In this blog post, the second of a new series, Stuart Eagles looks into what the Sheffield communists believed in. He scrutinises unfamiliar sources to find out more about what happened when Ruskin & the Communists met in Walkley on 27 April 1876 …
RUSKIN & THE COMMUNISTS (PART 2):
THE MEETING IN WALKLEY, 27 APRIL 1876 (PART 2)
Stuart Eagles
We ended the first blog post in this new series by considering the contents of a letter written to the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent by George Dawson, one of the Sheffield communists who met Ruskin in Walkley on 27 April 1876.
Dawson sought to correct the largely unfavourable report of the meeting that had appeared in the Tory Sheffield Daily Telegraph—a report subsequently reproduced by Ruskin’s editors, and the main source on which scholars have relied ever since. Dawson also took to task the “Spectator in Hallamshire”—a regular columnist in the Independent who had written an unflattering opinion piece about Ruskin and the Communists, apparently based on the Telegraph report. So:
WHO WAS GEORGE DAWSON?
George Dawson (1841-1886) was a native of Brampton, Derbyshire. By way of occupation, he became a master tailor and draper. He was also a serious autodidact.
It was “by great perseverance and much study”, according to his obituary, that he “acquired a large amount of information of many subjects” (Sheffield Weekly Telegraph, 27 March 1886).
Dawson got involved in Sheffield’s Mechanics’ Institute in the mid-1860s, and served it for some time as secretary, and later as a vice-president. His views on theology were said (rather cryptically) to be “advanced”, while on politics they were “too advanced” for him “to join himself with any party”.
When he met Ruskin at the museum in Walkley in 1876, he was in his mid-30s and married with two daughters. He is named on a list of “working men” compiled by the museum’s curator, Henry Swan, in the 1870s and certainly before 3 April 1881 (it includes addresses from which some of the working men are known to have moved away by the time of the 1881 census, Dawson included).
Dawson’s obituary describes him as “very much reserved, even awkward in the presence of strangers, but in the company of his friends he could be both genial and animated” (Sheffield Weekly Telegraph, 27 March 1886). The Telegraph report on the Walkley meeting records how one of the working men who met Ruskin was a phrenologist. This was almost certainly Dawson. In response to an exchange in which Ruskin denied being too modest, a man declared that “Mr Ruskin’s bump of self-appreciativeness was pretty well developed” (Works, 30.307)!
Whilst one Mr E. T. Edwards is known to have given a talk on phrenology in October 1875 to the Sheffield secularists who met at the Hall of Science in Rockingham Street (the group, as we shall see, out of which the Sheffield communists had emerged), Edwards (unlike Dawson) is not known to have met Ruskin in Walkley.
Dawson’s obituary, on the other hand, identifies phrenology as a subject to which he
“gave especial and earnest attention, and his knowledge of this science was excelled by very few. His natural diffidence, however, always kept him from making the most of his acquirements in this direction.” (Sheffield Weekly Telegraph, 27 March 1886)
We learn more about the phrenological episode in Walkley from the Swans’ eldest son, Howard, who recalled the incident with altogether more dramatic humour in reminiscences published in the Westminster Gazette just after Ruskin’s death. He wrote that
“a local working celebrity, whose forte was phrenology, in the midst of the discussion got up and said, ‘Ah, lad, tha’s plenty of self-esteem!’ and, so saying, laid a rough paw on the gentle Professor’s crown on that particular bump, much to the shrinking astonishment of Ruskin and the almost horror of the surrounding circle!” (Westminster Gazette, 24 January 1900)
This does beg the question of exactly how shy Dawson really was, though the episode was undoubtedly an awkward one!
DEFINING COMMUNISM
At this point we should introduce some evidence from another neglected source—the longer and more favourable report of the meeting between Ruskin and the communists published in the Liberal Sheffield and Rotherham Independent (Independent for short).
