25 January 2010 Students, volunteering and social action: Histories and policies. The Institute for Volunteering Research and Student Hubs are initiating research on the history of students, volunteering and social action in the UK. Outcomes may include a literature review, a one-day workshop, a witness seminar, policy commentaries, networking opportunities and a short pictorial history of the movement. To guide this research we propose to form a working group. We would welcome expressions of interest from all those interested: historians, research students, social researchers, practitioners, policymakers and students. See Student Volunteering History for more information.

20 January 2010 VAHS member Clare Mulley is launching the paperback version of her book The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb: Founder of Save the Children at the The Women’s Library in London on 12 March 2010. All are welcome. More information

1 January 2010 We are delighted to announce that the Voluntary Action Seminar has become the first at the IHR to offer podcasts of its monthly papers. The first four podcasts featuring are now available to download for free on the IHR website Click here for podcasts.

10 September 2009 We are pleased to announce that VAHS has won a £1,830 grant from the Economic History Society for a series of postgraduate and early career workshops in 2009/2010.

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Patriotic Volunteers in Cold War Britain

Matthew Grant, University of Manchester
Monday 22 February 2010, 5.30pm

The final conference programme is now availalble to download. Final Conference Programme

Conference excursions

Social Policy Tour of Liverpool
This short evening field trip led by John Lansley will take us round the city to see early social housing and other remnants of the history of Liverpool’s social policy. On the way, we will also be able to remark on the changes that have taken place not just in the last 150 years but in the last 10!

Visit to Port Sunlight
Port Sunlight Village was built by William Hesketh Lever, the owner of a soap works on the banks of the Mersey. Shocked by the squalor of the slums in which most workers lived and tired of paying heavy port dues for his exports and rent for his factory buildings, he decided to buy a site and build his own factory, with port access and decent housing for his workers at reasonable rents. He also provided schools, a library, and a whole range of public buildings. But this is no ordinary estate. The architecture and landscaping make it one of the most attractive areas on Merseyside. The coach trip here will include the museum, a walk around the village and, if there is time, opportunity to go to the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

Click here to go to the Capital of Culture official website.

Almshouse accommodation comprised a heterogenous range of residential charity founded by testamentary endowment, royal edict and a variety of other means. Ideally it offered free housing within a small, individual house of two or three rooms, and the means to maintain that household by dint of a small cash pension, but the reality could vary quite widely around this template. Almshouses as philanthropic ventures enjoyed their heyday before 1650 and experienced a revival of interest in the 19th century. Yet despite their fluctuating appeal to benefactors, and the comparative rarity of new foundations for the majority of the period 1650-1850, the poor continued to apply for places, live their latter years and ultimately die in almshouses. This paper will draw on a range of sources to characterise almshouse lives and draw lines of distinction between almshouses and other venues that accommodated the poor. It will argue that the longevity and desirability of such households was inevitably somewhat dependent on the generosity of the charitable foundation but also on the level of effective autonomy exercised by almspeople.

University of Liverpool 16-18 July 2008

Proposals for papers are invited on any aspect of the history of charity, voluntary organisations and volunteering.

To download the call for papers: click here

Abstracts of 250 words should be sent to or to Dr. Pat Starkey, School of History, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7WZ by 1 December 2007

Date: Tuesday 12 June 2007
Time: Talk will begin at 5.30pm; Walk will leave from Toynbee Hall at 6.30pm
Venue: Barnett Research Centre, Toynbee Hall, 28 Commercial Street,
London E1 6LS

Abstract:
Toynbee Hall was the first of the ‘university settlements’, organisations that brought graduates to areas such as the East End of London from the 1880s to live as well as undertake voluntary work with the local community. The aim was to encourage the leaders of the future to develop an awareness and understanding of the needs of the less fortunate. The settlement movement spread across London and major British towns and cities, as well as the North Americas, Europe, India and Japan, making major contributions to the development of social policy and public welfare around the world.

This talk will draw upon Kate Bradley’s work in progress, an examination of the settlements and other charities in London in the period 1918 to 1979, their relationships with their local communities and the development of the welfare state. She will explore the development of Toynbee Hall and its place in the East End, with case studies of how particular archival documents have provided fresh light on narratives about the history of the settlement movement after 1918.

Date: Tuesday 8 May 2007, 5.30pm
Venue: CIVITAS 77 Great Peter Street, Westminster, London SW1P 2EZ

Rowton Houses present an unusually clear-cut example of a single idea with no apparent or immediate parallel. The houses were not built by a chocolate or soap magnate but by a former political secretary of relatively limited means, raised to the peerage in unusual circumstances. For this reason, this paper is as much concerned with their creator as with the houses themselves. There is, nonetheless, a link with industrial philanthropy and a wider concern with the common lodging house and the needs of male casual workers.

Rowton’s central notion, though never fully realised, continues to offer the challenge of collective living to an age that has perhaps forgotten what this means. Its adaptation after his death in 1903 continued to provide accommodation for casual workers, but under different circumstances to those he envisaged.

After the paper there will be a brief commentary by Joe McGarry, who has been a resident and is now manager of the last and largest of Rowton’s six hostels, the only one still fulfilling its original purpose.

Make love not war: The impact of the 1960s on The Salvation
Army in the UK
Helen Cameron, Wesley Centre, Oxford Brookes University

‘Two nations, One Church?’ The Church of England, the welfare state and voluntarism under Thatcher
Liza Filby, Centre for Contemporary British History

Saturday 17 March 2007, 10.30am – 1pm
Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Jonathan Morgan, Archivist, Dr William’s Library

The paper will look at how the Order of St John came to be perhaps the foremost voluntary organisation undertaking first aid training and practice. Historical continuity is vital to the Order, more so than to probably any other voluntary organisation, and Jonathan Morgan seeks in the paper to explore this and its effects on the organisation.

Venue: Dr William’s Library, Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AG

Time: Seminar starts 5.30pm. Refreshments will be served.

Cost: £3 on the door for non-members or membership available at £10 / £15

Please note all are welcome to attend the VAHS Annual General Meeting 5-5.30pm