Semitic Lanrnsses

Social Service THE NEW SCHAFF HERZOG 470

institutions of all kinds; especially houses for the education of male and female workers in the sphere of philanthropy (deacons and deaconesses), houses of refuge, Magdalen asylums, asylums for drunkards, colonies for workingmen, hospitals, infirmaries, institutions for the blind, the deaf and dumb, epileptics, and others. The Innere Mission reports for 1907 18,200 deaconesses of the Kaiserswerth Federation and others, and in all 25,000 sisters engaged in charitable relief; and likewise German brotherhoods with a membership of 2,645. There are no statistics for philanthropical institutions in Germany. Those for Prussia contained in Statis­tisches Handbuch fur den preussischen Staat, i. 409 (1893), indicate 1,441 general institutions for the sick alone, with 75,224 beds, besides equally nu­merous institutions covering the other departments of philanthropy. A surprising feature of philan­thropy in Germany is the preponderance of munici­pal institutions over those of the State, the Church, and private foundations. Here the idea of the Reformation is fully realized. The importance which philanthropical institutions on the whole have for the care of the poor is shown by the sta­tistics of the German Empire for 1885 (Statistik des Deutsehen Reichs, xxix.), according to which 270,038 persons in institutions and 616,533 persons outside of institutions were supported. Thus al­most one third of all the beneficiaries in the empire was supported in institutions, which warrants the inference that the philanthropic institution has be­come the permanent basis for public charity and is destined to advance along this line.

(A. HAucs.)

II. Philanthrophy in Great Britain: The history of the relation of Christianity toward eleemosynary activities in England and the other portions of the

United Kingdom extends over a i. To Down  period of thirteen centuries divisible in­fall of to three distinct epochs. The first of Monasteries. these covers the interval between the introduction of Christianity into Eng­land in 597 A.D., and the dissolution of the monas­teries in that country which was practically com­pleted by 1540. In Scotland they were put down, and in many cases destroyed by the mob, about twenty years later. More than, perhaps, in any Portion of western and southern Europe, Chris­tianity had appeared in England as a civilizing as well as a moralizing agency, and its functions re­sembled those of modern missions to the barbarous tribes of Africa and Polynesia rather than those of missions planted in the midst of the venerable civilizations of India and China. Throughout this

Period of nearly one thousand years, the framework of society was predominantly military. In such an atmosphere of continual contention the care of the sick, the relief of the needy, and even the instruction of youth, were possible only under the supernatural sanction claimed by the Church, and for the most Part all three were in the hands of the moAastic orders. The transition from paganism to Chris­tianity among the masses of the Population was a far slower process than was the nominal acceptance of that faith by the chiefs of the Petty kingdoms forming the Saxon Octarehy. Speaking particu 

larly of the Northumbrians, J. R. Green observes, " With Teutonic indifference, they yielded to their thegns in nominally accepting the new Christianity as these had yielded to the king. But they retained their old superstitions side by side with the new wor­ship." With this view E. A. Freeman agrees. Such religious zeal and humane impulses as the Dark Ages produced found their expression mainly in the clois­tered life. When, in the comparative enlighten­ment of the thirteenth century, the great preaching orders of itinerant friars sprang up, those who adopted the rule of Francis of Assisi (q.v.) were charged by their great founder to minister to the sick in the lazar houses whose occupants leprosy and kindred diseases had doomed to isolation from their fellows. The oldest existing hospital in Lon­don, St. Bartholomew's, originated in a monastery dating from the twelfth century. Institutions set apart for the treatment of the sick as such were hardly known until the sixteenth century.

With the downfall of the monasteries ends the first period. The next century and a half constitutes the second epoch. During it, philanthropy was depend­ent on the means and conscience of the individual citizen, except so far as the State supervened under the Elizabethan poor law. Toward the end of the seventeenth century forms of associated benevo­lence begin to appear. This phase constitutes the third stage in its evolution.

