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Middlesbrough's Steel Magnates and the Guild of Help

Profile image of Tosh WarwickTosh Warwick

2010, Cleveland History

Abstract
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This paper analyzes the role of Middlesbrough's industrialists, particularly in relation to the Guild of Help, during the late nineteenth century. It argues against the narrative of a significant withdrawal of these elites from civic engagement, proposing instead that their involvement continued albeit in a reconfigured manner that expanded beyond local governance to a broader sphere of influence. The study highlights both philanthropic contributions and the nature of involvement of the industrialists' second and third generations, challenging the perception of decline in their civic participation.

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References (53)

  1. References and Notes.
  2. *This article is drawn from an earlier version presented at the Voluntary Action History Conference, University of Kent 2010, and is based upon work from my ongoing AHRC funded research 'Middlesbrough's Steel Magnates: Culture, Politics and Participation, 1880-1934'. I am grateful to the staff of Teesside Archives, Middlesbrough Reference Library and the University of Huddersfield for assistance offered in carrying out research for this article.
  3. A. Briggs, Victorian Cities (London: 1963), pp256-258.
  4. Briggs, p258.
  5. D. Hadfield. 'Political and Social Attitudes in Middlesbrough 1853-1889 with especial reference to the role of the Middlesbrough ironmasters', unpublished PhD thesis, Teesside Polytechnic, 1981; P. Stubley. 'The Churches and the Iron and Steel Industry in Middlesbrough, 1890-1914', unpublished M.A. Thesis, Durham University, 1979.
  6. Hadfield, 'Political and Social Attitudes', p358.
  7. Stubley, 'The Churches and the Iron and Steel Industry', p42 cited in J.J. Turner, 'The People's Winter Gardens, Middlesbrough', Cleveland History, No. 46, p31
  8. J. Garrard, ''Urban Elites, 1850-1914: The Rule and Decline of a New Squirearchy?' Albion, Vol. 27, No 4, Winter 1995; S. Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class: Ritual and Authority in the English Industrial City, 1840-1914 (Manchester: 2007);
  9. W.B. Rubinstein, 'Britain's Elites in the Interwar Period, 1918-39', in A. Kidd and D. Nicholls, The Making of the British Middle Class? Studies of Regional and Cultural Diversity Since the Eighteenth Century (Stroud: 1998), p186-202;
  10. M.J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (London: 1981). B. Doyle, 'The structure of elite power in the early twentieth-century city' in M. Daunton, The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume III.
  11. W.B. Rubinstein, 'Britain's Elites in the Interwar Period, 1918-1939', in A. Kidd and D. Nicholls, The Making of the British Middle Class?' p188, p194.
  12. R. Trainor 'The "Decline" of British Urban Governance: A Reassessment', in R.J. Morris and R. Trainor (eds.), Urban Governance: Britain and Beyond Since 1750 (Ashgate: 2000).
  13. M. Daunton, The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume III 1840-1950 (Cambridge: 2000);
  14. B. M Doyle (ed.), Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Regional Perspectives (Newcastle: 2007);
  15. A. Kidd and D. Nicholls, The Making of the British Middle Class? See also R. Colls and R. Rodger (eds.), Cities of Ideas: Civil Society and Urban Governance in Britain 1800-2000 (Aldershot: 2004).
  16. In the first thirty years of the twentieth century Dorman Long had come to own Bell Brothers and Bolckow Vaughan, the two forerunners in the town's iron industry.
  17. W. Lillie, The History of Middlesbrough: An Illustration of the Evolution of English Industry (Middlesbrough: 1968), pp473-474.
  18. K. Nicholas, The Social Effects of Unemployment on Teesside, 1919-1939 (Manchester: 1986), p25.
  19. ' Minute Book, Directors No.13 1904-1908', Bolckow Vaughan Co Ltd, 13/3/13 TA, p224.
  20. ' Minute Book, Directors No.13 1904-1908', Bolckow Vaughan Co Ltd, 13/3/13 TA, p224.
  21. 'Minute Book, Directors No.13 1904-1908', Bolckow Vaughan Co Ltd, 13/3/13 TA, p324.
  22. 'Minute Book, Directors No.2 1913-1923', Bell Brothers Ltd, 16/2/3, TA, p90.
  23. For a more complete discussion of the Guild of Help movement see K. Laybourn, 'The Guild of Help and the changing face of Edwardian philanthropy', Urban History, Vol. 20, No. 1 (April 1993);
  24. K. Laybourn, The Guild of Help and the Changing Face of Edwardian Philanthropy: The Guild of Help, Voluntary Work and the State, 1904-1919 (Lampeter: 1994);
  25. K. Laybourn (ed.) Social Conditions, Status and Community, 1860-c.1920 (Stroud: 1997) esp. chapters 1-3.
  26. Laybourn, 'The Guild of Help', Urban History, p44; M.J. Moore, 'Social Work and Social Welfare: The Organization of Philanthropic Resources in Britain, 1900-1914', The Journal of British Studies, Vol. 6, No.2 (Spring 1977), p86.
  27. Laybourn, 'Introduction', in Laybourn (ed.), 'Social Conditions', p12.
  28. 'Annual Report 1909-10, Middlesbrough Guild of Help', p7.
  29. Laybourn, Guild of Help, p50.
  30. 'Annual Report 1912-13, Middlesbrough Guild of Help', p16-17
  31. Miss Dorman was the first individual Dorman subscriber, in 1917 donating £2.2.0, a familial involvement that expanded the following year by Mr Charles Dorman's £5 subscription to the Administration Fund.
  32. Middlesbrough Guild of Help Minute Book 1910-1937 (MGOH M.B) .
  33. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p23 (1911).
  34. Laybourn, 'The Guild of Help', UH, p54.
  35. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p2 (1910), p31 (1911). This is consistent with Guilds of help elsewhere such as those at Bolton, Bradford and Halifax.
  36. Laybourn, Guild of Help, p51.
  37. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p37 (1911).
  38. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p45 (1912).
  39. Laybourn, Guild of Help, p61 makes reference to the women involved with the Bradford Guild of Help.
  40. For a contemporary discussion of the Lilian Dorman Club see W. Lillie, Middlesbrough 1853-1953: A Century of Municipal, Social & Industrial Progress (Middlesbrough: 1953).
  41. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p5.
  42. MGOH M.B 1910-1937.
  43. As discussed elsewhere, the main iron and steel companies contributed to the Administration Fund of the Guild of Help -Bolckow Vaughan (£100 per annum in addition to earlier contributions to the Benevolent Fund), Dorman Long and Samuelson's (£25-£40 each per annum). Indeed, even when plans for the setting up of the Guild of Help were in their infancy, the Minute Books of Bolckow Vaughan record the commitment of the Shareholders to assist the project, noting their willingness to guarantee 'up to the limit of £200 per annum for three years towards the expenses of the Guild of Help', formed to 'deal with the destitutions and other evils resulting from unemployment'.(Bolckow Vaughan Directors Minute Book 13/3/14, p74).
  44. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p15 (1910).
  45. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p21 (1911).
  46. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p20 (1911).
  47. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, pp25-32 (1911).
  48. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p17 (1910).
  49. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p17 (1910).
  50. MGOH M.B 1910-1937, p38 (1912).
  51. N. Evans, 'Urbanisation, Elite Attitudes and Philanthropy: Cardiff, 1850-1914', International Review of Social History, Vol.27 (1982), p306 notes the appeal of the publication of subscription lists and coverage in the Cardiff Times, citing numerous examples of individuals been singled out for praise, as a motive for philanthropic contributions.
  52. See R.J. Morris, 'Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites, 1780-1950: An Analysis', Historical Journal, 26 (1983), pp95-118. Also H. Meller, Leisure and the Changing City (London: 1976), p75 notes the way charitable effort helped reinforce the individual's place in society, citing the case of Mayor Symes in late nineteenth century Bristol. Similarly, R. Johnston, Clydeside Capital: A Social History of Employers (East Linton: 2000), pp96-98 has also identified involvement in charitable causes as both a 'stepping stone' and important to 'the network of capitalist influence'.
  53. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 30/05/1912 cited in M.I. Lowe, 'Morals not Money: Welfare in Middlesbrough 1892-1912', unpublished M.A. Thesis, Teesside Polytechnic, 1983, pp93-96. www.ctlhs.org.uk

