This article examines a journal initially known as London and subsequently the Municipal Journal which was first published in the 1890s. It is argued that this publication deserves closer scrutiny by historians interested in urban progressivism over the approximate period 1890-1910. As the foremost journal for diffusing ideas about the management of cities in this era it offers important insights regarding the successes and failures of the Progressive project in both the British capital and the provincial centers. It is argued that the journal played two important roles in this period. The first was to defend the Progressive agenda from Conservative (Moderate) attack, and the second was to play the role as the "Hansard of local government." The impression left to the historian is that Progressivism as a movement contained internal contradictions which contributed to its demise by 1914.
E.P. Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons: Ideal and Reality in Nineteenth Century Urban Government (London: Routledge, 1973); A.S. Wohl, The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London (London: Edward Arnold1973); M.J. Daunton, House and Home in the Victorian City: Working Class Housing 1850-1914 ( London: Edward Arnold, 1983); and H.E. Meller, Leisure and the Changing City 1870-1914 (London : Routledge, 1976). The literature was recently complemented by P. Joyce, The Rule of Freedom : Liberalism and the Modern City ( London: Verso, 2003) and A. Croll, Civilising the Urban: Popular Culture and Public Space in Merthyr c.1870-1914 (Cardiff: University Press, 2000).
2.
See for example M. Ferguson, Women's Magazines and the Cult of Femininity (London: Heinemann, 1983); C. White , Women's Magazines 1693-1968 ( London: Michael Joseph, 1968); R. Ballaster, M. Beetham, E. Frazer, and S. Hebron, Women's Worlds: Ideology, Femininity and the Women's Magazine ( Macmillan: Basingstoke, 1991); and more recently P. Tinkler, Constructing Girlhood: Popular Magazines for Girls Growing Up in England 1920-1950 (London : Taylor Francis, 1995). In the context of trade unionism see R. Warren, "Trade Union Communications: A Study of a Trade Union Journal" in The Industrial Tutor: Journal of the society of Industrial Tutors , (1992): 5-24.
3.
M. Dagneais and P. Saunier, "Tales of the Periphery: An Outline Survey of Municipal Employees and Services in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" in Municipal Services in the Modern Cit, ed. M. Dagenais , 1. Maver, and P. Saunier (Aldershot: Ashgate , 2003), 27.
4.
Pennybacker, Vision for London, 247.
5.
M. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981); A. Lees , Cities Perceived: Urban Society in European and American Thought 1820-1940 (Manchester: University Press, 1985), pertinent comments on 190-247. See also his more recent work Cities, Sin and Social Reform in Imperial Germany (Michigan: University Press , 2002).
6.
J.M. Stevens, "The London County Council under the Progressives 1889-1907" (Master's thesis, University of Sussex, Brighton, 1966), 6. For the general context of Progressivism see A. Saint, ed. Politics and the People of London: The London County Council 1889-1945, (Hambledon: 1989). Also S. Pennybacker, "'The Millennium By Return of Post:' Reconsidering London Progressivism 1889-1907," in D. Feldman and G. S. Jones ed. Metropolis London: Histories and Representations since 1800 (London: Routledge, 1989 ). See also Pennybacker's comments on sources at the end of her Vision for London 1889-1914 (London: Routledge, 1995), 246-8.
7.
For the background see J. Kellet, "The Commune in London: Trepidation about the LCC" in History Today (May, 1983 ), 5-9.
8.
S. Inwood, A History of London (London: Papermac ), 438.
9.
Pennybacker, Vision of London, 25.
10.
J.S. Buckingham , National Evils and Practical Remedies (1849, reprinted Microform Ann Arbor, 1981).
11.
Lees, Cities Perceived , 239-47.
12.
Y. Cohen and R. Baudoui, "Governer le Social, 1890-1945" in Y. Cohen and R. Baudoui, Les Chantiers de la Paix Sociale 1900-1940 (Fontenay: ENS, 1995), 10-13. I am indebted to the anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this reference and to Colin Anderson in the School of Languages, Massey University for providing a translation of the text.
13.
