Victorian Worthies

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In the holiday season he delighted to travel. In his journals he sets
down the impressions which he felt among the pictures and churches of
Italy, and in the mountains of Germany and Switzerland; he loves to
record the friendliness of the greetings which he met among the
peasantry of various lands. When he talked to them no one could fail to
see that he was genuinely interested in them, that he wanted to know
their joys and their sorrows, and to enrich his own knowledge by
anything that the humblest could tell him. Still more did he delight in
Scotland, where he had many friends. He was of the generation
immediately under the spell of the 'Wizard of the North', and the whole
country was seen through a veil of romantic and historical association.
There he went nearly every year, to Edinburgh, to Roslin, to Inveraray,
to the Trossachs, and to a hundred other places--and if his heart was
stirred with the glories of the past, his eye was quick to 'catch the
manners living as they rise'. As he commented caustically at Rome on
'the church lighted up and decorated like a ball-room--the bishop with a
stout train of canons, listening to the music precisely like an opera',
so at Newbattle he criticizes the coldness of the kirk, 'all is silent
save the minister, who discharges the whole ceremony and labours under
the weight of his own tautologies'. His bringing up had been in the
Anglican church; he was devoted to her liturgy, her congregational
worship, her moderation and simplicity combined with reverence and
warmth. Although these travels were but interludes in his busy life,
they show that it was not for want of other tastes and interests of his
own that his life was dedicated to laborious service. He was very human
himself, and there were few aspects of humanity which did not attract
him.

With his father relations were very difficult. As his interest in social
questions grew, his attention was naturally turned on the poor nearest
to his own doors, the agricultural labourers of Dorset. Even in those
days of low wages Dorset was a notorious example quoted on many a
Radical platform: the wages of the farm labourers were frequently as low
as seven shillings a week, and the conditions in which they had often to
bring up a large family of children were deplorable. If Lord Ashley had
not himself felt the shame of their poverty, their bad housing and their
other hardships, there were plenty of opponents ready to force them on
his notice in revenge for his having exposed their own sores. He was
made responsible for abuses which he could not remedy. While his father,
a resolute Tory of the old type, still lived, the son was unable to
stir. He sedulously tried to avoid all bitterness; but he could not,
when publicly challenged, avoid stating his own views about fair wages
and fair conditions of living, and his father took offence. For years it
was impossible for the son to come under his father's roof. When the old
earl died in 1851, his son lost no time in proving his sincerity as a
reformer; but meanwhile he had to go into the fray against the
manufacturers with his arms tied behind his back and submit to taunts
which he little deserved. That he could carry on this struggle for so
many years, without embittering the issues, and without open exposure of
the family quarrel, shows the strength of character which he had gained
by years of religious discipline and self-control.

Politics proper played but a small part in his career. The politicians
found early that he was not of the 'available' type--that he would not
lend himself to party policy or compromise on any matter which seemed to
him of national interest. Such political posts as were offered to him
were largely held out as a bait to silence him, and to prevent his
bringing forward embarrassing measures which might split the party.
Ashley himself found how much easier it was for him to follow a single
course when he was an independent member. Reluctantly in 1834 he
accepted a post at the Board of Admiralty and worked earnestly in his
department; but this ministry only lasted for one year, and he never
held office again, though he was often pressed to do so. He was attached
to Wellington; but for Peel, now become the Tory leader, he had little
love. The two men were very dissimilar in character; and though at times
Ashley had friendly communications with Peel, yet in his diary Ashley
often complains bitterly of his want of enthusiasm, of what he regarded
as Peel's opportunism and subservience to party policy. The one had an
instinct for what was practical and knew exactly how far he could
combine interests to carry a measure; the other was all on fire for the
cause and ready to push it forward against all obstacles, at all costs.
Ashley, it is true, had to work through Parliament to attain his chief
ends, and many a bitter moment he had to endure in striving towards the
goal. But if he was not an adroit or successful politician, he
gradually, as the struggle went on, by earnestness and force of
character, made for himself in the House a place apart, a place of rare
dignity and influence; and with the force of public opinion behind him
he was able to triumph over ministers and parties.

