Making English morals: voluntary association and moral reform in England, 1787-1886

M. J. D. Roberts0521833892, 9780521833899, 9780511216107

Campaigns for moral reform were a recurrent and distinctive feature of public life in later Georgian and Victorian England. Antislavery, temperance, charity organisation, cruelty prevention, ‘social purity’ advocates and more – all promoted their causes through the mobilisation of citizen volunteer support. This book sets out to explore the world of these volunteer networks, their foci of concern, their patterns of recruitment, their methods of operation, and the responses they aroused. In its exploration of this culture of self-consciously altruistic associational effort, the book provides the first systematic survey of moral reform movements as a distinct tradition of citizen action over the period, as well as casting light on the formation of a middle-class culture torn, in this stage of economic and political nation-building, between acceptance of a market-organised society and unease about the cultural consequences of doing so. This is a revelatory book that is both compelling and accessible.

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Table of contents :
Half-title……Page 2
Series-title……Page 3
Title……Page 4
Copyright……Page 5
Contents……Page 6
Preface……Page 8
Acknowledgements……Page 11
Organisations……Page 13
Sources and publications……Page 14
Moral reform identified……Page 16
Perspectives on moral reform……Page 19
Moral reform, altruism and the public sphere……Page 29
William Wilberforce, 28 October 1787……Page 32
Precedents……Page 34
A new sense of urgency: the moral crisis of the 1780s……Page 39
The moral reform project of the 1780s: leaders, motives, networks……Page 48
Assisting the magistrate: reform from above and its limits……Page 63
Dimensions of wartime moral anxiety……Page 74
From Bettering Society to Society for the Suppression of Vice……Page 78
Religion, region and rank: patterns of wartime mobilisation……Page 86
A new urban leadership……Page 92
Moral reform and its critics in an age of crisis management……Page 100
Restoration versus renovation: contexts of post-war concern……Page 111
Reclaiming the metropolis: London 1815–1820……Page 116
Animals and antislavery: the symbolic politics of the 1820s……Page 124
Morals, markets and Protestantism, 1828–1834……Page 129
Evangelicalism unleashed: moral reform leaders after 1815……Page 134
Law-making and law enforcement in the age of antislavery……Page 147
State, society and moral reform in an age of free trade……Page 158
Temperance and working-class self-help: moral reform projects of the 1830s……Page 163
Moral reform and the ‘condition of England’ question……Page 171
Protestantism, pure literature and prohibition: moral reform at mid-century……Page 179
Leaders: the age of Livesey and Shaftesbury……Page 186
Critics: moral reform and English liberties……Page 198
In search of ‘progressive improvement’: contexts of mid-Victorian moral reform……Page 208
Moral reform in a decade of democracy deferred……Page 214
1867: reform, voluntarism and the moral duties of citizenship……Page 221
Backlash: the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts and the reassertion of moral individualism……Page 228
Privilege vindicated, privilege challenged: moral reform leaders in the age of Josephine Butler……Page 236
Dilemmas of self-help: individualism and the ties of community……Page 250
6 The late Victorian crisis of moral reform: the 1880s and after……Page 260
Moral reform stalled: temperance and charity organisation……Page 261
Moral reform refired: social purity……Page 265
Moral reform triumphant: volunteer mobilisation and the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885……Page 278
A tradition in retreat? Moral reform after 1885……Page 287
A public sphere transformed: late nineteenth-century contexts of adaptation and decline……Page 296
Conclusion……Page 305
MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS……Page 314
VOLUNTARY SOCIETIES: REPORTS AND PUBLICATIONS……Page 315
NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS……Page 317
PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES……Page 318
UNPUBLISHED THESES……Page 320
BOOKS AND ARTICLES……Page 321
Index……Page 328