This blog was originally written in 2022 as part of a series of panels for the ‘Exploring Philanthropy’ exhibition. The panels were written by Rhodri Davies, Pears Fellow at the Centre for Philanthropy, and have been re-published here to support the Exploring Philanthropy virtual exhibition.

The History of Fundraising     

One of the most important factors in motivating people to give is simply being asked, and fundraising has played a crucial role in the history of philanthropy. Throughout the 17th century, one-off national fundraising appeals known as “charitable briefs” were issued in response to specific disasters. These were often fires, which caused huge damage and loss of life in towns and cities around the UK. In 1666, for instance, a charitable brief was issued following the Great Fire of London, which succeeded in raising over £16,000.

It was only with the arrival of new forms of “associated philanthropy” from the late 17th century, however, that we see a greater degree of organisation and the emergence of entities that look something like what we would think of as modern charities. These entities wasted little time in finding ways to drum up support and resources for their causes, and the 18th and 19th century saw a huge amount of growth and innovation in fundraising.

From early on it was recognised that the star power of celebrities was a powerful tool: The Foundling Hospital in London, for example, convinced the artist William Hogarth (with a number of his friends) to paint murals in their building, and also had organ in the hospital chapel donated by the composer George Friedrich Handel;  on which he gave a performance of Messiah in 1750 that raised £728  for the charity.

Credit: Foundling Hospital, London. Etching by H. Roberts, 1749, after J. Robinson after T. Jacobson. Wellcome Collection. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/zkkcq8hp. Public Domain Image. Titled: This view of the hospital for the reception of exposed and deserted young children erected in pursuance of a Royal Charter granted by his most sacred Majesty King George the 2nd Dated the 17th day of October 1739 is most humbly dedicated to the Governors and Guardians of the said hospital, by their most obedient servant Jeremiah Robinson.

Later on in the 19th century, some well-known charity figures such as Thomas Barnado and “General” William Booth became celebrities in their own right, and would sell memorabilia playing on their fame to raise money for their organisations; including postcards, plates and teapots bearing their image, and LP recordings of speeches.

The Salvation Army under Booth also pioneered other innovative approaches to fundraising. In 1891, they began selling safety matches under the brand “Lights in Darkest England”; in part to raise awareness about the plight of young women working in match factories who suffered the horrifying condition known as “phossy jaw” due to prolonged exposure to white phosphorus. The Lights in Darkest England matches were made in factories with better pay and working conditions, and were presented to the public in these terms; making them both an early example of “ethical consumerism” and a canny piece of fundraising for the Salvation Army.

Credit: The match factory established by the Salvation Army at Lamprell Street in Old Ford, to the north of Bow, in East London on 11 May 1891. This work is in the public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Salvation_Army_Match_factory.JPG

With the growth and development of fundraising came increasing criticism too; from those who complained that the tactics being used were too aggressive, or that organisations were spending too much on fundraising costs. The Times, for instance, lamented in 1880 that:

“When a name has been printed on a subscription list, its owner becomes a marked man. He has joined, by his own act, the unhappy class to which an appeal can be made with some chance that it will be met. From that day forward his persecution will never cease.”

Addressing criticisms like these continues to be a challenge for charities today, when competition for limited philanthropic resources is fiercer than ever.

Research and text by Rhodri Davies, Pears Fellow, Centre for Philanthropy

This blog, by Rhodri Davies, Pears Fellow at the Centre for Philanthropy, was first published as a series of panels in the Exploring Philanthropy exhibition in 2022 in the Templeman Gallery at the University of Kent. The exhibition featured original items from within Special Collections and Archives to support the exhibition as it explored the history of philanthropy, changing perceptions of philanthropy and how philanthropy is carried out today.

The blog is Illustrated with images from within Special Collections and Archives and elsewhere, and highlights some of the ways in which philanthropy has been parodied and mocked throughout history. 

Warning: This blog does contain imagery relating to the trade in enslaved people and the differences of opinion in Great Britain at the time about the focus of philanthropy within Great Britain and overseas. See our note on these items at the end of the blog post.

Telescopic Philanthropy

From the mid 18th century until the end of the 19th century, there was a recurring critique of “telescopic philanthropy”. This referred to giving that was seen as focussing on the plight of foreigners living in other countries at the expense of addressing pressing issues of poverty and suffering in the UK.

At first this critique was stoked by fears of the French Revolution, and the threat that its radical ideas posed to existing class hierarchies in Britain. In 1798 George Canning, a fervent anti-Jacobin (who subsequently became the UK’s shortest-serving Prime Minister), published a satirical poem entitled “New Morality” which mockingly contrasting high-minded “French philanthropy” with good honest “British charity”:

“Not she, who sainted Charity her guide,

Of British bounty pours the annual tide:

But FRENCH philanthropy; whose boundless mind

Glows with the general love of all mankind.”

