Save the Children Centenary by Janie Hampton

Eglantyne Jebb (1876-1928)

This year is the 100th anniversary of the founding of Save the Children, one of Britain’s most notable charitable institutions. It was started by two indominatable sisters, Eglantyne and Dorothy Jebb. Their father was an English land-owning barrister and founder of a literary and debating society, while their mother started a charity for ‘Home Arts and Industries’. Both Anglican parents gave their daughters a keen sense of social justice, and a responsibility to challenge inequality; their French governess Heddie taught them about Prussian oppression; while their unconventional aunt Bun taught them carpentry, fishing and even how to make lead bullets.
As one of the first female students at the University of Oxford, Eglantyne attended meetings of the Christian Socialists and the Salvation Army. The established church did not appeal to her and she felt a close, personal relationship with the God who had chosen her to do His work. She had one complaint ‘which does for every­thing,’ she said, namely: ‘The world is wrong.’ As a young woman she investigated the working and living conditions of the poor, although she was sceptical about the effect of upper-class philanthropy, and her own poor health prevented her from doing much. At the age of 40 her health improved, and the injustices and suffering of the 1914-18 world war provided the motivation she needed. She became a passionate, dedicated and inspiring champion of children’s rights – though didn’t actually like individual children very much.

Dorothy Buxton (1881-1963)

Dorothy Jebb went to Cambridge University and in 1904 married Charles Roden Buxton whose family had been steeped in political campaigning since the 18th century. Both Charles and his brother Noel were radical Liberal, and later Labour, MPs who campaigned against the Macedonian massacres and together survived an assassination attempt in the Balkans. Their great grandfather was the slave liberator Thomas Fowell Buxton MP and their great great aunt was the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. Dorothy, Charles and their children lived in unfashionable Kennington, London, among the people whose hardships they hoped to alleviate.
During the First World War, Dorothy and Eglantyne were distressed by the demonisation of the German people in the British press. To emphasize the common humanity of all Europeans, they published Notes from the Foreign Press. Dorothy was a member of the radical Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and believed that all governments shared responsibility for the suffering caused by war, and were creating a humanitarian crisis across Europe that could not lead to lasting peace. In 1916 she and Charles both joined the Independent Labour Party and became Quakers.
After the Armistice in 1918, the British government continued to blockade German ports, which led to a devastating famine. In 1919 the sisters founded the Save the Children Fund to help humanitarian agencies already working on the ground. They understood that controversy would help to raise awareness, so Eglantyne distributed leaflets in Trafalgar Square showing starving Austrian children. She was arrested, taken to court and fined. However, as well as gaining valuable publicity, she managed to persuade the prosecuting counsel to make a donation.
When Eglantyne asked Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canter­bury, to make an appeal on behalf of the children starving in Europe, he showed no interest. So she wrote to Pope Benedict XV. Clare Mulley, a former History Girl and Eglantyne’s biographer, recounts: ‘Pope Benedict had already been impressed by Miss Jebb’s lobbying to end the British economic blockade of Europe after the Armistice. In December 1920, he took the unpre­cedented step of issuing an encycli­cal, Annus Iam Plenus (On Children of Central Europe), in which he asked Catholic churches around the world to collect for Save the Children. It was the first time that the Roman Catholic Church had sup­ported a non-denominational cause.
‘Just before the appeal, Miss Jebb and her colleague Dr Hector Munro, who had witnessed the famine in Vienna, were granted a papal audience. Because she had been brought up in the Church of England, Miss Jebb was nervous about jeopardising the meeting by some slip in etiquette. In the event, her anxiety was forgotten in the drama of the moment: the Pope had fallen behind schedule, and, as Miss Jebb’s appointed slot approached, “The man who was showing us the way turned to us with violent gesticulations,” Miss Jebb later recounted to her sister. “Then he turned round again, and, to my utter amazement, took to his heels and ran. He was wearing a purple flowing garment like a dressing gown, which blew out all around him as he ran, so that he had the odd appearance of a purple ball bounding along the corridor.
“There was nothing for it but to run, too. Grasping my mantilla to prevent it falling off, I ran after him, through one gorgeous antechamber after another, where groups of soldiers and gentlemen-in-waiting turned to look. At last, through an open door, he turned, apparently too breathless to speak, with a wild wave of his arms. Precipitating myself in his wake, I perceived a small lonely figure, like a ghost, standing stock-still in the vast room, and, recollecting that popes always dressed in white, dropped on one knee. To my relief, I found that Dr Munro had run, too, and was making the poorest attempt at a genuflexion that I ever saw.” ‘
Dr Munro was not im­pressed by Eglantyne’s “attempt to curtsey” either, but the Pope didn’t notice. After asking many questions, he donated £25,000 to launch the appeal, insisting that it should be allocated to all children, irrespective of their faith. This prompted Archbishop Davidson to change his mind, and soon many other faith groups, from the Jewish community to the Theosophists, followed. Save the Children became a global appeal on an unequalled scale.

