Commonplace 128 George & Slumming
With paintings by Abbot Handerson Thayer (1848-1821) who liked his angels click.
When viewed through the prism of twenty-first century politics, slumming is an ugly word for an unattractive practice. The idea of visiting a locality or population to gawp at its residents is abhorrent to our way of thinking about privacy and human rights. In George's time, visits to places of 'social interest' such as mental asylums, workhouses, and areas of economic deprivation were almost part of the normal run of things for people in a slightly better position than the people on display- a sort of domestic alternative Grand Tour click. As we know from George's fiction, many 'ladies' involved themselves in the needs of the poor, and though George tended towards thinking this was an utter waste of time and effort, he was not averse, himself, from exploiting what might be a woman's natural tendency towards empathy and communication, especially when he manipulated the women he knew he could make use of - Clara Collet and Miss Orme, take a bow - into doing his bidding.
Who were these people who liked to study the disadvantaged? Were they philanthropists or scopophiliacs? And what were the factors that made slumming popular?
1) The scientists.
After the shock that was the Chartist Movement, and despite its reasonable aims, the most pressing matter for the ruling classes was controlling the masses. The Natural Selection theory of Charles Darwin raised notions of inherited traits which suggested to some that the deprived were innately beyond the pale, and as such, beyond change or redemption. Indeed, some saw them as surplus to requirements, and a drain on the economic system. Eugenics was the result of a misreading of many things, including Darwin, though the man himself was of the opinion that 'inferiors' are inferior for a reason, and he often cited women as the classic example of how inferiority manifests itself when judged against the other humans - the ones with the cocks. However, according to Darwin, men and women, like all living things, adapt to their environments, and so women, to succeed must fit into their prisons, or perish. By extension, it also proves that if you are born into squalor, it makes sense to behave in squalid ways; born into violence, you have to adopt violence.
Slumming had an acceptable face when it was done in the name of bringing about social change for the better. In order to study the poor, there had to be a methodology that served the purpose of those who wanted to control the masses. France gave us Auguste Comte and his philosophy of Positivism. George was, for a time, one of the British Positivists under the tutelage of Frederic Harrison. Positivism contended that all human behaviour subscribes to predictable systems and if you know what the systems are and how they work, you can control people and explain and then influence their behaviour. This became what we would now recognise as sociology - the study of people and social groups click. Sociology speaks via statistics, and so became what is taken for a useful tool in describing and containing the poor and needy. Not with the aim of making them happy, but to make them useful and acceptable, because to Positivists, that would mean they would be malleable and self-sufficient. Sociologists went out gathering their statistics and reporting back to those who debated the figures. Miss Clara Collet, sometime love botherer and all-round minion to George and scourge of Edith the second wife, was a government sociologist-cum-statistician for the Board of Trade. No doubt she honed her skills as a grass via this role, the old Tom Tale Tit that she was.
2) The Evangelists.
For a couple of centuries, the Church had been increasingly forced to adapt its presentation style, leading it to phase out the 'fire and brimstone' approach and introduce the idea that philanthropy would ensure Christianity prevailed. Befriending the poor was a core value of Methodism and the various 'new' sects such as Unitarianism and Quakerism and the best of them worked to get the better of the revolting masses by attempting to win them over to the Right Path by providing food, shelter, education, support, medicine, family guidance, leadership - I know! Christians actually doing what Jesus would have done!! Some worked for the greater good of the people, and some for the maintenance of the status quo in ensuring the prominent position the Church enjoyed in British society, but it can't be denied that genuine 'good' was done. Slumming in the name of god was a popular way for women to rise to their potential, and allowed access to experiences and challenges no other activity could offer them.
However, one dark cloud on the Church's horizon arrived in the form of Charles Bradlaugh click who unofficially stood for a humanistic alternative to theism, representing a modern take on individual responsibility towards one's responsibilities to one's fellows and one's conscience. Atheism was seen as akin to the godlessness of the poor and the Church needed to get to the tens of thousands of potential religion avoiders in the slum areas to prevent a slide towards the end of religion and the rise of atheism as a force of influence. Again, by working in areas of deprivation to directly influence the poor, religious groups rolled out their own form of sociology with direct action to influence the behaviour of the masses. There was a degree of competition, too, to make sure the many sects were able to boost numbers; competition from secular groups with no religious affiliations, especially the increasingly influential trades unions and Socialists posed another threat. Slummers gathered information about where to site churches and charitable institutions, and money could be raised to offset deprivation if it was targeted to a specific, preferably notorious, locale or identifiable group.
3) The Curious.
