In the fifth part of this new blog series, Stuart Eagles outlines the history of the Totley experiment during its first phase which involved the original group of Sheffield communists drawn from the Hall of Science. He seeks out evidence of who did what on the 13 acres, and traces the fault-lines that led to the scheme’s failure and the demise of the collaboration between Ruskin and a group of radical northern workers…
RUSKIN & THE COMMUNISTS (PART 5):
THE TRIAL OF COMMUNISM
Stuart Eagles
The early report of the Totley experiment that had appeared in The Times made two important claims.
“Nothing has yet been decided as to the details of the scheme. Mr Ruskin will not be responsible for its success or failure, having merely taken a kindly interest in its development.” (9 April 1877).
This public assertion, or promise (depending on your point-of-view), that Ruskin would be an almost silent partner at Totley contrasts starkly with the tone and content of his private letters to Henry Swan, the man who would serve as chief intermediary between Ruskin and the Sheffield Communists.
Whilst Ruskin declared that he was entirely united with Edwin Priest “in his faith”, and with Swan in his “hope” for the project, he confided:
“I dare not speak quite all I mean, because as far as I can judge the outcry from the rich would be [a] great hindrance; and I think God will show the truth to the men when His time comes; if he chooses that I should speak plainer, He will put words in my mouth.” (9 January 1877).
The hint of radicalism is clear, but so is the deeply rooted Christian morality which underpinned Ruskin’s politics, and was fundamental to all his philanthropic schemes.
That month’s Fors urged Sheffielders to form a commissariat. It was the first duty of any “civic authority” to ensure that everyone was fed and clothed, a point well made by the Sheffield Communists themselves in April 1876. He enjoined citizens to “make the ground in your district as productive as possible” (Works, 29.19).
If the Sheffield Communists read this, they are likely to have detected a kindred spirit. They might have had pause for thought, however, if they knew what Ruskin had written to Emily Swan earlier in the year:
“What a comic little thing you are, to fancy I expected Sheffield to take that dose of the feudal system like a quart of ale! If it could do such a thing as that—it could turn the world upside down—and there is a great deal of grease yet, in the wheels, and a good deal of dust to be raised on the road, before the old world comes to such turtle’s end. I only tell them what to aim at.” (12 January 1877)
Feudalism was hardly compatible with the concept of Equality Country. Yet five months later, Ruskin told Emily:
“[…] I am very glad the men feel that this world would be different if others felt as I do. That is assuredly true, and, I would give something to make a few public men be so! or to be premier of England for a year, myself.” (11 June 1877)
Nevertheless, Ruskin keenly underlined his belief that he was not getting carried away. He told Henry Swan not to
“fear my expecting too much—I expect nothing but row and disappointment for the men themselves. To me it is mere chemical experiments on Sheffield stuff.” (Received 21 July 1877)
It is doubtful that the communists themselves saw the project in such apparently flippant terms. Ruskin’s attitude not infrequently disregarded their hopes and feelings. Yet he seemed sincere in affording them the opportunity they craved to take a little piece of English land under their collective care to see what they could do with it.
Edward Carpenter would describe the Sheffield Communists in general—though with his friend Joseph Sharpe specifically in mind—as among
“the people—of native feeling, dignity, gentleness, in the very poorest walks, and of that desire for and belief in a better social life, which runs like a golden thread through the thoughts of the real workers in all lands.” (Carpenter, p. 74)
Even if their ambition was not in reality quite so great as this, it was noble and sincere. What was in doubt, however, was their capacity to realise much of a tangible kind in practice.
A MANAGER
The main option the Sheffield Communists pursued in their attempt to convert the “golden thread” of their faith and desire into the practical of social transformation was to employ a working manager.
Ruskin well understood that the Sheffield Communists themselves were essentially hobbyists in this experiment, however seriously they took their commitment. As we saw at the start of the last blog, Ruskin told readers of Fors Clavigera in April 1877 that they would “spend what spare hours they have, of morning or evening, in useful labour” on the land (Works 29.98 (written 4 March 1877).To describe the scheme as a commune or colony would therefore be misleading in the extreme. The group was not communists in a practical sense, nor even were they commuters (since they had day-jobs). Rather, they were day-trippers and weekenders. At least, that’s how they started. They intended to build towards a more serious commitment, but in the end they never got the chance.
