The Book of Books (39 page)

 

The English word ‘charity' comes from the Bible, a translation of the Latin word ‘caritas' which could also mean ‘care' or ‘love'. Charity combines both and in St Paul's letter to the Corinthians it is given its crown. ‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.' The King James Version is the only English Bible version to translate ‘caritas' as ‘charity' rather than as ‘love'.

Charity had been seen by the Christian Church as part of its purpose from the time of Christ. It had been considered a Christian virtue. Its administration was largely left to the Church. The consequences of the publication of the King James Bible included a growing belief on the part of individuals that the pursuit of charity was an obligation and a responsibility for the individual: the individual who had been released into full participation with their Creator and their Redeemer.

In Victorian Britain and in roughly the same period of history in America, there was a spectacular surge in the creation of charitable organisations which took on the desperate condition of the outcast impoverished, often diseased and malnourished masses cramped into the slums of the new industrial cities. These organisations were Bible-led and that Bible was the King James Version.
There was something simple, basic and good about their mission, which was to help the weak. But there was also the colouring of the times: the weak had to prove that they were deserving.

The role of government was very limited. The government's argument was that doling out large sums of relief to the poor would only encourage poverty, especially among the undeserving poor. There was an accepted level of destitution. The general view was that poverty was the result of personal failure—laziness, idleness, greed, or sin. In that respect – the moral sphere – it was thought the Bible could make a crucial contribution. This view was challenged by individuals like Henry Mayhew, who argued that this was not a moral problem but a social problem. The poor were not poor because they were immoral. If they were immoral it was because they were poor. They were poor because they could find no work and accumulate no money.

The Co-operative Movement and the Friendly Societies, connected through membership with the nonconformist branches of the Protestant Church, took a slightly different view. They encouraged self-help and reached out to those unable to rise to that challenge. They did not bring in what could in practice be a rigid and unhelpful distinction between the undeserving poor who brought neglect upon themselves and the deserving poor, to be rewarded and worthy of salvation.

Then there were individuals: Octavia Hill (1838 – 1912). She worked as a child with her sister in a toy workshop. By the age of fourteen she was running it. Her workshop, which from the description was appalling, was thought to be better than most of the sweatshops which were making Britain the ‘workshop of the world'. The toy workshop was subsidised by Christian Socialists. This group was to have a strong part in the British charity movement and it gave to Octavia Hill a desire for social reform which melded with her strong Christian principles.

Octavia Hill's impact is proof that an individual, however skilfully she might seem to be riding on the tide of an economic and social turn of history, can make a substantial difference. She was convinced that young, unmarried Christian women of the middle class should go into the world of extreme poverty and serve God and the poor. They acted as rent collectors and supervisors. Ellen Ranyard, founder of the ‘Bible Women', deliberately hired women from the working classes. She thought they would be more able to make easy contact with the women they went to help and to whom they sold Bibles.

Octavia Hill led by example and was a major force throughout the charity and welfare organisations of the nineteenth century. She campaigned successfully for social housing and for the availability of open spaces for the poor, a campaign which was key in the establishment of the National Trust. She was a founder member of the Charity Organisation Society (now the charity Family Action) which formed the basis of modern social work.

The latter society emphasised Bible study and encouraged attendance at Sunday school and Church. The Bible was the enabler in all of this. A strong prevailing idea was that those in poverty were so placed because of their ungodliness. Bible study and the practice of the Christian faith were to be made crucial to rehabilitation. Many of the poor, we are told, grudged the enforced Christianity as the price they had to pay. Those ignored for so long by Christianity or atavistically wary of its claims on them were often reluctant to accept the faith even though they benefited from the works. But they were made well aware that the Bible was part of the cure.

Just as vigorous as Octavia Hill was her contemporary, William Booth (1829 – 1912), who founded the Salvation Army. He came from the school that believed that poverty, vice and crime were indisputably linked to sin. His army took up the King James
Version as it marched into the slums and war zones, banners flying, drums beating, tambourines cascading with shimmering sounds. Booth wrote
In Darkest England and the Way Out
: he knew his ground on the first part of that title: the second he found in the Bible.

In the book, he sets out the cityscape, in which he worked:

Booth describes these Christian women, the Bible Women, who were so outstanding on the battlefields of nineteenth-century charity. Booth in this instance writes of the remarkable phenomenon of the ‘Slum Sister'.

Those of religion will recognise such people. In the current secularism of British society it is worth drawing attention to the practical dedication of those who came not so long ago before us and brought comfort and relief to many ‘outcasts' and acknowledge that this was inspired by what were believed to be the Words of God and Jesus Christ. I am sure it can be proved that non-religious women behaved just as well, applied themselves just as devotedly. That does not detract from those whose vocation was inspired by the King James Bible. These British Bible Women who, they might have said, were ‘about their Father's business', are now foreigners here in what was once their land. We know them not. But they helped make it the better land it became and William Booth, flags flying, tambourines shaking, knew what he was praising.

