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The Emergence of Provincial Charity Organisation Societies and Responses, 1870–1890

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Abstract

We have already seen how the London COS was formed with the backing of influential elites. In the provinces the preponderance of COS activists were senior members of the ancient professions or were successful businessmen with the occasional presence of local gentry usually as decorative appendages. Prominent among the professionals were senior Church of England clerics, medical practitioners, lawyers, academics and military men, some retired and others still professionally active. Their attitudes were typical of nineteenth-century professionals who lived by ‘persuasion and propaganda’ with emphasis on ‘social efficiency and the avoidance of waste’ directed towards organizing the distribution of rewards according to ‘personal merit, professionally defined’.1

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Notes

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© 1995 Robert Humphreys

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Humphreys, R. (1995). The Emergence of Provincial Charity Organisation Societies and Responses, 1870–1890. In: Sin, Organized Charity and the Poor Law in Victorian England. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375437_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375437_5

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-39434-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-37543-7

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