Mrs Maloy’s testimony is frank and to the point, and demonstrates that Ruskin’s description of them was accurate. She explained that
“none of our party were farmers and all were earning money at their trades; so we engaged a practical man as working manager, paying him 24s. per week and letting him live in the house rent free. The money we had already subscribed was our capital, and we still continued to subscribe.” (Maloy, p. 165)
Mark Frost has speculated that the working manager to whom Mrs Maloy referred was George Shaw (whose identity then remained a mystery), but Mrs Maloy clearly implies that the man was from outside. When she writes that the group “engaged a practical man” she seems to mean someone who had practical experience of agricultural work. As I have now established that George Shaw was the shoemaker in the group, and undoubtedly one of the leading figures at Totley who had given the initial lecture on communism that had sparked them all into action, the suggestion that Mrs Maloy would have described the manager they had employed simply as “a practical man” lacks credibility.
True, the report in The Times in April 1877 did make clear that the “object”of the scheme’s “promoters” was “simply to carry on the boot and shoe-making trade on co-operative principles” (9 April 1877). But Mrs Maloy is clear that the “practical man” was making up for a deficit in the group’s skill-set, specifically the fact that they had no experience of farming work. As we shall see, further evidence from Mrs Maloy suggests that Shaw was never in fact in residence at the farm, begging the question of whether any other shoemaker ever was? Swan’s list of “Candidates for Abbeydale” supplies some intriguing possibilities.
SHOEMAKING
Henry Swan gives an address for “J. Maloy” (presumably John Maloy) care of “Mr Haslam Bootmaker” of “53 South Street, Park”. This refers to John Haslam (1810-1882), a boot-and-shoe maker and cordwainer (whose son, Joseph Jonas Haslam (1841-1916), also a cordwainer, would go to Ruskin’s museum in Walkley and sign the visitors’ book in 1888).
At the head of Swan’s list, meanwhile, is a note that suggests that it was compiled, or at any rate informed, by William Scorah (1811-1883), a Nottinghamshire-born master boot-and-shoe maker based at Change Alley, though tthen about to retire to Barrack Lane. Another Sheffield boot-and-shoe maker on Swan’s list is Richard Teather (1818-1886) of Stockton Street, Spital Hill, described by Swan as a “temperance man”. Teather’s sons, William Thompson Teather (1856-1922), a commercial clerk, and Walter Teather (1858-1911), a cabinet-case maker, appeared on Swan’s other contact list of “working men”, together with Richard Teather himself.
Swan’s list of “Candidates for Abbeydale” also includes two shoemakers from further afield: Tom O’Hara of Wyke, near Bradford, and John A. Woodcock of Lightcliffe, near Halifax. Given their distance from Totley, and in the absence of evidence that they were directly involved in the project, it seems reasonable to speculate that they either helped supply stock or to instruct the communists in shoemaking—and perhaps both.
It is also worth remembering that one of the prominent members of the group of Sheffield secularists associated with the Hall of Science was William Atkin Lill (1843-1919), later a member of Carpenter’s Sheffield Socialist Society. He was something of a poet—see, for example, his poem, “Bruno”, in the Secular Chronicle (6:14 (17 September 1876) p. p. 135). Perhaps Lill was a kindred spirit of the shoemaker-poet, Robert Bloomfield (1766-1823), originally apprenticed to work on a farm? Lill gave a paper to the Sheffield Secular Society on “Secular Duties”: Henry Richardson reported that it was “very interesting, as it portrayed the many evils in society, and that it was the duty of the Secular body to unite and try as far as possible to remedy those evils” (Secular Chronicle, 6:24 (24 September 1876), p. 154). At another meeting Liill read a caricature of Annie Besant’s lectures which had appeared in the Sheffield Post, to which he sent a reply (see Secular Chronicle, 6:19 (5 November 1876) p. 225). Lill was the “bootmaker friend” who gave Carpenter three lessons in sandal-making (see Edward Carpenter, My Days and Dreams, p. 124). There is no direct evidence that Lill was involved at Totley, but he was certainly in its orbit and knew its key participants well
Other people on Swan’s list of candidates were not shoemakers: James Frith (1840-aft 1881), the son of a scissor forger, was a pen-blade grinder whom Swan correctly described as having a wife and three small children (all, in fact, were 10 or under when the list was made); but Swan added that Frith was “not pleasant in appearance”; and W. Dawson, listed at 1 Rutland Street, Woodside Lane, was (like John Maloy) a blacksmith, described by Swan as “a farm labourer in early life. He appears a straightforward honest man, such as would be useful”.
