George Joachim Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen PC

His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council

 deputy lieutenant

Fellowship of the British Academy

George Joachim Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen PC DL FBA

George Joachim Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen PC DL FBA (10 August 1831 – 7 February 1907) was a British statesman and businessman best remembered for being "forgotten" by Lord Randolph Churchill. He was initially a Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist before joining the Conservative Party in 1893.

While Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1888, he introduced the Goschen formula to allocate funding for Scotland and Ireland.

Background, education and business career
He was born in London, into a Jewish family,[1] the son of Wilhelm Heinrich (William Henry) Goschen, who emigrated from Leipzig. His grandfather was the prominent German printer Georg Joachim Göschen. He was educated at Rugby under Tait, and at Oriel College, Oxford, where he took a first in Literae Humaniores and served as President of the Oxford Union.[2] He entered his father's firm of ″Frühling & Göschen″, of Austin Friars, in 1853, and three years later became a director of the Bank of England.[3] From 1874 to 1880, Goschen was Governor (Company chairman) of the Hudson's Bay Company, North America's oldest company (established by English royal charter in 1670).

Political career, 1863–1885
In 1863 he was returned without opposition as one of the four MPs for the City of London in the Liberal interest, and he was reelected in 1865. In November of the same year he was appointed Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Paymaster General, and in January 1866 he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with a seat in the cabinet. When Gladstone became prime minister in December 1868, Goschen joined the cabinet as President of the Poor Law Board, until March 1871, when he succeeded Childers as First Lord of the Admiralty. In the 1874 general election he was the only Liberal returned for the City of London, and by a narrow majority. Being sent to Cairo in 1876 as delegate for the British holders of Egyptian bonds in 1876,[2]: 50  he concluded an agreement with the Khedive to arrange for the conversion of the debt.[3]

In 1878 his views on the county franchise question prevented him from voting consistently with his party. With the City of London becoming more Conservative, Goschen did not stand there at the 1880 general election, but was instead returned for Ripon in Yorkshire,[2]: 82  which he represented until 1885, when he was returned for Edinburgh East. He declined to join Gladstone's government in 1880 and refused the post of Viceroy of India, but he became special ambassador to the Porte, where he settled the Montenegrin and Greek frontier questions in 1880 and 1881. He was made an Ecclesiastical Commissioner in 1882. When Sir Henry Brand was raised to the peerage in 1884, Goschen was offered the role of Speaker of the House of Commons, but he declined. During the parliament of 1880–1885 he frequently found himself at odds with his party, especially over franchise extension and questions of foreign policy. When Gladstone adopted Home Rule for Ireland, Goschen followed Lord Hartington (afterwards 8th Duke of Devonshire) and became one of the most active of the Liberal Unionists. He failed to retain his seat for Edinburgh at the election in July of that year.[2]: 127 [3]

Political career, 1885–1895
On the resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill in December 1886, Goschen, though a Liberal Unionist, accepted Lord Salisbury's invitation to join his ministry as Chancellor of the Exchequer.[3] Churchill had assumed he could not be replaced and famously commented that he had "forgotten Goschen" was a potential alternative.[2]: 131  Goschen needed a seat in Parliament and so stood in a by-election in the Liverpool Exchange constituency but was defeated by seven votes in January 1887. He was then elected for the strongly-Conservative St George's, Hanover Square, in February. His chancellorship was memorable for his successful conversion of the National Debt in 1888.[4] He also introduced the first UK road tax, implemented in the form of two vehicle duties, on locomotives and carts.[5][6][7]

According to Roy Jenkins, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, "Whether Goschen was a good Chancellor is more problematical. His main and real achievement was the conversion in 1888 of the core of the national debt from a 3 percent to a 2.75 percent and ultimately 2.5 percent basis. For the rest he was a stolid and uninnovating Chancellor." Professor Thomas Skinner wrote, "Yet there remains a feeling that he failed to accomplish much of what needed to be done".[8]

The University of Aberdeen again conferred upon him the honour of the rectorship in 1888, he received an honorary LL.D from the University of Cambridge in the same year,[9] and he received a similar honour from the University of Edinburgh in 1890.[3]

Following the defeat of Salisbury's government in 1892, Goschen moved into opposition. Though he had been a leading Liberal Unionist as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Goschen did not stand against Joseph Chamberlain for the leadership of the party in 1892 following the departure of Hartington to the House of Lords as the Duke of Devonshire. Unable to work with Chamberlain, Goschen left the Liberal Unionists and joined the Conservatives in 1893. One obvious sign of his change of allegiance within the Unionist alliance was when he joined the exclusively Conservative Carlton Club in the same year.

