare state. Notes The Poor Laws emerged from the medieval Church system in which members of a parish paid a tenth of their income to the Church; a third of this income was reserved for poor relief. The system underwent major reform through the Poor Law

1

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The Settlement House Movement Revisited Act 1601, which required parishes to take responsibility for dealing with the needs of the poor in their parish, raising funds for this through levying a rate (local tax) on residents. The challenges of industrialisation led to further review through the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, which required would-​be recipients of welfare to enter the workhouse. Workhouse conditions were intended to be less comfortable than the living afforded by the lowest-​paid job in the area. This system continued until 1929, when responsibility was passed from parishes to county and borough councils (Cannon and Crowcroft, 2015). 2 There are two branches of the legal profession in the four nations of the UK. Broadly speaking, solicitors deal directly with the public and handle work that can be done without going to court or in preparation for a case. Barristers take referrals from solicitors and represent clients in court. In Scotland, barristers are known as advocates.

References BARS (British Association of Residential Settlements) (1938) Report 1935–​38. London: British Association of Residential Settlements. Bartley, P. (2000) ‘Moral regeneration: Women and the civic gospel in Birmingham, 1870–​1914’, Midlands History, 25: 61–​143. Berridge, V. (1990) ‘Health and medicine’. In F.M.L. Thompson (ed) The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–​1950. Volume 3: Social Agencies and Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blaiklock, O. (2012) ‘Advising the citizen: Citizens Advice Bureaux, voluntarism and the welfare state in England, 1938–​1964’, PhD thesis, Kings College London. Blott, A. (1911) Legal Dispensaries: An Account of the Poor Man’s Lawyer Movement. London: Avenue Press. Booth, W. (1890) In Darkest England and the Way Out. London: International Headquarters. Bourne, J. (2018) ‘Davy, Beatrice Honour (1885–​1966), barrister and later solicitor’. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bradley, K. (2009) Poverty, Philanthropy and the State: Charities and the Working Classes in London, 1918–​1979. Manchester:  Manchester University Press. Bradley, K. (2014) ‘ “All human life is there”: The John Hilton Bureau of the News of the World and access to free legal advice, c.1938–​1973’, English Historical Review, 129(539): 888–​911. Bradley, K. (2019) Lawyers for the Poor: Legal Advice, Voluntary Action and Citizenship in England, 1890–​1990. Manchester:  Manchester University Press. Brasnett, M. (1969) Voluntary Social Action: A History of the National Council of Social Service, 1919–​1969. London: National Council of Social Service.

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Briggs, A. (1990) Victorian Cities:  Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Melbourne, London. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Cairns, J.A.R. (ed) (1928) Careers for Girls. London: Hutchinson. Cambridge House (2017) ‘Our story’, Cambridge House [Online]. Available at: https://​ch1889.org/​our-​story [Accessed 20 July 2019]. Cannon, J. and Crowcroft, R. (2015) ‘Poor Laws’. In A Dictionary of British History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Citron, J. (1990) Citizens Advice Bureaux: For the Community, By the Community. London: Pluto. Committee on Legal Aid and Legal Advice in England and Wales (1945) Report of the Committee on Legal Aid and Legal Advice in England and Wales, Cmd. 6641. London, The Stationery Office. Committee on Legal Aid for the Poor (1928) Report of the Committee on Legal Aid for the Poor, Cmd. 3016. London: The Stationery Office. Cooter, R. (1992) In The Name of the Child: Health and Welfare 1880–​ 1940. London: Routledge. Covert, J.T. (2004) ‘Creighton, Louise Hume (1850–​1936)’. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cruickshank, E. (2015) ‘Carrie Morrison’, Spark21 [Online]. Available at:  http://​first100years.org.uk/​carrie-​morrison-​2 [Accessed 31 March 2017]. Cruickshank, E. (2017) ‘Edith Annie Jones Berthen’, Spark21 [Online]. Available at: https://​first100years.org.uk/​edith-a​ nnie-j​ ones-b​ erthen [Accessed 18 July 2019]. Cruickshank, E.B. (2018) ‘Berthen, Edith Annie Jones (1877–​ 1951)’. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eagles, S. (2009) ‘Thomas Coglan Horsfall and Manchester Art Museum and University Settlement’, Infed [Online]. Available at:  www.infed.org/​settlements/​manchester_​art_​museum_​and_​ university_​settlement.htm [Accessed 16 August 2017]. Glasby, J. (1999) Poverty and Opportunity:  One Hundred Years of the Birmingham Settlement. Studley: Brewin. Goriely, T. (2006) ‘Gratuitous assistance to the “ill-​dressed”: Debating civil legal aid in England and Wales from 1914–​1939’, International Journal of the Legal Profession, 13(1): 41–​67. Gurney-​Champion, F.C.G. (1926) Justice and the Poor in England. London: George Routledge and Sons. Haldane Society (1938) Annual Report for the Year 1937–​3 8. London: Haldane Society. Harris, J. (1977) William Beveridge: A Biography, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Hurren, E.T. (2007) Protesting about Pauperism: Poverty, Politics and Poor Relief in Late-​Victorian England, 1870–​1900. Woodbridge:  Royal Historical Society/​Boydell and Brewer. Johnson, P. (1985) Saving and Spending: The Working-​Class Economy in Britain 1870–​1939. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jones, J.M. (1940) Free Legal Advice in England and Wales. Oxford: Slatter and Rose. Jones, P.D. and Carter, N. (2019) ‘Writing for redress:  Redrawing the epistolary relationship under the New Poor Law’, Continuity and Change, 34(3): 375–​99. King, S.A. and Jones, P. (2016) ‘Testifying for the poor: Epistolary advocates and the negotiation of parochial relief in England, 1800–​ 1834’, Journal of Social History, 49(4): 784–​807. Koven, S. and Michel, S. (1990) ‘Womanly duties: Maternalist politics and the origins of welfare states in France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States 1870–​1920’, American Historical Review, 95(4): 1076–​108. Koven, S. and Michel, S. (eds) (1993) Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States. London: Routledge. LCSS (London Council of Social Service) (1919) Intermediate Report for the Year 1919. London: LCSS. LCSS (1920) First Annual Report 1919–​1920. London: LCSS. LCSS (1926) Annual Report 1925–​1926. London: LCSS. LCSS (1928) Unity and Co-​operation: A Year’s Social Service in London. Annual Report 1927–​1928. London: LCSS. Lord Chancellor’s Office (1926) ‘Evidence of Edith Berthen to the Finlay Committee, 3 June’ [Manuscript], LCO/​2/​981, National Archives, London. Mansfield House University Settlement (1891) Report for the Year Ending September 1891. London: Mansfield House University Settlement. Meacham, S. (1987) Toynbee Hall and Social Reform 1880–​1914: the Search for Community. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Morgan, R.I. (1994) ‘The introduction of Civil Legal Aid in England and Wales, 1914–​1949’, Twentieth Century British History, 5(1): 38–7​ 6. Moses, J. (2018) The First Modern Risk: Workplace Accidents and the Origins of European Social States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nottingham Evening Post (1905) ‘Social settlement’, Nottingham Evening Post, 12 January, p 3. NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) (2007) A Pocket History of the N.S.P.C.C. London: NSPCC. Pimlott, J.A.R. (1935) Toynbee Hall:  Fifty Years of Social Reform. London: J.M. Dent.

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Prochaska, F.K. (1980) Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-​Century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Richards, J. (1989) Inform, Advise and Support: The Story of 50 Years of the Citizens Advice Bureau. Cambridge: Lutterworth. Rimmer, J. (1980) Troubles Shared: The Story of a Settlement 1899–​1979. Birmingham: Phlogiston. Smith, J.D. (2019) 100 Years of NCVO and Voluntary Action Idealists and Realists. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Stephens, J. (2002) The Peckham Settlement 1896–​2000: A Story of Poverty, Privilege, Pioneering and Partnership. Fordingbridge: Stephens Press. Stocks, M.D. and Rogers, B. (1956) Fifty Years in Every Street: The Story of the Manchester University Settlement. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Tebbutt, M. (1983) Making Ends Meet:  Pawnbroking and Working-​ Class Credit. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Tillyard, F. and Hamnett, F.H. (1916) Legal Hints for Social Workers. London: National Union of Women’s Workers. The Times (1929) ‘Poor Man’s Lawyers’, The Times, 26 June, p 13. The Times (1961) ‘Obituary:  Sir Frank Tillyard’, The Times, 11 July, p 12. Toynbee Record (1898) ‘Occasional notes’, Toynbee Record, November, p 31. Toynbee Record (1899) ‘Tenants’ Protection Committee’, Toynbee Record, March, p 91. University of Birmingham (1912) ‘Council Minutes, 31 January’ [Manuscr ipt], UB/​C OU/​1 /​8 , Cadbury Research Library, Birmingham. Vernon, B.D. (1982) Ellen Wilkinson: A Biography. London: Croom Helm. Vicinus, M. (1985) Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–​1920. London: Virago. Vote (1927) ‘A Poor Man’s Lawyer’, Vote, 22 April, p 1. Waller, R.D. (ed) (1953) Harold Pilkington Turner: Memories of his Work and Personality. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Part III Research in settlement houses and its impact

10

Putting knowledge into action: a social work perspective on settlement house research Dayana Lau At the end of the 19th century, the consequences of the Industrial Revolution were dominant issues in public debate in many Western countries. In this context, the widespread practice of ‘slumming’ emerged (Ross, 2007). Well-​to-​do people made their way into the slums to encounter the lives of the ‘other half ’ (Riis, 1890). This was based on the idea that first-​hand experiences among the poor are essential to deal with social problems (Koven, 2004). In particular, metropolitan living conditions, the risks of industrial work, moral decay, upheaval of the family and the situation of immigrants and so-​ called ‘coloured people’ were examined in this manner. As one of the largest social reform movements of the late 19th and early 20th century, the Settlement House Movement also embraced this idea, and often based its practical work on groundbreaking empirical investigations on the living conditions of slum dwellers, not only to provide first-​hand accounts, but also to promote social reform. Subsequently, between the 1890s and the 1930s, US progressive reformers produced a tremendous volume of research, which comprises very diverse topics and approaches. The investigations arising from settlement houses oscillate between small, local and short-​term studies and research projects with huge samples, some of which were carried out nationwide and over decades. The choice of methods in the studies also reflects a broad spectrum that is difficult to capture in a nutshell, but was crucial to the development of empirical social research in many respects and –​in addition to the new discipline of sociology (Lengermann and Niebrugge, 2002) –​to the emerging profession of social work (Shaw, 2014a). Despite all this heterogeneity, the settlement studies jointly interlinked the production of scientific knowledge with reform-​oriented political activism. This political foundation appeared in various forms. First and most obvious, the findings represented a basis for political reform

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proposals and scientific treatment in the sense of ‘social engineering’ (Giddings, 1924; Brückweh et al, 2012). Second, these studies sought to give rise to new forms of social action. Thus, the profession of social work, which emerged during the height of the Settlement House Movement, was shaped by its concerns and put them into action (Muncy, 1991; Lau, 2019). Third, the practice of knowledge production itself could be perceived as politically significant and as such was ‘linked in part to the democratisation of knowledge in a social reform perspective’ (Chambon, 2012: 9). One goal, for example, was to develop innovative approaches of social research that emphasise the perspective of affected persons. At the same time, a scientific knowledge base should enable the movement to claim expertise in treating social problems. Referring to the Social Survey Movement, Chambon states: ‘This was a social movement using social work as disciplinary domain of influence’ (Chambon, 2012:  10). Turner (1996), giving the example of the Pittsburgh Survey, considers it an ‘episode in the history of expertise’. Hence, both authors view the specific form of settlement-​based social research as, among other aspects, a strategic tool that made a significant contribution to the development of the profession of social work. This chapter explores the link between settlement house research and the shaping of social work as a profession in two ways. First, it provides an overview of research topics and methodological diversity. This overview is based on a sample of individual and collective studies that can be traced back to the initiative of social settlements or national settlement associations. Second, two studies are examined in greater depth, focusing on their implications for the emerging social work profession.

Social settlements, new social sciences and the spreading of settlement house research In the research undertaken by settlement houses, an early connection between the emerging disciplines of sociology and social work becomes apparent. Since the early 1980s, sociologists have referred to the contribution of mostly female settlement residents to the emergence of sociology and their innovative empirical approaches (Deegan, 1981, 1988; Lengermann and Niebrugge, 1998, 2002, 2018; MacLean and Williams, 2012; Williams and MacLean, 2015). In this research, the hitherto hidden scientific works of the settlement residents, known as ‘settlement sociology’, were painstakingly rediscovered and examined as sociological avant-​garde. In this view, their close relationship to social

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work –​viewed as a fragile, inferior discipline –​was seen as an unwanted attribution that contributed to the concealment of this important work (Oakley, 2017: 21). However, these studies can be seen as new forms of knowledge production that were not only distinguished from academic research, but should also –​in the words of Shaw (2014b) –​be regarded as a root of sociological social work. In addition to this interconnected formation of sociology and social work, the transnational dissemination of knowledge is crucial for the emergence of the Settlement House Movement. This process includes the translation of settlement house research approaches and objects into different cultural contexts and is framed by an overarching process of ‘scientisation of the social’ (Raphael, 1996, 2012). According to Raphael, social sciences gained increasing influence at all levels of society in Western countries in the early 20th century. Academically educated professionals played a central role in the process of imparting social science knowledge production by solving social problems. The members of the Settlement House Movement acted as mediating experts who actively participated in the transnational translation of social science knowledge, and thereby promoted the transnational dissemination of social work. The US residents were inspired by studies of social problems conducted in European universities since the middle of the 19th century. Furthermore, the empirical research on new poverty in the ‘old world’, as conducted by Charles Booth (1889–​1903), Seebohm Rowntree (1899) and Beatrice and Sidney Webb (1912) became an important source of inspiration for them (Kellogg and Deardorff, 1928: 4 ff.). In turn, the research of the US settlements was translated transnationally and spread into other national contexts in Europe and beyond (Chiang, 2001; Köngeter, 2013). These transnational translations strongly promoted the global emergence of specific fields of expertise. A third aspect concerns the political positioning of progressive researchers. Mostly located in the middle class, settlement house researchers aimed to establish vis-​à-​vis contacts to neighbours beyond social boundaries, to develop participatory approaches and to work together with (and not for) the neighbourhood or community (for example, Trolander, 1987; Lissak, 1989; Carson, 1990; Crocker, 1992; Bullard, 2014; Williams and MacLean, 2015). However, the principle of participation also echoed on the methodological level, for example in the work of Florence Kelley, who deliberately distinguishes her research from academic approaches (Kelley, 1986; Sklar, 1995). As Oakley puts it, Kelley’s ‘argument for social work and social research differed from the university model in understanding social science knowledge as deriving

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from civic participation across class, race and ethnic divisions’ (Oakley, 2017: 24). Kelley represents an alternative notion of research practice that opposes paternalism and injustice. This conception of research as political action has profoundly shaped settlement house research approaches, which will be considered more closely in the following section.

Settlement house research from 1890 to 1936: social problems and the professionalisation of social work In this broad context, an unwieldy number of local and national investigations into recent ‘social evils’ arose. They differed in aims, methods and scope, but always focused on the ‘working poor’, most of whom perceived as ‘new immigrants’ or ‘coloured people’, and aimed to solve social issues associated with them. As mentioned, some attempts to compile these very diverse studies have already been made. In the following, I largely refer to contemporary sources such as the Bibliography of College, Social, University and Church Settlements (Montgomery, 1905) and the Handbook of Settlements (Woods and Kennedy, 1911) together with some pioneering secondary studies, for example by Deegan (1991), Lengermann and Niebrugge (2002) and Williams and MacLean (2015). The search resulted in a compilation of 51 major studies. This sample covers the period from 1890 to 1936 and includes studies that are either limited to individual neighbourhoods, cover multiple areas, or are even carried out at national level. Studies were included that represent a larger empirical survey of their own and were either conducted by active settlement residents or commissioned by settlement houses or settlement associations. The compilation does not claim to be complete; thus the following statements are limited to this sample. In addition to these criteria, the studies were recorded according to the problem they focus on and grouped into corresponding categories. The following categories of social problems were identified:  budgets, the city and the neighbourhoods, ‘coloured people’, family disintegration, health, housing, industrial work, immigration, moral dangers, and working girls and women. Each of these topics has been defined and described as a distinguished social problem by the authors, and the categories were formed accordingly (see Box 10.1). After presenting a list and giving a short, descriptive overview of the recorded studies from US-​based settlements, variations in the work on social problems, more in-​depth methodological approaches and recommendations for action are shown on the basis of two investigations. This chapter concludes in a final discussion of the concept of settlement house research and its relation to the professionalisation of social work.

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Box 10.1: Settlement house research by subject Budgets 1.