See K. D. Brown's entry for John Burns Dictionary of Labour Biography , vol. 5, ed. J. Bellamy and J. Saville ( London: Macmillan, 1979), 39-47.
14.
See for example the Municipal Journal, September 25, 1903, 853.
15.
M. Richter, The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and his Age ( London : Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1964 ); A. Vincent "The New Liberalism and Citizenship," in The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberalism and Community, ed. A. Simhony and D. Weinstein (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001); D. Sutton, "Liberalism, State Collectivism and the Social Relations of Citizenship," in Crises in the British State 1880-1930, eds. M. Langan and B. Schwarz ( London: Hutchinson, 1985), 63-79; I.C. Bradley, The Optimists: Themes and Personalities in Victorian Liberalism (London : Faber and Faber, 1980).
16.
P. Cox, Gender, Justice and Welfare (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), 6.
17.
See for example D. Alessio, "Coloured Views: Images of the New Zealand City and Town 1880-1930" (PhD diss., Department of History, Victoria University of Wellington, 1992).
18.
Stevens, London County Council under the Progressives, 4.
19.
See John Davis' review of Pennybacker's monograph in English Historical Review (September, 1997): 1005-6.
20.
See Macdonald's introduction to H. A. Taylor, Robert Donald (London: Stanley Paul, 1934).
21.
This phrase is used in the prospectus for the journal held in Robert Donald's private papers House of Lords Record Office (HLRO) ACC 1459 D/3/2.
22.
HLRO ACC 1459 D/3/2. Robert Donald's private papers.
23.
HLRO ACC 1459 D/3/2.
24.
HLRO ACC 1459/D/3/2.
25.
HLRO ACC 1459/D/32.
26.
London, February 2, 1893, 1.
27.
Joyce, Rule of Freedom .
28.
See for example F.H.A. Aalen, "Lord Meath, City Improvement and Social Imperialism," Planning Perspectives4: 2 (1989): 127-52.
29.
See H. Meller , The Ideal City (Leicester : Leicester University Press, 1979 ).
30.
This is noted by H. Meller, "Urban Renewal and Citizenship: The Quality of Life in British Cities 1890-1990," Urban History22 (May, 1995): 64.
31.
London, February 2, 1893, 1.
32.
P.J. Smith , "The Rehousing/Relocation Issue in an Early Slum Clearance Scheme: Edinburgh 1865-1885," Urban Studies26: 9 ( 1989): 100-14.
33.
Municipal Journal, March 23, 1900, 219
34.
Joyce, Rule of Freedom , 130.
35.
See M. Hewitt , "Confronting the Modern City: The Manchester Free Public Library 1850-1880," Urban History27 (2000): 62-88 and the Municipal Journal March 16, 1900, 321.
36.
Municipal Journal, August 10, 1900, 624.
37.
See "Shoreditch: Then and Now," the Municipal Journal, June 1, 1900, 424.
38.
C. Otter, "Making Liberalism Durable: Vision and Civility in the Later Victorian City," Social History27: 1 (2002): 1-15.
39.
Municipal Journal, May 18, 1900, 381.
40.
Wohl, The Eternal Slum , 259.
41.
See R. Vladimir Steffel, "The Boundary Street Estate: An Example of Urban Re-development by the London County Council," Town Planning Review47 (1976): 161-73. Reported by the Municipal Journal, March 2, 1900, 123.
42.
Ben Cooper was Progressive councillor for Bromley and Bow; see the Municipal Journal, July 26, 1901, 569.
43.
Wohl, The Eternal Slum , 259.
44.
Inwood, London: A History , 555.
45.
See A. Sutcliffe and D. Schubert, "The 'Haussmannization' of London? The Planning and Construction of Kingsway-Aldwych 1889-1935," in Planning Perspectives11: 2 (1996), 115-44.
46.
Municipal Journal, January 31, 1902, 83.
47.
Municipal Journal, May 24, 1901, 394; February 8, 1901, 102; July 30, 1909, 630.
48.
M.J. Daunton, House and Home in the Victorian City, 15.
49.
Municipal Journal, September 17, 1909, 773.
50.
London and the Municipal Journal, July 21, 1898, 457-8.
51.