Later Charles Dickens immortalised the stereotype of the telescopic philanthropist in the character of Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House: so concerned with raising money to support the poor inhabitants of “Booribola-Gha” that she neglects her own children to the point that they are destitute.

Miss Jellyby, etching by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), facing p31 in 1853 edition of Charles Dickens, Bleak House. Image scanned by George P Landow on 6th February 2012. Source: http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/phiz/bleakhouse/3.html

There was often a racial element to critiques of telescopic philanthropy, which were tied into opposition to the abolition of slavery. In 1840, for instance, The Times reprinted a poem from the satirical magazine John Bull which lamented that:

Your thorough-bred philanthropists can glance

Their pitying eyes over Earth’s expanse,

Til sorrow all their bosoms discomposes

For their black brethren sold to whips and chains;

And not a single sympathy remains

For starving whites who die beneath their noses.

A similar point was captured this Punch cartoon by John Tenniel:

Telescopic Philanthropy – Punch Magazine, March 4th 1865: This engraving by John Tenniel illustrates the concept of ‘Telescopic Philanthropy’ – a phrase partly popularised by Charles Dickens in his description of Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House. In the engraving, Tenniel represents this concept by depicting Britannia with a telescope, her sights fixed on the horizon and the poor and enslaved people overseas, but ignoring the poor children of Great Britain who are pulling at her robes to attract her attention. The subject of the engraving references an argument made by Lord Stanley in Parliament in 1865 to disband the West Coast Africa Squadron. The West Coast Africa Squadron was a naval unit formed to prevent slave trading on the West African coast. Lord Stanley felt that Great Britain should concentrate on their own white neglected poor, rather than the Black poor and enslaved people in Africa. (Caption by Beth Astridge, University Archivist, University of Kent)

Few today talk of “telescopic philanthropy”, but the legacy of these critiques can still be seen in the rhetoric of those use arguments that “charity should begin at home” to criticise international aid and development spending, or to attack the RNLI for saving the lives of migrant people attempting to cross the English Channel.

Mocking the Uncharitable

Those who do not give to charity despite having the means to do so have long been a prime target for satirists.

The most famous example is undoubtedly the character of Ebeneezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”. Scrooge’s response when approached by charity collectors about donating to a Christmas fund “to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth” is to ask “Are there no prisons?… And the Union workhouses- are they still in operation?” He then has these exact words thrown back at him by the Ghost of Christmas Present and eventually sees the error of his ways.

A first edition copy of Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, (1846) was on display in the Templeman Gallery as part of the exhibition open at page shown here:

Charles Dickens – A Christmas carol in prose; The Chimes, The cricket on the hearth. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1846. [A Christmas carol is dated 1843]: Charles Dickens (1812-1870) first published his short story as a stand-alone publication in 1843. A Christmas Carol tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a grumpy elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley, and then by ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. The ghosts show him visions of his life and others around him, including his clerk, Bob Cratchit and his poor family. Scrooge learns that joy has little to do with wealth and becomes a different person after his ghostly visitations. Dickens was passionate about social action and this story was inspired by visits to tin mines and a Ragged School where he witnessed society’s treatment of poor children. The story conveys his social concerns about poverty and injustice and enabled this message to be read by a wide audience. Classmark: PD4557.C4 SPEC COLL DICKENS.

[caption written by Beth Astridge, University Archivist, University of Kent]

A 1901 cartoon from the American satirical magazine Puck entitled “The Crabbed Millionaire’s Puzzle” makes a similar point about the dangers of miserliness. An elderly and glum-faced Scrooge-like figure sits atop a huge pile of money, surrounded by a crowd of people clearly holding out their hands and asking for donations. The caption reads “If I had begun earlier I might have had some fun in giving it away. Now I must leave it either to relatives whom I hate or to churches and colleges in which I have no interest!”

Pughe, J. S. , Artist. The crabbed millionaire’s puzzle / J.S. Pughe. , 1901. N.Y.: J. Ottmann Lith. Co., Puck Bldg., August 7. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2010651452/.

Making fun of the uncharitable has continued to be a recurring (if occasional) motif in satire. A 1972 sketch for Monty Python’s Flying Circus entitled “The Merchant Banker” saw John Cleese play a caricature of a rapacious capitalist banker. When asked by Michael Palin’s timid charity collector to give a pound, Cleese’s character at first assumes it is a tax dodge. When told that it isn’t, he is unable to understand what is being asked of him, saying “I don’t want to seem stupid but it looks to me as though I’m a pound down on the whole deal…?” The payoff to the sketch is that the banker decides charitable fundraising sounds like a great new way to get money out of people for nothing, and despatches the charity collector through a trapdoor in his office floor.