Isabel Eaton (1895): Receipts and expenditures of certain wage-​earners in the garment trades –​Hull House, Chicago 2. Louise More (1907): Wage earners’ budgets –​Greenwich House, New York 3. Margaret Bynington (1910): Homestead: The households of a milltown –​ Kingsley House, Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Survey, led by Paul Kellogg, volume 2 of 6) . Sue Clark and Edith Wyatt (1911): Making both ends meet: The income and 4 outlay of New York working girls –​Henry Street Settlement, New York 5. John C. Kennedy (1914): Wages and family budgets in the Chicago Stockyards District –​University of Chicago Settlement, Chicago (research project on the Stockyards District of Chicago, led by John C. Kennedy, volume 1 of 3) 6. Mabel Nassau (1915): Old age poverty in Greenwich Village –​Greenwich House, New York

The city and the neighbourhoods 7. . 8 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

Residents of Hull-​House (1895): Hull-​House maps and papers –​Hull-​House, Chicago (led by Florence Kelley) Robert Woods (1898): The city wilderness –​South End House, Boston Robert Woods (1902/​1903): Americans in process –​South End House, Boston Thomas Jones (1904): The sociology of a New York city block –​Union Settlement, New York Elsa Herzfeld and Natalie Henderson (1906): A West Side rookery –​ Greenwich House, New York Ernest Talbert (1912): Opportunities in school and industry for children of the Stockyards District –​University of Chicago Settlement, Chicago (research project on the Stockyards District of Chicago, led by John C. Kennedy, volume 2 of 3) Paul Kellogg (1914): The Pittsburgh District: Civic frontage –​Kingsley House, Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Survey, led by Paul Kellogg, volume 5 of 6) Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch (1917): The city workers’ world –​Greenwich House, New York Robert Woods and Albert Kennedy (1923): The zone of emergence: Observations of the lower middle and upper working class communities of Boston 1905–​1914 –​South End House, Boston

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‘Coloured people’ 16. W.E.B. Du Bois (1899): The Philadelphia Negro –​College Settlement Association/​College Settlement Philadelphia 17. Mary Ovington (1911): Half a man: The status of the Negro in New York –​ Greenwich House, New York 18. Louise DeKoven Bowen (1913): The colored people of Chicago –​Hull-​House, Chicago 19. John Daniels (1914): In freedom’s birthplace: A study of the Boston Negroes –​ South End House, Boston

Family disintegration 20. Lilian Brandt (1905): 574 deserters and their families –​Greenwich House, New York 21. Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott (1912): The delinquent child and the home –​ Hull-​House, Chicago and Chicago Commons, Chicago

Health 22. Amelia Shapleigh (1894): A study of dietaries –​College Settlement Association / College Settlement Philadelphia 23. Lilian Brandt (1903): Social aspects of Tuberculosis –​Greenwich House, New York

Housing 24. Jacob Riis (1890): How the other half lives: Studies among the tenements of New York –​King’s Daughters Settlement (the later Jacob Riis Neighbourhood Settlement), New York 25. Frances van Gasken (1895): Tenement houses in Philadelphia –​College Settlement Association / College Settlement Philadelphia 26. Robert Hunter (1901): Tenement conditions in Chicago –​Hull-​House, Chicago 27. Mary Sayles (1903): Housing conditions in Jersey City –​College Settlements Association / Whittier House, Jersey 28. Emily Dinwiddie (1904): Housing conditions in Philadelphia –​Greenwich House, New York 29. Albert Wolfe (1906): The lodging house problem in Boston –​South End House, Boston 30. Edith Abbott (1936): The tenements of Chicago, 1908–​1935 –​Hull-​House, Chicago

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Industrial work 31. Katharine Woods (1895): Accidents in factories and elsewhere –​College Settlement Association 32. Roswell Phelps (1903): South End House factory operatives –​South End House, Boston 33. Frances Kellor (1904): Out of work: A study of unemployment –​Henry Street Settlement, New York 34. Crystal Eastman (1910): Work-​accidents and the law –​Kingsley House, Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Survey, led by Paul Kellogg, volume 3 of 6) 35. John Fitch (1910): The steel workers –​Kingsley House, Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Survey, led by Paul Kellogg, volume 4 of 6) 36. Josephine Goldmark (1912): Fatigue and efficiency: A study in industry –​ Henry Street Settlement, New York 37. Paul Kellogg (1914): Wage-​earning Pittsburgh –​Kingsley House, Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Survey, led by Paul Kellogg, volume 6 of 6) 38. Alice Hamilton (1929): Industrial poisons in the United States –​Hull-​House, Chicago 39. Clinch Calkins (1930): Some folks won’t work –​National Federation of Settlements (research project on unemployment, volume 1 of 2) 40. Marion Elderton (1931): Case studies of unemployment –​ National Federation of Settlements (research project on unemployment, volume 2 of 2)

Immigration 1. Emily Balch (1910): Our Slavic fellow citizens –​Denison House, Boston 4 42. Grace Abbott (1917): The immigrant and the community –​Hull-​House, Chicago 43. Sophonisba Breckinridge (1921): New homes for old –​Hull-​House, Chicago

Moral dangers 4. E.C. Moore (1897): Social value of the saloon –​Hull-​House, Chicago 4 45. Royal Melendy (1900/​1901): The saloon in Chicago I/​II –​Chicago Commons, Chicago 46. Louise DeKoven Bowen (1910/​1917): The public dance halls of Chicago–​ Hull-​House, Chicago 47. Martha Bruère (1927): Does prohibition work? –​National Federation of Settlements

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Working girls and women 48. Elizabeth Butler (1909): Women and trades: Pittsburgh 1907–​1908 –​ Kingsley House, Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Survey, led by Paul Kellogg, volume 1 of 6) 49. Edith Abbott: Women in industry (1910) –​Hull-​House, Chicago 50. Louise Montgomery (1913): The American girl in the Stockyards District –​ University of Chicago Settlement, Chicago (research project on the Stockyards District of Chicago, led by John C. Kennedy, volume 3 of 3) 51. Robert Woods and Albert Kennedy (1913): Young working girls: A summary of evidence from two thousand social workers –​National Federation of Settlements

As can be seen in Box 10.1, even before the turn of the century –​which was the founding phase of the Settlement House Movement in the US –​nine of these studies were published. However, the summit of research activities reflected in this list is in the 1900s and 1910s. During this period, 34 works were published. A  further eight publications followed in the 1920s and 1930s. The vast majority of the studies were carried out by women, some of them involved in multiple projects. A total of 14 settlement houses, mainly located in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, were active as research hubs. It is striking that the research topics remain surprisingly persistent over the period studied. This reflects an accumulation of knowledge over many years and refers to an evolving network of cooperating persons and organisations. As Muncy (1991) has shown by the example of the US Children’s Bureau, there is a strong link between reform-​based research on social problems and the establishment of corresponding social agencies, whereby new expert fields arise and consolidate. Settlement house research is rich in innovative and pioneering qualitative and quantitative methods. As Oakley summarises, these include ‘house-​to-​house surveys, in-​depth interviews, questionnaires, personal budget-​keeping, participant observation and the use of key informants; their approaches to secondary data analysis covered using censuses, legislation, memoirs and diaries, wage and cost-​of-​living records, court and industrial accident reports, tax rolls and nursery rhymes’ (Oakley, 2017:  26). This innovative spirit also extends to the processing of the data obtained, which was made available to the general public in the form of maps, photographs, drawings, tables and exhibitions, most notably in the case of the Hull-​House Maps and

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Papers (Residents of Hull-​House, 1895) and the Pittsburgh Survey (Kellogg, 1914). In summary, the Settlement House Movement developed ‘scientised’ political reform efforts and intervention strategies, as many other social reform movements did at the turn of the 20th century (Raphael, 2012). In this way, the movement exerted a tremendous influence on the professionalisation of social work, illustrated by the example of a study on Chicago tenements (Abbott, 1936). This study was carried out from 1908 onwards in the context of the School of Social Service Administration, which was founded and supported mainly by active members of the Chicago branch of the Settlement House Movement. For more than a quarter of a century, generations of students participated in this study as part of their training (Abbott, 1936; Shaw, 2015). Thus, the Chicago school of social work connected the goals of the Settlement House Movement with social science knowledge production, as is also reflected in its cooperation with early academic sociology (MacLean and Williams, 2012), and that shaped the emerging knowledge base as well as early professional training of social work (Lau, 2020).

Social investigation in action: settlement house research on ‘the unemployed’ and ‘new immigrants’ This section examines two studies  –​Case Studies of Unemployment (Elderton, 1931) and New Homes for Old (Breckinridge, 1921)  –​ focusing on their research approaches and conclusions. Both studies deal with topics that are repeatedly treated in the sample. The authors chose a predominantly qualitative approach and sought to expressly pursue their questions ‘through the eyes of the affected’, but they differ fundamentally, both in positioning their investigation in the political discourse and in derived social actions. Case Studies of Unemployment In 1928, the National Federation of Settlements started to research the effects of unemployment on home and neighbourhood life and this was completed in 1931, inter alia, with the publication of Case Studies of Unemployment by Marion Elderton (1931). The guiding theses were that unemployment was not just a phenomenon of economic crisis, that its consequences did not only affect those who had not saved enough, and that not everyone who wanted to was able to find work (Calkins, 1930). Elderton’s study examines the effects of unemployment on

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families whose breadwinners had lost their jobs for reasons that were ‘industrial’ rather than individual causes (strikes, sickness, habits or other personal factors) (Hall, cited in Elderton, 1931: 24). For these ‘unemployed’ –​as distinguished from the ‘unemployable’ (Elderton, 1931: 1) –​‘earning a living’ was not only important in an economic sense, but in terms of self-​confidence. This is shown, for example, in their attitude towards charity, the use of which is seen as ‘shameful’ and to be avoided for as long as possible. The families ‘lose something, as they see it, when they take help, even if the cause for asking it lies outside their own control. It means a serious break in family pride and self-​confidence, a self-​confidence which seldom blossoms again with the same sturdiness. Even if it covered the ground, charitable relief would not be a convincing answer, either, to industrial dislocation in a democracy’ (Hall, cited in Elderton, 1931: xlv). Following the observed efforts of these families to get back to work, the authors raise the question, ‘of how we can assure … the opportunity to earn [this minimum foothold of existence]’ (Kellogg, cited in Elderton, 1931:  x). The industrial system is perceived as adjustable, as ‘progressive employers in a great variety of line have demonstrated that much can be done to iron out the curves’ (Hall, cited in Elderton, 1931: xxxvii). Showing the less tangible social and spiritual effects of unemployment, the case studies, conducted by settlement residents or other social workers, were intended to form a basis for these adjustments (Kellogg, cited in Elderton, 1931: viii). This reveals a confidence in the perfectibility of the industrial system and in the goodwill of the industrialists. According to Helen Hall, who headed the research committee and was affiliated to Henry Street Settlement in New York, the starting point was ‘the new contrast of speeded-​up production and enforced idleness’ (Hall, cited in Elderton, 1931: xxviii) throughout the country. Accordingly, 97 settlements, charity institutions and other social facilities in 32 cities from 21 states were attracted as contributors to this study (Elderton, 1931: 403 ff.). Hall wrote: ‘We have tried to let these neighbours tell their own stories so that others who are further removed from the run of life in our industrial districts may see, as we do, through the abstract economic problem of unemployment to the realities that lie behind it. … Our study is in no sense statistical’ (cited in Elderton, 1931: 23 ff.). The guiding schedule mainly sets out the researchers’ reports, but also provides space for self-​statements: ‘On the basis of the facts you have set down in the foregoing pages, tell this family’s story in as vivid

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a manner as possible, either in your words or their own’ (Elderton, 1931: 413). In addition to this, the book provides five self-​written essays on the topic ‘What unemployment has meant to my family’ (Elderton, 1931: 385 ff.). The neighbourhood workers are regarded as being ‘in an especially favorable position to bear witness to these facts. We do not merely know families when they are in trouble; we live beside them in good fortune and bad, consecutively throughout the years, and can make comparison between their normal standards and what unemployment does to them’ (Elderton, 1931: 409). The 150 case studies, each comprising about two to three pages, form the core of the study. The study does not reflected on how the families participated in the research process, but much space is devoted to direct quotations. The records are followed by a numbered breakdown of the issues specified in the schedule: the causes of unemployment, information on re-​employment, economic, physical, psychological effects, effects on children and future plans (Elderton, 1931: 379 ff.). Countermeasures taken by the families are also discussed. One example is ‘cutting down on food’: Cutting down on food, then, is one thing the family does for itself. In every third of our neighbourhood cases, the families had done it so radically as to prompt the investigator to remark upon it. The unmistakable evidences of malnutrition noted in case after case, and the prevalence among them of sicknesses that have roots in a weakened resistance, would not lead us to think lightly of this as something society should encourage as a resource against unemployment. (Hall, cited in Elderton, 1931: xlvii ff.) Food shortage, as an inevitable consequence of lack of money, is somewhat cynically classified by the author as a chosen measure against unemployment, which should not be ‘promoted’, because the effects of malnutrition would hinder re-​employment. So, it is perhaps not surprising that the proposed three ‘action lines’ against consequences of unemployment primarily aim to secure access to profitable employment, while financial protection only addresses those people who are willing to work: ‘We must make work steadier and more secure. We must make re-​employment swifter when men and women are laid off. And we must insure against want the households of breadwinners who seek work and cannot find it’ (Hall, cited in Elderton, 1931: xxxvi).

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New Homes for Old On the initiative of the Carnegie Corporation, New York, the Division of Adjustment of Homes and Family was commissioned to conduct a national study on the methods of the various agencies engaged in Americanisation. An 11-​part publication series was produced, of which the study New Homes for Old (1921) by the lawyer and political scientist Sophonisba Breckinridge, resident of Hull-​House in Chicago and then Dean of the Chicago School of Social Service Administration, forms part. The study investigates the challenges immigrants face in building a home in the new country and activities offered by various social service institutions. For Americanization is the uniting of new with native-​ born Americans in fuller common understanding and appreciation to secure by means of self-​g overnment the highest welfare of all. Such Americanization should perpetuate no unchangeable political, domestic, and economic regime delivered once for all to the fathers, but a growing and broadening national life, inclusive of the best wherever found. (Publisher’s Note, in Breckinridge, 1921: v) Hence, the author describes the debate on Americanisation as a contested concept and takes a clear stance. She is critical of an ‘attitude of superiority’ that can be traced back to rising nationalism and the difficult relationship between the US and the continent (Abbott, 1917: 277). Additionally, a lack of hospitality of communities, together with an attitude of the ‘self-​made man’, lead in the eyes of Breckinridge to oppressive integration methods (Breckinridge, 1921). In contrast, the investigation presented is ‘based on the belief that no attempts at compulsory adjustment can in the nature of things be successful. [… The] real solution lies in policies grounded in social justice and guided by social intelligence’ (Breckinridge, 1921: 6). By involving a long-​time resident of the Settlement Chicago Commons, ‘it proved to be possible to obtain many intimate views with reference to the more subtle questions of family adjustment.… No attempt has been made to organize a statistical study’ (Breckinridge, 1921: 6). The material incorporated consisted of questionnaires and interviews, which were conducted with a broad range of casework agencies dealing with family problems, settlements and national immigrant institutions, ‘asking their methods for attacking these

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difficulties and their advice as to the best methods worked out’ (Breckinridge, 1921:  7). Added were interviews with members of several immigrant groups: ‘Most of the persons interviewed … were people who were close enough to the great mass of immigrants to be familiar with their problems, their needs, their shortcomings, and their abilities, and at the same time were sufficiently removed from the problems to be able to view them objectively.… They were probably exceptional in their native ability’ (Breckinridge, 1921: 9 ff.). Breckinridge states two overarching achievements of the study: First, it can exhibit, so far as possible, the difficulties encountered by foreign-​born families in attaining in their family relationships such satisfaction as would constitute a genuine feeling of hominess, and make the immigrant home an integral part of the domestic development in this country. Second, the report can suggest the deliberate and systematic methods which can be effective in introducing the immigrant family and specialists’ standards to each other. (Breckinridge, 1921: 17) According to these aims, the study is divided into tracing the situation of immigrant families and the measures taken by local and national agencies. The first part covers immigration and its influence on family relations, household and child rearing, while the second part focuses on self-​organised initiatives, agencies of adjustment and family casework, their measures and challenges. The study draws a detailed and differentiated picture of the situation of immigrants in the process of their adaptation, which is strongly characterised by the ideal of a pluralistic society. At the same time, it contributes to the shaping of settlement house research: while it divides the problem of immigration into several sections, it comprehensively links the various threads of social problems dealt with by settlement investigations and views them in their interdependence. Immigration, however, appears as a dominant feature of the US as a nation. Dealing with that is the core task of social agencies, which must be coordinated at national level with the expertise of the emerging social work profession.

Conclusion The two studies presented in detail offer some indications of settlement house research and its implications on the emerging social work profession. The unemployment study draws on a client base that is

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willing to work, but is excluded from profitable employment, due to shortcomings of the industrial system. Thus, this study represents the orientation of the Settlement House Movement towards influencing social policy, but also a dilemma of its middle-​class residents, who view the working class from a middle-​class position, approving the industrial system. In addition, it promotes a mutually exclusive view on ‘charity’ and ‘social reform’, viewing welfare measures as stabilising social distress in the long run. The immigration study positions itself in an overarching political debate on Americanisation and underscores the contribution of a social work perspective:  according to the author, it can both counter nationalist preconceptions and create a knowledge base drawing on the views of those affected. In addition, it can coordinate the work of local initiatives that are apparently not yet linked sufficiently. Thus, settlement house research was designed to bringing reform-​oriented social science knowledge into action. Both studies are engaged in ‘bringing in’ the perspectives of those affected, but take varying political positions and also deal differently with the political implications of their research activities. While the study on ‘the unemployed’ affirms the stabilisation of the national industrial system, the study on immigration classifies and problematises national political attitudes in a cross-​border perspective, and identifies the social work profession as a corrective mechanism. In conclusion, some characteristics of settlement house research, considered from a social work perspective, can be noted. Through the research activities of the settlement houses, the aim of social work expands as much as that of social research. The research combines empirical studies of individuals and families with studies of neighbourhoods and cities, as well as practical tasks of social work with challenges of nation-​building. Their issues are not explored as local, short-​term or individual problems, but as structural and national problems. In most cases, the aim is to coordinate existing measures and initiatives at a higher level. In contrast, social work is depicted as ‘progressive’, with the studies advocating that it should undertake coordinating functions at national level as well as having an influence on the development of social policy. Social workers trained as socioscientific knowledge producers serve as ‘anchors that link the arguments of human sciences to the ground’ (Raphael, 2012: 45). In their commitment to social work, they bring movement-​based knowledge into action, develop interventions to solve social problems and contribute to the development of social work as a science-​based profession.

