The provincial social survey in Edwardian Britain

This article examines three social surveys carried out in English provincial towns after Seebohm Rowntree's study of York and before A. L. Bowley's sample surveys of five towns. The authors emphasized specific local circumstances and suggested local voluntary and municipal remedies for the social problems they described. Their focus was on the community, and although informed by the discourses of 'national efficiency' that also lay behind Rowntree's researches, the solutions to the problems of juvenile life and casual labour that compromised national efficiency were to be found in local endeavour. Poverty was viewed in the context of its impact on the community rather than on the individual

Rider Haggard and rural England: methods of social enquiry in the English countryside

No abstract available

Fellowship, service and the "spirit of adventure": the Religious Society of Friends and the outdoors movement in Britain c.1900-1950

This article considers the involvement of members of the Religious Society of Friends in various manifestations of the outdoors movement in early twentieth-century Britain. It examines the Edwardian ‘Quaker tramps’ and their role in the ‘Quaker renaissance’, and goes on to consider the influence of Friends in organisations such as the Holiday Fellowship and the Youth Hostels Association, as well as interwar Quaker mountaineers. It argues that, while the outdoor activities of the Quaker renaissance were essentially internal to the Religious Society of Friends, a wider conception of social service took Quakers beyond the boundaries of the Society in the interwar period, resulting in a more profound influence on the outdoors movement. These activities of Friends were associated with the promotion of the ‘social gospel’, and represented a significant strand of Quaker service in the first half of the twentieth century

Muscular Quakerism? The society of friends and youth movements in Britain, c.1900-1950

This article examines the relationship of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) to organised youth movements in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. It shows that, despite the Quaker testimony against war and militarism, many members of the Society participated, often enthusiastically, in youth organisations that were considered militaristic by many other Friends. In doing so, they openly acknowledged the 'military virtues', and were willing, especially during the Second World War, to collaborate with the military state in undertaking youth work. Although they tended to emphasise the spiritual aspects of the youth movements in which they participated, Quaker involvement in youth organisations – such as the Scouts, the wartime Youth Service and Outward Bound – reflected an acknowledgement of the relationship between militarism and character-building that had underpinned some earlier versions of muscular Christianity. The article emphasises the ubiquity of the language of 'character' in Quaker discussions of youth and adolescence in the first half of the twentieth century, although there was no single Quaker position on the suitability of particular youth organisations. Three conclusions are drawn. First, Quakers both shaped and were influenced by evolving conceptions of the role of youth work, particularly the emergence of an agenda of 'personal growth' in place of 'character-building'. Second, however, the appeal of the 'military virtues', and the benefits of the military experience in promoting them, remained a powerful dimension in Quaker approaches to youth movements. Finally, the experience of British Quakers in this period demonstrates the extent of the ‘cultural assimilation’ of Nonconformist denominations into the mainstream of British life during this period

The magic lantern and the cinema: adult schools, educational settlements and secularisation in Britain, c. 1900-1950

No abstract available

No finer school than a settlement: the development of the educational settlement movement

No abstract available

Britain's spiritual life: how can it be deepened?: Seebohm Rowntree, Russell Lavers, and the "crisis of belief", ca. 1946-54

This article examines the response of two social investigators in the early post-World War II period to the apparent secularization of British society. It explains how an unpublished survey that the two men carried out, along with the work of other Christian and non-Christian commentators in this period, expressed the hope that religious influences would be strengthened through secular institutions, including communal organizations, workplaces, and the military. A revival of Christian belief, in some form, was seen as a bulwark against communism in the context of the Cold War in which the Soviet regime was seen to present a threat to the "Christian civilization" of the West. The "spiritual life of the nation" was synonymous with the "national character," and for the information and opinion on which their study was based, Seebohm Rowntree and Russell Lavers turned to those who they believed were in a position to influence the national character

The decline of the adult school movement between the wars

This article considers the decline of the adult school movement, one of the largest voluntary movements in the history of adult education, and critically examines some of the reasons that have been used to explain it. It explores a number of features of the decline, using records of selected adult schools and adult school unions, and discussing variations by region and gender. The article argues that adult schools pursued a strategy of 'resistance' to secularisation, and that they increasingly concentrated on their core religious activities rather than attempting to compete with secular adult education providers. As a result, whereas the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had seen a rapid turnover of adult scholars, by the 1930s they were increasingly restricted to a committed core of members, dominated by older men and, especially, women. Reasons for the decline include the availability of alternative leisure pursuits, a lack of unity within the movement, and the association of the adult schools with unfashionable styles of Victorian philanthropy

Journeys into poverty kingdom: complete participation and the British vagrant, 1866-1914

No abstract available