Whilst we find humour in these characters’ lack of charity and justifications for being miserly, there is perhaps also an element of discomfort; as we are reminded of times that we ourselves have been too caught up in our own affairs to think about helping others, or when we have let cynicism about human nature creep in and become an excuse not to give.

Self Regard and Ego 

Those who engage in philanthropy, but are suspected of doing so merely for social status or to burnish their own ego have often been held up for ridicule by satirists.

Some of the most famous philanthropists throughout history have found themselves mocked along these lines. A 1903 cartoon for the US satirical magazine Puck, for instance, entitled “A Word to Grand Stand Specialists” , depicts Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller piling bags of money at the base of a statue labelled “fame”, in front of a backdrop of libraries and universities, Meanwhile the impish character of Puck tries to direct their attention towards a home for consumptives and says to them “You have qualified thoroughly as modern philanthropists, now why not do some good?”

Ehrhart, S. D. , Approximately , Artist. A word to grand stand specialists / Ehrhart. , 1903. N.Y.: J. Ottmann Lith. Co., Puck Bldg., June 3. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2010652271/.

In a 1908 short story entitled “The Angel and the Author” the writer and humorist Jerome K Jerome tells the tale of a wealthy, self-absorbed man who has a dream that he met an angel whose job it is to go around and record everyone’s good deeds so that they can be taken into account when that person arrives at the Pearly Gates and are assessed for entry into Heaven. The Author is at first delighted, assuming that he will be assessed favourably, but the reader quickly gets the idea that many of his so-called “charitable” acts are more for his own benefit than anyone else’s and that the Angel is counting many of them in the negative rather than positive column.

A first edition copy of Jerome K Jerome’s The Angel and the Author (1908) was on display in the Templeman Gallery as part of the exhibition open at this page:

Jerome K Jerome – The Angel and the Author, and others. London: Hurst and Blackett Limited (1908): The Angel and the Author – and others, was a series of twenty essays by Jerome K Jerome in 1908. Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in Walsall on 2nd May 1859. He was an English writer and humourist, and was best known for his comic book ‘Three Men in a Boat’, published in 1889. The first essay in the volume, titled The Angel and the Author, satirises those whose giving is not entirely selfless. The story describes a man who dreams he has died, shortly after Christmas, and goes up to meet the “Recording Angel”. He recounts many of his good deeds such as: “I have been to four charity dinners,” I reminded him; “I forget what the particular charity was about. I know I suffered the next morning. Champagne never does agree with me.” The man asks the Angel if all these deeds are noted in his book. The Angel confirms that they are indeed recorded. The man then sees that the Angel has written them in the wrong column – mixing them up with his sins. The Angel wearily assures him that there is no mistake. The man wakes and wonders what he could have done differently. “Would I have done better, had I taken the money I had spent upon these fooleries, gone down with it among the poor myself, asking nothing in return.” Classmark: PR4825.J3 JER SCR.

[caption written by Beth Astridge, University Archivist, University of Kent]

Although we can laugh at examples mocking the vainglorious efforts of big donors to use their gifts to gain social status, there may also be a slight edge of discomfort for many of us if we suspect that we have been guilty of the same failings in our own way. Whilst most of us will not have the option of getting a museum or hospital wing named after us, in a smaller way do we still sometimes use our giving and generosity to burnish our own self-image and the image we present to others? And whilst this has always been the case to some extent, has the advent of social media – with its pressures to present an unrealistic, idealised version of ourselves to the world – amplified the temptation for all of us to use charity in this way?

Disagreeable Do-gooders 

Even when philanthropists are motivated by the “right” things, the way in which they go about their business can still rub people up the wrong way. Hence there is a rich seam of satire that pokes fun at various forms of “do-gooder”, whose methods leave those who encounter their generosity feeling less than well-disposed.

W. S. Gilbert (Of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) captured this beautifully in a verse from his Songs of a Savoyard entitled “The Disagreeable Man”, which paints a vivid picture of a priggish do-gooder whose motives are not in question but whose approach alienates all around him:

“If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am:

I’m a genuine philanthropist – all other kinds are sham.

Each little fault of temper and each social defect

In my erring fellow creatures, I endeavour to correct.”

Charles Dickens often took aim at busybody do-gooders. Mrs Pardiggle in Bleak House is depicted as a philanthropist, but one who takes a particularly patronising approach in her interactions with the poor. She represents an archetype of the fashion for “home visitation”, which Dickens’s audience would have been very familiar with, which involved women from the middle classes going into the houses of poor families and subjecting them to a mixture of charitable support and moralistic browbeating.