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References Abbott, E. (1936) The Tenements of Chicago, 1908–​1935. Assisted by Sophonisba Breckinridge and other Associates. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Abbott, G. (1917) Immigration and the Community. New York, NY: The Century Co. Breckinridge, S. (1921) New Homes for Old. New  York, NY and London: Harper & Brothers. Brückweh, K., Schumann, D., Wetzell, R. and Ziemann, B. (eds) (2012) Engineering Society: The Role of the Human and Social Sciences in Modern Societies, 1880–​1980. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bullard, K. (2014) Civilizing the Child: Discourses of Race, Nation, and Child Welfare in America. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Calkins, C. (1930) Some Folks Won’t Work. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Carson, M. (1990) Settlement Folk:  Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885–​1 930. Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press. Chambon, A. (2012) ‘Disciplinary borders and borrowings:  Social work knowledge and its social reach, a historical perspective’, Social Work and Society, 10(2): 1–​12. Chiang, Y.-​C. (2001) Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, 1919–​1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crocker, R. (1992) Social Work and Social Order: The Settlement Movement in Two Industrial Cities, 1889–​1930. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois. Deegan, M. (1981) ‘Early women sociologists and the American Sociological Society: The patterns of exclusion and participation’, The American Sociologist, 16(1): 14–​24. Deegan, M. (1988) Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892–​ 1918. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers. Deegan, M. (ed) (1991) Women in Sociology:  A Bio-​Bibliographical Sourcebook. Westport, WA: Greenwood Press. Elderton, M. (ed) (1931) Case Studies of Unemployment. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Giddings, A. (1924) ‘Social work and societal engineering’, The Journal of Social Forces, 3(1): 7–​15. Kelley, F. (1986) The Autobiography of Florence Kelley:  Notes of Sixty Years (edited and introduced by Kathryn Kish Sklar). Chicago, IL: C.H. Kerr. Kellogg, P. (1914) Wage Earning Pittsburgh. New York, NY: Survey Associates.

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Kellogg, P. and Deardorff, N. (1928) ‘Social research as applied to community progress’. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Social Work (9–​13 July). Paris: Imprimé Union, pp 784–​831. Köngeter, S. (2013) ‘Paradoxes of transnational knowledge production in social work’. In A. Chambon, W. Schröder and C. Schweppe (eds) Transnational Social Support. New York, NY: Routledge, pp 187–​210. Koven, S. (2004) Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lau, D. (2019) Soziale Bewegungen, Professionalisierung und Disziplinbildung in der frühen Sozialen Arbeit [Social Movements, Professionalisation and the Formation of Discipline in Early Social Work], Trier: Universität Trier. Lau, D. (2020) ‘Knowledge production in social work between reform and expertise: A case study on the role of early professional schools’. In Wissen (ed) Wissen in der Transnationalisierung: Zur Ubiquität und Krise der Übersetzung [Knowledge in Transnationalisation: The Ubiquity and Crisis of Translation]. Bielefeld: transcript, pp 335–​50. Lengermann, P. and Niebrugge-​Brantley, G. (1998) The Women Founders:  Sociology and Social Theory, 1830–​1 930. Boston, MA: McGraw-​Hill. Lengermann, P. and Niebrugge-​Brantley, J. (2002) ‘Back to the future: Settlement sociology, 1885–​1930’, The American Sociologist, 33(3): 5–​20. Lengermann, P. and Niebrugge, G. (2018) ‘Settlement sociology’, in A. Javier Treviño (ed) The Cambridge Handbook of Social Problems, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 185–​202. Lissak, R. (1989) Pluralism and Progressives: Hull House and the ‘New Immigrants’, 1890–​1919. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. MacLean, V. and Williams, J. (2012) ‘ “Ghosts of sociologies past”:  Settlement sociology in the Progressive Era at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy’, The American Sociologist, 43(3): 235–​63. Montgomery, C.V. (1905) Bibliography of College, Social University and Church Settlements. Chicago: The Blakely Press. Muncy, R. (1991) Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–​1935. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oakley, A. (2017) ‘The forgotten example of “settlement sociology”:  Gender, research, communities, universities and policymaking in Britain and the USA, 1880–​1920’, Research for All, 1(1): 20–​34. Raphael, L. (1996) ‘The scientification of the social as a methodological and conceptual challenge for a social history of the 20th century’, History and Society, 22(2): 165–​93.

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Raphael, L. (2012) ‘Embedding the human and social sciences in Western societies, 1880–​1980: Reflections on trends and methods of current research’. In K. Brückweh and R.F. Wetzell (eds) Engineering Society: The Role of the Human and Social Sciences in Modern Societies, 1880–​1980. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 41–​56. Residents of Hull-​House (eds) (1895) Hull-​House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, Together with Comments and Essays on Problems Growing out of the Social Conditions. New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell. Riis, J. (1890) How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Rodgers, D. (1982) ‘In search of progressivism’, Reviews in American History, 10(4): 113–​32. Ross, E. (2007) Slum Travelers: Ladies and London Poverty, 1860–​1920. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rowntree, B. (1901) Poverty: A Study of Town Life. London: Macmillan. Shaw, I. (2014a) ‘Sociology and social work: In praise of limestone?’. In J. Holmwood and J. Scott (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Sociology in Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 123–​54. Shaw, I. (2014b) ‘Sociological social work: a cartoon’, European Journal of Social Work, 17(5): 754–​70. Shaw, I. (2015) ‘The archaeology of research practices: A social work case’, Qualitative Inquiry, 21(1): 36–​49. Sklar, K. (1995) Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–​1900. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Trolander, J. (1987) Professionalism and Social Change: From the Settlement House Movement to Neighbourhood Centers. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Turner, S. (1996) ‘The Pittsburgh Survey and the survey movement: An episode in the history of expertise’. In M.W. Greenwald and M.J. Anderson (eds) Pittsburgh Surveyed: Social Science and Social Reform in the Early Twentieth Century. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp 35–​94. Webb, B. and Webb, S. (1912) Das Problem der Armut. Jena: Diederich. Williams, J. and MacLean, V. (2015) Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years: Faith, Science, and Reform. Chicago, IL: Haymarket. Woods, R. and Kennedy, A. (eds) (1911) Handbook of Settlements. New York, NY: Charities Publication Committee.

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Animating objectivity: a Chicago settlement’s use of numeric and aesthetic knowledges to render its immigrant neighbours and neighbourhood knowable Rory Crath

In 1892, Hull-​House began engaging in a programme of empirically driven research. During a first phase spanning 30 years, residents of Chicago’s first settlement drew on two statistically based methods pioneered by English reformer Charles Booth, the social survey, together with interviews, statistical analysis and the use of social cartography. Together, these techniques became part of the Chicago settlement workers’ preferred methodological toolkit for championing social reform. Feminist social historians have documented the influential role that these mostly female researchers/​reformers played in establishing the place of numeric-​based evidence for examining the social and economic conditions of American urban life (Sklar, 1998; Lunin Schultz, 2007). Chicago-​based settlement workers were also instrumental in their use of numbers to ‘depauperise thinking’ (O’Connor, 2001: 12) about the living conditions of poor immigrants and migrants living in American industrialising urban areas, shifting attention away from moral behaviours and character to the study of structural and social factors conditioning poverty and illness. These same workers also introduced several research innovations that would later become foundational to American sociological research, including the focus on household-​based wages and household budget-​ based indexes of poverty (O’Connor, 2001; Lunin-​Schultz, 2007). Numerically based, spatial mapping of patterns of socioeconomic conditions, another innovation and a key focus of this chapter, set a precedent for future considerations of the social ecologies of poverty, illness and delinquency (O’Connor, 2001).

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The numerical evidence dotting the pages of at least 14 research reports published by Hull-​House residents during the period from 1893 to the late 1920s (Dando, 2017) were without question understood by the researchers to be objective representations of the realities of life in the immigrant wards of Chicago (Addams, 2007 [1895]: 45). And yet, despite this turn to numerical evidence, other non-​numeric, more experiential, affective and aesthetic knowledges were bundled into these reports. This chapter historicises our contemporary period’s predilection for numerical-​based evidence as a preferred and, at times, unquestioned knowledge source for orienting social work’s interventions and practices of care (Okpych and Yu, 2014). It does this by looking back to a period in which numericity and the appeal to objective knowledge were just gaining legitimacy in the nascent practices of knowledge production in American social work. The following questions drive this investigation. What did the reformers possibly mean by objectivity? How did they understand numerically based evidence, its capacities and limitations? And what was the imagined work of these non-​numeric-​based knowledges in enumerating and addressing the tears in the heart of American social democratic aspirations and materialisations? Through a close discursive reading of the two earliest of the 14 reports, this chapter explores the possible types of political, emotional and moral labour that the assemblage of evidence presented, including maps and numbers, together with writings and photographs, were expected to carry out, and to what social end.

A note on methodology This chapter’s methodological approach draws explicitly from the work of poststructuralist thinker Michel Foucault. I explore the calculative practices that were drawn on by early settlement researchers at Hull-​ House to construct certain urban issues as sociospatial problematics, and how these techniques were then utilised to assign validity to specified modes of intervention aligned with reformer’s understanding of moralised urbanism. My analytic attempt to trace connections between instruments of knowledge production and frameworks for social intervention follows Foucault’s provocative claim that micro-​level machinations of power ‘cannot function unless knowledge, or rather, knowledge apparatuses, are formed, organised, and put into circulation’ (Foucault, 2007, cited in Ghertner, 2010: 186). In his approach to investigating social relations of power, Foucault attended to the diverse procedures and mechanisms adopted by state

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and non-​state actors (such as settlement researchers/​reformers) for gathering and producing information about targeted populations. These included rational calculative practices as they existed in conjunction, or tension, with other more emotional or perhaps aesthetic-​based practices, and the differential truths about subjects and spaces that were produced (Foucault, 2007; Ghertner, 2010). Specifically, Foucault drew attention to the ways in which these generated knowledges were consolidated into what he referred to as a verified ‘grid of intelligibility’ (Ghertner, 2010) –​ taxonomies orienting how competing theories, and their associated interventions, should be assessed and verified. This orientation to reading the articulation between knowledge and power invites consideration of the research practices at Hull-​House as being intimately entangled with the machinations of power operative in the temporal and spatial specificities of Chicago and the industrialising American North-​East and Midwest at the turn of the 20th century. While this chapter focuses specifically on the epistemological knots being tied by Hull-​ House reformers to generate knowledge about the social-​spatial geographies of Chicago and the needs of the urban poor, this is only a partial story. As Foucault reminds us –​and this remains a subject for future research –​these truths that knowledge practices spin gain further traction –​or unravel –​through circulation and translation into programmes of governance (Foucault, 2007).

Contextualising and introducing the two reports Reportedly, in her travels to England in the late 1880s, Hull-​House founder and director Jane Addams became acquainted with sociologist Charles Booth’s use of the social survey together with his use of social mapping as a descriptive, numeric-​based mechanism for charting the socioeconomic geography of London’s urban industrialised centres (Knight, 2008). Following her return to the US, Addams, together with Hull-​House resident Florence Kelley, a special agent with the US Federal Department of Labor at the time, and Agnes Holbrook, another resident, conducted a social survey of a small, just under two square kilometres, area adjacent to Hull-​House inhabited by poor, mostly Eastern and Southern European immigrants and recent black migrants from the southern states (Holbrook, 2007 [1895]). Researchers spent ten weeks in 1892 documenting the spatial properties of living conditions, household composition, weekly household income and the social and ethnic placement of residents in the area (Holbrook, 2007 [1895]). The survey was funded through the US Federal Department

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of Labor and was part of a larger project documenting socioeconomic conditions of urban slums (The Slums of Great Cities, 1894). As Hull-​House reformer Edith Abbott clarified in her report on tenement conditions in Chicago, the areas referred to as a ‘slum’ comprised ‘dirty back streets, especially when inhabited by a squalid and criminal population’ (Abbott and Breckinridge, 1936: 29). For Abbott, as was true for other American middle-​class reformers, social researchers and state bureaucrats at the time, the rhetoric of the slum problematisied a particular social/​spatial and racialised geography experiencing an unprecedented inflowing of immigrant/​migrant labourers deemed other to Anglo/​middle-​class grids of sensibility and knowing (Park and Kemp, 2006). The resulting survey evidence was published in the settlement’s first bounded research report, Hull-​House Maps and Papers, in 1895, and was made available to a wider public and specifically to visitors attending Hull-​House programming (Addams, 1892; for details of Hull-​House programming, see Addams, 2007 [1895] and Knight, 2008). A more comprehensive social survey of three districts on Chicago’s West Side (including the section of Ward 19 near Hull-​House) was conducted in 1900 under the auspices of newly formed lobbying group –​the City Homes Association (CHA). The CHA was organised by Addams and residents of Hull-​House and supported financially by wealthy Chicago patrons (Philpott, 1991). The resulting report, entitled Tenement Conditions in Chicago (Hunter, 1901), received much wider circulation and political traction (Philpott, 1991) and was written by Hull-​House resident and social worker, Robert Hunter. Maps, together with statistical charts and graphs generated from social survey data, featured prominently in the two studies. The maps were an evocative, relatively new sociological technique for visually depicting the physical-​geospatial dimensions of social problems. The numeric household evidence tracked weekly wage earnings, household income, ethnic origin of residents, living conditions, housing conditions, indexes of poverty and illness, workers’ labouring conditions and types of employment. These were collapsed into sociological categories and then painstakingly translated graphically and colour-​coded on to street maps provided by municipal survey officers. The development of lithographic techniques in the 1860s had made it possible for the maps to be richly colour-​coded (Lunin Schultz, 2007), thus affording the Hull-​House cartographers the possibilities of rendering a visual display that was both aesthetically compelling and complex in the information that could be conveyed.

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The maps made their first public appearance in 1895 as foldouts in Hull-​House Maps and Papers. The report included not only the spatial-​social renderings of a targeted portion of the surrounding neighbourhood, but a few selected photographs documenting the work of Hull-​House, the survey questionnaire, and various statistical charts. An essential part of the collected volume was a series of essays written by settlement workers on various topics including child labour, wage poverty of residents, sweatshop labour, and reflections on programming offered through the settlement (cf. Sklar, 1998; Lunin Schultz, 2007). Numerically based, geospatial practices were once again foundational to the study conducted by the CHA a few years later. Following the same method as Hull-​House Maps and Papers, social surveys were first deployed to track physical conditions of the housing stock, density of living conditions, and the physical geography and infrastructure of the selected three immigrant/​migrant settlement areas. Like Hull-​House Maps and Papers, the Tenement Conditions report was replete with maps (albeit in grey-​scale), diagrams and statistical tables. Similarly, the report also included explanatory notes, and experiential testimony together with numerous photographs of life in Ward 19. Over the next few years, findings from the reports were deployed frequently as validated forms of scientific knowledge to support the reformers’ ongoing political struggles to hold government, business and ward inhabitants alike, responsible for the living/​working conditions of industrialising urban centres (Dando, 2017). Specifically, numerically based evidence was paired strategically with social cartography to evoke ‘the physical dimensions’ of social ills ‘and their spatial scale’ (Sklar, 1998:  123). Together, these imbricated knowledge sources allowed the reformers to demonstrate connections between incidents of poor sanitary conditions, slum congestion, exploitative labour practices, and poverty. In addition, the maps’ utility lay in their ability to spatially represent the health and social risks that these areas of the inner city posed for adjacent bourgeois areas of the city. 1

Enthusiasm for ‘counting noses’

In considering the evidentiary labour that abstracted numericity was expected to truck, a number of considerations arise. To what extent can it be argued that the numbers that were being revealed by Hull-​ House researchers were understood as strictly ‘rational’  –​objects abstracted from space and the hands that produced them –​the way in

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which numericity is understood today by positivist social researchers (Lash, 2009)? And what faith did the Hull-​House reformers have in numbers, whether graphically presented in data charts or richly detailed survey maps, to convey an evidence sufficiently complex enough to mobilise public sentiment? Certainly, there was mounting enthusiasm in the late 1800s and early 1900s among American and European social researchers to embrace rigorously ‘objective’ techniques of empiricism that relied on numericity and statistical manipulation of documented social phenomena (O’Connor, 2001). The social survey had its origins in positivist classificatory techniques deployed first in European military ordinance surveying and geological/​botanical surveying (Davison, 2003) to assist European biopolitical/​colonialist pursuits. As Söderström (1996) clarifies, the use of social-​spatial representations based on ‘numerical calculations’ were instrumental in facilitating an eventual epistemological shift in social research. Ways of knowing that were based on a social (and explicitly moralising) logic that attended to social and cultural nuance and complexity and allowed prejudice ‘to air freely’, gradually gave way to a perceived, morally neutral, detached and thus objective ‘spatial logic’ (Söderström, 1996: 264). Scientific social cartography, such as the numerically based calculative visual graphs and charts included in the Hull-​House report, can, in one sense, be understood as nascent examples of immutable mobiles  –​French sociologist Bruno Latour’s term for representations that are detachable from the place or object that they represent ‘whilst remaining immutable so that they can be moved in any direction without distortion, loss or additional corruption’ (Latour, cited in Söderström, 1996:  255). By extension then, one could argue that it is the logic of immutability that undergirds the calculative possibilities of social-​spatial mapping. These include: the rendering of readily comprehensible objects and spaces as components of a whole; the collapse of material and discursive complexity into analysable categories; the manipulation and control of these subjects of inquiry; and the authorisation of modes of intervention based on these calculative practices (Söderström, 1996). For its Hull-​House proponents, the techniques of the social survey and social-​spatial mapping were understood as complementary modes of realist inquiry, suitable for capturing the social conditions of a place as they existed, and for ‘presenting features of peculiar interest’ (Holbrook, 2007 [1895]: 56). There was also a belief in the capacity of numerically based, material evidence to reveal patterns and regularities of social phenomena to the trained scientific eye

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(Datson and Gillison, 2010). Indeed, as one British proponent of the social survey method proclaimed, and this might very well have been shared by the residents of Hull-​House, ‘every conclusion derived from observation or experiment had to be qualified as well as verified by the relevant statistic’ (Sklar, 1998: 137). According to the chief illustrator of the Hull-​House maps, Agnes Holbrook, the indexical quality of the maps, as a spatial and ‘systematic’ representation of life in the ward, produced a more realistic narrative than statistical charts and tables ever could; maps were likened to a ‘photographic reproduction’ because of their ‘greater minuteness’ (Holbrook, 2007 [1895]: 57). For Holbrook, it was the detailing of ‘… how members of various nationalities are grouped and disposed, and just what rates of wages are received in the different streets and sections’, that afforded the map ‘its real as well as its picturesque value’ (Holbrook, 2007 [1895]: 58). Further references to the maps’ ability to procure ‘a Kodak view’ (Holbrook, 2007 [1895]: 57) revealed as much about the assumed realist capacities of mapping and the panoptic relation of the mapmaker/​social researcher to their object of study, as it did about the omniscient optic advantage that the maps offered for the readers of them. Indeed, although the maps afforded an equally abstracted means of knowing urban social-​spatial life than what numbers-​based charts and graphs provided, they additionally allowed the intended viewer to visually position themselves outside of, but intimately in relationship to, a geographical and social space that was being represented graphically. In other words, the maps’ geometric plans offered the audience or researcher a god-​like view, and to conceive in abstract terms, ‘the particular measurable characteristics of the city, such as the density of the city, their earning power, or their state of health’ (Söderström, 1996: 261). Public reviews of Hull-​House Maps and Papers attested to the scientific nature of the study’s research design and its ability to produce evidentiary truths. One reviewer, in a New York newspaper, suggested that the report’s most laudable feature was its ‘precision; it is quantitative –​it counts noses; in other words, it is scientific. Hence it gives a firm point of departure for study. Discussion need not be in the air; there is a base-​line, or a benchmark’ (Anon., cited in Sklar, 1998: 138). Another reviewer for The Atlantic Monthly argued that ‘the industrial conditions of city life’ had been previously displayed for ‘the reading public’ in the form of easily digestible works of fiction accompanied by graphic illustrations (cited in Sklar, 1998: 138). The maps, for this reviewer, represented an alternative way of knowing about poverty; ‘the maps render possible an easy apprehension of the nature and condition of the community in which Hull-​House is doing its work … the details

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of what they reveal must be seen upon the maps themselves’ (cited in Sklar, 1998: 138). The attention to devising social-​scientific instruments for gathering and categorising numeric evidence in an abstracted register to know the social and health truths about targeted spatial environments by the residents and researchers of Hull-​House marked a distinctive departure from the ‘morally judgmental inquiries of charity work’ (O’Connor, 2001: 14) circulating at the time. Indeed, their abstracted numericity also departed from the, often-​lurid, social narratives and graphic portrayals of the lives of the urban poor that populated popular bourgeois fiction. Empirically documenting the causes and effects of poverty was also a strategy deployed by these early American social researchers to counter governmental policies and practices that had been formulated in the shadows of theoretically driven writings of moral philosophers who promulgated the virtues of laissez-​faire capitalism (Sklar, 1998). But building on O’Connor’s (2001) argument, I  would argue that these nascent techniques of social science research were not wholly understood as pristine, ‘disembodied’ (O’Connor, 2001: 15), dispassionate practices of gathering the facts of social nature that would later come to represent the hallmark of an objectivist social science. As I argue in the following sections, the numerical evidence that researchers produced via the social surveys and techniques of geospatial mapping had two other distinctive epistemological capacities that rattle contemporary understandings of what constitutes validated evidence: numeric evidence as democratic display, and the performative valence of numbers.