How many of these men actually became involved with the work at Totley remains unclear.
Ruskin reputedly reproached himself for not having the courage to follow the great Russian, Leo Tolstoy (himself an admirer of Ruskin’s writing), in making shoes (see Meynell, p. 272). In the third letter of Fors in March 1871, Ruskin had written sarcastically:
“if you are a shoemaker, it is a law of Heaven that you must sell your goods under their price, in order to destroy the trade of other shoemakers; but if you are not a shoemaker, and are going shoeless and lame, it is a law of Heaven that you must not cut yourself a bit of cowhide, to put between your foot and the stones, because that would interfere with the total trade of shoemaking.” (Works 27.48?)
Addressing “practical matters” with his “Sheffield friends” in Letter 77 of Fors (in May 1877), Ruskin said he had heard that “you are many of you shoemakers”, but he perhaps ought to have written, would-be or aspiring shoemakers? He continued:
“the fixing of standard quality for your shoe-leather […] will be essential: and on this and other matters of your business, you will look to our St George’s Companion, Mr Robert Somervell, for instruction; […] you are to make shoes with extremest care to please your customers in all matters which they ought to ask; by fineness of fit, excellence of work, and exactitude of compliance with special orders: but you are not to please them in things which they ought not to ask. It is your business to know how to protect, and adorn, the human foot. When a customer wishes you really to protect and adorn his or her foot, you are to do it with finest care: but if a customer wishes you to injure their foot, or disfigure it, you are to refuse their pleasure in those particulars, and bid them—if they insist on such dis-service—to go elsewhere. You are not, the smiths of you, to put horseshoes hot on hoofs; and you are not, the shoemakers of you, to make any shoes with high heels, or with vulgar and useless decorations, or—if made to measure—that will pinch the wearer. People who wish to be pinched must find torturers off St George’s ground.” (Works, 29.112-113)
Such trenchant advice, however morally commendable, can scarcely be characterized as that of a silent partner! St George’s shoemakers were expected to observe the highest technical and ethical standards, foregoing such unjustified profit as might be afforded by blind commercial interest.
Ruskin had already advised Henry Swan along the lines that he repeated here, namely that the communists should consult Companion and de facto company secretary, Robert Somervell (1851-1933), the son of the founder of K Shoes in Kendal, on “the boot and shoe business” (24 December 1876). Whether they ever did so is not known.
George Pearson, who took over the farm in Totley in February 1887, recalled in 1926:
“I believe one of their ideas in connection with the place was a boot factory, for there was a portion of a sewing machine and some steel frames for cutting soles and heels of different sizes: but the money was done before there was any return.” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 9 January 1926)
A shoe “factory” is certainly overstating the case, and allowance should be made for Pearson’s understandably imperfect recollection of events that he probably only knew about at some remove. Nevertheless, his testimony suggests that some practical steps were taken towards realising a boot and shoe co-operative on the land. By August 1878, by which time the original communists had left the farm, Ruskin told Swan in a letter, “it is St George’s opinion that we may advisably grow fruit and corn; and leave shoemaking to be managed elsewhere” (29 August 1878). The communists had moved on, and so, evidently, had Ruskin. Shoemaking had been abandoned.
FARMING
Ruskin seems initially to have thought that the communists would each take an allotted parcel of land and farm it more or less independently in family units. He wrote to Henry Swan on 31 May 1877:
“I have had no time to write as I hoped in this Fors, the system to be observed in division; so much land to each family as it can cultivate or wishes to, with requirement, not of rent, but of the production either of a certain quantity of good wares or good food per day, with proper organization for its immediate sale, distribution, or store, as the Master may direct, (in consultation always with wiser persons each in their own business).”
In other words, the shoemaking, or any other “cottage industry” (as we might now term it), would be likewise pursued independently. Products would not be pooled co-operatively, as such, but collected under the presumably (or allegedly) benign auspices of St George’s Company.