It was in 1832 that he first had his attention drawn to the conditions
of labour in factories. He never claimed to be the pioneer of the
movement, but he was early in the field. The inventions of the latter
part of the eighteenth century had transformed the north of England. The
demand for labour had given rise to appalling abuses, especially in the
matter of child labour. From London workhouses and elsewhere children
were poured into the labour market, and by the 'Apprentice System' were
bound to serve their masters for long periods and for long hours
together. A pretence of voluntary contract was kept up, but fraud and
deception were rife in the system and its results were tragic. Mrs.
Browning's famous poem, 'The Cry of the Children,' gives a more vivid
picture of the children's sufferings than many pages of prose. At the
same time we have plenty of first-hand evidence from the great towns of
the misery which went along with the wonderful development of national
wealth. Speaking in 1873 Lord Shaftesbury said, 'Well can I recollect in
the earlier periods of the Factory movement waiting at the factory gates
to see the children come out, and a set of dejected cadaverous creatures
they were. In Bradford especially the proofs of long and cruel toil were
most remarkable. The cripples and distorted forms might be numbered by
hundreds perhaps by thousands. A friend of mine collected together a
vast number for me; the sight was most piteous, the deformities
incredible.' And an eye-witness in Bolton reports in 1792: 'Anything
like the squalid misery, the slow, mouldering, putrefying death by which
the weak and feeble are perishing here, it never befell my eyes to
behold, nor my imagination to conceive.' Some measures of relief were
carried by the elder Sir Robert Peel, himself a cotton-spinner; but
public opinion was slow to move and was not roused till 1830, when Mr.
Sadler,[16] member for Newark, led the first fight for a 'Ten Hours
Bill'. When Sadler was unseated in 1832, Lord Ashley offered his help,
and so embarked on the greatest of his works performed in the public
service. He had the support of a few of the noblest men in England,
including Robert Southey and Charles Dickens; but he had against him the
vast body of well-to-do people in the country, and inside Parliament
many of the most progressive and influential politicians. The factory
owners were inspired at once by interest and conviction; the political
economy of the day taught them that all restrictions on labour were
harmful to the progress of industry and to the prosperity of the
country, while the figures in their ledgers taught them what was the
most economical method of running their own mills.

[Note 16: See articles in _D.N.B._ on Michael Thomas Sadler
(1780-1835) and on Richard Oastler (1789-1861).]

Already it was clear that Lord Ashley was no mere sentimentalist out for
a momentary sensation. At all times he gave the credit for starting the
work to Sadler and his associates; and from the outset he urged his
followers to fix on a limited measure first, to concentrate attention on
the work of children and young persons, and to avoid general questions
involving conflicts between capital and labour. Also he took endless
pains to acquaint himself at first hand with the facts. 'In factories,'
he said afterwards, 'I examined the mills, the machinery, the homes, and
saw the workers and their work in all its details. In collieries I went
down into the pits. In London I went into lodging-houses and thieves'
haunts, and every filthy place. It gave me a power I could not otherwise
have had.' And this was years before 'slumming' became fashionable and
figured in the pages of _Punch_; it was no distraction caught up for a
week or a month, but a labour of fifty years! We have an account of him
as he appeared at this period of his life: 'above the medium height,
about 5 feet 6 inches, with a slender and extremely graceful figure...
curling dark hair in thick masses, fine brow, features delicately cut,
the nose perhaps a trifle too prominent,... light blue eyes deeply set
with projecting eyelids, his mouth small and compressed.' His whole face
and appearance seems to have had a sculpturesque effect and to have
suggested the calm and composure of marble. But under this marble
exterior there was burning a flame of sympathy for the poor, a fire of
indignation against the system which oppressed them.