Children starving in the 1921 Russian famine were helped by Save the Children

Although Dorothy had the initial idea for the charity, her radical political activities were well known, and vilified by the right-wing British press. When in 1921 they claimed that Save the Children was aiding the next generation of German militants and Russian Bolsheviks, she handed over the reins to Eglantyne.
Save the Children was soon working in 24 European and Asian countries, assisting children regardless of their nationality, religion or their parents’ politics. In 1924 Eglantyne’s Declaration on the Rights of the Child, was adopted by the League of Nations. It later evolved into the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, which remains the most universally accepted human- rights instrument in history. ‘Miss Jebb had launched an international aid operation, saved the lives of thousands of children, redefined how child welfare oper­ates, and had written social policy of permanent world significance, all in an era when women did not even have the vote,’ wrote Mulley. Yet like so many successful women, she still felt a failure. Only eight years later, at the age of 52, she died of heart failure.

SCF began working in Africa in the 1930s.

Exhausted by fundraising and campaigning, and haunted by dreams of child famine victims, in 1923 Dorothy had a nervous breakdown. After her recovery, she campaigned on behalf of refugees from Germany and against concentration camps, and in 1935 went there to challenge Hermann Goering. She knew it was probably futile, but felt doing nothing was worse. She died in 1963, aged 82.

SCF assisted children affected by war in Britain, 1939-45 .

Eglantyne and Dorothy rebelled against both class and gender restrictions, and their belief in the importance of humanitarian aid and internationalism remains as relevant today as ever. Save the Children today works with more than 10 million children in 120 countries.

The Woman Who Saved the Children by Clare Mulley won the 
Daily Mail Biographers’ Club Prize. All the author's 
royalties from this book go to Save the Children.

www.janiehampton.co.uk

THE LAST RUNAWAY by Tracy Chevalier. A review by Adèle Geras

On March 29th of this year, Tracy Chevalier herself wrote on this blog, all about how she researches her novels. It was a fascinating piece and I said in the comments box at the time that I was longing to read the novel. Now I have read it, and I enjoyed it very much and would like to draw it to the attention of those people who love a good historical novel which manages to convey a whole lot of interesting information about a period (pre Civil War America) which we don't know terribly well, but who also want a rattling good story, which will involve them in the lives and loves of its protagonists.

Chevalier is drawn to the artistic or craft process. In her most famous book, The Girl with the Pearl Earring she goes into some detail in order to show us the way Vermeer mixed his paints; the way the paintings were set up and you closed the novel knowing a great deal about what it was like to be a painter at that time, as well, of course as what it was like to be his model. In perhaps my favourite of Chevalier's novels, The Lady and the Unicorn, the subject is the weaving of the famous set of tapestries presently in Musée de Cluny in Paris.

Here, our heroine, Honor Bright, leaves England to accompany her sister Grace to Ohio, which might just as well be on another planet. When Grace dies, Honor is left to make her own way in this strange new world, and the story of her adventures is full of romance, trials and tribulations, discoveries and awakenings. The book moves along swiftly. We see most things from Honor's point of view and there are her letters scattered through the text. She becomes aware of the existence of the Underground Railroad, a way of helping black slaves escape from their servitude in the South to safety in the North. The historical detail is very accurate and we hold our breath with Honor, who, towards the end of the book is hiding her part in the Railroad from her husband and family.