Such a system of family allotments and cottage industries does not appear ever to have been implemented, however. Given the likely tendency of such systemss to result in competition, it is doubtful that it would ultimately have suited either the communists, or Ruskin himself. Its appeal to Ruskin, however, was in its emphasis both on individual effort and personal creative expression—principles, at least in their purest sense, that might not have been easily reconciled with any easily recognizable work along communist or co-operative lines.
A “few more” people joined the community after it had been set up, according to Mrs Maloy and, as we have seen, W.H.C. in the Co-operative News had suggested that “between twenty and thirty persons of all ages” were involved by August 1877. Neither named anyone, nor did they identify the first “working manager” the group employed, nor “another man” who, Mrs Maloy claimed, was “engaged to work on the farm, receiving the same wages as the first and sharing the farm-house” (p. 165).
Mark Frost has identified one of these men as St George’s Companion James Burdon (c1850-1929). Burdon had already worked for Ruskin and was recommended to the group of communists by Henry Swan. The communists apparently employed him in the summer of 1877 for 16s. per week (not the 24s. indicated by Mrs Maloy).
Burdon later recounted how the “small group of townspeople” who had engaged him at Totley had no agricultural experience. He recalled staying on the land for “a few months” but felt that he was of “very little use to them” on account of being “left entirely” to himself (Burdon, p. 36). Exactly when these months fell is uncertain: Frost cites evidence that Swan had “got rid” of Burdon (in Ruskin’s approvingly dismissive words) by late April 1877, but there were payments made in early June, though these may have been made retrospectively. Ruskin asked Swan on 11 August to find out where Burdon was living so that he could be paid the last of his money (11 August [1877]).
Nevertheless, it was mid-way through October when Ruskin remarked, “I have no doubt whatever of the justice of the expulsion of Burdon” (17 October 1877).
Burdon may, of course, have left and come back more than once. But what caused his final “expulsion” from Totley is not clear. He would be sentenced at the Old Bailey on 31 March 1879 to twelve months’ imprisonment after being found guilty of forging two of Ruskin’s cheques worth £35 10s and £20 respectively *(see Proceedings of the Old Bailey (ref. t18790331-379 on <www.oldbaileyonline.org>).
If Burdon was on the ground at Totley in Apri 1877, he would have been lonely, as the communists seem barely to have got going by then—though this is in line with Burdon’s recollection of being left to himself.
By August 1877 W.H.C., the reporter from The Co-operative News, wrote that he found himself “in company with the elect” at Totley. The occupants of what he called “St George’s Land” were “two married couples and a single man, the latter a very intelligent Scotchman”, though frustratingly none of them are named. Presumably they were all resident in the farmhouse, which must have been rather crowded, though as we have seen, it did have three bedrooms. Burdon, a native of Scotland, is clearly a likely contender for the Scotsman, though this would mean that he spent longer at Totley than Frost has suggested. Ruskin had written to Swan back in June to say, “I must find a place for enclosed couple on our land at Sheffield—please consult about it, and write to them” though again their names are not given (23 June 1877).
The correspondent of the Co-operative News continued:
“Their occupation has hitherto consisted of preparing some of the ground for gardening purposes, and getting in a crop of hay, which appeared in good condition. Of necessity there will not be employment for all the members until the necessary buildings are erected, which can scarcely be accomplished under twelve months at least.”
The fact that there appears to have been an earnest plan to build on the site is evident from a letter Ruskin wrote to Henry Swan on 12 August. The communists, he asserted
“may erect what buildings they choose […]. We cannot reach ideal perfections in a first effort, and I think on all grounds, it is better that I should not interfere—but I could not at present if I would.”
Nevertheless, he “must know what the men want” before he could say “how” it should be done. “If only private houses” were desired, Ruskin opined,
“I am minded to let them build as they like—so far as plan of house is concerned: but I shall enforce some curious restrictions as to materials. The walls may be of any stone they like, or of brick, but the stone rough from quarry, and the brick, red, at least as dark as a pattern I will have sent, as much darker as chances. No black, blue glazed or yellow brick, nothing but red—by itself or mixed with the stonework as they like. The roofs may be thatched, tiled, or flagged: not leaded or slated. With wood they may build what they choose.” (Ruskin to Henry Swan, 25 March 1877)
“No gas is to be used anywhere”, he added, “nor any explosive oil”. All this from the silent partner!
The Totley experiment was probably already running into trouble by the first half of August, but Ruskin’s comments to Swan at this time, though undeniably wearied, seem generally judicious and reasonable.