It is easy to understand why the abrupt suppres­sion of these ecclesiastical institutions in both Eng 

land and Scotland should leave a z. To End chasm in the lives of the poor. The

of Seven  situation is brought vividly before the

teenth eye in the following passage from a Century. report by the commissioners charged

with receiving the surrender of Beau­lieu Abbey in Hampshire (the original spelling is retained):

" Ther be Sayntuary men here for dett, felony, and murder, xxxii; many of them aged some very seke. They have all, within (except?) iiii wyves and childem, and dwellynge houses and ground wherby the lyve with their famylies, whiche beynge all assembled before hus, and the Kinges Highnes pleasure opened to them, they have verye lamentable declared that if they be nowe send to other Saynturyes, not onlie they but their wyves and childern also shal be utterly undon."

The law which dissolved the monasteries did in­deed transfer the liability to perform the accus­tomed services for the poor to the shoulders of the new owners of the confiscated property, but it was a duty easily evaded. Though not the only cause, the alienation of monastic property and there were 645 monasteries whose aggregate revenues were esti­mated at $8,000,000 was one of the principal causes of the great distress chronicled by Bishop Latimer and other contemporary writers. Him­self no friend of the old order, that prelate breaks forth against the lax morality of the new in the following vehement passage from one of his sermons: " In times past men were full of Pity and compas­sion, but now there is no pity . . . . Now charity is waxen cold, none helpeth the scholar nor yet the poor." For two generations there appears to have

471 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA 8ooia16ervioe

been an interregnum in the general provision made by society for its less fortunate members from the ex­tinction of the religious orders to the passing of the first poor law, only partially filled by the custom of placing in the churches boxes for the receipt of alms for the poor. Instances also are recorded of poor men received into wealthier persons' house­holds. Gradually benevolent private citizens came forward who were liberal in their bequests of proper­ty for maintaining schools and alms houses. Per­haps the majority of the older towns of England contain grammar schools dating their foundation to one of the Tudor sovereigns. It may be doubted whether, in many of these instances, the monarch for the time being had any real share in establish­ing them. Henry VIII.'s school at Coventry, for example, was so named in order to win his protec­tion, but it was endowed by John Hales, a private citizen.

During the period which elapsed between the final severance from Rome and the accession of the House of Orange in 1688, the sympa 

3. Sporadic this of the benevolent discovered

Efforts further scope in founding loan charities

for Relief for assisting deserving tradesmen to

of Reed. start in business, in dowries for por­

tionless maidens, in ransoming the

Christian captives of the Mohammedan despots

on the North African littoral, in providing work

for the unemployed poor, and in gifts and bequests

to ameliorate the lot of the sick and of debtors and

other prisoners. The late Rev. B. Kirkman Gray,

in his standard work A History of English Phi­

lanthropy (London, 1905), mentions " forty six be­

quests for setting the poor on work between 1572

and 1692." The express injunctions contained in

the Gospels had always given to the relief of the

sick and of prisoners an especial sanction, and the

frequently recurrent visitations of the plague and

other epidemics, as well as the harshness of the

criminal law, offered abundant opportunity. The

Rev. J. Bamford, rector of St. Olaves, Southwark,

was a shining example of fidelity to one's post. Dur­

ing the plague year of 1603, he incurred consider­

able unpopularity among his flock by urging on them

the unfamiliar practise of isolating patients under

proper guardianship, instead of thronging round

them or deserting them as pity or panic got the

upper hand. Another remarkable example is that

of Nicholas Ferrar (q.v.). This gentleman, who

in early life had been secretary to the Virginia

Company, removed from London during the plague

year of 1625, and collected round him at Little

Gidding, a sequestered village in Huntingdonshire,

a band of persons of both sexes numbering at one

time, including his own family, as many as forty,

into a kind of religious community having for its

object joint prayer, almsgiving, and acts of personal

charity, such as teaching school, preparing cordials,

dressing wounds, and otherwise tending the sick.