Numeric evidence as relational and democratic display In a speech delivered in 1892, entitled ‘The subjective necessity for social settlements’, Jane Addams argued that a democratic impulse (Sklar, 1981; O’Connor, 2001) and intersubjective relationality were foundational to the work of the settlement house, including the labour of social inquiry. As she expresses, the first two ‘motives which constitute the subjective pressure toward Social Settlements’ entail: ‘the desire to make the entire social organism democratic, to extend democracy beyond its political expression; the second is the impulse to share the race life’ (Addams, 1892: 1). This message, propounding ‘a common understanding of a universal kinship and common good as constitutive elements of an ideal social’ (Addams, 1892: 2) was reiterated in her essay, ‘The settlement as a factor in the labor movement’, one

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of the collected essays that accompany the maps in the Hull-​House Maps and Papers report. For Addams (2007 [1895]), and the other residents of Hull-​House, numerical evidence embodied the experiential nature of settlement work, including the daily exposure to social and environmental toxicities and violences that affected their immigrant neighbours in the wards. This work, to quote Addams, was motivated by a drive towards ‘sharing the life of the poor’ –​their human kind who ‘bear the brunt of the social injury’ (Addams, 2007 [1895]: 38). The numbers that were generated by the reformers’ research were able to speak so powerfully to these social ills and the tear that they represented to a universal conception of a common good and common humanity, because they were born out of direct exposure to them, and not at an abstracted, disembodied distance. As Florence Kelley (1898: 550) explained, in an interview with the New England Magazine: The question is often asked whether all that the House undertakes could not be accomplished without the wear and tear of living on the spot. You must suffer from the dirty streets, the universal ugliness, the lack of oxygen in the air you breathe daily, the endless struggle with soot and dust and insufficient water supply, the hanging from a strap of the overcrowded street car at the end of your day’s work; you must send your children to the nearest wretchedly crowded school, and see them suffer the consequences, if you are to speak as one having authority and not as the scribes in these matters of the common, daily life and experience. As suggested in the introduction to Hull-​House Maps and Papers, Addams (2007 [1895]) similarly opines that the graphic and textually based ‘recorded observations’ were an authorial testimony to the residents’ ‘long acquaintance’ with life in the immigrant ward (p 45). For Addams, as for Holbrook, it was the experiential embodiment of human exchange across racial and class divides, and the affective relationality of a realised or realising ‘universal kinship’ that imbued numbers with their complex and nuanced shape and political force. Punctuating Kelley’s claim about the conjunctural tightness between facticity and relational experience, an anonymous reviewer of Hull-​ House Maps and Papers writing for the Omaha Daily Bee (1895), argued the following: If you wish to keep up with the times in this very progressive city you must study sociology. You must not only have such

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knowledge of the subject as can be gained from books and lectures, but you must have knowledge as has been gained by actual experience. To get this experience you must be perfectly familiar with the city as set forth in Hull-​House maps and notes. Other writers followed suit. In writing about Florence Kelley’s numerical evidence in an article published in the Journal of Social Work in 1940, journalist and social reformer Paul Kellogg (1940: 7) recalled: Those earliest Hull-​House Map and Papers show her meticulous care in gathering, adding, and dividing human items. Now one of the most treacherous saws that has come down to us is that two and two always make four. As Mrs. Kelly soon discovered, that proposition in simple arithmetic is loaded when confronted with realities. It may hold for two, but does not hold even for three. When three explosions in an industrial district injure, say three workmen on the average, it does not make six but nine causalities. The economic loss hangs on the length of their incapacity, on whether they are cripples for life. Counting for wives and children, a score or more may suffer from the multiplication of misery. It is through their relations, then, that things take on significance.

The performative, affective capacity of numbers Numbers were also thought to be virtuous and emotionally charged. In further detailing the necessity of the settlement houses, Addams insisted that their labour and activities were not only based ‘upon conviction, but genuine emotion’ (Addams, 1892:  1). Emotion, she argued, ‘springs from a certain renaissance of Christianity, a movement toward its early humanitarian aspects’ (Addams, 1892: 2; Knight, 2008: 328). For Addams, as for other reformer-​researchers, ‘genuine emotion’ as linked to the ‘sentiment of universal brotherhood’ (1892: 2) and the project of humanitarianism was what established their authority to see and enumerate. Numbers were epistemologically virtuous, not only because they embodied the deep-​seated feelings of settlement workers/​ researchers –​a genuine emotion to engage with the conditions of the wards –​but they also held an affective, agentic charge. Numbers were anticipated to be performative, to incite the sympathies of a bourgeois class and to awaken them to others’ suffering. According to Robert

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Park, an American journalist turned sociologist affiliated with the University of Chicago and Hull-​House, the work of the social survey was a pragmatic one; its utility was to ‘get and deliver the facts’. In Park’s assessment, ‘Pragmatic would mean that a fact is never quite a fact merely because it is investigated and recorded. It only becomes a fact in the fullest sense of the term when it is delivered and delivered to the person to whom it makes a difference’ (Park, cited in Bulmer, 1998: 303). In other words, in the hands of the reformers, findings from the social survey carried an added epistemological valence and performative value. They were understood as vehicles for exercising pastoral, charitable sensibilities as well as a reflexive political practice in which protestant moralism, Fabian socialist values (Park and Kemp, 2006), Darwinian understandings of the impressionability of environments (Park and Kemp, 2006), and a growing bourgeois anxiety about the potential for social tumult in the wake of rapid capitalist industrialisation and influx of racialised immigrants, could be assuaged (Davison, 2003). This capacity of numbers to affect a deeply humanitarian and political response in the readership, and reset moral compasses, is similarly echoed by Hull-​House researcher Agnes Holbrook when introducing the purpose of social inquiry. She writes ‘merely to state symptoms and go no further would be idle; but to state symptoms in order to ascertain the nature of disease and apply, and maybe, its cure, is not only scientific, but in the highest sense humanitarian’ (Holbrook, 2007 [1895]: 58).

Aesthetic ways of knowing the wards Despite these more complex and intimate understandings of numbers, for the Hull-​House researchers, numbers, together with their visual representations in the form of charts and maps, could not speak to all that was necessary to instigate reform. While authors of the Hull-​House Map’s and Papers championed the inclusion of the richly coloured and yet admittedly expensive maps in the final published report (Ely, 1910), uncertainty lingered about whether the visualised social-​ spatial mapping of urban problematics –​its empirically based, morally inscribed evidence –​was sufficiently self-​evident and self-​performing to wider bourgeois publics. According to Holbrook, the maps, as emergent knowledge forms, needed to be ‘explained’ and threaded with other kinds of evidence to render their realism, and thus use value, ‘intelligible’ (Holbrook, 2007 [1895]: 58). In the two reports, a numeric evidence was layered with the researchers’ own experientially

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based aesthetic representations of the immigrant or migrant wards. Knowing through sensing, in other words, seemed to be as important to the Hull-​House researchers as knowing through numbers. Photographic images were certainly a prominent feature of the reports and offered one layer of aesthetic knowledge about perceived living conditions in the immigrant or migrant wards. Photography was gaining traction in wider institutional settings such as public health and policing, as a suitable, visualising technology that would enable the viewer to comprehend a complex weave of connections between the physicality of urban spaces (the ‘sunless, airless, and yardless double-​ deckers’, congested living spaces), lack of proper state regulation and the ‘destruction of health and morals’ witnessed in the inhabitants of the settlements (Hunter, 1901: 16). As an example, in one section of the Tenement Conditions of Chicago report, Hull-​House resident and sociological researcher Robert Hunter first presented numerically derived evidence to illuminate urban spatial congestion: It will be seen (as documented in the accompanying maps and graphs) that 380 apartments have less than 400 square feet of floor area, and that 216, or 41 per cent, have space varying from 80 to 300 square feet…. It would be shocking to believe that 4,042 families are crowded into this small area for all the purposes of life. (Hunter, 1901: 31) Several data tables on the adjacent page evidence what Hunter denotes as ‘painful overcrowding’ (Hunter, 1901: 32). A photograph of a household including four adults and several children poised in their living quarters is included on the accompanying folded page. The photograph, evidencing the household members’ activities of daily life –​clothes washing, a sewing machine for home piecework labour, playing, socialising, sleeping –​within a constricted space that could be captured in a single frame, visually punctuates the moralised labour that numbers were expected to perform. The photographic image oriented the bourgeois reader to an indexical truth about the wards’ lifeworlds –​the aesthetic violations, and by extension according to conventions of the time, morally corrupting influences and risks to health, that constricted spatial configurations poised to Chicago’s migrant and immigrant residents (Philpott, 1991). But for Hunter, and the other authors of the Hull-​House reports, the photographs, like numerical-​based evidence ‘were inadequate to the task’ (Hunter, 1901: 3) of this necessary labour. In Hunter’s words, ‘the ugliness of the street, its wretched tenements, and its illegal, smelling

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garbage boxes in front of each house, cannot be imagined from the photograph. They seem to mellow or soften the disagreeable features, which when seen to the naked eye, are extremely offensive’ (Hunter, 1901: 31). If neither photographs nor visually represented numeric evidence held sufficient public or political capital and infrastructural support to be trusted as a singular epistemological source and as proper sociological evidence, then a careful articulation of the realities of what the audience was seeing in the representational forms was required as a first step in persuading public opinion. In other words, Hull-​House researchers sensed that the map, like the photograph, needed to be rehearsed and learned as a projective surface capable of mirroring a reality that the reformers were already seeing (Tagg, 1993). And here, seeing refers to the temporal present experienced by residents of Hull-​ House and the statistical rendering of experience into calculated fact, and of an anticipated or projective future. Not only were relatively new representational technologies of governance being staged to help solidify their external efficacy, but the expertise of the reformers (and associated academics and state officials) together with social and health regulatory practices, and the planning process itself, were also being established as legitimate forces in the governance of urban social lives and spaces. Vivid, and at times near lurid narrative representations of the social and physical conditions of immigrant quarters, were an essential component of all the reports. These layered descriptions reinvested abstract numericity and photographs that were once removed from their site of translation with the necessary proximity to the intimate, material, spatialised, aesthetic and embodied life patterns of the wards’ inhabitants. In her introduction to Hull-​House Maps and Papers, Holbrook (2007 [1895]: 54), for example, alerts her assumed middle-​ class readers to the aesthetic assault that confronts the proper citizen on entering these zones of strangeness: Little idea can be given to the filthy and rotten tenements, the dingy courts, and the tumble-​down sheds, the foul stables and dilapidated outhouses, and broken sewer pipes, the piles of garbage fairly alive with diseased odours, and of the numbers of children filling every nook, working and playing in every room, eating and sleeping in every window sill and out of every door, and seeming literally to pave every scrap of ‘yard…. In front of each house stand garbage receivers –​wooden boxes repulsive to every sense, even when as clean as their office will permit, shocking to

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both mind and instinct when rotten, overfilled, and broken as they often are. One hears little English spoken, and the faces and manners met with are very foreign. This staging of and trafficking in the doxa of bourgeois aesthetic normalcy to complete the moral and social work of presented evidence is illustrated in Hunter’s narrative (1901: 32) that accompanies his use of photographs and numbers based graphs and charts: One day the writer visited one of the residences. They were a family of 7, living in a 2-​room apartment of a rear-​ tenement. The day was in August, and the sun beat down upon one unmitermittently [sic] and without mercy. The husband had been brought home a few hours before, and the wife in a distracted but skillful way, found pathways among the clamoring children. The air was steamy with a half-​finished washing, and remnants of the last meal were still upon the table. A crying baby and the sick husband occupied the only bed. The writer had known before of five people sleeping in one bed, so he supposed the father and oldest child usually slept on the floor. As he watched the woman on that day he understood a little of what it means to live in such contracted quarters.

Conclusion What I have argued in this chapter is that in the early years of their research programming, Hull-​House residents drew on a bundle of epistemological practices to formulate an evidentiary basis for doing the work of social reform. Photographic images were deployed to suggest spatial congestion and lack of light (Tagg, 1993), and maps and numbers created to convey a violation to the projected ideals of a moralised-​ relational and humanitarian urbanism. The narratives referencing other aesthetic sensibilities, beyond visuality and the physical materiality that they recalled, were further deployed to provide the affective hook necessary for interpellating a bourgeois public to action. Detailing a full spectrum of the senses of the slum allowed the discourse to bear the fuller weight of emotion (Tagg, 1993: 151). And it was this enhanced emotional appeal, via the aesthetic register, that interpellated an imagined public to affirm that the limits of a ‘shared’ aesthetic sensibility –​and by inference a social-​moral sensibility –​had been breached within the reaches of a social-​spatial geography they called home.

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Indeed, what the epistemic bundle was expected to traffic, I  contend, were two interconnected aesthetically charged images. First, it cultivated a sense that the ‘slum’ with its attendant ‘evils’, was no mere ‘spectre’ perched on the horizon of Chicago’s future (Hunter, 1901: 178), but an indwelling presence, and threat of the present that could erupt if not attended to properly with appropriate governance strategies and the encouragement of public opinion. Second, the knowledge assemblage –​part numeric, part aesthetic –​ positioned the necessity for the cultivation of another civic space (Tagg, 1993), a space of light and silence, of cleanliness, orderliness, with unencumbered sightlines, bucolic pleasures afforded by the presence of trees, shrubbery and other greenery (Hunter, 1901), and fresh, uncluttered openness. This was a space that was represented in photographic images of Hull-​House with its spacious, well-​lit interiors and pastoral garden spaces (Hunter, 1901; Addams, 2007 [1895]), and one that was assumed to be conducive, following Foucault, to the cultivation of a compliant, orderly, and productive nationalist citizenry. It also foreshadowed regulatory mechanisms that would be put in place by 1903 to control future tenement construction, and became an aesthetic template for guiding the slum clearings that would take place in future decades (Hunter, 1901; Abbott and Breckinridge, 1936; Platt, 2000). If a bourgeois public’s comprehension of, and voyeuristic and narcissistic pleasures in reading about, the degradations of urban squalor had been previously gleaned from fictionalised accounts and pictorial renderings, the reformers were instrumental in mediating an epistemological bridge between these sensibilities of governance. In their reports, Hull-​H ouse researchers layered ‘situational representations’ together with knowledges produced through newly emerging technologies that procured a more abstracted means of visualising urban social-​spatial life. The deployment of social maps, as immutable mobiles, allowed the social reformers to reason about urban issues, and to target with precision sites for therapeutic intervention. In this sense, numerically based visual calculative practices were instrumental in creating the conditions necessary for sustained state intervention in the spatial, subjective governance of the poor and racialised subjects living in Chicago and in other newly emerging industrialised centres throughout the US. And yet, as I have attempted to argue, the reformers’ inclusion of aesthetically based narratives in the reports signalled a reluctance –​or a pragmatism –​to forsake, at least at that historical juncture, what these rationalist calculative practices were designed to devalue –​the epistemology and deeply seated humanitarian

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nature of their lived experiences, and the ability of an aesthetic register to speak moral and social truths. Note Anon., cited in Sklar, 1998: 138.