This tells us that, despite Dawson’s alleged shyness, he asked “the first question put to Mr Ruskin”—about “the extremes of wealth and poverty” (Independent, 29 April 1876).
Ruskin’s reported reply was remarkably consistent with the principles he had first set down in detail in Unto this Last (1860), a fact that chimes with the Rev. T. W. Holmes’s characterisation of the meeting in his reminiscences (see previous blog post, #45).
The Independent’s report gives the best insight yet into Ruskin’s motivation for embarking on the farm experiment at Totley in which the Walkley meeting ultimately resulted.
Ruskin said that
“everyone might live on terms of equality with his neighbour, and that there ought to be no poor. He objected to so much competition in business. One tradesman, he contended, seemed to think he could only get rich by stealing another man’s customers. Food was adulterated, and scarcely anything was manufactured in an honest and genuine way. He thought that by their living in a ‘community’ they might secure healthy houses, fresh air, pure water, and good food and clothing. Everyman would be able to exercise his peculiar skill or talents, and reap the reward of his labours.” (Independent, 29 April 1876).
This is the honest (Ruskin would also say “true” and “just”) politics of social affection, interdependence, and co-operation. When Ruskin spoke of living “on terms of equality” with his neighbour, he meant that all men are equal in the sight of God; he wasn’t endorsing an egalitarian vision of society. Likewise, when he spoke of co-operatio, he was not thinking of the co-operative movement, but using the word deliberately as an antonym for competition, which he saw as the chief destructive force in the prevailing system of modern industrial capitalism.
So, how far did Ruskin’s views resonate with the Sheffield communists?
George Dawson helpfully provided some sort of description of his own brand of communism in his letter of correction to the Independent. But he is almost comically vague.
Dawson perceived his communism very much as having developed out of the co-operative movement. He made it clear that he was not alone in his growing sense of confidence about what collective politics might achieve. He wrote:
“Co-operation, once sneered at, is now a great fact. Communism is co-operation, with the moral, intellectual, and social elements added.” (Independent, 6 May 1876)
The Independent report confirms the Telegraph’s claim that Ruskin expressed agreement with the “broad principles” of communism, though it is doubtful that anyone explicitly set these out, and in any case he crucially admitted that the word was susceptible of many meanings.
However, the Independent reveals that, after making this admission, Ruskin added: “The realisation of their [i.e. the Sheffield communists’] Utopia depended upon their notions as to what constituted happiness.” (Independent, 29 April 1876).
The best clues as to how the Sheffield communists might have answered Ruskin’s challenge to define happiness are once again provided by George Dawson. This time, we must turn to a long letter he had written a couple of months before the Walkley meeting.
It was published in the journal, the Co-Operative News, headlined “Co-Operative Villages—Co-Operation and Communism”.
“England is not so bright or so happy as she lyingly pictures herself to be. It is only the few who are happy and prosperous, and only the few who can be, in the midst of such temptation and vice, good and virtuous.
“Re-model society, remove its shams, its vices and sins, or rather the causes of these, and you will have a happy England.” (Co-Operative News, 12-19 February 1876)
Dawson went on to cite the influence of Old Owenites such as Dr Henry Travis on the group of communists who would meet Ruskin in Walkley in April 1876.
Dawson explained that “a small circle of friends in Sheffield had met, and conceived a plan similar in all its leading principles to that of the doctor” (i.e. Travis, about whom, more later). Preferring the term “communities” over “co-operative villages”, Dawson wrote that the subject had deeply interested him and his friends for some time. “[T]he horrid condition of society is such”, Dawson wrote,
“as to lead all thinking men to the conclusion that things are so very bad that something must be done, either to end or mend our present barbarous and unchristianised state”.
The “unequal and unrighteous division of wealth” needed to be re-balanced because of the manifest injustice of the “unequal division of God-given comfort, health, knowledge, morality, and length of life” which it supported.
Dawson commended what he called communist and co-operative “mottoes” such as “in all labour there is profit”, “the labourer is worthy of his hire”, “he who will not work neither shall he eat”—Christian, Pauline sentiments in large part compatible with Ruskin’s gospel.