“I am quite unable at present to visit Sheffield, or deal with any one of the practical problems at Abbeydale. For the men’s sake, and for the sake of all, I must now husband my strength, and for the present leave the men to themselves; trusting to Mr Priest and Mr Shaw, and the others who have sent me their names, to do honour to our cause in the Fors accounts, by enabling me at the end of the year to show that the estate is paying its 3 per cent interest, if I did not choose to return it.” (Ruskin to Henry Swan, 12 August 1877)
VISITING THE COMMUNISTS’ HOME
The report in The Times of April 1877 had stated that the “garden produce” cultivated on the land was intended only to meet the group’s own requirements, but it is evident that the sneering report that appeared in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph had been right to talk of the communists’ intention to supply refreshments to visitors.
Mrs Maloy claimed that the group “excited much local interest”:
“we had parties to visit us during the summer taking tea, for which we charged. Another woman member and myself found our hands very full at this time, for between us we prepared all the teas and sold eggs and fruit, doing all we could to add to the income.” (Maloy, p. 165)
On a Sunday in early August 1877, Henry Richardson—one of the United Friends, but writing here in his capacity as secretary of the Sheffield Secular Society from the Hall of Science—gave notice in The Secular Review and Secularist that a party of 70 of his members had enjoyed “a pleasant outing to Mr Ruskin’s farm at Totley” and had partaken there of “tea”, “games”, and conversation (1:10 (11 August 1877) p. 158). Among the games might have been “knurr and spell”, a peculiarly northern trap-and-ball game later remembered by the eldest of the Swan children, Howard Swan (though not with reference specifically to Totley). The visit Richardson described also evidently offered the opportunity to continue a discussion started the previous week when . H. Neave gave his analysis of the doctrine of free will
“in such a clear, sound, and excellent manner that he was requested to again deliver the same on our first open Sunday, and he agreed to continue the discussion next Sunday, at the Communist Home, at Totley, where we are to meet; an excursion starting at 2.30 from Sheffield Midland Station.” (The Secular Review and Secularist , 1:9 (4 August 1877) p. 143)
Much the same report appeared in The Secular Chronicle, though it referred to “the Communists’ Home at Totley, four and a half miles from Sheffield” (8:6 (5 August 1877) p. 69).
These references are evidently to the same day (5 August) that the reporter from The Co-operative News visited the colony. W.H.C. explained that “a large party of Secularists and others were to pay a visit to the estate” that afternoon, on what was “a glorious day” of sunshine in a sunny St Swithin’s summer.
Subsequent excursions to the farm at Totley were advertised in The Secular Review for Sunday 26 August and Sunday 9 September, weather permitting (see 1:12 (25 August 1877) p. 191 and 1:14 (8 September 1877) p. 223).
On Wednesdays, Mrs Maloy remembered, “fruit, eggs, and vegetables” were fetched from the farm and sold over a period of about four months at meetings the communists held in Sheffield (Maloy, 165). George Pearson told a journalist on Sheffield’s Daily Independent in 1938, shortly after his 80th birthday:
“The experiment was carried on […] and as the land was fresh the produce was good at the start. A speciality was made of strawberry growing, and I believe that some of the finest strawberries ever produced in the district were grown on St George’s farm during those years.”(Daily Independent, 17 January 1938).
As 1877 advanced and winter approached, another man was employed to manage the farm on wages of 16s per week. Mark Frost has shown that Ruskin told HJenry Swan in a latter received on 4 November 1877 that St George’s Companion William Buchan Graham (1847-1909) deserved to be tried by the Totley communists, though Ruskin was himself careful not to characterize this as a recommendation. Frost also shows that Graham, who later claimed to have been on site from November 1877 to May 1878, complained, as Burdon had done, that he was paid in lump sums and in arrears for work that principally involved the hard labour of digging (see Frost, p. 142).
Soon after Ruskin suggested Graham to Swan, he approved a recommendation made by Henry Swan and Robert Somervell to appoint Henry Richardson as “provisional manager for the land” at a salary of £25 per annum (letter from Ruskin to Henry Swan, 26 November 1877).
By January 1878, however, Ruskin admonished Swan for having recommended Richardson only to find out that “he won’t do” and, only by means of the “good luck” of that discovery had they avoided appointing him (letter from Ruskin to Henry Swan, 5 January 1878).