In an 1851 essay entitled “Whole Hogs”, Dickens also poked fun at inflexible social reformers and philanthropic campaigners who refuse to compromise in the pursuit of their goals:

“It has been discovered that mankind at large can only be regenerated by a Tee-total society, or by a Peace Society, or by always dining on Vegetables. It is to be particularly remarked that either of these certain means of regeneration is utterly defeated, is so much as a hair’s-breadth of the tip of either ear of that particular Pig be left out of the bargain.”

This sort of moral absolutism was also mocked in an 1881 Puck magazine cartoon entitled “The Gentler Sex- Charity for the Drunken Brother, Contempt for the Unfortunate Sister”. It depicts a group of female temperance campaigners holding up a drunken man in the street while they talk to him about their abstinence pledge; meanwhile behind them a young mother holding a baby is being thrown out of a women’s home onto the street.

Wales, James Albert, Artist. The gentler sex – charity for the drunken brother, contempt for the unfortunate sister / J.A. Wales. , 1881. N.Y.: Published by Keppler & Schwarzmann. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2012647287/.

Grand “Philanthropy” at the Expense of Charity  

One notable criticism of philanthropy throughout history has been that too often those doing it get caught up in grand schemes and utopian visions, which lead them to lose sight of the consequences of their actions or the need for basic human kindness.

The 1843 Punch magazine illustration “Substance and Shadow” depicts an art gallery in which hungry and ragged children are trying to get the attention of well-dressed adults, who are too engrossed in looking at the exhibition to notice them. The scene is meant to depict a national exhibition which the Government of the day organised, and which drew Punch’s ire on the grounds that such expenditure was grotesque when levels of child poverty were so stark. An accompanying satirical editorial witheringly pretended to commend the government’s decision:

“We conceive that Ministers have adopted the very best means to silence this unwarrantable outcry. They have considerately determined that as they cannot afford to give hungry nakedness the substance which it covets, at least it shall have the shadow… The poor ask for bread, and the philanthropy of the State accords – an exhibition.”

An 1843 edition of “Punch; or The London Charivari” magazine – showing Cartoon No 1: Substance and Shadow – was on display for the Exhibition in the Templeman Gallery:

Substance and Shadow – Punch Magazine, 1843: Punch; or, The London Charivari, was a British satirical magazine published between 1841-1992. Founded by Henry Mayhew and Ebenezer Landells, in 1843 it established the term ‘cartoon’ as we now know it – referring to a humorous illustration or pictorial satire. The cartoon, by John Leech, titled “Cartoon – No 1 – Substance and Shadow” depicts the picture gallery in Westminster Hall and shows poor and ragged children and adults visiting the gallery. The people do not look like they are enjoying the experience of looking upon pictures of ‘high society’ with lives and experiences so different from their own. Leech is satirising the insensitivity of government spending on an exhibition when poverty was such a huge problem. “The poor ask for bread, and the philanthropy of the State accords – an exhibition”. (Caption by Beth Astridge, University Archivist, University of Kent)

In his 1848 cartoon “The Universal Philanthropist”, the famed cartoonist George Cruikshank took more direct aim at individual philanthropists who let their grand schemes for social reform get in the way of more basic human charity. The cartoon shows a well dressed gentleman aiming a kick at a poor family who cower to get out of his way. The father of the poor family is saying “Please Sir, bestow your charity for we are starving!”, to which the philanthropist angrily responds “Interrupting me…at a moment when I am perfecting a grand benevolent plan f Universal Brotherhood and Community of Goods, for the amelioration of the whole Human Race! Why you ungrateful wretch, get out of my house and learn to love your benefactors!”

The idea that grandiose philanthropy can sometimes be contrasted unfavourably with the need for more immediate human charity has often been particularly keenly-felt at Christmas. In the 1900 Puck magazine cartoon “A Christmas Sermon”, the character of Puck stands on a stage in front of a crowd of many of the wealthiest and best-known donors of the day (including Andrew Carnegie, J. D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt), holding a plan for a “model tenement” and pointing the audience’s attention towards a picture showing the current state of slum housing. Puck exhorts his audience:

“Here is something for you generous millionaires to think about, when you are endowing schools, colleges and libraries. A chance to learn is good, but a chance to live is better. Your present plan gives more to those that already have much.

 Suppose you try giving something to those that have less than nothing. Provide necessities for the poor rather than luxuries for the rich. It is better to give these many thousands a chance to live clean, decent, moral lives than to give a few hundred sons of well-to-do parents a college education. While these horrible conditions exist one model tenement will do more real good than a dozen colleges.

You mean well. Try to do as well as you mean.”

Pughe, J. S. , Artist. A Christmas sermon / J.S. Pughe. , 1900. N.Y.: J. Ottmann Lith. Co., Puck Bldg. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2010651359/.