1

References Abbott, E. and Breckinridge, S. (1936) The Tenements of Chicago, 1908–​1935. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Addams, J. (1892) ‘The subjective necessity for social settlements’, Archives of Women’s Political Communication [Online]. Available at:  https://​ awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/ ​ 2 018/ ​ 0 3/​ 0 5/​ subjective-​necessity-​for-​social-​settlements-​1892 Addams, J. (2007 [1895]) ‘Prefatory note: The settlement as a factor in the labour movement’. In Residents of Hull-​House and R.L. Schultz (eds) Hull-​House Maps and Papers, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp 138–​50. Bulmer, M. (1998) ‘The decline of the social survey movement’. In M. Bulmer, K. Kish Sklar, and K. Bales (eds) The Social Survey Movement in Historical Perspective, 1880–​1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 291–​315. Dando, C. (2017) Women and Cartography in the Progressive Era. New York, NY: Routledge. Datson, L. and Gillison, P. (2010) Objectivity. New  York, NY: Zone Books. Davison, G. (2003) ‘The social survey and the puzzle of Australian sociology’, Australian Historical Studies, 43(21): 139–​62. Ely, R. (1910) ‘Letter, correspondence with Jane Addams, Dec 31, 1910’, Richard T.  Ely Papers, Chicago Daley Library Special Collections, University of Illinois. Foucault, M. (2007) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–​1978. New York, NY: Picador Press. Ghertner, A. (2010) ‘Calculating without numbers:  Aesthetic governmentality in Delhi slums’, Economy and Society, 39(2): 185–2​ 17. Holbrook, A. (2007 [1895]) ‘Map notes and comments’. In Residents of Hull-​House and R.L. Schultz (eds) Hull-​House Maps and Papers, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp 53–​62. Hunter, R. (1901) Tenement Conditions in Chicago. Chicago, IL: City Homes Association. Kelley, F. (1898) ‘Hull-​House’, New England Magazine, 18(5): 550–​66.

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Kellogg, P. (1940) ‘The living spirit of Florence Kelley’, Survey Midmonthly, Journal of Social Work, January:  5–​8. Florence Kelley Collection 1–​15, Chicago Daley Library Special Collections, University of Illinois. Knight, L.W. (2008) Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lash, S. (2009) ‘Afterword: In praise of the a posteriori: Sociology and the empirical’, European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1): 175–​87. Lunin Schultz, R. (2007 [1895]) ‘Introduction’. In Residents of Hull-​ House and R.L. Schultz (eds) Hull-​House Maps and Papers, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp 1–​44. O’Connor, A. (2001) Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-​Century U.S. History. New Jersey, NJ: Princeton University Press. Okpych, N.J. and Yu, J. (2014) ‘A historical analysis of evidence-​based practice in social work: The unfinished journey toward an empirically grounded profession’, Social Service Review, 88(1): 3–​58. Omaha Daily Bee (1895) ‘Progress and poverty’, Omaha Daily Bee, 2 June. Scrapbooks, 1889–​1897, 1–​3, Folders 506–​508, Chicago Daley Library Special Collections, University of Illinois. Park, Y. and Kemp, S.P. (2006) ‘ “Little alien colonies”: Representations of immigrants and their neighbourhoods in social work discourse, 1875–​1924’, Social Service Review, 80(4): 705–​34. Philpott, T.L. (1991) The Slum and the Ghetto:  Immigrants, Blacks and Reformers in Chicago, 1880–​1930. Belmont, CA:  Wadsworth Publishing Co. Platt, H. (2000) ‘Jane Addams and the ward boss revisited:  Class, politics, and public health in Chicago, 1890–​1930’, Environmental History, 5(2): 194–​222. Sklar, K.K. (1981) ‘Florence Kelley: Resources and Achievements’, Paper presented for the Fifth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, 1981. Florence Kelley Collection 1–​15, Chicago Daley Library Special Collections, University of Illinois. Sklar, K.K. (1998) ‘Hull-​House Maps and Papers: Social science as women’s work in the 1890s’. In M. Bulmer, K. Kish Sklar and K. Bales (eds) The Social Survey Movement in Historical Perspective, 1880–​1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 1–​48. Söderström, O. (1996) ‘Paper cities: Visual thinking in urban planning’, Cultural Geographies, 3(3): 249–​81. Tagg, J. (1993) The Burden of Representation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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Part IV Final reflections

12

‘The soul of the community’: two practitioners reflect on history, place and community in two community-​based practices from 1980 to 1995: St Hilda’s Community Centre in Bethnal Green and Waterloo Action Centre in Waterloo, South London Jeanette Copperman and Steven Malies

Introduction This chapter offers a perspective on the Settlement House Movement in a more contemporary light. It draws on the reflections of two practitioners who worked in two community organisations in the 1980s and 1990s and on data from interviews with former community workers, residents and volunteers in these organisations on community-​ based practices in London during the period 1980 to 1995. The two organisations are St Hilda’s Community Centre in Bethnal Green in the East End of London (St Hilda’s), which was one of the original settlements created in the 1880s, and Waterloo Action Centre (WAC) in South London, which came out of Blackfriars Settlement and the Lady Margaret Hall Settlement in the same period. Community development and community social work were very much part of mainstream social work practice in the 1980s and 1990s, supported by local authorities and integrated into social work education. In the UK, community development and community-​based social work has now been largely lost from both mainstream statutory social work practice and from social work education. Mainstream social work practice has become focused on individual casework (Stepney and

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Popple, 2008). Community social work and community development in the UK now takes place mainly within third sector and voluntary organisations. Our key objective of this chapter is to document community-​based social work practice within these two community-​ based organisations and illustrate its considerable contemporary value to the communities that they serve. The 1980s and 1990s were a period of profound social change in the UK. This period witnessed the advent of the privatisation of public services under the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher; the miners’ strike of 1984 whereby the state sought to curb the power of trade unions; the initiation of the ‘right to buy’ (a government policy that enabled council tenants to buy their property at a discounted rate); radical community development; and anti-​racist and anti-​fascist movements  –​much of it coming from the East End of London. Moreover, feminist organising, including Greenham Common and the squatters’ movement, were especially important in London, an area of exceptionally expensive housing. It is useful to see considerable links with this wider ecology in the development of social work within the two organisations discussed in this chapter. Radical social movements formed a backdrop to campaigning and community organising in the 1980s and 1990s. Community work and radical social work was underpinned by the approaches of thinkers such as Paulo Friere (1972) and Saul Alinsky (1969), and the work of the National Community Development Projects (The CDP Interproject Editorial Team, 1977), which suggested that community work should start from helping people in the local area to identify their needs. Local people were seen as the experts, while the role of the community worker was to support the building of local expertise and connection (Alinsky, 1969; Mayo, 1975). The concepts of ‘politics of place’ (Kemmis, 1992) and of engaging with local residents were, and remain, central to the ethos of community-​based practice at both St Hilda’s and WAC. This focus on engaging with local communities and building on their strengths echoes the ideas from the 1890s when the original settlements were set up. A founding statement for St Hilda’s states that it was set up to ‘promote the welfare of the poorer districts of London, more especially that of women and children by devising and advancing schemes which tend to elevate them and giving them additional opportunities in education and recreation’ (Anon., 1896). As joint authors of this chapter, we are both writing from our experiences of practising as qualified community social workers, Steven within a local authority adult social care department commissioning

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a range of services from St Hilda’s and Jeanette, who worked as a community development worker, as part of a collective in WAC in the 1980s. We both trained as community workers qualifying with a Central Qualification in Social Work at a time when a social work qualification in the UK encompassed a community work pathway. For both of us, our work in these contexts was both ‘a professional and political practice’ (Banks, 2011: 12). Both organisations in which we worked at the time had, and still have, a strong sense of place, and the politics of both place and neighbourhood was, and remains, central to the community-​based practice. Despite financial challenges, both organisations very much continue to thrive. One theme that runs through the two case studies that follow this introduction is how funding affected, and continues to affect, the activities and practice within the community centres. Lady Margaret Hall Settlement and St Hilda’s were originally financed through subscriptions of £5 per annum (Clarke, 1953; Barrett, 1985) in the 1890s. Funding for Blackfriars Settlement and St Hilda’s remained precarious in the years that followed. As the range of activities expanded, these were funded through public appeals, appeals to alumni of the women’s colleges, legacies and sale of properties (Barrett, 1985). In the 1950s, following the establishment of the welfare state in 1948, there were questions about the role of the settlements and funding dwindled. By the 1980s and 1990s, government was making funds available for urban renewal, and St Hilda’s and WAC entered into arrangements with local authorities, corporate benefactors and central government to obtain grants. The neighbourhoods surrounding St Hilda’s and WAC have much in common. Both are socially deprived areas close to areas of considerable wealth and fame. St Hilda’s is a short walking distance from the Square Mile, London’s financial district. WAC is adjacent to the South Bank Arts Centre and just over the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament and Whitehall, the centre of UK government. Both areas, close to the London Docks, suffered considerably from intense bombing during the Second World War, with the loss of industry as well as housing. Both communities, traditionally white and working class up until the 1980s, continued to have poorly maintained and unmodernised housing and vacant spaces that had not been redeveloped after wartime bombing. And although the two areas are some distance apart, both communities suffered from the closure, due to containerisation, of the London Docks. At the beginning of the 1980s, access to public housing of good quality was limited. The condition of the housing stock was poor

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and the impact of changing housing policies, such as the ‘right to buy’ policy, which allowed council tenants to buy their properties, was diminishing the stock of public housing. This affected both communities as most residents lived in public housing. The right of established residents and their sons and daughters to live in good-​ quality housing became an important campaigning issue in the 1980s. In the East End of London, access to good-​quality housing for new immigrants and overcrowding within existing housing also became an important focus for community organisation. In both community organisations during the 1980s, the community centres became the focus for pensioners’ lunch clubs, social groups, youth clubs, mother-​and-​toddler groups and welfare rights services. It is notable that both organisations also started to offer free legal services in the 1980s and continue to offer free legal and welfare advice services to date. Through developing the provision of these services, both organisations held, and continue to hold, a trusted role in their respective local communities. It is, however, important to explore the fractures and contradictions they face. Community organising in both places is multilayered and complex, and brings together issues of race and class, access to resources, and the impact of gender. Two issues in particular were how to effectively place residents in charge of managing their own resources, and how to recruit and encourage residents and volunteers to run their own organisations. These are issues analysed in both case studies overleaf. Both organisations supported residents and shared what were traditionally seen as professional knowledge and skills. Social justice is a strand common to both organisations, with community volunteers involved in all aspects of running their centres. It is useful in exploring the case studies to note key areas of commonality:  • • • • • •

both organisations maintain their own buildings; both are reliant on volunteers and committee members; both have had to survive the withdrawal of local authority funding; both have discovered ways of brokering private–​public partnerships; both have come from a radical tradition; both offer a spotlight on current social and community work practice and offer themselves as an enduring model of a potentially better way of providing local services.

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Methodology St Hilda’s and WAC both have a wealth of literature: pamphlets; oral history memorabilia; photos; and a CD history of each. These were read and used by the authors to provide background to the history of both organisations. Tower Hamlets Archives and Cheltenham Ladies’ College Archives, which house the background to the establishment of St Hilda’s, were also searched. In addition, published and unpublished materials from the SE1 people’s history project were searched (SE1 being the postal code for WAC). This information was collated in order to inform the two case studies. Also, four interviews were carried out at St Hilda’s and at WAC with residents, volunteers and former community workers. Quotations from these interviews have been included in the following case studies. The two authors have also drawn on their own memories and reflections of this period.1

St Hilda’s Community Centre, Bethnal Green In July 2019, St Hilda’s celebrated its 130th anniversary. There was a street party and a gathering of all the volunteers and workers past and present, trustees and residents. St Hilda’s was founded in 1889 as a settlement house in Bethnal Green, an area just east of the City of London and now part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Initial funding was by subscription from the alumni of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, who raised enough funds to build a settlement house and fund six women volunteers (Clarke, 1953). The name St Hilda’s was chosen as St Hilda is the patron saint of women’s education. The reasons why this site was chosen is indicated in an anonymous letter sent in 1890: The settlements help to fill a gap and to reproduce as much as possible in London the healthier tradition of English country life, in which rich and poor, educated and uneducated can be in mission. (Anon., 1890) The letter continues: We chose this site as the vicar was a friend of Miss N and his family had a special connection with Cheltenham College. (Anon., 1890)

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Source: Steven Malies

At that time, the Poor Law almoners (charitable administrators) reported that 30% of the population lived in dire poverty, a stew of near-​starvation and alleys. The area was transformed by the opening in 1900 of a new housing estate built over the slum clearance named the Boundary Estate. The project was hailed as setting ‘new aesthetic standards for housing the working classes and included a new laundry, 188 homes, and 77 workshops’ (Mackay, 2016). St Hilda’s is now at the centre of the estate (Tower Hamlets Council, n.d.). The estate still exists and is a mix of tenants and private owners who bought their homes under the ‘right to buy’ scheme introduced by the Thatcher government. The area still faces severe social deprivation. The unemployment rate in 2019 was the highest in the capital and amongst the majority Bangladeshis, it was double the national average (Trust for London, 2020). Rebuilding St Hilda’s In the 1980s, there were several keys events that sparked the renaissance of St Hilda’s as a community centre. First, there was a recognition by the St Hilda’s management group that the composition of the local population had changed. On the Boundary Estate, Bangladeshis now comprised a substantial proportion of the population (Curtis and Ogden, 1986). Race in the locality was a

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very sensitive issue, with the rise of the National Front (a far-​r ight political party) creating a climate of fear that culminated in the party winning a council seat in 1993 in the nearby Isle of Dogs, which it lost in 1994 to the Labour Party. One local resident, speaking in December 2018, said: “In the post-​World War Two period there was a significant decline in the local population as families moved out further east to new council housing and to the new towns like Milton Keynes.… The centre although still active had lost its original ethos of community engagement.” In fact, the community population shrank dramatically, as many families left the area (ONS, 2019). A resident of the estate at the time made the observation: “the Boundary estate was not a mixed society, there were too many problems and too many differences” (Anon., 1974). This rather pessimistic comment captures the issues facing the area at the time. In the post-​war era, the Boundary Estate was left to fall into disrepair, and tenants reported dampness, poorly fitting windows and overcrowding (St Hilda’s Community Centre, 1976: 4). In 1975, the centre opened a facility where beverages, including alcohol, could be obtained, and as a result the building became more of a social club, known as the Club Row Club (the centre being located on Club Row), where residents paid a membership to come and drink at the bar and take part in social events. A local resident remarked that the centre had become rundown and by the evening you were ‘stepping over the drunks’ (St Hilda’s Community Centre, 1975: 2). The place was no longer seen as safe and it was felt that, by default, it had become a no-​go area for the local Bangladeshi community. The facility closed in 1983 eight years after a battle won by the then centre director, David Kitchen. This bold decision meant that St Hilda’s could return its focus to its wider community purpose. Very soon after the closure, a retired Bangladeshi teacher who lived on the estate decided to set up a class for local women to learn English and, at the same time, to have an opportunity to socialise outside the home and domestic life. A community outreach worker employed at the time reported that “women in the area didn’t go out, they didn’t speak English. In the beginning it was very hard to bring them into the Centre.” The worker continued: “A small upstairs room was booked, and some 42 women came. They delighted in each other’s company and this led to a sea change in St. Hilda’s community activities” (St Hilda’s Archive, 2009). The main concerns raised were illiteracy, the social isolation of women and the poor health outcomes of Bangladeshi elders. The centre

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had for some time turned its back on its immediate neighbourhood, although it carried on providing a youth club and day services for older people. It had to acknowledge that it had failed in the previous decade to engage with either the changing population or their specific needs. The political context David Blunkett, a Labour Party MP, wrote in 1983, in a Fabian Society tract: ‘If we can stimulate community action and get people to relate their local community problems to a sense of political purpose, then we have begun to change society’ (Blunkett and Green, 1983: 28). In a study on community engagement undertaken by a social work student on placement from Middlesex University at St Hilda’s at this time, a Boundary Estate resident who was asked their opinion about the St Hilda’s management said that: “… the people of St Hilda’s are not in touch with the community, therefore they are harming the community” (Flynn, 1985: 6). It might be useful here to look at the changes in government legislation and local policy and its effect on the work St Hilda’s wanted to do. A key piece of policy was the Barclay report (1982), an enquiry into the role of social workers in England and Wales. The report favoured a ‘community approach’, according to which people have the potential to care for each other if power is devolved to them. Social work’s role is then to support these informal networks and to develop the weaker ones. There is an emphasis on community engagement and the role for social workers as brokers of resources working with carers and voluntary organisations to support service users as citizens. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets went with the ethos of this initiative and granted each of its hamlets significant autonomy in deciding how budgets might be spent. The introduction of the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 meant that all adults over 18 were entitled to an assessment of their needs and that local social work managers could decide how their budgets might be spent. This enabled the legal and financial framework to respond effectively to local needs and cultures. In essence, social work managers could broker services tailored to local need. Reaching out The first Bangladeshis came to the area in the 1950s as sailors who worked and traded in the nearby Pool of London docks. By the early 1980s, many went back to Bangladesh to get married and brought

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their families to London to settle in the area. They largely worked in the clothing trade in sweat shops and as home workers, living in poor-​quality lodging houses and hard-​to-​let council properties. St Hilda’s recruited Mr M., a local resident, as a community worker in 1984. He began running advice sessions and identified where the community’s needs lay. In partnership with Age Concern (a national advice service for older people), the focus turned to the needs of older people in the area. These included poor housing, long working hours and the consequences of a change in diet to Western processed food. Many older Asian people were having heart attacks at 50 and were then forced to rely on their families for support. The local authority services were ill equipped to provide a decent service to this community and a rethink was needed. Social work students then –​ and I  (Steven) include myself –​were taught using the community and social action models. I managed the services for all the adults in a ward using community development models (a locality based on old church boundaries). I and the locality home care managers (employed by the local council in the home care and district nursing service) surveyed all the known people aged 65 and over and mapped them on to the health records kept by the local nursing service and general practitioners’ records. All the home care and personal care was provided and managed by the local authority and casework was done when an individual’s support network began to break down. Community centres such as St Hilda’s had a vital role in offering advice on welfare benefits, free legal advice, lunch and social clubs, and referrals to statutory services for more complex needs. The 1984/​85 St Hilda’s annual report acknowledges that the centre had failed in the previous decade to fully involve local people: ‘We have developed links with agencies that have helped and advised us on the most appropriate ways of involving both our traditional users and our more recently arrived neighbours’ (St Hilda’s Community Centre, 1985). The centre had begun to lay the foundations for a social action centre and saw the following year as ‘a year of action’. St Hilda’s was affiliated with the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres, which advocated for the idea that the settlements needed to engage with their local stakeholders in a meaningful way in order to survive. A change to the way that local people’s social care needs were assessed came with the introduction of the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. The emphasis was on the assessment of need and the requirement for local services to reflect these needs, and for the local authority to commission them from local providers. The

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local, white, British elders were well catered for by traditional home-​ based services. There was a pensioners’ action group that advocated for better services, but it was comprised primarily white British and Afro-​Caribbean people. The barriers of religion and language meant that day care was not going to be a good fit for the local Bangladeshis. Local elders and their carers were invited to come to a lunch club that served halal food. The management group continued to recruit care workers locally, often from extended families. As barriers began to break down and the local community to work together, the service grew and eventually Sheba Dan, a domiciliary care service for all Asians, was launched in 1994. I have the sense that the original settlement volunteers would cheer what was achieved. One hundred and thirty years after its establishment, a community centre responding to its locality was thriving despite the insecurities of economic austerity and political uncertainty in an exemplary way. Moreover, a few the children of immigrants and working-​class families associated with St Hilda’s went on to tertiary education and became social workers, lawyers and community activists based on their experience of the centre as volunteers, care workers or users.