THE GATHERING CLOUDS
By this point (January 1878), Ruskin was losing patience, though he was still inclined to give the communists the chance to prove themselves.
“There can be no more money be [sic] advanced at present. Advise the men of that forthwith.
“They shall not be pressed in any way during the present year, advise them of that.
“But during the year [1878], I must see myself what each of them are and will then decide if they stay on the ground or not.
“Here, they have ground free for a year to show what they can do. If they do well, they stay, if ill they go.” (Letter from Ruskin to Henry Swan, 5 January 1878).
Mrs Maloy recounts that the man who read the paper on Communism—whom we now know to be George Shaw—then wrote to Ruskin and was sent a cheque for £100 which he duly cashed—to the consternation of what Mrs Maloy calls “the committee” (presumably, the committee of the United Friends’ Association) (Maloy, p. 165).
Why they should have reacted thus is unclear. Were they reluctant to be further indebted to Ruskin? Was it simply a matter of due process having not been followed, with one member of the group acting arbitrarily without consulting the rest? Were they nervous after Ruskin had told Swan that no further money could be advanced to them? We simply do not know, but the committee’s reaction certainly seems to be consistent with the statement made in The Times in April 1877 that “Mr Ruskin has not been asked to furnish them with the requisite means to carry out the movement” (9 April 1877).
Mrs Maloy’s account implies that the group’s President, whom we know to be Edwin Priest, took action at the committee’s instruction, and accordingly returned the money to Ruskin. Ruskin is alleged by Mrs Maloy to have refused to accept the refund, however.
The accounts of the St George’s Company show that a cheque for £100 was cashed on 12 February 1878 (see Works, 30.117), but it is listed under Priest’s name, suggesting either that the original cheque was written to Priest rather than Shaw (or at any rate sent to one or the other as prominent representative of the United Friends’ Association). Another possibility is that Shaw’s cheque was never in fact cashed, but that when Priest returned it to Ruskin, Ruskin responded by sending a replacement cheque made out to Priest for the same amount which Priest did then cash, however reluctantly.
This second possible explanation is supported by what Mrs Maloy wrote next. She recalled that “this member” (we can infer, for reasons explained below, that she means George Shaw) had always wanted to live and work on the farm with his family, and at this point he pressed the society to allow him to do so. Mark Frost’s suggestion that the member was Priest (p. 158), and Goldsmith’s that it might have been Henry Richardson (p. 50) can be dismissed. Neither were shoemakers, which as we shall see, is crucially important. Priest was anyway advanced in years and already widowed. And Henry Richardson had been found so wanting that he was not to be appointed manager at £25 a year, let alone advanced a cheque for £100.
Furthermore, Mrs Maloy also alleges that the unnamed member (whom I believe to be Shaw) required a guarantee from his fellow communists that he would not lose out financially by committing himself to life on the farm: he wanted the group, she asserts, “to take up his business, paying him the value of it, and in the event of failure at the farm he [was] to take his business back” (Maloy, p. 165).
Although Mrs Maloy never names Shaw, she confirms that he ran a “bootmaker’s sales shop”. Shaw was the only member of the group now identified by my research to have run such a business, and likewise to have been the man who read the all-important paper on communism at the Hall of Science that proved to be the spark for the Totley scheme. There can be little doubt that Mrs Maloy was referring to George Shaw.
THE END
Mrs Maloy is unrelentingly critical of the man we now know to have been George Shaw in her recollection of events in 1889. She scathingly condemns him with the charge of wrecking the entire scheme by an act of unreasonable behaviour that brought about the end of the communists’ involvement in the project.
The committee denied Shaw consent to move his family and business on site. Mrs Maloy alleges that “much disappointed and very unreasonable at the refusal”, Shaw made an approach to the socialist, William Harrison Riley (1835-1907), who was a regular and friendly correspondent of Ruskin’s. What form the approach took is not clear.
If Mrs Maloy is right about this, she may nevertheless be slightly awry as to the timing. The St George’s Company accounts show that on 14 February 1878, two days after Priest seems to have cashed Ruskin’s cheque for £100, “W. Riley” of “Totley Farm” received a first payment of £10 (see Works, 30.117). What we know for certain is that also on 14 February, Ruskin wrote to Riley from Brantwood to appoint him as a “retainer” of the Guild. The letter is important in several respects, and is quoted here in full.