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Challenging the ‘decline’ of the industrial elite in the manufacturing town: Middlesbrough’s steel magnates and the urban sphere 1880-1931
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In 1862, on a visit to the town, the future Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone hailed Middlesbrough as a ‘remarkable place, the youngest child of England’s enterprise … an infant Hercules’. In only a century it expanded from a tiny hamlet of only 25 inhabitants in 1801 to a town of 90,000 in 1901 and had almost 140,000 people thirty years later. Central to its growth was the iron industry, which dictated its economic, political and social development in the early decades: ironmasters sat on the town council, provided the first MP and gifted the first public park and early urban institutions. The last quarter of the nineteenth century has been characterised as a period heralding a decline in participation by British urban elites in the day-to-day activities of the towns and cities that housed their businesses, with it argued these businessmen withdrew from leadership in the urban sphere and adopted a more leisurely, country-facing, gentrified lifestyle. Recent work has challeng...

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'Middlesbrough's steel magnates, 1880-1934: A philanthropic elite?'
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In his chapter on the ‘growth of the new community’ of Middlesbrough in his landmark Victorian Cities, Briggs (1963) contended that from the later nineteenth century period onwards, the will of the town’s ironmasters to engage in the life of the town had dwindled, with the second and subsequent generations of industrialists and managers. In line with notions of a ‘decline of the industrial spirit’ stressed by Wiener (1981) and emphasis in subsequent works exploring the role of Middlesbrough’s manufacturers by Hadfield (1979) and Stubley (1979) the town’s industrialists have been presented as having withdrawn from participation from 1880 up to the outbreak of the First World War. Yet, these arguments for elite withdrawal from the urban sphere have developed based upon a reduced representation and visibility of those magnates from municipal involvement as councillors and a perceived reduced participation in business activities with the rise of the general manager.

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Related topics

  • History
  • Geography
  • Urban History
  • Iron and Steel (History)
  • Urban Elites
  • Social surveys
  • Iron and Steel History
  • Sir Hugh Bell
  • Cleveland History
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