In 1833 some progress was made. Lord Althorp, the Whig leader in the
Commons, under pressure from Lord Ashley, carried a bill dealing indeed
with some of the worst abuses in factories, but applying only to some of
the great textile industries. That it still left much to be done can be
seen from studying the details of the measure. Children under eleven
years of age were not to work more than nine hours a day, and young
persons under nineteen not more than twelve hours a day. Adults might
still work all day and half the night if the temptation of misery at
home and extra wages to be earned was too strong for them. It seems
difficult now to believe that this was a great step forward, yet for the
moment Ashley found that he could do no more and must accept what the
politicians gave him. In 1840, however, he started a fresh campaign on
behalf of children not employed in these factories, who were not
included in the Act of 1833, and who, not being concentrated in the
great centres of industry, escaped the attention of the general public.
He obtained a Royal Commission to investigate mines and other works, and
to report upon their condition. The Blue Book was published in 1842 and
created a sensation unparalleled of its kind. Men read with horror the
stories of the mines, of children employed underground for twelve or
fourteen hours a day, crouching in low passages, monotonously opening
and shutting the trap-doors as the trollies passed to and fro. Alone
each child sat in pitchy darkness, unable to stir for more than a few
paces, unable to sleep for fear of punishment with the strap in case of
neglect, and often surrounded with vermin. Women were employed crawling
on hands and knees along these passages, stripped to the waist, stooping
under the low roofs, and even so chafing and wounding their backs, as
they hauled the coal along the underground rails, or carrying in baskets
on their backs, up steps and ladders, loads which varied in weight from
a half to one and a half hundredweights. The physical health, the mental
education, and the moral character of these poor creatures suffered
equally under such a system; and well might those responsible for the
existence of such abuses fear to let the Report be published. But copies
of it first reached members of Parliament, then the public at large
learnt the burden of the tale, and Lord Ashley might now hope for enough
support from outside to break down the opposition in the House of
Commons and the delays of parliamentary procedure.

'The Mines and Collieries Bill' was brought in before the impression
could fade, and on June 7, 1842, Ashley made one of the greatest of his
speeches and drove home powerfully the effect of the Report. His mastery
of facts was clear enough to satisfy the most dispassionate politician;
his sincerity disarmed Richard Cobden, the champion of the Lancashire
manufacturers and brought about a reconciliation between them; his
eloquence stirred the hearts of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort,
and drew from the latter words of glowing admiration and promises of
support. In August the bill finally passed the House of Lords, and a
second great blow had been struck. Practices which were poisoning at the
source the lives of the younger generation were forbidden by law; above
all, it was expressly laid down that, after a few years, no woman or
girl should be employed in mines at all. The influence which such a law
had on the family life in the mining districts was incalculable; the
women were rescued from servitude in the mines and restored to their
natural place at home.

There was still much to do. In 1844 the factory question was again
brought to the front by the demands of the working classes, and again
Ashley was ready to champion their cause, and to propose that the
working day should now be limited to eight hours for children, and to
ten hours for grown men. In Parliament there was long and weary fighting
over the details. The Tory Government did not wish to oppose the bill
directly. Neither party had really faced the question or made up its
mind. Expediency rather than justice was in the minds of the official
politicians.

Such a straightforward champion as Lord Ashley was a source of
embarrassment to these gentlemen, to be met by evasion rather than
direct opposition. The radical John Bright, a strong opponent of State
interference and equally straightforward in his methods, made a personal
attack on Lord Ashley. He referred to the Dorset labourers, as if Ashley
was indifferent to abuses nearer home, and left no one in doubt of his
opinions. At the same time, Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, did
all in his power to defeat Ashley's bill by bringing forward alternative
proposals, which he knew would be unacceptable to the workers. In face
of such opposition most men would have given way. Ashley, who had been a
consistent Tory all his life, was bitterly aggrieved at the treatment
which his bill met with from his official leaders. He persevered in his
efforts, relying on support from outside; but in Parliament the
Government triumphed to the extent of defeating the Ten Hours Bill in
March 1844 and again in April 1846. Still, the small majority (ten) by
which this last division was decided showed in which direction the
current was flowing, and when a few months later the Tories were ousted
from office, the Whigs took up the bill officially, and in June 1847
Lord Ashley, though himself out of Parliament for the moment, had the
satisfaction of seeing the bill become the law of the land.