Freak shows were also popular, and gave everyone something to stare at. However, the life of John Merrick, also known as the Elephant Man click, shows us how exploitation gave a lifeline, albeit of the most basic and abusive sort, to a class of unfortunates who, if they lived in a village, might have had a support system to sustain them, but who found themselves alone and left to their own devices in the uncaring metropolis.
The inherent entertainment value in staring at the poor, disadvantaged and disabled was not a Victorian invention, but it would be wrong to think it is a particularly old concept. In Suzannah Lipscomb's informative piece, click, she makes the point that 'fools' were often persons with learning difficulties, and not the clever posing as wise that Shakespeare gave us. We now tend to think the care of anyone who does not subscribe to the mean of human behaviour requires some form of institutionalisation, but before that was the case, communities supported and protected their harmless mentally ill and disabled members, and no-one in genuine want would be left without shelter or sustenance. When the newspapers were full of stories of an exotic place George termed the 'Nether World'. it was no surprise anyone might seek to have a look for themselves. Today, we have 'Jack the Ripper' walks round Whitechapel, complete with dramatic reconstructions of the murders. As they say in the English north, 'there's nowt as queer as folk'.
4) The Perverse.
Some people do like to look at suffering and dirt, and derive sexual pleasure from it. It's what the French term 'nostalgie de la boue'. HG Wells thought this explained George's desire to marry both Marianne aka Nell and Edith, both supposed to be unsophisticated working class women. (This is unfair to the pair of them, but we will leave that for another day.) HG Wells knew something about sexual desire as he had so much of it in himself, and was a man not afraid to extend his rutting territory in any direction that presented itself. Though George would never have spoken about it to anyone, he must have put himself under the social microscope when he sought to explain his pretended interest in the lives of the poor. Perhaps he was afraid of what he saw?
In 1886, the new science of studying people had given the world sexology in the form of Germany's Richard von Krafft-Ebing, with his 'Sexualis Psychopathia'. Krafft-Ebing's pioneering study of his psychiatric patients gave an introduction to some of the many ways sexual feelings may be experienced and expressed. In one interesting chapter, he links religious martyrdom to masochism and hysteria. Those who disapproved of the physical freedom women were enjoying when they went out into poor areas to administer relief (no pun intended!) often misrepresented the drive for independence as a form of repressed sexuality by linking women's usually repressed sexual desire with guilt, and the need for self-punishment through wallowing in filthy lives and doings. George made good use of this in Demos, when he had his female protagonist, Adela, an irritatingly smug dabbler in dirt for reasons of social conscience, feel revolted when it arrived in the form of the priapic needs of her husband, the working class and, to George (though probably not to any of his readers) loutish Richard Mutimer. Her decision to marry a man she didn't like, who she regarded as being socially beneath her, suggests she had a capacity for Darwinian pragmatism all women would recognise. It takes Richard's death for her to realise he was one of her successful social projects, and that she might have loved him. Which is fiction.
5) The writer in search of material.
The journalist looking for a good story fed off the anguish and pain of the deprived London boroughs. A trend was started with a major work that introduced a new genre: undercover journalism. After the death of Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) the inevitability of enfranchisement for the poorer classes seemed inevitable. The anxiety this provoked in the monied classes led to some novel ways of explaining the real world to the ignorant bourgeoisie. In 1866, the investigative work of James Greenwood in his 'A Night In A Workhouse', was published in the Pall Mall Gazette. Greenwood disguised himself as a pauper and joined the queue for admittance to Lambeth Workhouse, posing as a man in need of a bed. His article was so popular in the Gazette that it was published as a stand alone work, with a special penny edition for the poor to read about themselves - or about those without a penny to waste on newsprint, below them.
George took tours of the Paris Morgue and the Marylebone Workhouse that he lived near, looking for good copy for stories. Before him, Charles Dickens had done something similar, with his tours round Bedlam and various prisons, including the prison at Coldbath Fields click, a place George would have passed many times on his rambles. Have a look at this to read about one of its inmates click. Dickens' great friend John Forster (of the famous 'Life' revised by George) was a prominent Unitarian - a sect that prided itself on its work with the disadvantaged. Forster was head of the Lunacy Commission from 1861-1872, though his tenure was not considered enlightened.
George certainly made a lot of his superficial association with the poor, even though he never really had anything new to say about their plight, or cared enough to challenge the status quo of their predicament. In fact, he quickly ditched the poor in favour of the educated strapped for cash as the focus of his fiction. His concentration on their struggles was every bit as voyeuristic as his temporary preoccupation with the poor, but brought to it the shared perspective of a dispassionate outsider looking in: still slumming, but with toffs under the microscope. A case of 'big fleas and little fleas' click?
With paintings by Abbot Handerson Thayer (1848-1821) who liked his angels click.