Philanthropic Hypocrisy  

Hypocrisy always attracts satire. In the case of philanthropy, this has most often been seen in critiques that the ways in which donors have made their money are at odds with their efforts to do good through philanthropy. This ties into a wider critique of “tainted donations” i.e. the idea that some money is so ethically problematic or “bad” that it is impossible to do good through giving it away.

The heyday of satirising tainted donations was in the early 20th century US “gilded age”, when the debate became a mainstream political and social issue thanks to a controversy in 1905 over whether the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions should accept a large donation from J. D. Rockefeller. Mark Twain, for instance, wrote a letter to Harper’s Weekly in the guise of Satan (entitled “A Humane Word From Satan”) which began:

“Dear Sir and Kinsman – Let us have done with this frivolous talk. The American Board accepts contributions from me every year: then why shouldn’t it from Mr. Rockefeller…?”

G.K. Chesterton, meanwhile, penned an article entitled “Gifts of the Millionaire” in which he poured eloquent scorn on Rockefeller’s philanthropy, arguing that it was nothing more than the latest in a long line of attempts to buy absolution through giving. Chesterton famously opened the article by declaring that:

“Philanthropy, as far as I can see, is rapidly becoming the recognisable mark of a wicked man”.

Many cartoonists have also taken aim at tainted donations. A 1905 cartoon called “Puck’s inventions” picked up on the aforementioned scandal over the tainted donations of J. D. Rockefeller, depicting Rockefeller himself on a ladder, feeding coins into a giant machine labelled “Patent Disinfector” which then come out of a chute labelled “Purified Cash For Missions”.

Ehrhart, S. D. , Approximately , Artist. Puck’s inventions / Ehrhart. , 1905. N.Y.: J. Ottmann Lith. Co., Puck Bldg. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2011645691/.

Another Puck cartoon from 1911 entitled “A phase of our tax system – the greater the service, the heavier the tax” depicts two charity workers addressing an oversized man sitting on a throne (presumably a slum landlord), who is taking taking money from a box labeled “Rents” with one hand and putting it into a basket labeled “Organized Charity” with the other, while in the background are run-down tenement buildings.

Concerns about tainted donations continue to be a major source of debate within philanthropy. Scandals such as those surrounding the Sackler family, whose role in the US opioid epidemic has led many to argue that their philanthropy is morally illegitimate, regularly bring the issue back to public attention and raise difficult and long-standing questions about whether it is possible to “do good with bad money” or whether such donations should be refused.

By Rhodri Davies, Pears Fellow, Centre for Philanthropy, University of Kent

[Note: This section of the ‘Exploring Philanthropy’ exhibition highlighted attitudes to the trade in enslaved people and the differences of opinion in Great Britain at the time about the focus of philanthropy within Great Britain and overseas. Some of the archive material displayed in the exhibition and in this blog reflects these contemporary attitudes and language, and depicts Black people in a racist manner. All such items were displayed in the interests of historical accuracy in relating to describing these differing perspectives, as altering them would risk falsifying the historical record. It would also be problematic to source non-offensive modern equivalents with a similar meaning. These items do not reflect the views or opinions of the University of Kent, Special Collections & Archives or our staff.]

This blog from our Centre for Philanthropy colleague and Pears Fellow, Rhodri Davies, first appeared as panels in the ‘Exploring Philanthropy’ exhibition in the Templeman Gallery in 2022. 

Read on as Rhodri takes you on a whistle stop tour of the history of philanthropy!

How do we define “Philanthropy”?

“Philanthropy” is one one sense simple to define: it literally means “love of humanity”. Yet what this means in practice has proven far more difficult to pin down. The historian Benjamin Kirkman Gray argued in his 1905 book A History of English Philanthropy that philanthropy is “probably incapable of strict definition”, and many modern academics and practitioners would agree that it is an “essentially contested term”.

Part of the challenge is that the meaning of philanthropy has shifted considerably over time. Following its emergence in Ancient Greece (where it had a meaning significantly different to our modern understanding), the word philanthropy largely disappeared for more than a thousand years, when it was replaced by Judeo-Christian notions of “charity” and “almsgiving”. It finally re-emerged in something like its modern form in the 18th century, first in France and then in England, where it was used to refer to the prison reformer John Howard – a man who has been called “the first modern philanthropist”.

A key milestone in the emergence of the modern conception of philanthropy was the introduction in 1601 of the Statute of Charitable Uses. This did not, as it has sometimes been claimed, introduce a legal definition of charity; but its preamble did enumerate for the first time a list of purposes which could acceptably be deemed as ‘charitable’. (A list that borrowed heavily from William Langland’s 14th century dream poem Piers Plowman). This strengthened the notion of philanthropy as something that was concerned with secular problem solving, and laid the foundations for the definition of charity that we still use in the UK to this day (and, indeed, in many other places whose common law has followed our own).