For me, though, the most beguiling aspect of the novel is the quilting. Reading about 'quilting frolics' and the different roles that quilts then played in a woman's life was enthralling. The different styles, the variations and nuances and colours and fabrics are cleverly mirrored in the patchwork way the book works: a bit of farm life, a bit of a letter, a memory of home, a whiff of a love story, a threat of great danger, and someone at the centre of it trying to make sense and harmony of her life as best she can. The characters in this novel, from milliners, to bounty hunters, to all the worthies of the Quaker community, and the (mostly) women who surround Honor most of the time, are all very well brought to life. The black characters too, strange to Honor, are given their fair weight in the story and one of the best moments is when Honor sees a quilt made by one of the Negro (sic) women and remarks on the difference between the two styles of quilting she has met in America, both of which are different from what she was used to in England.

I don't know whether Tracy Chevalier will take it as a compliment, but I intend it as one when I say that I think The Last Runaway is a perfect teenage novel, too. I think that anyone from about the age of 14 who likes an exciting, romantic, historically accurate novel will enjoy this book and I would urge fans of, for instance, Celia Rees's Witch Child, to try Tracy Chevalier. I am wondering where her curiosity will take her next.

Cecil Jackson-Cole - grand father of charities, by Leslie Wilson

In early 1971, the telephone rang at our house at what my parents, who kept early hours, considered the ungodly hour of ten o'clock. My mother picked up the receiver, and a male voice said: 'Mrs Baker?'

'Yes?' she answered, wondering who it was.

'Would you like to live in London?'

It was before the era of cold calling, and she almost put the phone down, thinking she was talking to a lunatic, but instead, she said: 'I don't want to go and live in London, thank you.'

The unknown caller then asked if he could speak to her husband, so she went - with great misgivings - to get my father.

Photo courtesy of Andrews
Charitable Trust

The caller introduced himself to Dad, saying that he was Cecil Jackson-Cole, that he'd been hearing about my father on and off for the past ten years, and that he wanted to employ him. He suggested my father might like to take a senior post at Help the Aged. My father agreed to go and talk to Mr Jackson-Cole in London, and though he didn't want the post at Help the Aged, they put together a role for him, working half of his time as personnel manager at Andrews and Partners, the estate agents, and the other half dealing with personnel for Help the Aged and the umbrella charity, Voluntary and Christian Service, which existed to set up charities. And so my family came into the orbit of a great man - though not in physical stature; he was short and rather plump - and a great eccentric.



Cecil Jackson-Cole - generally known as 'CJC' was born in 1901, and I'm afraid I know nothing at all about his early life, except that he told me that as a child his family didn't have much money, but they had an aunt who lived in great style in a house she called 'Richborough'. Little Cecil assumed that meant she wanted everyone to know that she was wealthy. He himself became a wealthy man, but there was nothing ostentatious about him; he dedicated his wealth to assisting others.
The list of charities who were helped or set up by CJC include Oxfam, Help the Aged (now Age UK), Action in Distress (now Action Aid), and Toc H, but there are undoubtedly many more. He owned a series of furniture shops in London, called Andrews and Partners, but he disposed of the furniture business and used the name for an estate agent's instead. It was never widely known, but the estate agency's purpose was to fund Voluntary and Christian Service, and this remained the case during all the time that my father worked for the organisation.



The first Oxfam shop in Broad Street.
 Photo courtesy of Oxfam archive



Cecil Jackson-Cole was one of the founders of the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, which was set up during the war to aid the starving people of Greece while it was being blockaded by the Nazis. At the end of the war it was suggested that the job had been done, and that the committee should disband, but but CJC leaped to his feet saying, ‘There is a world of need out there, we have been effective, so we must go on.’

Oxfam has gone on, and it will be 70 years old this year.