There was great rejoicing in the manufacturing districts, and Lord
Ashley was the hero of the day. The working classes had no direct
representative in Parliament in those days: without his constant efforts
neither party would have given a fair hearing to their cause. He had
argued with politicians without giving away principles; he had stirred
the industrial districts without rousing class hatred; he had been
defeated time after time without giving up the struggle. Much has been
added since then to the laws restricting the conditions of labour till,
in the often quoted words of Lord Morley, the biographer of Cobden, we
have 'a complete, minute, and voluminous code for the protection of
labour... an immense host of inspectors, certifying surgeons and other
authorities whose business it is to "speed and post o'er land and ocean"
in restless guardianship of every kind of labour'. But these were the
heroic days of the struggle for factory legislation, and also of the
struggle for cheap food for the people. Reviewing these great events
many years later the Duke of Argyll said, 'During that period two great
discoveries have been made in the science of Government: the one is the
immense advantage of abolishing restrictions on trade, the other is the
absolute necessity of imposing restrictions on labour'. While Sir Robert
Peel might with some justice contest with Cobden the honour of
establishing the first principle, few will challenge Lord Ashley's right
to the honour of securing the second.

Of the many religious and political causes which he undertook during and
after this time, of the Zionist movement to repatriate the Jews, of the
establishing of a Protestant bishopric at Jerusalem, of his attacks on
the war with Sind and the opium trade with China, of his championship of
the Nestorian Christians against the Turk, of his leadership of the
great Bible Society, there is not space to speak. The mere list gives an
idea of the width of his interests and the warmth of his sympathy.

Some of these questions were highly contentious; and Lord Ashley, who
was a fervent Evangelical, was less than fair to churchmen of other
schools. To Dr. Pusey himself he could write a kindly and courteous
letter; but on the platform, or in correspondence with friends, he could
denounce 'Puseyites' in the roundest terms. One cannot expect that a man
of his character will avoid all mistakes. It was a time when feeling ran
high on religious questions, and he was a declared partisan; but at
least we may say that the public good, judged from the highest point,
was his objective; there was no room for self-seeking in his heart. Nor
did this wide extension of his activity mean neglect of his earlier
crusades. On the contrary, he continued to work for the good of the
classes to whom his Factory Bills had been so beneficial. Not content
with prohibiting what was harmful, he went on to positive measures of
good; restriction of hours was followed by sanitation, and this again by
education, and by this he was led to what was perhaps the second most
famous work of his life.

In 1843 his attention had already been drawn to the question of
educating the neglected children, and he was making acquaintance at
first hand with the work of the Ragged Schools, at that time few in
number and poorly supported. He visited repeatedly the Field Lane
School, in a district near Holborn notoriously frequented by the
criminal classes, and soon the cause, at which he was to work
unsparingly for forty years, began to move forward. He went among the
poor with no thought of condescension. Simple as he was by nature, he
possessed in perfection the art of speaking to children, and he was soon
full of practical schemes for helping them. Sanitary reform was not
neglected in his zeal for religion, and emigration was to be promoted as
well as better housing at home; for, till the material conditions of
life were improved, he knew that it was idle to hope for much moral
reform. 'Plain living and high thinking' is an excellent ideal for those
whose circumstances put them out of reach of anxiety over daily bread;
it is a difficult gospel to preach to those who are living in
destitution and misery.

The character of his work soon won confidence even in the most unlikely
quarters. In June 1848 he received a round-robin signed by forty of the
most notorious thieves in London, asking him to come and meet them in
person at a place appointed; and on his going there he found a mob of
nearly four hundred men, all living by dishonesty and crime, who
listened readily and even eagerly to his brotherly words.

Several of them came forward in turn and made candid avowal of their
respective difficulties and vices, and of the conditions of their lives.
He found that they were tired of their own way of life, and were ready
to make a fresh start; and in the course of the next few months he was
able, thanks to the generosity of a rich friend, to arrange for the
majority of them to emigrate to another country or to find new openings
away from their old haunts.

But, apart from such special occasions, the work of the schools went
steadily forward. In seven years, more than a hundred such schools were
opened, and Lord Shaftesbury was unfailing in his attendance whenever he
could help forward the cause. His advice to the managers to 'keep the
schools in the mire and the gutter' sounds curious; but he was afraid
that, as they throve, boys of more prosperous classes would come in and
drive out those for whom they were specially founded. 'So long', he
said, 'as the mire and gutter exist, so long as this class exists, you
must keep the school adapted to their wants, their feelings, their
tastes and their level.' And any of us familiar with the novels of
Charles Dickens and Walter Besant will know that such boys still existed
unprovided for in large numbers in 1850 and for many years after.