We might assume a link between philanthropy and giving money, but this has not always been the case. Many of the celebrated “philanthropists” of the 18th century were men like John Howard or William Wilberforce, whose primary tools were campaigning and political influence. It was only in the 19th century, during the Victorian era, that philanthropy gradually came to be more associated with the idea of wealthy individuals giving money. This was cemented in the late 19th and early 20th century with the emergence in the USA of a new breed of ultra-wealthy industrialists like Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan – who were vilified by some as “robber barons”, but were celebrated by others for the scale of their giving. These Gilded Age mega-donors established a new template that continues to shape our understanding of philanthropy even today.

Credit: John Howard bringing water and fresh air into a prison in order to improve the conditions for the inmates. Watercolour. Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/kp2dxsex

Religion and Secularisation 

The relationship between religion and philanthropy is deep and long-standing. For a long time the two were inextricably linked, as virtually all giving was guided by religious teaching and done via religious institutions. However, the Reformation in 15th Britain – which saw a schism between Catholicism and Protestantism following the decision of Henry VIII to leave the Church of Rome – together with the rise of a new form of secular humanism in continental Europe during the 16th century (epitomised by figures such as Erasmus) eventually paved the way for a new secular conception of philanthropy that was distinct from the religious almsgiving of medieval times.

This secularisation was a very slow process, however; and religious teaching continued to play a major part in motivating and shaping philanthropy for a long time. Protestant preachers and writers in the 15th and 16th centuries, keen to find new ways to distinguish their religion, often caricatured Catholic giving as “superstitious” and derided it as inferior to their own brand of “worldly” philanthropy. The poet John Donne, for instance, claimed that:

“There have been in this kingdome, since the blessed reformation of religion, more publick charitable works perform’d, more hospitals and colleges erected and endowed in threescore, than in some hundreds of years of superstition before.”

The secularisation of philanthropy only really took root with the advent of the enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the arguments of influential thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft, Emmanuel Kant and Thomas Paine led to the emergence of new views on the interplay of rights, responsibilities, charity and justice in our society.

The link between religious identity and philanthropy remained important for many, however. This was particularly true of minority groups, for whom systems of mutual aid and charity were often vital because they were excluded from the support that mainstream society offered. This was the case for the many dissenting groups of Protestants- including most notably, perhaps, the Quakers; whose willingness to combine commercial success with a strong habit of giving saw them produce many celebrated philanthropic families such as the Cadburys and the Rowntrees. It was also true of Britain’s Jewish community, which likewise gave rise to many significant philanthropists like Frederick David Mocatta and Baron Maurice de Hirsch.

Religion remains an important element of philanthropy to this day. Many donors, at all levels, would still cite religious belief as a key factor that motivates and informs their giving; even if the causes they focus on and the approaches they use reflect our more secular modern understanding of philanthropy.

Credit: George Cadbury, from Stead, H.F., How Old Age …. Wellcome Collection. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/nsq63wc6 Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Campaigning and Reform  

When trying to define the difference between charity and philanthropy, a distinction is sometimes drawn between addressing the symptoms of society’s problems and addressing their underlying causes: with the argument being that the former typifies charity while the latter typifies philanthropy. This is perhaps too simplistic, but it does reflect a fundamental truth about the history of philanthropy: that campaigning and advocacy designed to bring about social change has long been just as important as addressing issues through the direct provision of services.

When “philanthropy” started being used in its modern form in the 18th century it was primarily applied in the context of campaigning; to figures like the anti-slavery advocate William Wilberforce or the prison reformer John Howard. And even as philanthropy increasingly came to be associated with the giving of money, efforts to drive fundamental social change rather than merely alleviate immediate suffering remained equally important.

Philanthropy has often played a particularly important role in the early stages of campaigning for new rights or freedoms, because it can provide vital support for marginalised groups and causes that have little or no public recognition at that point. Over time, further resources can be drawn in and new public and political support developed, resulting in the cause in question being brought from the margins into the mainstream and – in many cases – resulting in changes in policy and legislation. Following this template, philanthropy has helped to secure many major milestones of social progress that we now take for granted; from the abolition of slavery and the prohibition of child labour, to universal suffrage and the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

This has, of course, been far from easy. At the core of philanthropy’s role in attempting to drive social change there is often a tension between incrementalism and radicalism: between those who feel that the only pragmatic option is to work with existing systems, and those who feel that those very structures need to be torn down for real change to occur. Sometimes this tension has been a positive one; bringing both sides towards a middle ground that makes it possible to achieve real change. At other times, however, the tension between incrementalism and radicalism has proved too much and seen movements splinter.

