Charity Begun at Home: Missionary Philanthropy and the New Middle Class in Sheffield

Abstract

The first two decades of the nineteenth century saw the establishment of an expansive network of missionary philanthropic societies in England. The Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor (SBCP), formed in London in 1796, spawned provincial auxiliaries and promoted a range of related reforming bodies. The extension of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) (from 1804), the establishment of monitorial and Sunday schools and a range of societies designed for the reform of the English poor, and the arrival during the 1810s of the auxiliary denominational missionary societies saw the consolidation of a popular missionary philanthropic movement. As I have shown in Chapter 1, domestic philanthropy was from the outset intimately connected with overseas missions. Frequently inspired by the commitment of missionaries to taking the gospel overseas — sometimes as a reaction against the perceived neglect of the ‘heathen’ at home, and often self-consciously promoted as part of the same global project — domestic philanthropy was acutely informed by the global civilising mission.