Figure 12.2: St Hilda’s Community Centre, Club Row, 2020

Source: Steven Malies

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Waterloo Action Centre, Waterloo WAC can trace its origin back through the Settlement Movement over 130 years and it is still going strong. It was set up in 1972 out of the much older Blackfriars Settlement and the Lady Margaret Hall Settlement. Blackfriars Settlement, formerly called the Women’s University Settlement, came into being in 1887, and was one of the first women’s settlements. The Women’s University Settlement was set up originally with philanthropic funding and staffed largely by female students newly admitted to separate women’s colleges at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. They were influenced by the ‘settlement idea’ (Barrett, 1985). To this day, WAC is still based in a fomer library building next to Waterloo station where it was first established in 1972. It is in the Waterloo area of London, which spans two London boroughs –​the north end of Southwark and Lambeth Councils on the South Bank of the River Thames. This area is now considered a desirable part of London, but in the 1890s when Blackfriars Settlement was set up the area, according to Charles Booth’s poverty surveys, was deemed the second poorest area in London after Bethnal Green (Barrett, 1985). The Waterloo area next to the London Docks suffered from heavy bombing during the Second World War, tracts of land were left derelict and the area had become depopulated. At the same time, the public housing that existed was often old and of poor quality with largely unmodernised council properties and a homeless population. Community work at WAC WAC set up in 1972 in a disused library building on the Lower March, a street in Waterloo, initially as an extension of the Blackfriars Settlement. New premises were needed for the Blackfriars Settlement work centre for disabled people and Blackfriars Settlement saw an opportunity to set up a community centre in the north of the borough that could act as a community hub. There was a recognition that the Waterloo area had been neglected by local authority health and social services for many decades. Lambeth Council allowed the new centre to occupy the Waterloo site at a nominal rent. The old library building was in poor repair, so Lambeth Council donated some funds for its renovation, a local builder donated materials and local people took part in the repair work. WAC remained part of Blackfriars Settlement until 1979 when it became independent, but from the outset it had its own name and identity.

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The Settlement House Movement Revisited Figure 12.3: The Waterloo Action Centre building

Source: Waterloo Action Centre

From the beginning, the philosophy of WAC was based on community development and social action models, finding out what people wanted and helping them build on those strengths to achieve those goals in a democratic way (Mayo, 1975). For Jenny, the first community worker at WAC, trusting local people was a cornerstone of practice: “Social workers miss so much –​they miss people’s strengths.” Local residents were considered the experts, professionalisation of roles was resisted, and community members were involved in all aspects of the centre as equals. The first community development worker at the centre had been appointed earlier as a community development worker at Blackfriars Settlement in 1971. The role was a new one:  “Neither I  nor the Settlement knew in detail what that would mean” (Jenny, community worker, interviewee, n.d.). The post was to develop links with the community, which at the time had little organised activity. It turned out that one of the first activities was to set up a football team: ‘There was a block with a lot of homeless families and a large number of children with no access to youth provision. The boys wanted a football club and we held a jumble sale to raise money for their football shirts. The parents then wanted a football club for the younger children which was held outside.’ (Jenny, community worker interviewee, n.d.)

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The girls also wanted their own space: ‘… there was a girls’ group that met in a lift on one of the estates. They were offered space at Blackfriars Settlement but they couldn’t cross the road (because of rivalries between estates) [because] it would have been dangerous for them so I found them a space in a church.’ (Jenny, community worker, interviewee, n.d.) Community action and ‘fair rent housing for local people in need of housing’ It quickly became apparent that decent housing at a fair rent was a major issue in the local area. Tenants’ associations became a key part of community organising. Maureen, a volunteer at WAC and a long-​ term resident, became involved with Blackfriars Settlement in the early 1970s. A single mother isolated at home in poor housing conditions with two young children, she was supported by the mothers’ and toddlers’ group. She recalls moving into Campbell Buildings in 1971 with a ten-​month old baby: ‘We had no central heating. I think they did put in a gas fire. We had no bathroom. We had a tiny kitchen with no door on it, so I put a curtain up for modesty and no hot water … with the help of WAC we formed a tenants’ association, which enabled us to get doors on the kitchen, which we never had and hot water heaters.’ (Maureen volunteer and long-​term resident, interviewee, n.d.) Community work quickly moved from self-​help and participation to conflict and campaigning (Banks, 2011). Edward Henry House was another block providing poor-​quality housing for homeless people. The tenants in Edward Henry House organised a rent strike about the conditions in the property. As the community worker, Jenny was responsible for collecting the rents in cash along with two other council workers, as most people at the time did not have bank accounts and could not afford to get into debt. The tenants set up barricades to prevent the council workers who were collecting the rent from coming into the property. Jenny recalls that the publicity of the local newspaper, the South London Press, was important to the success of the campaign. One ongoing difficulty was resisting co-​option by the council: “One problem was the tenants who were in the association

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became emotionally co-​opted by the council” (Jenny, community worker, interviewee, n.d.). People also began to notice that tenants who became active in the campaign got moved out more quickly, which suggested that the council was keen to co-​opt the leaders of the rent strike. Nonetheless, supported by WAC, Edward Henry House was eventually developed into a housing cooperative with high-​quality housing for local people. Although Jenny kept a low profile at the time of the strike, her salary at the time was paid by Lambeth Council, which was also the landlord of Edward Henry House. Walking this tightrope between funders and radical community action is one of the contradictions of community organising (Banks, 2011). The rent strike took place against a background of a wider radical housing movement, including rent strikes and the squatting of empty properties across London. As well as action on poor housing, community attention turned to increasing the number of affordable homes available and making sure that open spaces in the area were protected. During the 1970s, large property developers began to buy up land and open spaces in Waterloo, seeing this area of London next to the Thames as ripe for redevelopment. Housing and open spaces for local people were under threat (Imrie et al, 2008). Local opposition to a proposal by the Imperial War Museum to turn precious local open space into a home for the Overlord Embroidery (a tapestry to commemorate D-​Day and the Normandy landings of 1944) became the first time that the community successfully thwarted a proposed development. The community had discovered that the planning application to turn the space into a building had not been properly publicised, so it forced a public inquiry and collected evidence to support the case to keep the area in question as a park. One issue Jenny and the organisers faced was countering local people’s lack of belief in their own power and convincing them that it was worth standing up to powerful interests and institutions: ‘…. the public inquiry went on for three days and then some months later we discovered we’d actually won. A number of people would take part in it, but lots wouldn’t because they said, “Well, what’s the point, you know the Head of the Imperial War Museum is the Duke of Gloucester and Southwark Council has already given permission and nobody’s going to listen to the likes of us, so why bother?” ’ (Jenny, community worker, interviewee, n.d.)

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The experience of successes such as these helped to build local people’s confidence and experience of organising and led to the establishment of Waterloo Community Development Group, which continues to campaign to this day on planning issues. In 1977, when plans were put forward to develop tracts of the South Bank into office buildings and expensive private housing in contravention of the locally agreed regeneration plan, the Coin Sreet Campaign to oppose office development and promote community-​led regeneration and homes for local people was born. The Coin Street Campaign was one of a number of initiatives in London at the time where local people organised to challenge the privatisation of public spaces. By 1979, WAC had become a thriving, open-​door advice and community centre. The area comprised both a traditional, white, working-​class community that had been there for generations and middle-​class activists who had moved into owner-​occupier properties, as well as council tenants who had bought their properties under the ‘right to buy’ scheme, and the area had become more racially diverse. Several of the key working-​class activists at WAC were employed in Fleet Street just across the river in the printing industry, or in ‘the print’ as it was known, producing national newspapers. The print at the time was a highly paid and unionised working-​class occupation and its members were able to bring experience in negotiation and belief in the power of community organising, as well as strong links to the trade unions. The 1980s to the present day Arriving as a young newly qualified community worker at WAC in 1982, there was activity everywhere. Campbell Buildings, a grim old dark Victorian block, was being pulled down; the second Coin Street public inquiry was under way and the fate of continued housing for local people on the South Bank of the River Thames hung in the balance; the adventure playground across the road housed in an old barge taken from the River Thames was heaving with young people; and there was a continuous flow of people coming into the open-​door advice agency with a variety of welfare rights, employment, housing, mental health issues. There was a lunch club for older people, free weekly legal advice sessions and a local newspaper. WAC was the home for the Association of Waterloo Groups, a coalition of organisations and professionals in the Waterloo area that organised the Waterloo Festival. Social justice, addressing poverty and imbalances of power were integral to community organising.

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Source: Waterloo Action Centre

Funded through central and local government programmes, there was a collective of five paid workers and two community health development workers. We were all paid exactly the same, with no formal hierarchy and we worked by consensus. A much larger group of community members and volunteers who sat on the management committee took part in various groups and organising activities, and volunteered with the open-​door advice sessions. While community work at the centre had a radical edge, most of the professional day-​to-​day work was a mixture of individual advocacy and support for local groups. Managing class and racial tensions and balancing support and advocacy for those living in poverty and poor housing at the same time as carrying out high-​profile campaigning required negotiation. The change from a traditional, white, working-​class community to a more diverse one was also unwelcome to some. A Bangladeshi advice session was set up and there were threats from the National Front (a fascist group) and physical attacks on some local individuals and on the centre. Determining who was included in the definition of ‘local community’ could also be complex. For example, local residents initially opposed plans to build a homelessness hostel in the area, although they came round to supporting the idea after some discussion.

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WAC remains a vibrant community centre at the heart of the Waterloo community, although funding constraints have restricted the welfare rights and advice services. Public funding cuts have left it largely reliant on volunteers and on funding itself from renting out spaces, selling donated clothes and applying for grants from the public and private sectors. The early settlement pioneers might have been proud of the impact WAC has had on the local area and on the life chances of individuals within it. Waterloo now has five fully mutual housing cooperatives supported by WAC where residents collectively run high-​quality, affordable, rented housing on the South Bank, an outstanding achievement at a time when public house building has all but ceased in the UK. Coin Street Community Builders has become a large social enterprise running an additional four housing cooperatives and is involved in regeneration with public–​private regeneration partnerships, although some argue that in the process it has become depoliticised and lost touch with its radical routes and local community priorities (Baeten, 2008). Community organising and decent housing have also helped shape individuals’ lives and enabled family members to remain in the area. This was the case for Maureen. In 1980, she moved from Campbell Buildings into a flat with an indoor bathroom. Volunteering and working for WAC increased her confidence and through networks formed at the centre she got a job in an architect’s office. Her daughters now have their own homes in one of the local housing cooperatives, and one runs a successful business selling coffee in the area. Having retired from paid work, Maureen volunteers again at the centre.

Conclusion The ethos of the original settlements can now be easily dismissed as paternalistic, but at the time it was a radical vision. The founders sought to bring about social change through interaction between an educated and financially secure elite and those in need. Many aspects of their original vision can still be seen in the 1980s and 1990s and up to the present day in the two organisations discussed in this chapter. This includes the centrality of the politics of place and the importance of responding to local need, the mixture of individual and groupwork and building up trusting relationships in a neighbourhood. One key difference between the visions then and now is the status accorded to local people in both communities. The low status accorded to the ‘the poor’ in some original letters related to St Hilda’s Settlement

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(Anon., 1896) is very different from the way in which local residents in both case studies are key decision makers in their own right and seen as being the equals of practitioners. The success of St Hilda’s and WAC has centred on community action and community development and benefits from having members committed over the long term who can juggle different priorities. The future for both is challenging due to funding constraints but they continue to play a vital role in the life of those communities. They are democratic spaces; you do not need money to attend, and social justice and wellbeing remain central to their ethos. Both centres still provide access to free, independent, legal advice at a time when legal aid has been severely restricted; they welcome volunteers and reach out to people who are vulnerable. Note The study received ethical approval from a University Ethics Committee (Ref. HREC/​3125).

1

References Alinsky, S. (1969) A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals. New York, NY: Vintage Press. Anon. (1974) St Hilda’s Archive. Anon. (1890) ‘To Ms Beale the headmistress of Cheltenham Ladies College’, [Letter, signature unclear], ref. 7512, Cheltenham Ladies’ College Archive, Cheltenham. Anon. (1896) [Letter], ref. 7550, Cheltenham Ladies’ College Archive, Cheltenham. Baeten, G. (2008) ‘Regenerating the South Bank:  Reworking community and the emergence of post political regeneration’. In R. Imrie, L. Lees and M. Raco (eds) Regenerating London: Governance, Sustainability and Community in a Global City. London: Routledge, pp 237–253. Banks, S. (2011) ‘Re-​g ilding the ghetto:  Community work and community development in 21st-​century Britain’. In M. Lavalette (ed) Radical Social Work Today:  Social Work at the Crossroads. Bristol: Policy Press: 165–​85. Barclay, P. (1982) Social Workers: Their Role and Tasks. London: Bedford Square Press. Barrett, G. (1985) Blackfriars Settlement: A Short History 1887–​1987. London: Blackfriars Settlement. Blunkett, D. and Green, J. (1983) Building from the Bottom: Sheffield Experience. London: Fabian Society.

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Clarke, A.K. (1953) A History of Cheltenham Ladies’ College 1853–​1953. London: Faber. Curtis, S.E. and Ogden, P.E. (1986) ‘Bangladeshis in London: a challenge to welfare’, Revue Europeenne des Migrations Internationales, 2(3): 136–150. Flynn, A. (1985) ‘Going local’, [Student research project], University of Middlesex, London. Friere, P. (1972) The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin. Imrie, R., Lees, L. and Raco, M. (eds) (2008) Regenerating London:  Governance, Sustainability and Community in a Global City. London: Routledge. Kemmis, D. (1992) Politics of Place. Norman, OK:  University of Oklahoma Press. Mackay, R. (2016) ‘Shoreditch slums give way to country’s first social housing’, The Guardian, 16 March. Mayo, M. (1975) ‘Community development: A radical alternative?’. In R. Bailey and M. Brake (eds) Radical Social Work. London: Edward Arnold, pp 182–​96. ONS (Office for National Statistics) (2019) Historical Census Population [Online]. Available at: www.ons.gov.uk [Accessed 19 August 2019]. St Hilda’s Archive (2009) Interview with staff member, 87–​92. St Hilda’s Community Centre (1975) Annual Report 1975. London: St Hilda’s Community Centre (held at Tower Hamlets Archives, London). St Hilda’s Community Centre (1976) Annual Report 1976. London: St Hilda’s Community Centre (held at Tower Hamlets Archives, London). St Hilda’s Community Centre (1985) Annual Report 1984/​85. London:  St Hilda’s Community Centre (held at Tower Hamlets Archives, London). Stepney, P. and Popple, K. (2008) Social Work and the Community: A Critical Context for Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. The CDP Inter-project Editorial Team (1977) Gilding the Ghetto: The State and the Poverty Experiments, National Inter-Project Reports [Online]. Available at: http://ulib.iupuidigital.org/cdm/ref/collection/CDP/ id/3506#:~:text=Object%20Description%20%20%20Title%20%20 %20Gilding,Contact%20us%3A%20digschol%40iupui.edu%20%20 12%20more%20rows%20 (Accessed 27 July 2020). Tower Hamlets Council (n.d.) ‘Local history’ [Online]. Available at:  www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/​ l gnl/​ l eisure_​and_​culture/​l ocal_​ history/​local_​history.aspx (Accessed 19 August 2019). Trust for London (2020) Unemployment Rate, by London Borough [Online]. Available at: https://www.trustforlondon.org.uk/data/ unemployment-rate-borough

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Conclusion Sarah Vicary The Settlement House Movement Revisited: A Transnational History has explored the past place of the Settlement House Movement within social work and social welfare. In this concluding chapter, the themes from each of the book’s chapters are drawn together. First, we reflect on the place of the Settlement House Movement as it has developed in different national contexts, signifying a more complex perspective than that which has been traditionally afforded. The chapter then goes on to examine the role of historical research and, particularly, the contribution that this methodological approach can have within social work and social work education, by highlighting the different examples provided within the individual chapters. It ends with a discussion of some cross-​cutting insights that emerge from this volume and an exploration of the unique role that the Settlement House Movement held, and still holds, in the continued development of social work, social welfare and other fields of knowledge and practice. This volume is divided into four parts, each of which has a distinct yet connected theme. Part I  explores the transnational transfer of knowledge. The Settlement House Movement is shown to be a transnational endeavour, emerging in London at the beginning of the 1880s with the foundation of Toynbee Hall in London by Samuel and Henrietta Barnett. Toynbee Hall attracted many reform activists from continental Europe, and also inspired Stanton Coit, Lillian Wald and Jane Addams to establish the first settlement houses in the New York and Chicago, spreading after that to the rest of the US and later to other Western, industrialised countries and even beyond. The transfer of the settlement house model, particularly between the UK and the US, is the well-​known legacy of the Settlement House Movement. However, this book suggests that our understanding of the transnationalisation of the Settlement House Movement is restricted, due to the overwhelming success story of settlements in the first decades of the 20th century and the repetition of stories told by their founders. Yet, there is a lack of historical research on this topic. As such, Part I starts from the argument that it is not possible to understand why settlements were

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so influential without considering broader transnational connections and dimensions. As Stefan Köngeter writes in Chapter Two, three dimensions seem to be key to any transnational analysis: • the importance of the dual considerations of Christianity and secularisation; • the scientific developments of social approaches that helped to further research methods favoured by the Settlement House Movement; • the social question as a crisis of the nation as a community and, consequently, the development of nation states as welfare states. It is against this background that different transatlantic developments are explored, beginning with Köngeter’s specific focus on Canadian and German settlements. This first part of the book then moves on to other case studies, including, in Chapter 3, the influence of Prussian academic thought on the Greenwich House Settlement in New York through its founder, Mary Simkhovitch. This chapter discusses the notion of ‘municipalisation’, the transfer to the urban public sector of some of the core goods of the private sector for the sake of the public good. This is followed, in Chapter 4, by a study of the Portuguese settlement experience, which itself begins by exploring the French experience and offers an opportunity to explore the impact of this and the Addams’ Hull-​House approach on the emergence of settlements in Portugal from a trans-​Atlantic perspective. The analytic lens adopted in this chapter is Hull-​House’s paradigmatic three Rs motto –​residence, research and reform –​which are key component in a comparison of these international experiences and an underpinning theme of the first part of the book. The final chapter in this part examines two settlement houses that were established by social workers in Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s. As we have seen, while the transatlantic influence of the US and the UK was significant, settlement houses established by Jews in Central and Eastern Europe were also a major influence. A central finding of Chapter 5 is that Palestine settlements were established by social workers and they had the support of the formal social welfare services. The mix of individual casework and community organisation undertaken at these settlements reveals that a major source of the motivation for their social work founders and the activists linked to them was an effort to integrate Jewish immigrants from Middle Eastern countries into mainstream Jewish society and to enable them to contribute to the Zionist aspiration of a Jewish state in Palestine.

