Page 17 - Mansfield 2019/20

‘ The Settlers had a delicate task: to support the people of a deprived industrial suburb and, without patronising them, organise and train them to help themselves.’
From 1884 Perfect’s successor Frederick Newland, and then Mansfield House and the Women’s Settlement, hugely expanded this tradition. Percy Alden, a Mansfield student, became Mansfield House’s first Warden, assisted by Will Reason. The Settlers had a delicate task: to support the people of a deprived industrial suburb and, without patronising them, organise and train them to help themselves. Eschewing sectarianism, their purpose was practical Christianity, as a preliminary to pursuing a pastoral career. Mansfield graduate Silvester Horne described Mansfield House as ‘an extension of Mansfield College’.
Elementary, adult, and university extension education was provided on a range of academic and practical subjects. Evening
lectures covered scientific, literary, historical, and social subjects. A ‘Local Parliament’ club offered debating practice. A ‘Brotherhood Society’ dealt with public authorities on local problems.
Among the abundance of initiatives and amenities provided, there was a loan society; a penny-savings bank; a sickness benefit society (one of the forerunners of National Insurance); a ‘Hospital Letter Society’ (an early form of medical insurance); free children’s meals; old-age pensions; and orchestral, choral, dramatic, gymnastic, boxing, cricket, football, and cycling clubs. Annual outings to Oxford were also arranged, including a cricket match against Mansfield College.
The Women’s Settlement organised an employment agency; day nursery; medical and hospital services; workrooms; disabled care; and second-hand clothes markets. Mental health pioneer, Dr Helen Boyle, worked nearby at Canning Town Mission Hospital, the experience prompting her later ground-breaking work on preventive treatment of mental illness.
Frank Tillyard, a barrister, gave free legal assistance in a weekly evening ‘clinic’: the ‘Poor Man’s Lawyer’. People from Canning Town and across London sought advice on tenancy, employment, wages, compensation for accidents, and marital law. Other university settlements took up the scheme, which eventually became Citizens Advice.
Percy Alden went on to participate in local government. As Councillor and Deputy Mayor of West Ham he promoted public baths, libraries, parks, recreation grounds, tree planting, and better sanitary inspection. He was a pioneer advocate of state support for the unemployed, and became an MP first for the Liberal and then the Labour party. Knighted in 1933, Sir Percy was killed by
a flying bomb on Tottenham Court Road in 1944. His name is inscribed on the World War II memorial in Mansfield’s Chapel.
Though the state gradually took over many of the services first provided by the Settlements, the latter continued to thrive until World War II, when the Blitz devastated Canning Town. Post-war movement of population to New Towns, and the decline of docks and industry, further disrupted the district’s social fabric. The Settlements never properly recovered.
They were eventually absorbed by the Aston Trust, and to this
day Aston-Mansfield continues to support disadvantaged people across east London. But the main legacy of Mansfield House,
the Women’s Settlement, and the Canning Town Congregational Church that spawned them, is how they helped shape the fabric of today’s social services.
This article is abridged from the unpublished history of Canning Town Congregationalism by amateur historian Timothy MM Baker, which can be found in the College Archives.
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