Dawson wrote:
“In a properly organised state of society there could be no millionaires, no paupers, no people dying of want, or short of all the necessities and comfort of life. It is a disgrace to a nation calling itself ‘Christian’ and ‘Bible loving’, that a man or child may die from sheer want.”
It was those hording millions of pounds, that they did not desire to use and could not possibly spend, who were the cause of poverty. Only “co-operation in its highest sense, or communism, is the cure for all this”, Dawson concluded. Everyone should have their fair share and no more. This would make for a “happier, healthier, more perfect society”.
The achievements of the co-operative movement were commendable, Dawson thought, but the simple receipt of the “divi”—the interest paid to shareholders—only went so far.
What was needed was collective action: people should band together to create their own communities. They would be “more honest, equable, healthy, and moral than we have yet seen”. “This is communism—as I call it”, Dawson asserted.
What was now needed, above all else, Dawson argued, was a “practical example” of such a community, taking co-operative politics and communism to the next stage of their development.
THE COMMUNIST VISION OF THE CO-OPERATIVE COMMUNITY
In Dawson’s model community there would be no pub, but a “common cooking kitchen, the common washhouse” and residents would be able to “warm [their] rooms by simply turning a tap”. He claimed that that last notion struck contemporaries as so absurdly unrealistic and utopian that it provoked derision:
“The richer we get the bigger we build our cities, and the unhealthier they become; the more keen and deadly the competition, the faster we died. Civilisation (so called) and demoralization and death go, at present, hand in hand.”
The solution was clear, Dawson insisted:
“you must begin in a small way, and a community commenced to-morrow, with the help of all this surplus wealth of which co-operators boast, would and must be a success, and be a start towards the redemption of society.”
MR RUSKIN AND THE COMMUNISTS OF SHEFFIELD
Further particulars of the meeting in Walkley between Ruskin and the communists on 27 April 1876 were given in a report printed in the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent on Saturday, 29 April under the title, “Mr Ruskin and the Communists of Sheffield”. It has not previously been cited by Ruskin scholars. According to Dawson’s letter, the Independent report was from a “reliable source” and constituted a “correct” and “just” account which he thanked the newspaper for publishing (6 May 1876). Indeed, he may well have written it himself.
The report in the Independent is approximately twice the length of that in the Telegraph. It gives a much clearer sense of the character of the communism espoused by the group of workers whom Ruskin met.
“They believe that Communism as propounded by Robert Owen is the only true remedy for the evils at present prevailing in society. They advocate the leaving of the dust and dirt and squalor of towns, and erecting ‘co-operative villages’ on suitable pieces of land where fresh air and pure water can be readily obtained. The ‘villages’ should consist of houses, works, dining and lecture hall, library, and so forth. The earnings of the ‘community’ to go into a common fund; every member to have food, shelter, and clothing; and the surplus to be devoted to providing the same happy homes for others.” (Independent (29 April 1876).
The inspirational example of Robert Owen is crucially significant. The loyalty of Ruskin’s Sheffield communists to Owenite principles was emphasised again in the anonymous report published in The Times just under a year after the Walkley meeting: those who had met Ruskin consisted of “several working men who had embraced the doctrines of Robert Owen” (9 April 1877). A utopian socialist active in the co-operative movement, Owen sought to improve the conditions of the workers in his New Lanark textile mills, and established co-operative communities shaped by his first-hand experience of New Harmony, Indiana.
The “latest work of their modern authority, Dr Travis” was praised in the Independent report, and was also referred to approvingly in George Dawson’s letter in the Co-operative News (Independent, 29 April 1876). Henry Travis (1807-1884), a Yorkshire-born but London-based physician who wrote widely about socialism and the co-operative movement, was among Owen’s key supporters. The book alluded to in the report, but not named there, was probably Effectual Reform in Man and Society (1875) in which the word “effectual” connotes socialism and co-operation. Travis was named as an influence on the Sheffield Communists and credited with convincing many of the working classes who had read him that
“it would be well if they could live and work together on an advanced co-operative system, each labourer becoming a partaker in the common benefits arising out of the undertaking, whatever form it takes (Independent, 29 April 1876).
