The Social Settlement after Twenty-five Years

Abstract

More than a quarter of a century has elapsed since a letter, written by a passenger on an English railway train as he sat on the bank beside the track waiting for a broken-down engine to be repaired, resulted in the founding of the first Social Settlement. The writer was the Reverend Canon Samuel A. Barnett, then Vicar of St. Jude's Church, Whitechapel, in East London, and the settlement was Toynbee Hall. Mrs. Barnett has recently published an interesting account of the steps that led to the realization of the settlement idea. She describes the lack of knowledge of the poor on the part of earnest, thinking men, when she and her husband took up their work at St. Jude's, and tells of the visits they made to Oxford from time to time to talk to little groups of cultivated, serious young college men to get them to care about the poor and their problems. Some of these men came to Whitechapel for a visit, to see for themselves the conditions of poverty, and occasionally some would take lodgings in East London, when they left the university to begin their lifework. In this way a connection was established between Whitechapel and the university, and discerning spirits were able to see that each side had contributions of value to make to the other.