Thread by @Philliteracy

Here we go with Part 2 of our thread on the history of disaster relief funds.

This time looking at some of the key themes highlighted by the way funds were distributed.

The first common theme is complaints about the pace of distribution being too slow in relation to the pace of collecting money in the first place & in relation to immediate need.

E.g. After the Great Fire of London, 1666:

The same was true of colliery disaster funds in the C19th, which often attracted criticism for being ponderous in getting money to those affected by the disasters.

Part of the problem (particularly as time went on) was increasing centralization of disaster relief funds at a regional or even national level, which made both collection and distribution more complex (and thus slower):

However, as Kiesling notes, most accepted this centralization as a necessity (or at least an unavoidable reality):

The real issues, however, come when you look at who money was doled out to, and even more so how that was done....

Brace yourselves.

Firstly the who.

E.g. In the distribution of money after the Great FIre of London, it was clear that money wasn’t going to those most in need, but to those with the best social connections.

In some cases, the prioritisation of those with higher social status would be overt.

E.g. In the case of the Titanic Relief Fund, they even published a handy table on how the iniquity worked.

Thanks guys!

But “who” was also a problem in terms of how decisions were made, as the infrastructure for relief funds was almost always controlled by local or national elites:

The problem was that too often this brought with it a paternalistic approach, including sever judgements about morality and the “deserving” vs “undeserving” poor:

E.g.

In the case of colliery disaster funds, these paternalistic attitudes on the part of local elites sometimes spilled over into punitive approaches that aimed to demean the recipients:

A particularly egregious example of this is the Titanic Relief Fund, which dealt with the many widows among its recipients in an extremely harsh and demeaning way:

In some cases, resent by recipients at their treatment boiled over into violence and protest- most famously in the Stalybridge Riots in 1863 as detailed by Peter Shapely:

As Shapely notes, it was even remarked at the time that these riots could be seen as a “strike against charity”:

This resent of the very notion of charity, with its connotations of paternalism and dependence, was something that shaped many other disaster relief funds too, e.g. The Aberfan Disaster Relief Fund:

One route to avoiding some of these issues was to have members of the working class represented in the decision making structure of the relief funds. Which did happen, though as Benson points out, antipathy to Trade Union involvement could be a significant barrier.

The question of working class representation was also a major bone of contention with the Aberfan fund- in that case because there were purported legal concerns about potential recipients of the fund also being trustees:

There were many among the elite, however, who believed that paternalism & harsh treatment of this kind were counterproductive as they undermined the potential value of charity as a means to protect & nurture society (and existing hierarchies).

For these enlightened elites, it was vital to show respect (of a kind) for the recipients of one’s charity as it was only by doing so that rish and poor would then be bound together in bonds of mutual reciprocity.

Or something.

And this did apparently work in some cases, with the recipients of relief funding expressing clear gratitude towards their social superiors in a way that one assumes was very gratifying for the Victorian middle/upper classes:

However, others were not so taken with this gratitude on the part of recipients - seeing it instead as complicity in stifling justified working class dissent.

E.g. The Rev Joseph Rayner Stephens mocked such pliant Northern workers as “Lancashire Lambs”:

So there you have it.

<breathes again>

Lots of fascinating details- many of which (IMHO) still really resonate today.

Hopefully there’s been something at least interesting, if not useful, in there for some of you.

For the others, I can only apologise.

Nah, not really!