Unfortunately, these efforts, however creditable to those who made them, were but sporadic, inade­quate to the needs of the time, and of uncertain duration. The community of Little Gidding sur­vived its founder's death only to be dispersed in the unquiet times of the Civil War. This last event,

by impoverishing the propertied classes, cut off a principal source of the flow of material charity,

although the Puritan majority in the 4. Legisla  Long Parliament are entitled to credit

tive and for passing enactments conceived in Other Relief the interest of the masses, such, for in 

Measures. stance, as those in relief of poor debtors

and for the reform of prison abuses. Dishonest trustees too often intercepted and misap­plied the funds dedicated to endowments confided to their administration. Again, the philanthropist of the seventeenth century was handicapped at every turn by his want of practical knowledge. His art was in its infancy. The reserve of past experi­ence on which he could draw was small. He had to make his own experiments, and to grope his way by the light of his own blunders., John Evelyn (d.1706), a stanch churchman of the period, was one of four commissioners appointed by Charles II. in 1664 to undertake the care of the sick, wounded, and prisoners in the then pending war with the Dutch. His own district took in the coastline of Kent and Sussex, and he seems to have extended his attention to the families of the slain, for he notes in his diary under date of May 16, 1665, " To London to consider of the poore orphans and widows made by this bloudy beginning." He reckoned the ex­penses of his mission at $5,000 a week and subse­quently at double that sum, and had the greatest difficulty in extorting it from the government of the day, as may be judged from the following passage from a letter to the lord treasurer's secretary: "One fortnight has made me feele the utmost of miseries that can befall a person in my station and with my affections: To have 25,000 prisoners, and 1,500 sick and wounded men to take care of, without one peny of money, and above £2,000 ($10,000) in­debted. It is true I am but newly acquainted with buisinesse . . . learning that at once which others get by degrees." He proceeds to speak of his desire of serving God " in anything which I hope He may accept, for I swears to you no other consideration should tempt me a second time to this trouble."

The closing years of the seventeenth century saw, as Kirkman Gray has pointed out, the extension of individual into corporate philanthropy. The leaders in this new departure included men like

Robert Nelson (d. 1715) who had made 5. Rise of the grand tour of France and Italy, for

Corporate the older countries of the continent

Philan  were at that time somewhat in advance

thropy. of the English in this respect. The in 

flux of Huguenot refugees consequent upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes also lent a stimulus to the movement. With Nelson was as­sociated Anthony Horneck (d. 1697), a German settled in England who had taken orders in the Established Church. Evelyn describes him as " a most pathetic preacher, a person of a saint like life." Both Nelson and Horneck were authors of numerous theological works. They joined in form­ing associations for the reformation of manners and morals which sprang up during the last quarter of the century as a reaction against the license preva­lent during Charles the Second's reign. Nelson was one of the founders of the Society for Promoting

Social Service THE NEW SCHAFF HERZOG 479

Christian Knowledge (see TRACT SOCIETIES, III., 2) in 1698 and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1701. He was also a member of the com­mission appointed by the house of commons to add fifty new churches to the metropolis, then rapidly extending its boundaries. A great object of both the societies above named was, in the first instance, to extend religious teaching to portions of Great Britain and her dependencies which were untouched by the parochial system of the Church of England. Thus, regions so far apart as the Scottish Highlands and the American plantations became objects of their efforts. A cooperator in the same field was Thomas Bray, commissary to the governor of Mary­land. The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge had its headquarters in London, but had correspondents throughout the country. A great feature of its work was the establishment of " charity schools." These were originally day schools imparting rudimentary instruction in reading and writing and, generally, also in arithmetic and some simple manual occupation. Religious instruction was insisted upon in all the schools. In the absence of any uniform or national system of education, the society did a great work, although the total number of children in attendance all over the country ap­pears never to have exceeded 30,000 at any one time. The system continued to be actively carried out through the greater part of the eighteenth century. Toward the end of this period Miss Hannah Ball (d. 1792), an early disciple of John Wesley, started a Sunday school at High Wycombe. Another was set on foot in Gloucester by Miss Cooke, also a Methodist, for the benefit of the children engaged in her uncle's pin factory. From such small be­ginnings the movement was spread largely through the sympathy of the editor of the influential Glou­cester Journal, the well known Robert Raikes, (q.v.). In 1801 a conservative estimate computed these schools at 1,516, with an average exceeding 100 children in each, in London alone (see SuNDAY­seHOOI.s).

The eighteenth century witnessed the spread, and indeed almost the genesis, of the modern hospital system. Until then, the only hospitals, even in

London, had been adapted from the 6. Hospitals; medieval monastic establishments of

Care of St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's.