Although the view of model co-operative ventures adopted by the socialist William Harrison Riley (who would later be involved with the Ruskinian experiment at Totley) may not have been identical with those of the group of Sheffield communists Ruskin addressed in Walkley in April 1876, it is instructive to pause here to consider what Ruskin told Riley in several letters that passed between them. Passages from these letters were published by Riley in an article in an American periodical in 1890 which has hitherto been overlooked by scholars.
On model industrial villages, Ruskin wrote:
“I shall be glad to hear your plan for an industrial village, but have you yet seen that the main purpose of Fors is to determine what people should be industrious for? Till you determine that, how can you plan a [model] village?” ([Riley], p. 348)
Ruskin wrote later that he did not know “how far I can or may choose to help or promote your plan for an industrial village”:
“You think cooperation will do all? By no means, my friend. Cooperating rogues are worse than single ones. ….
“I see that, to a certain extent, we agree, and that you are now prepared not to speak of Republicanism until the workingmen have been taught self-respect. But will you please first tell me what in themselves you wish them to respect? …” ([Riley, p. 348)
In Walkley in April 1876, the Sheffield communists hoped to hear Ruskin’s views on their movement, to gain his sympathy, and “above all” to secure “his aid and influence in the practical development of their scheme” (Independent, 29 April 1876). They had read the books in which he had
“condemned, as strongly as themselves, the present state of competition in business, and preached a crusade against unhealthy squalid homes, as distinguished from the pure air, pure food, and plain but substantial clothing to be met with in places like the Swiss mountains, where the atmosphere is uncontaminated by the roaring, reeking, smoky industries of man.” (SIndependent, 29 April 1876)
The Sheffield communists believed that Ruskin’s views coincided with many of theirs, the Independent reported. But they acknowledged one crucial difference. Ruskin had not invested the St George’s Company in “a local habitation”. Consequently, he was not able to give them practical advice, either on where to locate their scheme, or on “its embodiment in a material, substantial form”.
It is not clear from the Independent report if the following words indirectly record something Ruskin said that night in Walkley, or merely indicates what one or more of the Sheffield communists thought of the St George’s Company, but it certainly sounds like Ruskin.
“Like pure air in the gardens of nature, his society is to be of universal benefit if, like the air itself, its healing influences are not corrupted by the folly or vices of men.” (Independent, 29 April 1876)
Whoever this thought belonged to, it exposes the fault-lines between the beautiful dream of an ideal and the gritty reality of attempts at practical realisation. There was a sense of jeopardy on both sides and the two worlds were about to collide.
Given that there was so much interest in model communities among the members of this group of Sheffield’s politically conscious working-class, Ruskin’s arrival in Walkley to speak with them could scarcely have been more propitiously timed. What became the Totley project was a collaborative land experiment fuelled by the Sheffield communists, enabled by Ruskin, and mediated by Henry Swan.
It was reported that a “rev[erend] gentleman”—presumably Holmes—objected to the “Utopian scheme” outlined by the communists. They ought better, he thought, “to cultivate nature as they found it in their own homes, making these beautiful, and devoting more time to their children”. They might cultivate flowers in their windows, he thought.
George Dawson rebuffed the suggestion and said that this was impossible in many places: he had tried it in his own home, “where the air was poisoned”, and “it had been a failure”.
Ruskin sympathised, and added that “the men most capable of the subtle forms of art were to be found in warm countries, where they passed most of their time out of doors”.