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The second part of the book moves to the interface between the Settlement House Movement and other social movements, beginning with a focus on university extension. Here Geoffrey Ginn explores the initial framing and spread of the University Settlement idea in the 1880s, typically ascribed to shared conceptions of social service arising from voluntarism and of the moralising character of charity activism. Evaluating its contribution of the Settlement model as pioneered at Toynbee Hall, this chapter concentrates on the cluster of educational activities associated with University Extension and in particular the affinities between London centres such as Whitechapel and Bermondsey. The extent to which the Settlement model can be taken as a direct consequence of University Extension is considered in detail through these case studies. The next chapter focuses on the emergence of the Settlement House Movement in Germany with the establishment of the Hamburger Volksheim in 1901 and, in particular, on the later foundation of the Social Working Group in Berlin. It is suggested that both were highly influenced by their predecessors in England and the close connections to the Protestant churches in England and in Germany, thus revealing the mixed influences of different social and religious movements, particularly that of social Protestantism and socialist movements. In this chapter, insight is provided into the tensions between the educational and missionary approach of Protestantism and the reality, and sometimes despair, of poverty and the other social movements set up to combat its effects. In addition, the influences and interconnections of the Settlement House Movement with the emergence of social work education and research is discussed. Moving on, the third chapter in this part explores the motivation of a young, Anglo-​Jewish man (Basil Henriques) and his founding of a settlement house in the slums of East End London. Drawing on Henriques’s diaries, family correspondence and university lecture notes as well as literature about the period, it is argued that the foundation of this settlement house represented the founder’s time and social class, yet adroitly articulated a Jewish response to poverty in a Christian, social reform tradition and thus bridged the Jewish community with the mainstream Anglo-​Saxon world. The initial framing and spread of the settlement house idea in the 1880s is typically ascribed to shared conceptions of social service arising from the voluntarist and moralising character of charity activism. A final consideration in Part II concerns the spread of another reformist movement, the Poor Man’s Lawyer services, its link to the Settlement House Movement, and the intersections of both with

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the early National Council of Social Service and other national and transnational networks of reformers. The provision of these free legal advice clinics was a means of usefully applying the legal skills of residents at male-​led settlements, as well as creating a form of social work that was acceptable for upper-​and middle-​class men to engage in. Settlement provision of legal advice also closely intersected with the social work undertaken, from direct interventions in helping needy families, to training social workers in aspects of law and seeing legal advice as a key element in community development. Part III of the book focuses on research and settlements, and begins in Chapter 10 with a summary of the various groundbreaking empirical investigations within settlements that not only provided first-​hand accounts but also acted as projects undertaken to promote social reform. As Dayana Lau suggests in this chapter, these research projects ranged from small to large, some of which were carried out over huge geographical areas and over time. The research design also varied, reflecting a broad spectrum underpinning the development of empirical social research both for the new discipline of sociology and, of much significance to this book, for the emerging profession of social work. Exploring this production of knowledge in terms of its egalitarian impact, not least in the opposition of injustice and paternalism, these studies also afforded expertise in social problems and in turn the development of the evidence base for the social work profession. In a more detailed discussion of two case studies taken from that list, the dilemmas in much contemporary debates around social work as a profession are rehearsed. Included among Lau’s list is the use of geo-​mapping technologies and other statistically generated graphic practices that are nowadays commonplace epistemological sources in social work research, policy and practice. These numerically driven, yet graphic, displays arguably developed in the settlements. The next chapter in the part of the book, Chapter  11, discusses Hull-​House’s innovative use of social surveys and mapping at the turn of the 20th century. These represent a first concerted effort within the traditions of American social work/​ sociology to deploy geocentric, numerically driven research as a means of tying intervention through urban governance to liberal welfare political judgements. The chapter presents findings from archival research and secondary sources and argues that this was one of the first efforts to deploy more numerically based evidence to reason about urban issues. However, it was the aesthetic analysis of the slum employed by reformers in the courts and in reports for positioning the evidentiary value of the maps that was also significant. The author, Rory Crath,

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argues that the reformers’ objective in overlaying a numerically based visual technique with an evocative description of the smells and sounds of the immigrant ‘slum’ was to permit the public an opportunity to sense the imperative for legal and institutional change necessary. Preceding this Conclusion, an initial chapter in Part IV of the book applies some of the themes discussed in previous chapters through the lens of two practitioners and their personal reflections on two settlement houses in London and those of a focus group in an exploration of the Settlement House Movement in a more contemporary light. It concentrates on community-​based practice in two organisations in England during the period 1981 to 1995:  St Hilda’s Community Centre in Bethnal Green, East London and Waterloo Action Centre in Waterloo, South London. St Hilda’s was one of the original settlements from the 1890s, while Waterloo Action Centre came out of Blackfriars Settlement and the Lady Margaret Hall Settlement. At the time, community development and community social work were part of mainstream social work practice supported by local authorities and integrated into social work education. The authors, Jeanette Copperman and Steven Malies, argue that this has largely been lost from both contemporary mainstream social work practice and education, taking place only in the voluntary sector. The chapter documents the value of social work within contemporary community-​based organisations where politics of place is central to the community-​based practice undertaken, thus continuing the original ethos and ideas of the original settlements. The exploration of the past and current influence of these two settlement houses brings us back to the purpose of The Settlement House Movement Revisited: A Transnational History. Although this book does not claim to offer a systematic exploration of the Settlement House Movement, the diverse case studies and issues discussed in it do offer some cross-​cutting insights on the history of this movement. The transnational outlook of this volume shows that the terms employed when referring to settlement houses and the approaches underlying them differ within, and across, cities and countries. In the Anglophone countries, the discussion focuses primarily on the prefix (for example, university versus social settlement). Yet, the terms employed in other national contexts, such as maisons sociales, centros sociais or Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft, reflect diverse understandings of the settlement approach. While the chapters here show that all these different approaches have in common the fact that they viewed the initial settlements in England or in the US as the source of the movement, it is important to note that the Settlement House

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Movement was an outcome of a broad array of social developments and movements that differ across cities, countries and continents, in their ideological background (for example, socialist, Christian-​socialist and so on), as well as in their relation to other social movements (such as women’s movements, and the peace movement). This is true for the Settlement House Movement within the Anglophone countries, as shown, for example, in Chapter 6, which explores the interconnection with the university extension movement, and in Chapter 9, which depicts how the Poor Man’s Lawyer movement was embedded in the work of settlement houses. These two less well-​ known cases are examples of a much larger field of social movement that influenced the development of the Settlement House Movement. The insights in this volume of settlement houses in continental Europe enrich this picture and show that even more social movements and ideologies were incorporated in the settlement approach. It was only the internationalisation of the Settlement House Movement from the 1920s onwards, and the institutionalisation of the national and international federations and conferences, that finally led to the convergence of the name and the impression of a unity of diverse approaches in hindsight. While clearly each of the settlement houses described here had its own character determined by the needs of the neighbourhood and the interests of their founders, staff and residents, they did tend to adhere to common reference points. This was the establishment of a physical structure in impoverished neighbourhoods by activists who resided on site, promoted and implemented diverse educational, cultural and social reforms and services, and did so while collaborating (albeit to different degrees) with the residents of those neighbourhoods. The settlement houses and their physical infrastructure, including their social environment, were not only important for the settlement work itself, but also served as a place for experiential learning for many social reformers around the world. Myriad international reports show how exceptional and far-​reaching these experiences were. The physical infrastructure therefore was key for the multibranched Settlement House Movement as it enabled cognitive, emotional, bodily learning. Yet the commonalities go beyond this basic reference point. The ‘settlement folk’ (Carson, 1990) tended to be middle-​or upper-​class individuals, often women, ready to devote themselves to improving the wellbeing of excluded populations in the cities in which they resided. In doing so, the settlement residents often drew on a crucial reservoir of social capital, financial resources and acquired knowledge based on top-​level studies and transnational learning. This work entailed an all-​encompassing commitment to a social group often

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characterised by class, living conditions, ethnicity, religion, language and cultural characteristics very divorced from their own. However, not all of these divides were equally important for the settlement houses. Racial segregation in the US, for example, was hardly tackled (Lasch-​ Quinn, 1993). Other differences were interpreted very differently (see Chapter 2) depending on the convictions, ideologies and motivations underlying the settlement houses. Religious belief, for example, played a major role, as did ethnicity (in some of the cases) and often the context of gender inequality. Interestingly, political ideology appears to have been less important in most cases. Although some settlement houses residents, particularly in the US, engaged much in policy-​related activities, radical social change and an affiliation with political movements advocating the undermining of the existing class system were uncommon, and indeed some of the settlement residents adhered to very conservative political and social worldviews  –​this, despite the fact that the Settlement House Movement flourished during a period when radical social and political movements enjoyed much support. In this sense, despite the readiness of settlement residents to break with their class backgrounds on a personal level, they did not generally support replacing the class system itself as many socialist approaches did at the time. Rather they sought to further an amelioration of the living conditions of the most disadvantaged groups and the facilitation of a positive integration of people from both sides of the social divides described. Innovation was another defining feature of the settlement houses. This was reflected in the readiness of the settlement residents to move beyond the previously dominant ‘friendly visitor’ approach and to address social distress by actually residing within poor neighbourhoods, becoming intimately familiar with the conditions within them and establishing with the members of these communities services the state did not provide and for which they lacked the resources to acquire from the market. The settlements advocated and implemented, to varying degrees of success, a participatory practice that involved working jointly on social issues and learning from each other. The settlement houses introduced services –​adult education, legal aid, health provision, social care –​that were unknown and inaccessible in these neighbourhoods beforehand. In what has been described by one commentator as a three-​way partnership (Rimmer, 1980: 155), the success of a settlement depended on interested and well-​connected leadership, dedicated paid and unpaid staff, and the community it was set up to serve, a balance that was hard to maintain. These actions and initiatives were innovative, but ultimately aimed very often at re-​establishing a society as a cohesive

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community as imagined in the past. The settlement house pioneers were ‘dreamers of a new day’ (Rowbotham, 2010), but at the same time remembered the good old days when the brute forces of industrial capitalism did not tear apart the social groups. Research is a final cross-​cutting commonality that emerges from the chapters in this book. Involvement in research was common to many of the settlements, particularly those affiliated with universities. The residents often engaged in path-​breaking social research that explored issues and populations generally ignored previously. In doing so, they adopted previously untried research methods that were intended to provide a more accurate and vivid understanding of the reality that they knew from their surroundings in the neighbourhoods. More important, the settlement residents regarded this research as a means not only to create knowledge but also to raise awareness of acute social problems and to serve as a tool to advocate for change. At the same time, settlement research emphasised research approaches that connected practice and academia, devotion and distance, and intimate insights and objective knowledge. Ultimately, the goal of this book has been to employ historical methods to better understand the impact of the Settlement House Movement on social work and social welfare. The changing social, economic and religious circumstances discussed in many of the chapters illuminate several common threads: human effort, the move towards professional service instead of volunteer endeavour, and the tradition of private concern made public. All of these played an important part in the development of social work as a vocation and afterwards as a profession, not least the understanding of poverty, and not just of the material kind. Running parallel with the foundation of the welfare state in the UK, for example, large numbers of students were enrolling for social work training underpinned by the collective voice of these residential settlements. Arguably, settlement residents were the forerunners of social work, certainly that which regarded the community as a central arena for social work practice. Clearly, the social work that we see today owes much to the values, the practices and the knowledge that developed within the Settlement House Movement during its long history from the end of the 19th century. At the same time, the history of the Settlement House Movement can be read from very different disciplinary angles. It is certainly perceived as crucial to the development of sociology. Williams and MacLean (2015: 14) contend that the movement was a forerunner to the discipline of sociology that successfully combined theory and practice. The Settlement House Movement was also

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highly influential on education; the idea of schools as centres for the community, favoured by Dewey (1902), and the emergence of adult education are closely linked to the settlement houses. Furthermore, social policy, social planning, early childhood education, social hygiene and many more professions and their related discipline have roots in the myriad ideas, concepts and practices that are found in the transnational history of the Settlement House Movement. These many connections across the boundaries of professions and disciplines are still waiting to be discovered. References Carson, M.J. (1990) Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885–​1 930. Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press. Dewey, J. (1902) ‘The school as social center’, The Elementary School Teacher, 3(2): 73–​86. Lasch-​Quinn, E. (1993) Black Neighbors: Race and the Limits of Reform in the American Settlement House Movement, 1890–​1945. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Rimmer, J. (1980) Troubles Shared: The Story of a Settlement 1899–​1979. Leicester: Warner Russell. Rowbotham, S. (2010) Dreamers of a New Day: Women who Invented the Twentieth Century. London: Verso. Williams, J.E. and MacLean V.M. (2015) Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years: Faith, Science and Reform. Chicago, IL: Haymarket.

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Index 3Rs of the Settlement Movement 27–​9, 52–​5

A Abbott, Edith, Hull-​House reformer  60, 168, 170, 184 Abbott, Grace, Hull-​House resident  54, 55, 59, 169 Addams, Jane, Hull-​House, Chicago  45, 51–​4, 56, 59, 66, 183, 184, 188–​9, 190 Adler, Felix  22 Alden, Percy, Mansfield House  148 Alinsky, Saul  202 Americanisation  174 anti-​Semitism  131, 139, 141, 142 Associations Féminines et Catholicisme (Fayet-​Scribe)  61 Attlee, Clement  140

B Ball, Sidney  96–​7 Bangladeshi community  208–​10 Boundary Estate  206–​8 St Hilda’s Community Centre  208–​10 unemployment rate  206 Barclay Report (1982), social worker role  208 Barnett, Henrietta  91–​2, 96–​7, 141 Barnett, Samuel  16, 91–​9, 102, 103, 146 view of the social divide  26 Baron, Bernhard  140 BARS (British Association of Residential Settlements)  153, 155 Bassot, Marie-​Jeanne  55–​8, 60, 62, 64 Berlin, Germany  East Social Working Group (SAG Berlin-​Ost)  19, 23, 109–​10, 112–​22 municipalisation  35–​48 Bermondsey Settlement  99–​101, 103 Berthen, Edith, solicitor  152–​3 Birmingham  social work diploma course  150 Women’s University Settlement  149 Bismarck, Otto van, municipalisation  35, 38 Blackfriars Settlement  203, 211, 213 Bliss, William  17 Bloch, Zipporah, Shimon Hazadik experiences  80

Blott, Arthur, Poor Man’s Lawyer  148–​9 Blue, Rabbi Lionel  140–​1 Blunkett, David, Labour Party MP  208 Bode, Wilhelm  110–​11 Booth, Charles  social surveys of poverty  22, 181, 183–​4, 211 Booth, William, In Darkest England and the Way Out  148 Boundary Estate, Bethnal Green  205–​8 Bouquet, B., France settlements, four main movements  60–​2 boys’ clubs  115, 129, 137–​8, 139–​40, 142 Breckinridge, Sophonisba, New Homes for Old  169, 174–​5 British Association of Residential Settlements (BARS)  153, 155 budgets, research on  167

C Cambridge House, Camberwell  151, 154 Canada, Presbyterian and Methodist churches  17–​18, 22–​3, 27 Careers for Girls (Cairns)  153 Carson, Sara L., Toronto settlement houses  18, 27 Case Studies of Unemployment (Elderton)  171–​3 casework approach  73, 74, 80 Catholic Church  and first social work school in Portugal  63 social Catholicism  60–​1 feminine associationism  61–​2 Central Neighbourhood House (CNH), Toronto, Canada  25 centrossociais (social centres), Portugal  63–​6 charitable behaviour of Jews  133 charitable expenditure, London  135 charity, attitude towards by the unemployed  172 Charity Organisation Society (COS)  3–​4, 42, 45, 73, 135, 146, 149, 153 Cheltenham Ladies’ College  205 Chicago  see Hull-​House Christianity  Christian influence on social welfare  16–​19

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The Settlement House Movement Revisited influence on Basil Henriques  132–​3 ‘social Christianity’, Bermondsey Settlement  99–​100 church influence  16–​19, 22–​3, 25, 27 cities, research on  167 see also social surveys Classen, Walter  111, 115 Cohen, Hannah Helena  76–​7 Coin Street Campaign  215 Coit, Stanton  21–​2, 221 Columbia University, New York  40 community action  208, 213–​15 community-​based practices (1980 to 1995)  201–​5 St Hilda’s Community Centre, Bethnal Green  205–​10 Waterloo Action Centre, Waterloo  211–​17 Community Development Projects (CDP)  202 community development workers, roles and responsibilities  202–​3, 209, 212, 213 community social work methods  73, 74 Copperman, Jeanette  6, 225 Courtney, Kate  93 Crath, Rory  5, 224–​5 Cummings, Edward, on Toynbee Hall  98