When viewed through the prism of twenty-first century politics, slumming is an ugly word for an unattractive practice. The idea of visiting a locality or population to gawp at its residents is abhorrent to our way of thinking about privacy and human rights. In George's time, visits to places of 'social interest' such as mental asylums, workhouses, and areas of economic deprivation were almost part of the normal run of things for people in a slightly better position than the people on display- a sort of domestic alternative Grand Tour click. As we know from George's fiction, many 'ladies' involved themselves in the needs of the poor, and though George tended towards thinking this was an utter waste of time and effort, he was not averse, himself, from exploiting what might be a woman's natural tendency towards empathy and communication, especially when he manipulated the women he knew he could make use of - Clara Collet and Miss Orme, take a bow - into doing his bidding.
 |
| The Angel 1887 |
Who were these people who liked to study the disadvantaged? Were they philanthropists or scopophiliacs? And what were the factors that made slumming popular?
1) The scientists.
After the shock that was the Chartist Movement, and despite its reasonable aims, the most pressing matter for the ruling classes was controlling the masses. The Natural Selection theory of Charles Darwin raised notions of inherited traits which suggested to some that the deprived were innately beyond the pale, and as such, beyond change or redemption. Indeed, some saw them as surplus to requirements, and a drain on the economic system. Eugenics was the result of a misreading of many things, including Darwin, though the man himself was of the opinion that 'inferiors' are inferior for a reason, and he often cited women as the classic example of how inferiority manifests itself when judged against the other humans - the ones with the cocks. However, according to Darwin, men and women, like all living things, adapt to their environments, and so women, to succeed must fit into their prisons, or perish. By extension, it also proves that if you are born into squalor, it makes sense to behave in squalid ways; born into violence, you have to adopt violence.
Slumming had an acceptable face when it was done in the name of bringing about social change for the better. In order to study the poor, there had to be a methodology that served the purpose of those who wanted to control the masses. France gave us Auguste Comte and his philosophy of Positivism. George was, for a time, one of the British Positivists under the tutelage of Frederic Harrison. Positivism contended that all human behaviour subscribes to predictable systems and if you know what the systems are and how they work, you can control people and explain and then influence their behaviour. This became what we would now recognise as sociology - the study of people and social groups click. Sociology speaks via statistics, and so became what is taken for a useful tool in describing and containing the poor and needy. Not with the aim of making them happy, but to make them useful and acceptable, because to Positivists, that would mean they would be malleable and self-sufficient. Sociologists went out gathering their statistics and reporting back to those who debated the figures. Miss Clara Collet, sometime love botherer and all-round minion to George and scourge of Edith the second wife, was a government sociologist-cum-statistician for the Board of Trade. No doubt she honed her skills as a grass via this role, the old Tom Tale Tit that she was.
 |
| Winged Figure 1889 |
2) The Evangelists.
For a couple of centuries, the Church had been increasingly forced to adapt its presentation style, leading it to phase out the 'fire and brimstone' approach and introduce the idea that philanthropy would ensure Christianity prevailed. Befriending the poor was a core value of Methodism and the various 'new' sects such as Unitarianism and Quakerism and the best of them worked to get the better of the revolting masses by attempting to win them over to the Right Path by providing food, shelter, education, support, medicine, family guidance, leadership - I know! Christians actually doing what Jesus would have done!! Some worked for the greater good of the people, and some for the maintenance of the status quo in ensuring the prominent position the Church enjoyed in British society, but it can't be denied that genuine 'good' was done. Slumming in the name of god was a popular way for women to rise to their potential, and allowed access to experiences and challenges no other activity could offer them.
However, one dark cloud on the Church's horizon arrived in the form of Charles Bradlaugh click who unofficially stood for a humanistic alternative to theism, representing a modern take on individual responsibility towards one's responsibilities to one's fellows and one's conscience. Atheism was seen as akin to the godlessness of the poor and the Church needed to get to the tens of thousands of potential religion avoiders in the slum areas to prevent a slide towards the end of religion and the rise of atheism as a force of influence. Again, by working in areas of deprivation to directly influence the poor, religious groups rolled out their own form of sociology with direct action to influence the behaviour of the masses. There was a degree of competition, too, to make sure the many sects were able to boost numbers; competition from secular groups with no religious affiliations, especially the increasingly influential trades unions and Socialists posed another threat. Slummers gathered information about where to site churches and charitable institutions, and money could be raised to offset deprivation if it was targeted to a specific, preferably notorious, locale or identifiable group.
 |
| Winged Figure Seated on a Rock 1903 |
3) The Curious.