See I. Maver , "Local Party Politics and the Temperance Crusade: Glasgow, 1890-1912" in Scottish Labour History Society Journal , vol. 27 (1992), 44-63. See also I. Maver (Sweeney) , "Municipal Administration of Glasgow 1833-1912," (PhD diss., Department of History, University of Glasgow, 1990), and her "Glasgow's Civic Government," in W. H. Fraser and 1. Maver , eds., Glasgow Vol. II. 183-1912 ( Manchester : University Press, 1996 ), and J.J. Smyth, habour in Glasgow 1896-1936: Socialism, Suffrage, Sectarianism ( East Linton: Tuckwell, 2000).
52.
M.J. Wiener, Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture Law and Policy 1830-1914 ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press1990), 262-3.
53.
Cited in Wiener, Reconstructing, 262.
54.
See J. Lawrence , "Class and Gender in the Making of Urban Toryism, 1880-1914," English Historical Review108 (July, 1993): 629-52.
55.
A. August, "A Culture of Consolation? Rethinking Politics in Working-Class London, 1870-1914," Historical Research74 (2001): 191-219. In this important challenge to the notion of working-class passiveness, August clearly demonstrates a politics of everyday life in London districts populated by the working class.
56.
See London and the Municipal Journal, March 10, 1899, 201 and the Municipal Journal, April 13, 1906. It reported that twenty-seven education authorities were making provision for "systematic moral instruction" (p. 398).
57.
See C. Harding and L. Wilkin, "The Dream of a Benevolent Mind: The Later Victorian Response to the Problem of Inebriety," Criminal Justice History6 (1998 ): 195-6.
58.
Municipal Journal, April 6, 1906, 371. The failure of the LCC's inebriate reformatory located at Farmfield, Horley, Surrey is documented in G. Hunt, J. Mellor, and J. Turner, "Wretched, Hatless and Miserably Clad; Women and the Inebriate Reformatories ," The British Journal of Sociology40:2 (1989): 244-70.
59.
For a recent study of juvenile reform, see D.M. Pomfret, "Representations of Adolescence in the Modern City: Voluntary Provision in Nottingham and St. Etienne 1890-1914," Journal of Family History26:4 (October, 2001): 455-79. See also his monograph, Young People and the European City: Age Relations in Nottingham and St. Etienne 1890-1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004) and H. Hendrick, Images of Youth ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
60.
Inwood, History of London , 443.
61.
Municipal Journal, March 23, 1900, 219.
62.
See for example "Training Poor Law Children: How Kensington and Chelsea Guardians are attempting to Make Good Citizens," Municipal Journal, April 13, 1900, 280.
63.
For antiurbanism in the 1890s see J. Marsh, Back to the Land: The Pastoral Impulse in England 1800-1914 (London: Quartet, 1982).
64.
"The London Scholar," Municipal Journal, April 15, 1910, 534.
65.
"Homes for East London Children," Municipal Journal, May 8, 1903, 445.
66.
J.A. Stack , "The Provision of Reformatory Schools, the Landed Class and the Myth of the Superiority of Rural Life in Mid-Victorian England ," History of Education, 8 (1979): 33-43.
67.
Municipal Journal, May 28, 1909, 450.
68.
London, March 16, 1898, 108. "It is clear that the shopkeepers in general recognise the advantage of permitting the costers to ply their trades in the streets."
69.
R.J. Morris , "Governance: Two Centuries of Urban Growth," in Urban Governance: Britain and Beyond since 1750, ed. R. J. Morris and R. H. Trainor (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 10.
70.
Municipal Journal, October 10 1902, 829.
71.
See Municipal Journal, November 1, 1901, 845.
72.
For example, an example for the city of Manchester is documented in "Alleged Municipal Corruption," Municipal Journal, November 2, 1900, 863.
73.
M. Brodie, The Politics of the Poor: The East End of London 1885-1914 ( Oxford: University Press, 2004), 87.
74.
See Pennybacker, "The Millennium by Return of Post" and the review of Politics and the People of London by Ken Young, "Toppling the Colossus: The LCC and the Historians " in London Journal15:2 (1990), 147-54.