“My dear Riley,
“I will take you for a Retainer of St George’s Guild at monthly wages to be agreed upon, having reference to your various good capacities and to the number of your family—on condition of your complying with the general regulations of the guild; and continuing to do so. See Fors 1875 p. 208. You shall have an acre of land secure to you, of which you may distribute three pieces, quarter of an acre each, to whom you choose, but you will yourself be answerable to me for the rent of the whole [acre].
“I am about to send down to Sheffield one of my own trusted servants; with whose help you can choose, after consultations, the piece of ground you would like to have. But it can be secured to you only by my bond in my own written words. No external law enters the St George’s Guild. I send you a cheque for ten pounds as retaining money, the first instalment of the wages to be agreed on: send me in return a list of the members of your family:—(in case we do not agree on the arrangement at present proposed, I will make some other, and if we cannot come to terms, you must keep the ten pounds as a sign that I meant well for you. My servant, David Downs, will I hope be in Sheffield on Saturday, but he is slightly ill, and I cannot be sure. Mr Downs will remain at Sheffield, if his health admits of it, until all these matters are arranged.
“Always affectionately yours,
“J Ruskin”
(Letter from Ruskin to William Harrison Riley, 14 February 1878)
We will re-visit the details included in this letter in a later blog post, but it suffices to note here the limited but definite terms of Riley’s appointment, and the role Ruskin expected David Downs simultaneously to play. Indeed, Ruskin evidently tasked Downs with sorting the whole mess out, and not for the first time (see my blog #8, “Ruskin’s Gardener-Angel, David Downs”). It is also evident that Ruskin had both affection for and confidence in Riley, whom he seems determined to have given a chance.
If Mrs Maloy’s timeline is roughly accurate, and George Shaw really was instrumental in Ruskin appointing Riley as a retainer responsible for an acre of land at Totley, then it follows that Shaw must have contacted Riley some time before the £100 cheque was cashed by Priest (though possibly after his own hasty alleged cashing of the earlier cheque for £100)!
Mrs Maloy’s suggestion that Shaw contacted Riley is all the more credible in light of the fact that Riley, like Shaw, had spent extended periods of his life living in America. Shaw and Riley, with their shared experience as radical Englishmen abroad, may well have come to each other’s notice across the Atlantic or, more probably, in Sheffield.
Indeed, before Riley moved to Sheffield in 1877, he had delivered two lectures at the Hall of Science on 12 April 1874, in his role as the editor of the Republican Herald. Riley’s afternoon lecture on “Communism” and his evening lecture on “Land, Labour, Money” were duly advertised in the local press (see Sheffield Daily Telegraph and Sheffield Independent, 11 April 1874).
It seems possible, even likely, that Shaw, whom we know to have been involved with the Hall of Science, attended these lectures. Given the fact that Shaw would soon afterwards advocate Communism to his friends in the Mutual Improvement Class of the Sheffield Secular Society, Riley’s lecture may well have been a vital source of inspiration. The timing is certainly instructive.
For both men, ‘communism’ really signified the sort of co-operative socialism embodied in the ideas of Robert Owen.
There is another important piece of evidence to consider which sheds light on the intimacy of the connection between Riley and Shaw. It also supports the argument that when Mrs Maloy wrote about a shoemaker who wanted to move his family on to the farm at Totley she was referring to George Shaw. On 24 November 1880 Shaw wrote a letter to Frederick William Evans (1808-1893), an elder of the Mount Lebanon Shaker community in New York which Evans had joined in the 1830s.
The letter, published in the American journal, The Shaker Manifesto, and not previously cited by Ruskin scholars, provides insight into Shaw’s ideas and values. It demonstrates that Shaw’s commitment to a communist life remained strong even after the trial of communism at Totley had ended in failure.
In the letter, Shaw expressed his doubts about the wisdom of the Shakers’ “self-denying practice of celibacy”:
“I have several friends”, he wrote, “who require but an assurance from the head of some community that they would be welcome and made equals in a social sense […] who would object to being separated from the dearest objects in life, to wit: husband and wife.” (The Shaker Manifesto, 11:1 (January 1881), p. 13).