CJC with his wife Theo at my wedding
Photo by Michael Wheeler



He was interested that I worshipped with the Quakers - I later became a Quaker - because he also worshipped with the Society of Friends. I don't think he was ever a member, but he certainly lived out the Quaker testimony about simplicity of lifestyle. He lived in a flat in Hastings (I think it was Hastings, somewhere on the South Coast, anyway). I went there once with my parents, to have lunch with him, and I have a memory of shabbiness and brownness, the way old-fashioned places used to be in the 70s. Not at all like a millionnaire's residence.

His only treasure seemed to be a set of African carved animals, exquisitely made in a variety of lovely woods. He said something like: 'Animals are so beautiful, I love to look at them.' He handled these carvings with an almost childlike delight and wonder.
I remember how, at lunch that day - we had his favourite dish, lasagne, followed by tinned fruit or something similarly unluxurious - he asked me very seriously whether I thought that it was more effective for a charity to appeal to people with images of horror - it was the time of the Biafran war, when we were shocked by images of skeletal babies - or to show them positive things that they could help with. I said I thought positive was better than shock - I opined that people turned off the shocking images quite fast. I was still very young - in my first year at university - but he really wanted to know what I thought and treated me with a respect that I remember well, though probably my answer to his question only reinforced what he was already thinking.

Not that he was always an easy man to work with; a man so driven and dynamic was bound to have his shadow side. Luckily, CJCs colleagues and employees had the support, when there were difficulties, of his first wife, Phyllis. Phyllis was dead, but CJC talked to her every day - I'm not sure how - and she gave him advice - evidently very good advice - on staff relations. This tubby, unremarkable-looking little man was in touch with angels and otherworldly powers as well as with the dead: I remember him telling me that he had endured attacks by Satan and beaten them off by calling on the name of Christ.

He had a habit of saying 'Ye-es. Anything e-else?' and sometimes my father would telephone him and say: 'You asked me to ring you, Mr Jackson-Cole.' CJC would answer: 'Ye-es. Anything e-else?'

He came to my wedding with his second wife, a delightful woman called Theo, and at the end of the film that was made of the day is a shot of CJC directing the cars out of my parents' drive, with an expression of solemn satisfaction. My father said, when he saw the film, that he must have been saying: 'Ye-es. Anyone e-else?' as he directed the cars out.
My father told me that when he was dying, in 1979, CJC was engaged in an argument with God. 'I can't go yet,' he said. 'I've got so much more to do.' Then he was seen to listen to God's reply, which must have been convincing, because he gave way, saying: 'All right. I'll go now.' Then he died.

He left behind him a legacy of charitable work which continues today, and millions of people have been benefited by his initiatives. I am proud that my father was associated with some of them. I also am privileged to have known, however slightly, a man who made such a constructive mark on history.

 

photo: Leo Reynolds







Friends, Faith and Far Horizons

by Marie-Louise Jensen

I'm delighted to be writing today about three of my favourite books for young people: Ann Turnbull's Quaker Trilogy. The third book, Seeking Eden, was published last Thursday. I read it at once and adored it as I had the previous two. For those who haven't read the books, here is a very brief review of each:

No Shame No Fear
is the story of a girl from a family of Friends who leaves home to find work in a nearby town. There she meets Will who is drawn away from his father’s Anglican faith to the Friends both spiritually, and by Susanna’s beauty. But a new law is about to come into force, outlawing religious gatherings outside the Anglican church, and Susanna and Will are both to find their faith tested in the time to come. No Shame No Fear was shortlisted for the Whitbread Book Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize.

Forged in The Fire

follows the fortunes of the young couple some years later. Will is working in London, trying to establish himself so that they can marry. Susanna follows him there. Their struggles to overcome the long time they have spent apart are further threatened by plague and then by the Fire of London.

Seeking Eden

Will and Susanna have decided to leave London, where they have been cruelly persecuted for their faith. Inspired by William Penn and the colony he has founded in the new world, they hope to start again and build a new life on distant shores. The story is told from the point of view of their son Josiah, who is every bit as rebellious and determined as his father was, with all his mother's impulsiveness too. His relationship with his parents is troubled as he goes through his teen years. Jos wants to be a man, to be independant and to make his own way in the world. But in America, Jos is to be faced with difficult choices himself. Can he reconcile the slave trade with the principles he has been taught? And what consequences will his choices have for his relationship with his family and with the girl he loves?