Holmes’s recollection was that Ruskin spoke of
“what the world will be when the toil of men is not for hurtful things, when the beauty of the earth and sky is no longer defiled with the smoke of men tormented with an inappeasable desire to make money without any conception of its worthy use, when the eyes of men shall be open to the loveliness that lies around and bends above them, when the life he has painted in such inimitable colours becomes the only life regarded as worth any strife at all.” (Works 30.310)
Ruskin answered questions with the “greatest courtesy”, but Holmes does not provide any details of these exchanges (Works 30.310).
On a wider political point, Ruskin was asked about crime and, according to the Telegraph, answered that he felt “so strongly” that he “dare[d] not give expression to his ideas for fear of being misunderstood, or that he should be charged with cruelty” (Works 30.309).
The account in the Independent stated that Ruskin explained his own political outlook as follows.
“[… H]is object had always been to see the people cultivate art in the only practicable way, that of surrounding themselves with beautiful things; inasmuch as the delight of the cultivated eye was higher than that of the cultivated ear. It was his delight that the St George’s Company was universal, and that so far from its being local it would have members all over the world.” (Independent, 29 April 1876)
But, he added, perhaps sensing some disappointment in the audience:
“It was, however, possible that they might buy some land, and enable members of St George to leave nasty or unhealthy places to go and cultivate it.” (Independent, 29 April 1876)
This must have seemed promising to the Sheffield communists. Indeed, here are the seeds out of which the Totley experiment would grow.
THE TOTLEY ESTATE
The report in the Independent, which focused almost exclusively on the political discussion, concluded that “Mr Ruskin’s society was greatly enjoyed by those who had the pleasure of meeting with him”. It is worth noting, however, that Mrs Maloy later said of the meeting that “Nothing of any apparent importance took place between us at this time” (Maloy, p. 165).
Nevertheless, a generally favourable opinion of Ruskin among the Sheffield communists at the time (1876) was apparently reciprocated. Encouraged by Henry Swan, Ruskin proceeded to pursue the scheme “to buy some land”.
Nowhere in the Telegraph report, nor in Mrs Maloy’s letter, was it acknowledged that any practical undertaking was made during the three hours Ruskin and the communists shared together in Walkley. But the report in the Independent, published only two days after the event, is clear. Ruskin, it said, held out to the Sheffield communists
“the prospect of his being able to purchase some land for the purpose of cultivation, and placing upon it those who chose to leave bad, unhealthy places for the toil and recreation of a country life.” (Independent, 29 April 1876)
Mrs Maloy picked up the story of Ruskin’s relationship with the Sheffield communists in her letter to the Commonweal written in 1889. It was Henry Swan, whom she calls “a persevering man”, who suggested that Ruskin lend them the money to buy land that the communists could then manage ‘freely’, i.e. independently of Ruskin and the Guild of St George. “[A] few weeks” after the meeting at the museum, she reported, “Mr Ruskin invited some of our party to look at and choose some land” (Maloy, p. 165).
Although Ruskin was abroad in Europe for nine months from August 1876, it is clear from correspondence unearthed by Mark Frost that Ruskin continued to take an active interest in the matter. Ruskin wrote to Emily Swan from Venice that “[i]t is quite possible that if a certain number of Sheffield men were to join, of good character, I might advance them some of St George’s fund to buy land with, if land is to be had, in the neighbourhood’ (10 December 1876).
Within two weeks, Ruskin had approved the purchase of the Totley estate (22 December), though the price for it then quoted was £1,200. not the £2,287 eventually paid (letter from Ruskin to Henry Swan, 23 December 1876: see Frost, p. 137).
The communist tenants would pay Ruskin 5% rent (23 December), reduced to 3% just one day later (24 December).
Mark Frost has shown that Swan visited the 13 acres at Totley before New Year 1877. Swan presumably met the farm’s owners when he looked over the estate. The conveyance documents give a sense of what he might have inspected: “messuage or dwelling house Barns stable cowhouses outhouses erections and buildings with the appurtenances thereunto”; and “closes pieces or parcels of land thereunto adjoining and belonging or occupied therewith called the ‘Croft’ or ‘Housefield’ the ‘Well field’ ‘Little Bottom’ and ‘Long Field’”.
