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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1290
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 1:39 pm: |       |
Despite several searches I have been unable to track down the original thread so have started this one in despair of further searching.
The following is of great interest as regards the activities and nature of the 'guests' at Toynbee during the 1880's; and I think it not too imaginative to consider both the central characters in this slice of LVP history to be suitable candidates for our Jack.
Highly suspicious folk.
'Others saw no need to wait for the revolution and inspired by Morris set about reorganising existing society. The Guild of Handicraft which opened its doors in Whitechapel in 1888 was the brainchild of a young architect Charles Robert Ashbee. Whilst a trainee at the office of architect G.F.Bodley, and living at Toynbee Hall, Ashbee was influenced not only by the ideas of Morris & Ruskin, but also met Edward Carpenter, philosopher of the simple life and proponent of `homogenic love'. The Guild grew out of lectures Ashbee gave on Ruskin to the 'BWM', his shorthand for the British Working Man. Frustrated by the well-intentioned philanthropy of Toynbee Hall "neither a college, convent nor a club" he conceived of a more practical experiment, a craft 'co-operative' modelled on English Medieval Guilds, where skilled craftsmen working by the principles of Ruskin & Morris would not only produce hand-crafted goods, but also run a school for young apprentices. The idea was greeted with great enthusiasm by almost everyone except Morris himself, who was by now deeply involved in promoting revolutionary socialism. In an attempt to win his support Ashbee declared, "look I am going to forge a weapon for you;- and thus I too work for you in the overthrow of society", to which Morris replied, " The weapon is too small to be of any Value."
Ashbee, like Morris before him was a rich boy turned revolutionary. His mother came from a wealthy Jewish family in Hamburg and his father was a senior partner in a London law firm. Despite Morris's discouragement Ashbee pushed on with both the Guild & School of Handicrafts opening in rooms at Toynbee Hall on June 23rd 1888. The venture was a surprise success and shortly moved to larger premises on the top floor of a nearby warehouse and then onto a rather grand Georgian house in Mile End Road and open a shop in the West End to sell the Guild's goods. At Essex House the Guild carried out carpentry, carving, cabinet making and decorative painting . A smithy was built in the garden and metalwork, silverwork & jewellery were added to the Guild trades. Ashbee's success in Whitechapel was based partly on his own developing architecture practice, with the guild providing the furniture, fixtures and fittings for a growing number of commissions. Other factors contributing to the success were no doubt the contact with the wealthy patrons of Toynbee Hall and the success of other young Arts & Crafts architects, supplied by the Guild. A lively social life was established at the Guild with programmes of lectures, and Guild suppers, where the men sang songs and acted in masques. An Essex House cricket X1 was formed and a number of country cottages were acquired to which the guildsmen would cycle for weekend breaks and short holidays.
In many ways the comradeship of the Guild with its genial company of young men enjoying themselves together came close to achieving Carpenter's ideal of 'homogenic' love between men, which was based on Ashbee's own barely-concealed homosexuality, which both he and his wife Janet came to terms with remarkably well, given that these were the years after the Oscar Wilde trial.
Return to Utopia Homebase Return to top Return to Stories Index'
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1291
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 1:56 pm: | |
Buck's Row comes into the story as well:
'Between 1880 and 1890 in front of Bucks Row and Winthrop Street, Sunday meetings were held where intellectuals of the day would address the impoverished inhabitants of the East End. One could see and here such splendid orators as William Morris - the great social reformer (1834-1896), George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) exposing hypocrisy amongst the ruling class and promoting socialist ideals.'
Ah, Toynbee Hall what secrets do you hold? |
Robert Clack
Inspector
Username: Rclack
Post Number: 304
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - 6:07 pm: | |
Hi AP
The front of the Board School in Bucks Row was used as an open air meeting place. One of the speakers who used the place was a Rudolf Rocker,a German Philosopher, who spoke there between 1895 and 1914. Apparently he was quite a busy man, a one time school teacher, a founder member of the Anarchists Club and a leading figure in the Jewish trade union movement.
Rob |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1293
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 1:20 pm: | |
Thanks for that Rob.
I have been employing my good self in tracking down the odd and 'queer' folk associated with Toynbee Hall and its complicated environs in the 1880's.
A finer bunch of radical social revolutionaries and anti-Papist folk you couldn't meet.
The place was a positive nest of do-gooders, all determined to rid the East-End of its ills, especially prostitution. So our Jack would have fitted in there quite nicely.
Here is one famous chap from the 'Toynbee Gang' who took rescuing the 'poor' to an extreme that eventually bit him on the rear:
'Watts' extraordinary quasi-Papal portrait Mammon (dedicated to his worshippers) attacks the gross acquisitiveness of his age. His Holiness appears as a donkey-headed tyrant. Watts has taken up Carlyle's vision in Past and Present of "serious, most earnest Mammonism grown Midas-eared". He had experienced lavish living for a period as the protege of Lord and Lady Holland, and this made him alert to the dire effects of fashionable worldliness on an artist's creative energies. Watts' comments on this painting still ring true as a critique of the commercial values of the Saatchi generation: "While Mammon sits supreme great art cannot find a place."
Publication of WT Stead's exposé of child prostitution in Victorian London provoked The Minotaur. Watts started his terrifying portrait of the muscular man-beast in 1885, immediately after reading Stead's articles on "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" in the Pall Mall Gazette. One version of the painting shows the Minotaur crushing a little bird in his predatory paw. Another more explicit version substitutes a naked baby for the bird in the obscene monster's clutches. He saw it as his mission as an artist "to hold up to detestation the bestial and brutal", to channel indignation at England's sexual squalor. He embraced the clear relation between politics and art.
Watts' moral zeal was unfortunately sharper than his judgment. His enthusiasm for the rescue of the innocent led him into a disastrous marriage to the young actress Ellen Terry. He intended to remove her from "the temptation and abominations of the stage". Watts was then 46, Ellen Terry was 16. The marriage lasted less than a year, with Terry all too rapidly returning to the gaslight. The child-bride's bewitching features shine out from several paintings, including Watts' transcendent "painted parable" Love and Life.'
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1294
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 1:37 pm: | |
Earlier I was asked for confirmation of the fact that university-educated young men were frequent residents at Toynbee Hall during the 1880's and my reply was vague, so here is adequate confirmation of the fact that we must not always think of Whitechapel residents as mad polack jews grovelling in the gutter for bread:
'For philanthropically inclined males who wanted to go among the poor, the 1880s saw the rise of settlement houses, people's palaces and philanthropic working men's clubs. Toynbee House in Whitechapel, started by Samuel Barnett, Oxford House, started under the aegis of Octavia Hill, and Walter Besant's People's Palace on the Mile End Road (which now houses Queen Mary College) were all institutions intended to bring culture and education to the benighted people of the East End. Toynbee Hall and Oxford House were "settlement houses"; university-educated young men lived in them and were supposed to form bonds with the working men of the slums that would civilize the latter. Male settlement workers, like Hill's female rent collectors, entered the formerly closed spaces of the working class. As with Hill's young ladies, settlement men were in the forefront of the development of “new liberal” and socialist political economy and urban sociology. Three of Booth's assistants were Toynbee residents.'
Taken from:
The Proletarian Other: Charles Booth and the Politics of Representation Ben Gidley Isbn: 0 902986 61 9 Price:£2.50 (p&p free) First published in Great Britain 2000 by Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW. |
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