Booth wrote that his experience of the work of the Slum Sisters gave him a ‘greater respect for true religion'. These are two from many examples. There is a strong connection, in my view, between the work done here and that which Christ sent out the Apostles to do.

‘Mrs. W—of Haggerston slum. Heavy drinker, wrecked home, husband a drunkard, place dirty and filthy, terribly poor. Saved now over two years. Home A.1, plenty of employment at canechair bottoming; husband now saved also.'

‘Mrs. R—Drury Lane slum. Husband and wife, drunkards; husband very lazy, only worked when starved into it. We found them both out of work, home furnitureless, in debt. She got saved and our lasses prayed for him to get work. He did so, and went to
it. He fell out again a few weeks after, and beat his wife. She sought employment at charring and office cleaning. Got it.'

Catherine Booth, wife of William, was as energetic and effective as he was. She was a devout Christian, daughter of a coachbuilder in Derbyshire, and by the age of twelve she had read the Bible eight times. Despite William's opposition to her feminism, she went her own way and in 1860, in Gateshead Bethesda Chapel, she began to preach. A strange compulsion seized her, she reported, and an inner voice taunted her: ‘She will look like a fool and have nothing to say.' Catherine decided that this was the devil's voice and replied: ‘That is just the point. I have never yet been willing to be a fool for Christ. Now I will be one.' Her sermon so impressed William that he changed his mind about women preaching and she went on to develop a reputation as a powerful speaker, especially in the Dockland parishes of the East End of London.

The Salvation Army was not welcomed by the establishment. Lord Shaftesbury called William Booth ‘the Anti-Christ'. But they went marching on and in 1882, a survey in London found that on one weeknight, there were about 1,700 worshipping with them compared to 1,100 in ordinary churches. The ‘Sally Army' reached out and fed and comforted those whom the Anglican Church could not or would not embrace.

Catherine Booth went on to be the leading figure in transforming the condition of the ‘sweat-shops', then mostly employing women. Her chief activity was with the match factories where the vile overcrowding and the pittance wages (9d a day) were made even worse by the use of yellow phosphorous which caused the widespread illness known as ‘phossy jaw' (necrosis of the bone). The whole side of the face turned green and then black, discharged pus and led to early death. Catherine helped the workers to get the use of yellow phosphorus banned.

There is a sense in which intelligent, brave women who were excluded from all the commanding heights of the state, found, through their faith nurtured by the King James Version, that the unexpected consequence was access to the power to change society. There are so many examples.

Josephine Butler, for example, came from a very well-connected family. Her father was the cousin of Earl Grey, the Prime Minister, who led the Whig government from 1830 to 1834 and introduced the Great Reform Act. She was, claimed Prince Leopold, ‘the most beautiful woman in the world'.

She was an Anglican and saw the King James Version as her text when she immersed herself in charity work. She wrote and campaigned for improved educational and employment opportunities for single women. Most notably of all she campaigned with others to end what was known as the ‘white slave traffic' – child prostitution then rampant in London. She was spat on and vilified but eventually Parliament passed an Act that raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen. This and her work in securing the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, which applied only to women and gave the police the right to arrest any woman they considered might be a prostitute, proved that these women of the Bible could and did engage in politics and on a very controversial issue. Religion was not only a commitment and a faith, it had become, especially for women in the nineteenth century, a gateway to bring about essential social change.

America was also accelerating and expanding its Christian charity with characteristic buccaneering effectiveness. The Charity Organisation Society founded in England in 1869 soon crossed to America, where it became more ‘scientific', but still used ‘friendly visitors', mostly women. It established the first professional training school for social work – the New York School of Philanthropy.

The Social Gospel Movement was the cavalry of the Protestant
Christian intellectuals and it rode into battle against inequality, alcohol, crime, racism, slums, child labour and poor schools. There was within the movement a strand of conviction that the Second Coming would not arrive until society had cleansed itself through its own efforts with the help of the Bible. Self-help before salvation. There were crusades against the twelve-hour day; there was the establishment of the YMCA to help young people from the country adjust to the city without falling for its temptations; and there were the settlement houses, such as Jane Addams's Hull House.

Jane Addams was born in 1860. Her Presbyterian father ran the local Bible class. She herself, as she grew older, did not follow his example: she was not personally religious. However she said that she had no doubt that the Bible and her father's teaching had led her to the charitable social work which was to consume her life. She would use religious language and imagery to get her message to Christian communities. On the site devoted to Christian charity workers we read:

In her impact she can be compared with Octavia Hill but her social politics seem closer to those of Henry Mayhew. She saw the distress in the most indigent and underprivileged areas of society and addressed it not as a vice or a crime but as a social problem.
Hence her unique and lasting contribution, the US settlement movement, which began at Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, in 1889. She became just the second woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.