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Charity Disestablished? The Origins of the Charity Organisation Society Revisited, 1868–1871

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2003

MICHAEL J. D. ROBERTS
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Abstract

The Charity Organisation Society is conventionally assumed to have emerged as a natural response to chronic problems of urban poverty relief which, by 1869, had become acute. While accepting that such an approach identifies a necessary dimension of explanation, the argument presented here contends that no sufficient explanation of the emergence of the COS can be given without taking into account the ecclesiastical dimension of events, in particular, the key role played by Whig Broad Churchmen determined to ‘hold the line’ against ideals of religious voluntarism in the aftermath of the shock of Gladstone's 1868 disestablishment of the Church of Ireland.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 2003 , pp. 40 - 61
Copyright
2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

APPC = Association for the Prevention of Pauperism and Crime in the Metropolis; COS meeting (1870) = Meeting of the society for organising charitable relief and repressing medicity, held at Willis's Rooms, on March 30th, 1870, the earl of Derby in the chair (1870); COS minutes = Charity Organisation Society, minute books, London Metropolitan Archives, A/FWA/C; CO Rev. = Charity Organisation Review; NAPSS: Trans. = National Association for the Promotion of Social Science: Transactions; PD = Parliamentary debates; PP = Parliamentary papers; SP = Papers of the Revd Henry Solly, British Library of Political and Economic Science; SRD = Society for the Relief of Distress; TP = Papers of Archibald Campbell Tait, Lambeth Palace Library
The Tait papers were consulted by kind permission of the archbishop of Canterbury to whom I make grateful acknowledgement.