Freak shows were also popular, and gave everyone something to stare at. However, the life of John Merrick, also known as the Elephant Man click, shows us how exploitation gave a lifeline, albeit of the most basic and abusive sort, to a class of unfortunates who, if they lived in a village, might have had a support system to sustain them, but who found themselves alone and left to their own devices in the uncaring metropolis.
The inherent entertainment value in staring at the poor, disadvantaged and disabled was not a Victorian invention, but it would be wrong to think it is a particularly old concept. In Suzannah Lipscomb's informative piece, click, she makes the point that 'fools' were often persons with learning difficulties, and not the clever posing as wise that Shakespeare gave us. We now tend to think the care of anyone who does not subscribe to the mean of human behaviour requires some form of institutionalisation, but before that was the case, communities supported and protected their harmless mentally ill and disabled members, and no-one in genuine want would be left without shelter or sustenance. When the newspapers were full of stories of an exotic place George termed the 'Nether World'. it was no surprise anyone might seek to have a look for themselves. Today, we have 'Jack the Ripper' walks round Whitechapel, complete with dramatic reconstructions of the murders. As they say in the English north, 'there's nowt as queer as folk'.
4) The Perverse.
Some people do like to look at suffering and dirt, and derive sexual pleasure from it. It's what the French term 'nostalgie de la boue'. HG Wells thought this explained George's desire to marry both Marianne aka Nell and Edith, both supposed to be unsophisticated working class women. (This is unfair to the pair of them, but we will leave that for another day.) HG Wells knew something about sexual desire as he had so much of it in himself, and was a man not afraid to extend his rutting territory in any direction that presented itself. Though George would never have spoken about it to anyone, he must have put himself under the social microscope when he sought to explain his pretended interest in the lives of the poor. Perhaps he was afraid of what he saw?
In 1886, the new science of studying people had given the world sexology in the form of Germany's Richard von Krafft-Ebing, with his 'Sexualis Psychopathia'. Krafft-Ebing's pioneering study of his psychiatric patients gave an introduction to some of the many ways sexual feelings may be experienced and expressed. In one interesting chapter, he links religious martyrdom to masochism and hysteria. Those who disapproved of the physical freedom women were enjoying when they went out into poor areas to administer relief (no pun intended!) often misrepresented the drive for independence as a form of repressed sexuality by linking women's usually repressed sexual desire with guilt, and the need for self-punishment through wallowing in filthy lives and doings. George made good use of this in Demos, when he had his female protagonist, Adela, an irritatingly smug dabbler in dirt for reasons of social conscience, feel revolted when it arrived in the form of the priapic needs of her husband, the working class and, to George (though probably not to any of his readers) loutish Richard Mutimer. Her decision to marry a man she didn't like, who she regarded as being socially beneath her, suggests she had a capacity for Darwinian pragmatism all women would recognise. It takes Richard's death for her to realise he was one of her successful social projects, and that she might have loved him. Which is fiction.
 |
| The Angel 1914 |
5) The writer in search of material.
The journalist looking for a good story fed off the anguish and pain of the deprived London boroughs. A trend was started with a major work that introduced a new genre: undercover journalism. After the death of Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) the inevitability of enfranchisement for the poorer classes seemed inevitable. The anxiety this provoked in the monied classes led to some novel ways of explaining the real world to the ignorant bourgeoisie. In 1866, the investigative work of James Greenwood in his 'A Night In A Workhouse', was published in the Pall Mall Gazette. Greenwood disguised himself as a pauper and joined the queue for admittance to Lambeth Workhouse, posing as a man in need of a bed. His article was so popular in the Gazette that it was published as a stand alone work, with a special penny edition for the poor to read about themselves - or about those without a penny to waste on newsprint, below them.
George took tours of the Paris Morgue and the Marylebone Workhouse that he lived near, looking for good copy for stories. Before him, Charles Dickens had done something similar, with his tours round Bedlam and various prisons, including the prison at Coldbath Fields click, a place George would have passed many times on his rambles. Have a look at this to read about one of its inmates click. Dickens' great friend John Forster (of the famous 'Life' revised by George) was a prominent Unitarian - a sect that prided itself on its work with the disadvantaged. Forster was head of the Lunacy Commission from 1861-1872, though his tenure was not considered enlightened.
George certainly made a lot of his superficial association with the poor, even though he never really had anything new to say about their plight, or cared enough to challenge the status quo of their predicament. In fact, he quickly ditched the poor in favour of the educated strapped for cash as the focus of his fiction. His concentration on their struggles was every bit as voyeuristic as his temporary preoccupation with the poor, but brought to it the shared perspective of a dispassionate outsider looking in: still slumming, but with toffs under the microscope. A case of 'big fleas and little fleas' click?
 |
| Boy and Angel 1918 |
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