Political career, 1895–1907

Caricature from Punch, 13 August 1881: "This is a Joke-'im Goschen Picture of a Wise Man from the East, at present ascertaining which way the wind blows"
From 1895 to 1900 Goschen was First Lord of the Admiralty. He retired in 1900 and was raised to the peerage as Viscount Goschen of Hawkhurst, Kent. Though retired from active politics he continued to take a great interest in public affairs, and when Chamberlain started his tariff reform movement in 1903, Lord Goschen was one of the weightiest champions of free trade on the Unionist side.[3]

Other public positions
In educational subjects Goschen had always taken the greatest interest, his best known, but by no means his only, contribution to popular culture being his participation in the University Extension Movement. His first efforts in parliament were devoted to advocating the abolition of religious tests and the admission of Dissenters to the universities. His published works indicate how ably he combined the wise study of economics with a practical instinct for business-like progress, without neglecting the more ideal aspects of human life. In addition to his well-known work on The Theory of Foreign Exchanges, he published several financial and political pamphlets and addresses on educational and social subjects, among them being,The Cultivation of the Imagination, Liverpool, 1877, and that on Intellectual Interest, Aberdeen, 1888.[10] He was President of the Royal Statistical Society, 1886–88.

He also wrote a biography of his grandfather, The Life and Times of George Joachim Goschen, publisher and printer of Leipzig (1903). This culminated a long-standing project to refute allegations of Jewish ancestry,[2]: 1  giving his earliest ascertainable ancestor as a Lutheran pastor named Joachimus Gosenius, recorded in 1609.[11] However, it did not prevent his family from being erroneously classed as of Jewish origin in the German genealogical work known as The Semi Gotha, first published 1913.[12]

Private life
Goschen died on 7 February 1907. He had married, in 1857, Lucy, the daughter of John Dalley, and had 6[13] children. He was succeeded by his eldest son George (1866–1952), who was also a Conservative politician, served as Governor of Madras and married the daughter of Lord Cranbrook.[3]

Cultural references
Goschen appears as a minor character in the historical-mystery novel Stone's Fall, by Iain Pears.
He is referenced in the poem Away from It All by New Zealand poet A. R. D. Fairburn:
I want to leave behind me all rancid emotion.
I want to be alone. I want to forget Goschen.[14]

References
 NOBLE FAMILIES OF JEWISH ANCESTRY (archive.org)
 Spinner, Thomas J. (26 July 1973). George Joachim Goschen: The Transformation of a Victorian Liberal. Cambridge University Press. p. 4. ISBN 9780521202107 – via Internet Archive. July.
 Chisholm 1911, p. 263.
 "Tidy up the mess the Goschen way". Financial Times. 20 July 2011. Archived from the original on 10 December 2022.
 "The speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer". The Times. 27 March 1888.
 "The Excise Duties (Local)". The Times. 27 March 1888.
 "Car tax disc to be axed after 93 years". BBC News. 5 December 2013.
 Jenkins, Roy (1998). "George Joachim Goschen". The Chancellors. London: Macmillan. pp. 79–80. ISBN 0333730577.
 "Goschen, George Joachim (GSCN888GJ)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
 Chisholm 1911, pp. 263–264.
 Goschen, George Joachim (1903). The Life and Times of Georg Joachim Goschen, printer of Leipzig 1752–1828, Volume 1. p. 3.
 "NOBLE FAMILIES OF JEWISH ANCESTRY". Archived from the original on 9 September 2012. Retrieved 25 September 2012.
 1871 England Census; Class: RG10; Piece: 1047; Folio: 92; Page: 3; GSU roll: 827483 in conjunction with 1891 England Census; Class: RG12; Piece: 779; Folio: 79; Page: 4; GSU roll: 6095889
 A. R. D. Fairburn. "Away from It All". Retrieved 11 April 2015.
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh (1911). "Goschen, George Joachim Goschen, 1st Viscount". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 263–264.



 

George Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen - Wikipedia






The Charity Organisation Societies were founded in England in 1869 following the 'Goschen Minute'[1] that sought to severely restrict outdoor relief distributed by the Poor Law Guardians. In the early 1870s a handful of local societies were formed with the intention of restricting the distribution of outdoor relief to the elderly.

Also called the Associated Charities was a private charity that existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a clearing house for information on the poor.[2] The society was mainly concerned with distinction between the deserving poor and undeserving poor.[3] The society believed that giving out charity without investigating the problems behind poverty created a class of citizens that would always be dependent on alms giving.[4]

The society originated in Elberfeld, Germany and spread to Buffalo, New York around 1877.[5] The conviction that relief promoted dependency was the basis for forming the Societies. Instead of offering direct relief, the societies addressed the cycle of poverty. Neighborhood charity visitors taught the values of hard work and thrift to individuals and families. The COS set up centralised records and administrative services and emphasised objective investigations and professional training. There was a strong scientific emphasis as the charity visitors organised their activities and learned principles of practice and techniques of intervention from one another. The result led to the origin of social casework. Gradually, over the ensuing years, volunteer visitors began to be supplanted by paid staff.