Evangelia House, Toronto  18, 27 exercise, health benefits of  47

F Fayet-​Scribe, S.  56, 59–​60, 62 feminist movement, France  61–​2 food shortage, ‘chosen measure’ against unemployment  173 Foucault, Michel  182–​3 France  and the feminist movement  61–​2 maisons sociales movement  55–​8 résidences sociales, compared and contrasted to Hull-​House scheme  58–​60, 66–​7 social Catholicism  60–​1 Free University of Berlin  35, 38, 39 Friendly Aid House, Manhatten  40–​2 Friere, Paulo  202

G

Davis, Allen F.  24, 93 Dehn, Günther  115 Denison House, Boston  37 Dessertine, D., maisons sociales movement in France  55–​6 Dewey, John  20, 26, 36–​7, 44, 229 Diémer, Marie  58, 60, 68 Dreyfuss, Alfred  131 Durand, R., French settlements  59, 61

Gahéry, Marie  55, 56, 57 Garcette, C., France settlements, four main movements  60–​2 gendering of social work  146–​7 Germany, Settlement House Movement in  18–​19, 21, 109–​22 Ginn, Geoffrey  223 Goschen, G.J.  92 Gramm, Erich  121–​2 Gramm, Hermann  122 Gräser, Marcus  112, 121 green spaces, expansion of, New York City  46–​7 Greenwich House, Manhattan, New York  42–​5 Greenwich Village, New York City  42–​4 Günther, Gerhard  111 Gurney-​Champion, F.C.G., provision of Poor Man’s Lawyer  150

E

H

Écoled’Action Sociale  58, 60, 64 education  France  62 Germany  114–16 Jerusalem  78–​80 Mary Simkhovitch’s  37–​40 Portugal  63 for young Jewish women and girls  76, 82 see also university extension Edward Henry House  213–​14 Elderton, Marion, unemployment case studies  171–​3 Engels, Friedrich  15, 16, 22, 29

Hadassah Organisation  79, 82–​3 Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers  155 Hall, Helen  172 Hall, Stanley G., recapitulation theory  115 Hamnett , F.H., Legal Hints for Social Workers  150–​1 Harris, José  104 health, research on  168 see also social surveys healthcare, improvements in  82–​3 Hebrew Women’s Organisation, Palestine  77, 78, 80

D

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Index Henriques, Basil  129–​42 beginnings of the settlement  136–​40 family background and influences  129–​32 Oxford study and thoughts about poverty  132–​6 Henry Street Settlement, New York  2, 167, 169, 172 Hertz, Chief Rabbi Joseph  139–​40 hire purchase  154–​5 Hire Purchase Act (1938)  155 Holbrook, Agnes, chief illustrator of Hull-​House maps  183, 187, 189, 191, 193–​4 Holland, Henry Scott  93 housing  Berlin  118 Chicago tenements study  171, 184, 185, 192 London  203–​4, 206 community action and rent issues  213–​15 housing cooperatives  217 overcrowding problems  192, 193–​4, 204, 207 public housing, New York City  46 reform of tenements  45 research  168 ‘right to buy’ policy  202, 204, 206, 215 Tenants’ Protection Committee  151–​2 Hull-​House, Chicago  181–​2 comparison to the French résidences sociales movement  58–​60 research by residents of (1890 to 1936)  166–​70 residence, research and reform  52–​5 ties with University of Chicago  20 Hull-​House Maps and Papers  21, 22, 53–​ 4, 170–​1, 183–​5 aesthetic representations of wards  191–​4 numerical evidence and democracy  188–​90 numericity issues  185–​8 performative value of numbers  190–​1 public reviews of  187–​8, 189–​90 summary comments  194–​6 Hunter, Robert, Tenement Conditions in Chicago  168, 184, 192–​3, 194 Hurren, E.T., on pauperism  145–​6 Hurt, James  54

I idealism of ‘settlement idea’  104, 120 immigrant neighbourhoods, Chicago  181–​94

immigration research  169 Americanisation study  174–​5 Imperial War Museum proposal  214 income and budgets, research on  167 industrial work, research on  169 Institute of Social Work (ISS), Lisbon  63, 64, 65–​6

J James, William  20 Jannasch, Hans Windekilde  115 Jaques, Ernst  111, 117–​18 Jerusalem settlement houses  Nachlat Achim  81–​4 Shimon HaTzadik  77–​81 Thon family, role in establishing  75–​7 Jewish clubs, London  137–​8 Jewish immigrant communities  from Eastern Europe  74–​5, 77–​8 in London  138–​9 Jewish immigrants/​migrants  to Central Europe and America  74–​5 to Jerusalem  78, 81 to Palestine  77–​8 to US, Canada and the UK  18, 131 to Whitechapel, London  138 Jewish Settlement House, St George’s, London’s East End  139–​40 Jewish Toynbee Hall  75 Johnson, P., hire purchase  154–​5 Jones, J.M., Poor Man’s Lawyer evenings  154 Jones, P., negotiation of parochial relief  145–​6 Judaism  130–​1, 133–​4, 139–​40

K Kalvary, Hadassah, Jewish activist  76, 79 Kelley, Florence, Hull-​House resident  22, 36–​7, 45, 54, 59, 165–​6, 189–​90 Kellogg, Paul  167, 169, 190 Kennedy, John C., settlement house research  166, 167, 170 kindergartens, Jerusalem  79, 80 King, S.A., negotiation of parochial relief  145–​6 knowledge  experiential, affective and aesthetic  182–​3 production of scientific  163–​71, 176 Settlement House Movement  20–​1, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28 see also university extension Köngeter, Stefan  1, 222 Koven, Seth  101

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L Lady Margaret Hall Settlement  203, 211 Lathrop, Julia, Hull-​House resident  54, 55, 59 Lau, Dayana  5, 224 Lau, Richard  119 lawyers ‘doing social work’  145–​55 Le Fer de la Motte, Mercédès  56–​7, 67–​8 Le Play, Frédéric  59, 68 Legal Aid and Advice Act (1949)  145, 154 Legal Hints for Social Workers (Tillyard and Hamnett)  150–​1 Leo XIII, Pope (1878 to 1903)  60–​1 Leys, Kenneth  132, 134, 136, 142 Lidgett, John Scott, Bermondsey Settlement  99–​101 Lindner, Rolf  115, 116 Loewe, Rose, Jewish Girls’ Club  140 London Council for Social Service (LCSS)  153–​4 London Society for the Extension of University Teaching (LSEUT)  94–​ 5, 96, 100, 102 Lovejoy, Esther  56, 67 Lowell, Josephine Shaw, Charity Organisation Society founder  45

M Macdonald, James A., ‘social gospeller’  17–​18 MacLean, V.M.  51–​5 maisons sociales movement in France  55–​8, 62 Malies, Steven  6, 225 Manchester University Settlement  152 Mandatory Palestine (1920-​48)  73–​4 emergence of social work  74 settlement houses in Jerusalem  77–​84 Thon family  75–​7 Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx and Engels)  15, 24 Mansfield House, Canning Town, East London  147–​8, 149, 151 maps, social  see Hull-​House Maps and Papers Marx, Karl  15, 16, 24, 29 McKinley, William, US President  41 Meacham, S.  91, 146–​7 Mead, Edwin Doak, Friendly Aid House lecture (1898)  41 Mead, George H., nation’s social context for settlement houses  25 Mennicke, Carl  25, 115–​16 Methodism  23, 99

Mill, John Stuart  135–​6 Montefiore, Claude  133–​4, 136, 140–​1, 142 Montgomery, Louise, working girl research  170 moral character of late-​Victorian settlement work  103–​4 moral conduct, furthering through scientific means  22–​3 moral dangers  169 Moral and Social Reform Council of Canada, surveys by  23 moral turpitude, poverty attributed to  135 moralised character of settlement work  103, 104 Moses, J., tort law  146 Muncy, R., US Children’s Bureau  170 municipal socialism  Germany  35–​40, 48 New York  45–​8 ‘municipalisation’  35, 222 Wagner’s advocacy of  38 Munro, Hector, Poor Man’s Lawyer  152

N Nachlat Achim settlement house  81–​4 nation states  25–​6 National Consumers League (NCL)  45 National Council for Social Service (NCSS)  153, 155, 224 National Health Service and Community Care Act (1990)  208, 209–​10 National Industrial Recovery Act (1933)  46 neighbourhoods, research on  167 see also social surveys New Homes for Old (Breckinridge)  174–​5 New York City  Mary Simkhovitch’s settlement work in  40–​8 settlement house research  167, 168, 169 NSPCC  151 numbers, emotional effects of  190–​1

O Oakley, A.  165–​6, 170 Obra das Mães para a EducaçãoNacional (OMEN)  63–​4, 65, 68–​9 older people, services for  208, 209 OMEN (Obra das Mães para a Educação Nacional)  63–​4, 65, 68–​9

234

Index Osterhammel,Jürgen  116–​17 Owen, Robert, utopian socialism  136 Oxford and Bermondsey Mission (OBM), South-​East London  137, 142 Oxford Hebrew Congregation (OHC)  134, 138, 139 Oxford House, Bethnal Green  136–​7, 147 Oxford and St George’s Jewish Girls’ Club  140 Oxford and St George’s Jewish Youth Trust  140 Oxford and St George’s Jewish Boys’ Club  129, 139–​40, 142 Oxford and St George’s Settlement House  129–​42 Oxford University  Basil Henriques’ time at  132–​6 Sidney Ball’s reputation at  96–​7 St John’s College, Barnett’s address at  92

P Park, Robert  190–​1 Picht, Werner  111, 112, 120 Pimentel, I., OMEN  63–​4 Pittenger, Mark  122 political economy  135–​6 ‘politics of place’, community-​based practice  202, 203 Poor Laws  145–​6, 155–​6 Poor Man’s Lawyer  145–​55 Popkewitz, T.S.  26 Portugal, influence of the Settlement Movement in  63–​6 poverty, causes of  135, 188 Presbyterian Church, Canada  17–​18, 22–​3, 27 Progressive Era, US (circa 1890–​1917)  36–​7 Protestantism, German settlement house movement  18–​19, 116–​17, 121, 223

R radical community action  214 radical social movements  202 Raphael, Lutz, ‘scientization of the social’  21, 165 Recchuiti, John Louis, Progressive Era urban reformer  36–​7 recreational facilities, New York City  46–​7 Religiöse Sozialisten (Religious Socialists)  115–​16 Rerum novarum (Pope Leo XIII)  60–​1

research  163–​6, 170–​1 on budgets  167 city and neighbourhoods  167 ‘coloured people’  168 family disintegration  168 health  168 housing  168 immigration  169 industrial work  169 moral dangers  169 unemployment  171–​3 working girls and women  170 see also Hull-​House Maps and Papers; social surveys Residence, Research, and Reform (3Rs of the Settlement Movement)  52–​5 Résidence Sociale Levallois-​Perret (RSLP)  57–​8, 59–​60, 64 résidences sociales (France)  55–​8 compared and contrasted to Hull-​ House scheme  58–​60, 66–​7 Riis, Jacob, How the other half lives  163, 168 Rodgers, Daniel T.  21, 36 Rogers, Frederick, supporter of education  95–​6, 97, 103–​4 Rowbotham, Sheila, working class rejection of university extension  101 Royal Commission report (1909) on English Poor Law policy  135

S Sachße, Christoph  121 SAG Berlin-​Ost  19, 25, 109–​10, 112–​22 Salomon, Alice, Soziale Frauenschule (Social Women’s School)  111, 120 Salvation Army  148 Schmoller, Gustav von  21, 38, 45 Scotland, N.  91 Sekretariat Sozialer Studentenarbeit (Secretariat of Social Student Work  113 ‘settlement folk’, social status of  226–​7 settlement sociologists, use of research  53–​4 settlement sociology  164–​5 Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act (1919)  146 Shaw, I., root of sociological social work  165 Sheffield, Poor Man’s Lawyer services  149, 151, 153 Shimon HaTzadik, Jewish settlement house  76, 77–​81

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The Settlement House Movement Revisited Siegmund-​Schultze, Friedrich  18–​19, 25, 26, 112–​16 Silva, T.,orientation of ISS social centres  65–​6 Simkhovitch, Mary Kingsbury  36–​48, 222 advocating municipal socialism  45–​7 formal education  37–​40 settlement work (1897–​1946)  40–​5 Simkhovitch, Vladimir  38, 41, 42 slums  aesthetic analysis of  224–​5 Chicago tenements  184, 194–​5 ‘slumming’ by well-​to-​do people  163 social cartography  see Hull-​House Maps and Papers social Catholicism  France  60–​1, 67 Portugal  64 social divide  20, 24, 26, 29 social Gospel movement  17–​18 ‘social idealism’  104, 120 social justice  152, 204 social reform  Hull-​House residents  54–​5 Social Survey Movement  164 versus casework  73 social surveys  22–​3, 164, 183–​4, 185, 186–​7, 191 social work training  at Berlin’s settlement house  120 at the École d’Action Sociale, Paris  58 in the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine  74 in law  145, 149–​51, 155 social work’s role, Barclay report (1982)  208 Söderström, O.,‘spatial logic’  186 Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-​Ost (SAG Berlin-​Ost)  19, 23, 25, 26, 109, 112–​22 spatial mapping of socioeconomic conditions  181–​94 St. Christopher House, Toronto, Canada  18, 25, 27 St George’s Jewish Settlement  140 St Hilda’s Community Centre, Bethnal Green, East London  background  201–​4 Bangladeshi community  208–​10 political context  208 rebuilding  206–​8 research methods  205 Starr, Ellen Gates, Hull-​House resident  52, 54, 59

state, role in poverty alleviation  135 Stuart, James  94, 102

T Taylor, Graham, Chicago Commons  25 Tebbutt, M., hire purchase  154–​5 Tenants’ Protection Committee  151–​2 Tenement Conditions in Chicago (Hunter)  168, 184, 192 tenement reform, New York City  46 Tenements of Chicago (1908–​ 1935) (Abbott and Breckinridge)  168, 184 Thatcher, Margaret  202 privatisation of public sector services  202 ‘right to buy’ scheme  206 Thon, Dr Ya’akov  75–​6, 77 Thon, Hannah Helena (née Cohen)  76, 77, 78–​9, 80–​1, 85 Thon, Sarah  76 Tillyard, Frank  145 early social work training and legal guidance  149–​51 establishment of Poor Man’s Lawyer  147–​9 Legal Hints for Social Workers  150–​1 Toynbee, Arnold  96 Toynbee, Gertrude  96 Toynbee Hall  74, 91, 92 Basil Henriques’ work at  138, 139 Frederick Rogers’ views  103–​4 in Lvov, Eastern Europe  75, 76 for male voluntary social work  146–​7 Poor Man’s Lawyer work at  151, 152, 154, 155 Siegmund-​Schultze’s visit to  18–​19 university extension  91–​9, 102–​3 Toynbee Halle, Lvov, Galicia  75, 76 Transatlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Rogers)  36 transcendent, transformative and transnational  28 transnational analysis  15–​29, 222 Berlin, Germany  35–​50 France  51–​70 Mandatory Palestine  73–​90 Portugal  63–​6 transnational dissemination of knowledge  165 Trattner, Walter I., settlement approach  27 Traun, Heinrich  111 Turner, S., Social Survey Movement  164

236

Index tutorial-​style classes, Workers’ Educational Association (WEA)  101–​2 Twenty Years at Hull-​House (Addams)  54

U unemployment case studies  171–​3 Unitarian Church, Manhattan  40–​1 university extension  91–​9 Bermondsey Settlement  99–​101 challenges of  101–​2 outside activities of students  102–​3 the ‘settlement idea’  103–​4 tutorial initiative  102 University Extension Society  97–​8, 100, 102, 223 University of London  94–​5 utopian socialism, Owen  136

V Verein für Socialpolitik (1873)  21 Vicary, Sarah  6 Vice Commissions reports (from 1902), US  23 Vilbrod, A.  68 vocational training, Jewish people  75, 79 Volksheim Hamburg  109–​12, 113, 115, 117–​18, 121 voluntary social work  146–​7, 149, 151 von Schulze-​Gaevernitz, Gerhart  110–​11

W Wagner, Adolf  38–​9 Wagner-​Steagall Housing Act (1937)  46 Wald, Lillian  36–​7, 221 Walkowitz, Judith  93 Ware, Caroline  42–​3 Waterloo Action Centre (WAC)  201, 203, 211, 225 1980s to the present day  215–​17

community action  213–​15 community work at  211–​13 research methods  205 Webb, Beatrice and Sidney, new poverty in the ‘old world’  165 Westerkamp, Alix  116 Whitechapel, London  Jewish boys’ club in  139, 142 see also Toynbee Hall Wilkinson, Ellen, Labour MP for Jarrow  155 Williams, J.E., 3 Rs of the Settlement Movement  51–​5 Wohl, Robert, ‘generation of 1914’  113–​14 women  factory workers  45 female researchers  181 feminist movement  61–​2 higher education  37 influence of within the Settlement Movement  3, 52–​3 research on working girls and women  170 work creation in Jerusalem  78–​9 Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, Boston  37 Women’s International Zionist Organisation (WIZO)  77 Women’s University Settlement  211 Woods, Robert, settlement house research  166, 167, 170 Workers’ Educational Association (WEA)  102

Y Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), Toronto  18 youth club, Berlin  114–​15

Z Zionist activity/​movement  75–​7, 82, 85

237

European Social Work Research Association “The transnational, comparative perspective and fresh insights on the settlement house movement offered by this thoughtfully conceptualized book are an original, welcome and overdue addition to the historical canon on these iconic social welfare institutions.” Susan P. Kemp, University of Auckland “University Settlements have a very special place in the history of social work. This new collection demonstrates why, showing the unique contribution they have made to practice and research worldwide.” Viviene E. Cree, The University of Edinburgh

This book explores the role and impact of the Settlement House Movement in the global development of social welfare and the social work profession. It traces the transnational history of settlement houses and examines the interconnections between the Settlement House Movement, other social and professional movements and social research. Looking at how the Settlement House Movement developed across different national, cultural and social boundaries, this book shows that by understanding its impact, we can better understand the wider global development of social policy, social research and the social work profession. John Gal is Professor at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Stefan Köngeter is Professor and Co-Head of the Research Institute for Social Work and Social Spaces at the University of Applied Sciences, St. Gallen. Sarah Vicary is Associate Head of School in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies at the Open University.

ISBN 978-1-4473-5423-9

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