Thus the years went by. He succeeded to the earldom on his father's
death in 1851. His heart was wrung by the early deaths of two of his
children and by the loss of his wife in 1872. In his home he had his
full share of the joys and sorrows of life, but his interest in his work
never failed. If new tasks were taken up, it was not at the expense of
the old; the fresh demand on his unwearied energies was met with the
same spirit. At an advanced age he opened a new and attractive chapter
in his life by his friendly meetings with the London costermongers. He
gave prizes for the best-kept donkey, he attended the judging in person,
he received in return a present of a donkey which was long cherished at
Wimborne St. Giles. It is impossible to deal fully with his life in each
decade; one page from his journal for 1882 shows what he could still do
at the age of eighty-one, and will be the best proof of his persistence
in well-doing. He began the day with a visit to Greenhithe to inspect
the training ships for poor boys, at midday he came back to Grosvenor
Square to attend a committee meeting of the Bible Society at his home,
he then went to a public banquet in honour of his godson, and he
finished with a concert at Buckingham Palace, thus keeping up his
friendly relations with all classes in the realm. To the very last, in
his eighty-fifth year, he continued to attend a few meetings and to
visit the scenes of his former labours; and on October 1, 1885, full of
years and full of honours, he died quietly at Folkestone, where he had
gone for the sake of his health.

In this sketch attention has been drawn to his labours rather than to
his honours. He might have had plenty of the latter if he had wished. He
received the Freedom of the City of London and of other great towns.
Twice he was offered the Garter, and he only accepted the second offer
on Lord Palmerston's urgent request that he should treat it as a tribute
to the importance of social work. Three times he was offered a seat in
the Cabinet, but he refused each time, because official position would
fetter his special work. He kept aloof from party politics, and was only
roused when great principles were at stake. Few of the leading
politicians satisfied him. Peel seemed too cautious, Gladstone too
subtle, Disraeli too insincere. It was the simplicity and kindliness of
his relative Palmerston that won his heart, rather than confidence in
his policy at home or abroad. The House of Commons suited him better
than the colder atmosphere of the House of Lords; but in neither did he
rise to speak without diffidence and fear. It is a great testimony to
the force of his conviction that he won as many successes in Parliament
as he did. But the means through which he effected his chief work were
committees, platform meetings, and above all personal visits to scenes
of distress.

The nation would gladly have given him the last tribute of burial in
Westminster Abbey, but he had expressed a clear wish to be laid among
his own people at Wimborne St. Giles, and the funeral was as simple as
he had wished it to be. His name in London is rather incongruously
associated with a fountain in Piccadilly Circus, and with a street full
of theatres, made by the clearing of the slums where he had worked: the
intention was good, the result is unfortunate. More truly than in any
sculpture or buildings his memorial is to be found in the altered lives
of thousands of his fellow citizens, in the happy looks of the children,
and in the pleasant homes and healthy workshops which have transformed
the face of industrial England.

JOHN LAWRENCE

1811-79

1811. Born at Richmond, Yorkshire, March 4.
1823. School at Londonderry.
1827. Haileybury I.C.S. College.
1829. Goes out to India as a member of Civil Service.
1831. Delhi.
1834. P[=a]n[=i]pat.
1836. Et[=a]wa.
1840-2. Furlough and marriage to Harriette Hamilton.
1844. Collector and Magistrate of Delhi and P[=a]n[=i]pat.
1845. First Sikh War.
1846. Governor of J[=a]landhar Do[=a]b.
1848. Second Sikh War.
1849. Lord Dalhousie annexes Punjab. Henry and John Lawrence members
of Punjab Board.
1852-3. New Constitution. John Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of Punjab.
1856. Oudh annexed. Henry Lawrence first Governor.
1857. Indian Mutiny. Death of Henry Lawrence at Lucknow (July). Punjab
secured. Delhi retaken (September).
1858-9. Baronetcy; G.C.B. Return to England.
1864. Governor-General of India. Irrigation. Famine relief.
1869. Return to England. Peerage.
1870. Chairman of London School Board.
1876. Failure of eyesight.
1879. Death in London, June 27.

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