Insane; Bedlam was rather a house of deten 

Nursing. tion than a curative institution for the

insane. While the care of the sick, in its early stages, was intimately connected with the afflatus of Christianity, the forward movement of the period above mentioned appears to have owed its origin mainly to the humane instincts of leading medical practitioners combined with an entirely legitimate desire in the profession to utilize the in­stitutional care of the sick in the study and advancement of the science and practise of the heal­ing art. From these considerations it would seem that, so far as the extension of the hospital system at this date was a branch of philanthropy, it falls outside the title and scope of the present section. An exception should perhaps be made in the case of the new and more humane treatment of the insane inaugurated in 1791 at York by William Tuke (d.

1822), a tea merchant of that city and a member of the Society of Friends. In the Tuke family, as in the sect to which it adhered, philanthropy has been hereditary. William Tuke's great grandson, James Hack Tuke (d. 1896), twice traveled in Ireland to administer relief during the famine year of 1847, and again during the distress of 1881. He also journeyed to Paris during the Commune of 1871 to distribute $100,000 raised by his denomination to relieve the sufferings arising from the siege of the preceding winter. A further exception with regard to the late Miss Florence Nightingale (q.v.), who first established a training school for sick nurses, and had herself in early life been a disciple of Eliza­beth Fry (q.v.), should also, perhaps, be made.

Conversely, the Methodist movement of the same century (see METHODISTS, I.) was too exclusively concerned with the Evangelical revival to rank

among directly philanthropic or social 7. Anti  agencies, though John Wesley himself

Slavery and wrote against Slavery (q.v.). With the Prison  founders of the so called "Clapham

Reform. Sect," however, the association of the

agitation against the slave trade, and ultimately against slavery itself, was close and in­timate. As early, indeed, as 1727, the Society of Friends at its annual meeting had taken up the position that " the importing of negroes from their native country and relations by Friends is not a commendable nor allowed practise." From these two bodies were drawn most of the champions of the crusade. The historian Lecky remarks that the activity of the philanthropic spirit " has been largely stimulated by the Evangelical Revival." The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade founded by Granville Sharp (d. 1813) in 1787 was largely composed of Quakers. William Wilberforce (q.v.) was a leading member of the Low church or Evan­gelical colony settled round Clapham Common, and was besides an influential member of parlia­ment and a friend of William Pitt, the prime minister. Thus he constituted a link between the religious and the political worlds. Thomas Clarkson (d. 1846) was already in deacon's orders in the Church of England when he took up the question, and actually refrained from taking priest's orders lest that profession should interfere with his prosecution of the cause, to which he felt so strong a call that he writes, " At length I yielded, not because I saw any reasonable prospect of success in my new under­taking (for all cool headed and cool hearted men would have pronounced against it) but in obedience I believe to a higher Power." Again, the era of Prison Reform (q.v.) was inaugurated by john Howard (q.v.). Of Non conformist training and strong religious sentiments, his duties as high sheriff of Bedfordshire brought him into contact with the harsh treatment of prisoners in his native land. The horrors of jail fever were equaled by those of the miscellaneous herding together of the novice or perhaps the innocent with the most de­pmVed. His end came in the course of prosecuting his investigations in the prisons of South Russia. His endeavors were directed toward the reform of the system; those of Elizabeth Fry who, like the Tukes, came of a prominent Quaker family, aimed

473 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Social service

at the reform of the individual prisoner. Their memories have been perpetuated and their work continued by societies bearing their names.

Inspired also by the Evangelical sentiment, and one of the foremost pillars of that branch of the Church of England throughout the middle half of last century, was Anthony Ashley Cooper, seventh earl of Shaftesbury (q.v.), of whom Professor Blaikie has remarked, " The lives of Howard, Mrs. Fry, Wilberforce, and other great philanthropists are associated mainly with a single cause Shaftesbury's with half a score." Like Wilberforce, he stood for the ideal of philanthropy in the stormy cross seas of politics. His sympathies for the suffering were first attracted to the insane by an inquiry instituted in parliament into the condition and treatment of that unfortunate class. Thenceforward he con­tinued throughout his life a member of a perma­nent commission charged with the supervision of asylums for lunatics. In 1833 he proceeded to engage in the amelioration of the lot of industrial workers, particularly of women and children, at that time employed not only in factories but also in col­lieries. Not content with knowledge at second hand, he ascertained the conditions under which they worked by personal visitation. And here it seems permissible to observe that the charity of one gen­eration is apt to become the oppression of its suc­cessors. One of the abuses against which Shaftes­bury strove was the exploitation of young children in the textile trades. Yet this very practise had been fostered, if not inaugurated, in those schools for imparting instruction in manual crafts as well as in book learning and conduct, set up by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and carried still further in schools connected with the work­houses of those days. Of course there was always this marked difference that the factories were run for private profit, while the receipts from the school children's handiwork went to support the schools, and not into the pockets of the managers.