There has also been sustained criticism of the campaigning role of philanthropy. The then-Chief Charity Commissioner wrote in 1979 that “The role of the charity is to bind up the wounds of society…to build a new society is for someone else”, and charities are still regularly told by politicians to “stick to their knitting” and “stay out of politics”. Often part of the rationale for doing so is a suggestion that charitable campaigning somehow represents an unwelcome new development. However, it is clear from history that this is far from true and that campaigning has in reality always been a vital tool for philanthropists in driving social change.

Philanthropy and Business  

Philanthropy and business are sometimes presented as if they are entirely separate from one another, but in reality the lines between making money and giving it away have often been distinctly blurred throughout history, as people have found novel ways to combine profit and purpose.

As far back as 1361, on his death from plague, the Bishop of London Michael Northburgh left 1,000 silver marks to establish a fund in old St Paul’s Cathedral that would not make grants, but rather offer interest-free loans on pawned objects, which had to be repaid within one year or the goods would be sold.

In the late 17th century, meanwhile, the London merchant Thomas Firmin set up a number of projects “for the imploying of the poor”, where he ran deliberately loss-making businesses in which spinners and weavers were paid well above the going market rate. It was said that he viewed these projects as “thrifty philanthropy rather than ordinary business”. The desire to combine business and philanthropy was in fact so widespread in the 18th century that the merchant James Hodges lamented:

“Any proposals for publick benefit, at the expense of private purses, without any visible return, must probably make but a small progress”

One group notable for combining business with philanthropy were the Quakers. Many big name companies and brands that still exist to this day have their roots in Quaker-owned family companies; e.g. Cadburys and Rowntrees in the world of confectionery or Barclays and Lloyds TSB in the world of banking. Figures like Elizabeth Fry, George Cadbury and Joseph Rowntree became renowned for their giving and social campaigning; which was often inextricably linked to their commercial activities.

The creation of new accommodation and facilities for employees and their families was a prominent focus for the philanthropy of Quakers as well as other business leaders. Cadbury created the model village of Bournville to house his workers; likewise Joseph Rowntree had New Earswick, Titus Salt had Saltaire and William Lever built Port Sunlight, among others. These new villages combined decent quality housing with suitably-improving leisure amenities such as museums and gardens, and were vastly superior to the majority of the cramped housing found in larger urban areas at the time. In many cases, however, this came at the price of additional controls on the lives of workers- such as the prohibition of alcohol or the introduction of curfews.

Housing was also the focus of a different business-informed approach to philanthropy known as “percentage philanthropy” (or “4 per cent philanthropy”). This was where donors like Octavia Hill and Edward Guinness would build decent-quality affordable housing in urban areas and then charge the working classes below-market rents to live in them, so the properties would deliver some financial return and the discount would be seen as the philanthropic element.

Today there is a growing trend towards “social enterprise” or “social investment” approaches that seek to combine social and financial return. Often this is presented as an unprecedented new innovation, but in fact it is clear that there is a rich history stretching back many years of people finding ways to bring business and philanthropy together.

Credit: Elizabeth Fry. Reproduction of lithograph. Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ghqzazrc

Philanthropy and the Welfare State  

From the beginning of the 17th century, when the Tudor government somewhat reluctantly introduced Poor Law legislation, the question of whether responsibility for meeting the welfare needs of citizens should lie with the state or with private philanthropy has been at the heart of political debate for hundreds of years.

Over time, the nature and scale of social problems changed as the UK became industrialised and urbanised, and it became apparent that the State had to step into many areas. But as David Owen, one of the most prominent historians of English philanthropy, notes: The welfare role of government remained “largely supplementary, to fill such urgent gaps as might be left by the network of private agencies and to carry out its traditional obligation of relieving the genuinely destitute.”

However, from the late 19th century into the first half of the 20th century a growing body of thought emerged which saw the State as having a far more central role in providing welfare. This was realised in 1948 with the creation of the National Health Service and the wider welfare state. Philanthropy and charities had played a key role in this story, as almost every element of the welfare state as we know it reflected a need that was first identified and met through philanthropic means, but it was unclear at first what the ongoing role (if any) of philanthropy was to be. As Maria Brenton notes “a common expectation in those years at the end of the war was that the voluntary sector would just wither away.”

Some rejoiced at this idea. Labour Health Minister Aneurin Bevan, for instance, derided philanthropy as “a patchwork of local paternalisms” and thought that the move towards centralised state control of healthcare represented clear progress. Others had different views: William Beveridge, one of the key intellectual architects of the welfare state, thought that there would always be a role for philanthropy because:

“Voluntary Action is needed to do things which the State should not do… It is needed to do things which the State is most unlikely to do. It is needed to pioneer ahead of the State and make experiments. It is needed to get services rendered which cannot be got by paying for them.”