The folk who owned the property were William Frederick Badger and his wife Jane. The couple had married in Heeley on 22 June 1867. William was then aged 29, a bachelor, and a self-declared ‘Gentleman’ resident in Heeley, who was the son of William Badger, also described as a Gentleman. In fact, William Badger Snr was a prosperous scissor manufacturer, whose firm, William Badger & Co., based on Cooper Street until the mid-1870s after William Snr’s death (in 1868), manufactured scissors, sheers, and table and spring knives. For part of William Jnr’s childhood, the family lived at West Don House. He entered the family business as a scissor-smith.
Badger Jnr married the 40-year-old widow, Jane Ward, who lived in Totley, possibly on the farm that was later known locally by her new husband’s name (Badger’s Farm). She certainly had farming in her blood, as her father, William Hatfield, was a farmer from Cottesmore, Rutland.
The conveyance document suggests that Jane was the owner of the property, because the initial agreement that Ruskin would purchase the estate was made with her, and later agreed “with the approbation of the said William Frederick Badger” (the Married Women’s Property Act was not passed until 1882, so for legal purposes William’s “approbation” was strictly necessary). . Sadly, Jane Badger would be dead within five years of the sale of the farm. She passed away on 22 March 1882 at Bradway Bank, Norton, aged only 54, and was buried three days later in an unmarked grave in Sheffield General Cemetery.
The farm, situated in the hamlet of Lower Mickley (or Neiter Mickley, as the conveyance document calls it) was not officially conveyed from the Badgers to Ruskin until 8 June 1877, and then transferred to the Guild of St George on 18 January 1879, three months after the organisation was granted the legal status of a limited company which conferred on it the right to own property (see Frost, p. 229n; and a letter from the Sheffield solicitor Benjamin Bagshawe to John Ruskin (8 June 1877) reproduced in Works , 29.182-183).
Ruskin had come a long way from the position he had stated to Swan on 3 April 1876. Then he had said, “I am not prepared, nor shall be, for many a day, to institute any colony”. He perhaps had in mind the land colonies associated with the Chartists, but he went on: “I shall only put chosen persons on ground as I get it. My first object is to save the ground—and I can always, at leisure pick out the people to live on it.” He even stated that when he met the men in Walkley later that month, he “may” outline his “reasons for not beginning a colony”.
Who did choose “to leave bad, unhealthy places for the toil and recreation of a country life”?—who did Ruskin allow to use the ground he secure at Totley?—and who exactly were the communists that met Ruskin in Walkley on 27 April 1876 and collectively took on a farm a few miles outside Sheffield? These questions will be answered in the third blog post in this new series on “Ruskin & the Communists” …
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Sources Cited
Anon: “Mr Ruskin and the Communists of Sheffield” in Sheffield and Rotherham Independent (29 April 1876)
Anon: “Death of Mr George Dawson” (obituary) in Sheffield Weekly Telegraph (27 March 1886).
Dawson, George: “Co-Operative Villages—Co-Operation and Communism” in Co-Operative News (12-19 February 1876)
Frost, Mark: The Lost Companions and Ruskin’s Guild of St George: A Revisionary History (Anthem Press, 2014)
Holmes, T[homas] W[illiam]: “An Evening With Ruskin at Walkley” in The Lamp: a Magazine for Christian Workers and Thinkers, no. 1 (January 1892) pp. 13-17, reproduced in Ruskin, Works, volume 30
Maloy, M.A.: “St George’s Farm” [a letter] in Commonweal, vol. 5, no. 176 (25 May 1889) pp.164-165
[Riley, William Harrison]: “John Ruskin” in The Illustrated American, vol. III, no. 28 (30 August 1890) pp. 347-352
Swan, Howard: “John Ruskin: Reminiscences by a Worker in His Museum”, in Westminster Gazette (24 January 1900).