Earlier this week, I put three questions to the author, which she has responded to below. I'd like to welcome Ann Turnbull to the History Girls. It's a pleasure to have you with us.

Ann, can you tell us what drew you to writing about the Friends (Quakers) in the first place?

Thank you, Marie-Louise. It's lovely to be here.
In the early 1980s I began attending Quaker meetings and was involved with Friends for several years. I read the testimonies of the early Friends and felt inspired and fascinated by their unswerving commitment to their faith. When I read about whole communities being in prison and their children keeping the meetings going, I knew there was a story there – but it was nearly twenty years before I began to tell it.

Reading Seeking Eden, I’m very aware that you must have done a great deal of research in order to portray Pennsylvania, Barbados, the work of merchants and apprentices and the experience of Tokpa the slave in such an apparently effortless way. Could you tell us how you went about this?

I used mostly books – heaps of them - and museum visits. I also got hold of videos of Delaware and Pennsylvania, and a film, The New World. I use bibliographies to find titles and the internet to track down books. In particular I look for first-hand accounts. My ‘bible’ was Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, which was incredibly useful for finding out about the country, the wildlife and plants, and how the settlement of Philadelphia was managed. Of course there are always questions you can’t find an answer to, so there is quite a lot of guesswork in the details. I would have loved to have found the journal of an ordinary settler from the 1680s, but no such luck! However, William Penn was a great communicator; his writings give a vivid picture of this new land and its inhabitants – he was, after all, often writing to attract wealthy backers and new settlers. For the merchants and apprentices, I found a copy of a 1948 book about Quaker merchants in early Philadelphia which told me almost everything I needed to know.
Barbados was easier. I used a tourist guide and the Sufferings of Early Quakers covering America and the West Indies. This gave me detailed first-hand records of what was happening to Friends in Barbados at the time. I usually buy rather than borrow books as I don’t have easy access to major libraries, but I did spend a few days in Birmingham’s reference library and the wonderful university library.
For Tokpa’s memories and experience I visited museums: the Africa galleries at the British Museum (I went there three times!) and the Museum of Slavery in Liverpool, which was full of inspiring exhibits. I worked hard to verify everything - though I’m sure I got things wrong. But in the end you can’t get everything right. You can only try to make the story ‘true’ in the sense that you have imaginatively entered the minds of your characters and the world they inhabit.

What did you most enjoy about writing Seeking Eden and what did you find most difficult?

I like a challenge – and these were big, difficult themes and an environment that was new to me. I found that exhilarating. And I enjoyed, as always, the actual writing and construction of the story and seeing the characters evolve. 

The most difficult things?  Writing about places I had not visited – not being able to go to the libraries and museums in Philadelphia and walk around in the places where the first settlers lived.   Trying to imagine the inner lives of Tokpa and Miata and to create a convincing voice for Tokpa.   Fearing that it would never work, and trying to get it done on time (I was months late delivering!)

Ann, thank you so much for joining us today, and I hope that some of our followers will be inspired to read your wonderful books.

A Vision of True Equality by Leslie Wilson

As the country gears up to an expensive celebration of sixty years of one monarch's reign, I would like to look back to an event that until recently was largely uncelebrated in our history yet which was absolutely crucial to the development of democracy in this country. I'm talking about the Putney debates.



They happened at St Mary's Church in Putney, between the 28th October and the 9th of November 1647 - Charles I was still alive at this time - when soldiers from the New Model Army, which was fighting for Parliament, joined together with civilians to debate the future shape of England. This came about because of pressure from radicals in the ranks of the Army - Oliver Cromwell had been trying to negotiate a settlement still fundamentally based on monarchy and privilege - but there were multitudes of others, in England at that time, who had other ideas.