To return to Lord Shaftesbury. In the "hungry forties" he took up the cause of the uncared for boys in the streets, and promoted the organization of

the so called Ragged Schools for their

8. Ragged benefit another of those charitable

Schools; movements directly traceable to relig­Young ious impulse. Rather than oppose,

People's in common with the land owning class

Societies. as a whole, the repeal of the Corn

Laws, he vacated his seat in the house of commons. By this time he had acquired a definite influence among the working classes, who were beginning to appreciate his disinterested ef­forts on their behalf. When the wave of discon­tent, which had been gathering mass and moment through a long series of years, threatened in 1848 to catch infection from Paris and to break forth into active revolt, he was besought to exercise that influence in favor of peace and order, and after­ward received the thanks of the home secretary for his efforts in that direction. Another cause which enlisted his aid was that of the improvement of working class dwellings. Lord Shaftesbury was also a supporter of the Young Men's Christian As­sociation (see YouNe PEopLz's Soc=TIEB). This

society was set on foot in 1844 with the primary object of evangelizing the masses of young men en­gaged in trade and business in the metropolis, many of them living at a distance from their families and friends, and left to their own resources to avoid or to succumb to the varied temptations surround­ing them in so vast a city. In time it added to its original program by establishing libraries and reading rooms, classes in various branches of study, and employment bureaus. Sir George Will'ams (q.v.), himself head of a large drapery firm in St. Paul's Churchyard, was identified with this effort from its commencement, and was its treasurer until his death, when the association included 7,229 branches scattered throughout the United States as well as the British Empire. A sister society for young women followed in 1855. Reference has been made to the Ragged School movement. Connected with it as regards the class to be benefited was the Reformatory and Refuge Union, founded in 1856 to supply a center of information and encouragement for the already numerous local and isolated efforts to meet the needs of the various classes of delinquents  e.g., youthful offenders, unfortunate women, and discharged prisoners.

It has been pointed out above that the last two centuries have been the age of associated benevo­lence. But this is not to say that individual benefi­cence has been superseded. On the

g. Move  contrary, during the past half cen­ments under tury, as much at least as during any

Personal earlier period, schemes of the greatest

Initiative. magnitude have been the outcome of

the initiative of a single person. Even

the method of three centuries ago of bequeathing

money for pensions or almshouses is not extinct.

But the ideal of personal service is higher, and the

chief benefactors have in their lifetime drawn to­

gether bands of sympathizers who act under their

leadership and can continue their work. The great

mission carried on by the late Dr. Thomas John

Bamardo (d. 1905) had its modest beginning in his

compassionate observation of the city arab class

while himself a medical student. At the date of his

death 60,000 children were computed to have

passed through the various institutions he had

founded, 16,000 having been placed in British

colonies. Of these it is said that only 300, or less

than two per cent, have failed to do well. Another

great organization in the same field is the Church

of England Society for Waifs and Strays. With its

establishment the Rev. Edward de Montjoie Rudolf

has been especially connected. The Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which holds a

quasi official position, and has had 144,234 children

under its notice during the twenty five years of its

existence, was the creation of Benjamin Waugh, a

Congregationalist minister. As an example of what

individual inspiration can effect, it would be hard to

find a more conspicuous example than that of the

Salvation Army (q.v.), the creation of the evangel­

izing zeal of the Rev. William Booth (q.v.), and his

wife Catherine Mumford Booth (q.v.). To plan an

organization designed for home mission work upon

a military framework must have demanded great

originating power in the first instance. To extend it