Operations
Charity Organisation Societies were made up of charitable groups that used scientific philanthropy to help poor, distressed or deviant persons. The Societies considered themselves more than just alms givers. Their ultimate goal was to restore as much self-sufficiency and responsibility as an individual could manage. Through their activities, the Societies tended to be aware of the range of social services available in their communities. They thus became the primary source of information and referral for all services. Through these referrals, a Society often became the central agency in the social services of its community. For instance, the Charity Organization Society of Denver, Colorado, the forerunner of the modern United Way of America, coordinated the charitable activities of local Jewish, Congregational and Catholic groups. Its work under the leadership of Frances Wisebart Jacobs ranged from work with tuberculosis patients[6] to the care and education of young children[7] and was funded in part by direct assistance from the city itself.[8]

Settlement House movement
The Charity Organization Society can be compared to the settlement house movement which emphasised social reform rather than personal problems as the proper focus of charity.

Efficacy and criticism
Despite its claims that private charity would be superior to public welfare because it improved the moral character of the recipients, records from the COS' Indianapolis branch show that only a minority of its relief recipients managed to become self-reliant, with the exit rate declining sharply the longer people were on relief. The exit rates are similar to those in late-20th-century public welfare programs, despite the fact that COS only granted relief only to recipients it deemed worthy and improvable. Furthermore, journals kept by the COS case workers and "friendly visitors" indicate that they were not on friendly terms with the relief recipients but described them in disparaging terms and interacted with them in an intrusive and presumptuous way.[9]

The COS was resented by the poor for its harshness, and its acronym was rendered by critics as "Cringe or Starve".[9]

Britain's Charity Organisation Society
In Britain, the Charity Organisation Society led by Helen Bosanquet and Octavia Hill was founded in London in 1869[10] and supported the concept of self-help and limited government intervention to deal with the effects of poverty. Alsager Hay Hill was prominent from its foundation, acting as honorary secretary of the council until July 1870, and as an active member of the council until 1880:[11]

Mr. Alsager Hay Hill joined the Society in its first year. He was one of its first Hon. Secretaries, and the life and soul of Council meetings in the early days of struggle. A man of rare natural wit, something of a poet, and the brightest of companions, he threw himself eagerly into the Society's work, and more particularly devoted his time and energy to an attempt to deal with the problems of unemployment. His 'Labour News' of thirty years ago anticipated the Labour Exchanges of today.[12]

The organisation claimed to use "scientific principles to root out scroungers and target relief where it was most needed".[13] Annie Barnes joined the organisation and used her own background that people objected to accepting "Charity".[14] The Charity Organisation Society was renamed Family Welfare Association in 1946 and still operates today as Family Action, a registered family support charity.

See also
Scientific Charity Movement
References
 Poor Law Board; 22nd Annual Report (1869–70), Appendix A No.4. Relief to the Poor in the Metropolis. PP XXXI, 1871
 (1895). "Charity's Clearing House." The Washington Post. December 15.
 (1900) "Commissioners of the District of Columbia." Washington Government Printing Office.
 (1887). "Lots of Chronic Paupers." The Washington Post. October 21.
 Welfare, National Conference on Social (1 January 2005). Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1880.
 (1903) Albert Shaw, The American Review of Reviews. Radcliffe Library, 1903: 701.
 (1903) Benjamin Lindsey Collection, Box 85, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; letters from Izetta George dated February 11 and February 14, 1903.
 (1900) Isabel C. Barrows, ed. The Social Welfare Forum. The Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction at the Twenty-Sixth Annual Session Held in the City of Cincinnati, Ohio, May 17–23, 1899. Boston: George H. Ellis, 1900, page 376.
 Ziliak, Stephen (2004), Self-Reliance before the Welfare State: Evidence from the Charity Organization Movement in the United States. Journal of Economic History, Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 433–461
 "1800s". Family Action: About Us. Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 17 November 2010.
 Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). "Hill, Alsager Hay" . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
 Bosanquet, Helen (1914), Social work in London, 1869 to 1912: A History of the Charity Organisation Society. New York, E P Button & Co.
 Rees, Rosemary (2001). Poverty and Public Health 1815–1949. London: Heinemann.
 Elizabeth Crawford, ‘Barnes , Annie (c.1887–1982)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 28 July 2017
Categories: Poor Law in Britain and IrelandSocial welfare charities based in the United KingdomHistory of Buffalo, New York





Lord Randolph Churchill - Wikipedia






Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill[a] (13 February 1849 – 24 January 1895) was a British aristocrat and politician.[1] Churchill was a Tory radical and coined the term 'Tory democracy'.[2] He participated in the creation of the National Union of the Conservative Party.

He became Secretary of State for India, and later was Chancellor of the Exchequer. As Chancellor, he attracted both admiration and criticism across the political spectrum. Some critics were from his own party, including some of his friends. Eventually, he risked a tactical resignation as Chancellor to try to secure his position on armed forces expenditure, but the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, accepted his resignation and replaced him. This was the "beginning of the end" of Churchill's career.

His elder son was Winston Churchill, who wrote a biography of him in 1906.[3]