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The records of the Charity Commissions a source for urban history1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Kevin Grady
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Extract

Officially sponsored investigation of charities has a long history encompassing the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century commissions issued under the Statutes of Charitable Uses of 1597 and 1601, and the brief national inquiry made for the Gilbert returns of 1787–8. It was in the nineteenth century, however, that the first detailed general surveys of English and Welsh charities were made. In August 1818, amidst revived interest in the more effective utilization of charitable funds, the Brougham Commission was appointed by parliament to examine the state of charitable trusts for educational purposes in England. With the renewal and widening of its powers in the following year, it spent almost two decades investigating charitable trusts of all types in England and Wales. The Commission expired in 1837 but, after lengthy vacillation, parliament set up a permanent body in 1853. Like its predecessor, this new commission began collecting up-to-date information about charitable trusts; a task it still performs today. The invaluable products of the two commissions are several voluminous series of reports and digests printed in Parliamentary Papers between 1819 and 1913, and extensive records dating from 1819 held by the Charity Commission and the Public Record Office. This article discusses these sources and their value to the urban historian.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 9 , May 1982 , pp. 31 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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Footnotes

1

My thanks are due to the Charity Commission and, in particular, Mr M. Conboye for much help and advice during the preparation of this article. Helpful comments were also made by Professor M. W. Beresford and Dr M. Collins.

References

2 39 Eliz., c. 6 and 43 Eliz., c. 4; for details of the surviving commission documents see Guide to the Contents of the Public Record Office (HMSO, 1963), IGoogle Scholar. Abstract of the (Gilbert) Returns made in 1787–88 (P.P. 1816, XVI, A-B).Google Scholar For accounts of the development of English charities and their investigation see Jordan, W. K., Philanthropy in England, 1480–1660 (1959)Google Scholar and Owen, D., English Philanthropy, 1660–1960 (1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Technically, the Brougham Commission was a series of four commissions. Its establishment and performance is the subject of Tompson, R., The Charity Commission and the Age of Reform (1979).Google Scholar The permanent Charity Commission is discussed in chapter 9 of the same work, and more fully in Owen, op. cit., ch. 7 and 11.

4 The development of charitable trusts and the evolution of the legal definition charity are discussed in Jordan, op. cit., especially 109–25, and Jones, G., History of the Law of Charity, 1532–1827 (Cambridge, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The range of charitable uses trusts encompassed is examined in Jordan's general study and in more detail in his companion volumes The Charities of London, 1480–1660 (1960) and The Charities of Rural England, 1480–1660 (1961); the latter surveys charities in Buckinghamshire, Norfolk, and Yorkshire. For the later period see Owen, op. cit.

5 Reports of Commissioners upon Public Charities (England and Wales) (i.e. the reports of the Brougham Commission, hereafter, Reports of Commissioners), Fifteenth (P.P. 1826, XIII), 660–81.Google Scholar

6 Nineteenth Report of Commissioners (P.P. 1828, XI), 576–605.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 580–1.

8 Returns comprising the reports made to the Charity Commission in the result of an Inquiry held in each of certain counties into Endowments subject to the provisions of the Charitable Trusts Acts, 1853–1894 (hereafter, Endowed Charities (Returns)), (P.P. 1897, LXVII, part 6), 369–70.Google Scholar

9 Analytical Digest of the Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into Charities (P.P. 1843, XVII), 672–719.Google Scholar

10 Reports from Commissioners on Municipal Corporations in England and Wales (P.P. 1835, XXIII), 1615–24, 1705–10, 1671–9, 1491–1507.Google Scholar

11 Endowed Charities, General Digest: Explanatory Memorandum and Tabular Summaries (P.P. 1877, LXVI), 27–9.Google Scholar

12 Fifteenth Report of Commissioners (P.P. 1826, XIII), 737–8.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., 737.

14 Nineteenth Report of Commissioners (P.P. 1828, XI), 626.Google Scholar

15 Thirty-second Report of Commissioners, part 2 (P.P. 1837–1838, XXVI), 813–27.Google Scholar

16 Endowed Charities (Returns)—(P.P. 1899, LXIX), 660Google Scholar (St Olave's); (P.P. 1901, LI), 144–55 (Dulwich), 709–13 (Harvist's), 713–19 (Lyons').

17 Endowed Charities, General Digest: Explanatory Memorandum and Tabular Summaries (P.P. 1877, LXVI), 27–29.Google Scholar

18 See n. 5 for official title. Exempted from the inquiry were the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, several of the larger endowed schools, all cathedral and collegiate churches, charities for the benefit of Jews, Quakers and Roman Catholics, and charities wholely maintained by voluntary contributions.

19 See n. 8 for the official title. The counties and county boroughs included, with the publication dates of their reports, are: Anglesey (1897), Berkshire (1905–10), Carmarthenshire (1900), Carnarvonshire (1900), Denbigh (1893–4), Devon (1906–13), Durham, Gateshead, and Sunderland (1904), Flintshire (1899), Glamorganshire, Cardiff, and Swansea (1897), Lancashire (1908–1910), County of London (1897–1904), Merionethshire (1897), Montgomery (1900–2), Wiltshire (1908), Yorkshire—West Riding (1897–9). The permanent Commission also produced annual reports on its activities and a variety of reports, schemes, and papers on various individual charities and types of charity; see the index to Commons Papers. In addition, it produced special reports in connection with the City of London Parochial Charities Act of 1883. An independent inquiry worthy of note here is the Royal Commission which reported on the charities of the City of London Livery Companies in 1884 (P.P. 1884, XXXIX, parts 1–5).

20 Fifteenth Report of Commissioners (P.P. 1826, XIII), 660–81, 733–8Google Scholar; Endowed Charities (Returns) (P.P. 1899, LXXII), 295–521.Google Scholar

21 Fifteenth Report of Commissioners (P.P. 1826, XIII), 662–1, 733–8.Google Scholar

22 Endowed Charities (Returns) (P.P. 1899, LXXII), 323–50.Google Scholar For the state of endowed schools in the period between the two series of reports, researchers may consult a number of parliamentary reports, notably the Royal Commission on Schools (P.P. 1867–1868, XXVIII, parts 1–17).Google Scholar

23 Endowed Charities (Returns) (P.P. 1901, LI), 141.Google Scholar

24 General Index to the Accounts and Papers, Reports of Commissioners, Estimates, etc, 1801–1949 (HMSO)

25 Ibid. for location of General and Supplementary Digests.

26 Charity accounts prior to 1901 have been destroyed but those from 1901–1955 are stored at the Public Record Office, and more recent ones are at the Commission's offices.

27 See Tompson, op. cit., especially ch. 4–6, 9; and Owen, op. cit., especially ch. 7, 9–11.