The dire predictions of those who thought philanthropy had had its day clearly turned out to be incorrect, but the creation of the welfare state did lead to a period of soul-searching in which charities and their supporters were forced to rethink what their role might be. For some organisations this meant repositioning themselves to fill in gaps in state provision. For others it meant challenging the failings of state welfare directly through advocacy and campaigning. As it became clear throughout the 1960s and 70s that universal welfare was not the panacea some had thought, organisations like Shelter and the Child Poverty Action Group emerged to bring new issues of homelessness and poverty to public attention.

The present-day relationship between philanthropy and the welfare state in the UK is complex: in addition to charities filling in gaps in state welfare, or working alongside public sector bodies to enhance state services (as many charities do within the NHS), there are also many charities that deliver services on behalf of the state through grant-funding or contractual arrangements. Perhaps as a result, the desirable balance between state-funded and philanthropic welfare provision continues to be a point of fierce debate in political discourse.

Tainted Donations  

Philanthropy has, throughout the ages, generated controversy of various kinds as people object to who is giving, what they are giving to and how they are doing it. Within this controversy there is a notable recurring theme is a belief that some donations are “tainted” by virtue of where they come from because the money being given away was made in ethically dubious ways.

The question then, of course, is whether it is better to accept the gift in the hope of “putting bad money to good uses”, or to turn it down in order to avoid tainting oneself. This is a question people have been grappling with for as long as they have been giving to good causes, and opinion has always been divided. In 746, for instance, at the Council of Clovesho (a church synod attended by Anglo-Saxon kings) it was decreed that “alms should not be given from goods unjustly plundered or otherwise extracted through force or cruelty”.

Likewise in the 19th Century the Quaker philanthropist George Cadbury took a holistic view of wealth: as the historian David Ownen notes, “making money and giving it away formed for Cadbury a single pattern, and making it could be a constructive socially as giving it away. No amount of philanthropic giving could take the curse of a fortune that had been accumulated carelessly or without regard for the welfare of the workpeople who had labored for it.”

Others, meanwhile, have argued that the distinction between “good” and “bad” money is unworkable and should therefore not be an impediment to philanthropy: according to George Bernard Shaw:

“practically all the spare money in the country consists of a mass of rent, interest and profit, every penny of which is bound up with crime, drink, prostitution, disease and all the evil fruits of poverty as inextricably as with enterprise, wealth, commercial probity and national prosperity. The notion that you can earmark certain coins as tainted is an unpractical individualist superstition”.

And “General” William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, perhaps expressed it most clearly when he (somewhat apocryphally) said “the only problem with tainted wealth is t’aint enough of it!”

Concerns about tainted donations continue to be a major issue for philanthropy. As the UK undergoes something of a reckoning with our national history in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in recent years, many organisations – including philanthropic ones – are digging into their own histories to uncover potentially problematic links to slavery and the proceeds of colonialism, and trying to determine the best course of action to take in light of these findings. There are also concerns about current donors: the most notable example in recent years being the Sackler family, whose long-standing philanthropy has become the focus of widespread controversy as a result of their much-criticised role in creating and sustaining the US opioid epidemic.

We will be holding a series of guided tours of the Mining in Kent exhibition. Join us on a tour to find out more about the exhibition, hear about the exhibition highlights, and get the answers to any questions you might have about mining in Kent!

The exhibition tells the story of the history of mining in Kent, from the early days of discovering the Kent coalfield to the impact of the 1984 Miners’ Strike. Illustrated by original archive material from Special Collections and Archives we explore the main coalfields in the county and what life was like for a Kent miner. We look at the history of miners’ strikes in 1926, 1972, 1974 and 1984 and how these were portrayed by cartoonists in the national press. We take a deeper look at the impact of the 1984/1985 miners’ strike in Kent and the different forms of support that arose for the miners and the mining community, from Kent students to stand-up comedians.

Tours will be led by Karen Brayshaw (Special Collections and Archives Manager) or Beth Astridge (University Archivist).

Tours will be held on:

• Wednesday 10^th July 12pm – with Karen Brayshaw
• Monday 22^nd July 1pm – with Beth Astridge
• Friday 9^th August 12.30pm – with Karen Brayshaw – NOW FULLY BOOKED
• Tuesday 10^th September 12.30pm – with Beth Astridge – NOW FULLY BOOKED
• Thursday 26^th September 12.30pm – Karen Brayshaw

If you would like to join us for a guided tour of the Mining in Kent exhibition – please  email specialcollections@kent.ac.uk to book your place!