Radical, crazy visions. Like giving every man in England the right to elect members of Parliament. There were even activists who believed women should have the vote, though they were something of a minority. This was, after all, a time - inevitable, really, given the fact that the translation of the Bible into English had given ordinary people the ability to read it for themselves - when previous ideas of religious and social hierarchy had been seriously questioned. The Civil War itself was a challenge to the concept of the Divine Right of Kings - the idea that Kings, being set in their places by God, were answerable only to God and that the common people had a duty to obey them, no matter what they did.

I haven't room here to enumerate all the ideas that fermented in England then - and there are plenty of websites that give a detailed account of them - but to me there are two phrases which sum them up. One is Colonel Rainsborough's rallying call for universal manhood suffrage. 'For really I think that the poorest hee that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest hee; and therefore truly, Sr, I think itt clear, that every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put Himself under.' (I'd want to add Woman and shee - but hey..)

The other was the cry of George Fox, one of the founders of the Society of Friends (Quakers) - still probably one of the most radical religious groups in Britain. 'There is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to your condition.' After years of agonised searching for salvation and inner peace, Fox had realised that God could speak directly to ordinary people, without the permission or control of priests. Given that the monarch was the head of the Church of England, this conviction was considered to pose a drastic threat to the fabric of society - as was the Quaker practice of sending out women to travel 'in the ministry.'

The concomitant passionate belief in equality - everyone is equal in the eyes of God, and it's important to live in God's way now, rather than wait for Heaven to make everything OK - led Quakers to refuse to take their hats off to so-called social superiors, and to call everyone 'thou' - which then, in England, was the familiar form, like 'tu' in French, and to call them, moreover, by their first and last names only, leaving off all titles. If a ploughboy spoke to the monarch, he still spoke as human being to fellow human being.

The visions of ordinary men and women in England at that time prefigured our modern ideas of a good society - of fundamental British values, indeed - and many of those courageous and far-seeing people suffered for them. Quakers certainly did. And yet our schoolchildren aren't taught about the English Revolution. Why not? Have we ever had Jubilee celebrations for the Putney Debates, country-wide? Why not? Instead, at a time when people are beginning to question the idea of an unelected Second Chamber of Parliament, the institution of unelected monarchy remains largely unchallenged - to a point where, when a member of the Royal Family made a mess of his ambassadorial role recently, Parliament was instructed that the Royal Family were not to be criticised. Incidentally, until the Human Rights Act was passed, it would have been illegal for me to write this blog piece, as it was a felony (I think that's the correct term) for anyone to advocate in writing the abolition of the Monarchy.

I'm sure that Elizabeth Windsor has worked very hard, in her way, during her years as monarch. But I doubt if she's worked any harder than any nurse, foster-parent, social worker, or other professional who works for the public good - and she certainly has never worked for peanuts. She is one of the world's super-rich. And it is deemed, in this country, that she and her family, by an accident of birth, deserve unconditional respect from the rest of us. Yet the rich, the aristocracy, and the monarch and her family are, simply, human beings, and thus deserve no less and no more respect or honour than any other human being in this country.

The discrepancy between the Windsors' status and that of their 'subjects' - which under the present arrangement every British national is deemed to be - iconises the inequality which turns many parts of our country into hell-holes. I am thinking of the recent Guardian report on accommodation, for example. People crammed into one sordid room, with inadequate heating or food. Or the parts of the country where - for the profits of shareholders - employment is simply no longer on offer and there are generations who haven't worked. It's convenient and easy to say that this is their fault. But if you shove people to the bottom of the heap, you can't expect them to be bright, motivated, and optimistic. Their hopes and faculties decay.

At a time when misfortune, illness, and disability, or simple poverty, are being seen as a crime, and when the obscenely wealthy are cosseted and rewarded, it seems to me more vital than ever to stand up for the concept of fundamental human worth divorced from wealth or status. The radicals of Putney wanted to remake England and they seemed like crazy visionaries to many of their contemporaries, who preferred what they saw as sensible pragmatism. Yet their ideas have born fruit, though they never lived to see it. Let's continue to pursue that vision of equality, especially at times like the present where it's under attack by the forces of cynicism, greed, callousness and despair.