This supports Mrs Maloy’s testimony that Shaw (whom she did not name) sought to move into the farmhouse with his family. Indeed, the main purpose of Shaw’s letter to the Shakers, he insisted, was to plead that “a good portion of your estate should be set apart for the use of people desiring to practice Communism, and still live with their dear life partners, husband and wife”.
Shaw also stated that he “never could believe” in “a life hereafter” and that his “concern” was with “the present earth life”. This is scarcely surprising given his secularist convictions.
He noted the success of the perfectionist Oneida Community, founded in New York by John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1866). Shaw commended the popularity of Oneida, hinting at the attraction of its acceptance of traditional relationships, though only insofar as he referred to its abandonment of “complex marriages” involving multiple partners. His comments suggest complete ignorance of the fact that the change in sexual politics and practice was brought about after a community member was charged with rape. Shaw also noted that Oneida had recently been converted into “a joint stock association”. ([This change would only come into legal effect on 1 January 1881.)
Mention of the joint-stock model, however, apparently prompted memories of his own experience in Totley:
“I have long desired to live in a Community; I made a great effort to establish one in Sheffield, received much pecuniary assistance from Prof. Ruskin, of Sheffield [sic]. It failed, and I have lost all hope of a rational Communism being practiced in England.
“I am personally doing well in business, but I want to get out of this wicked, miserable, wretched pandemonium.
“I have just received a letter from Shirley, a Shaker village in Massachusetts, U.S. He [i.e. the letter-writer] is a very dear friend, Harrison Riley; he speaks very highly of your people; I am so glad he is amongst you; I know you will like him. I have a copy of the letter you wrote my friend, and shall be pleased to receive one from you.”
Crucially, this testimony reveals that Shaw’s friendship with Riley endured after both men had left Totley. The reference to “much pecuniary assistance” from Ruskin suggests that Shaw did not blame the professor any more than he blamed his “very dear friend” Riley, for the failure of the Totley experiment. The cause of his sense of hopelessness seems to originate mainly in his fellow communists and the sense of a dream unfulfilled..
A warm and lengthy reply to this letter was published on the pages that followed it, the main thrust of which was to advise Shaw and his friends to join the Quakers rather than the Shakers in order to preserve both political principle and traditional family values (see The Shaker Manifesto, 11:1 (January 1881), pp. 14-15.]]
The result of Shaw’s approach to Riley back in early 1878, Mrs Maloy claimed, was that Riley took “absolute possession” of the farm (p. 165). A deputation from the communists’ committee, of which she was not herself a part, challenged Riley at the farm and was told with alleged “sneers” that it (the committee) “had no power”. Mrs Maloy claimed that Riley even threatened one member with “personal violence”.
Sally Goldsmith has pointed out that Mrs Maloy acknowledged only second-hand knowledge of such a confrontation (see Goldsmith, p. 59). Goldsmith speculates that David Downs may have been the party allegedly guilty of threatening violence, rather than Riley, especially as Riley would later describe Ruskin’s gardener as capable of being a surly drunk. However, it is not clear that Downs would have been present in Totley at the time, though the date of such a confrontation admittedly remains uncertain.
Approached by the communists for his explanation of these matters, Ruskin gave no answer. The communists, not entirely unreasonably, took Ruskin’s silence for a discourtesy, even disdain. In reaction, the Sheffield Communists renounced “all further responsibility or connection” with the Totley project (Maloy, p. 165).
It is tragic that this should have proved to be the final straw. As we shall see in the sixth part of this new blog series, these events occurred at a time when Ruskin was in fact gravely ill and mentally incapacitated. Ruskin’s silence was wholly unavoidable. What we also know is that if Shaw invited Riley to join the project on the ground, as seems likely, then it was not without Ruskin’s knowledge or approval.
“DEAR READER, I MARRIED HIM”
There is an amusing if almost unbelievable post-script to the personal story of Totley which has escaped the notice of researchers until now.
As previously observed, Mrs Maloy was a widow by 1889 when she wrote to William Morris’s socialist journal, The Commonweal, and squarely blamed George Shaw for destroying the communists’ dream, albeit that she did not actually name him.
After George Shaw articulated his sense of hopelessness of establishing communism in England, he and his family once again moved to America. No doubt the increasingly challenging economic circumstances in Britain helped to make up his mind. His long-standing interest in alternative communities in America evidently endured. The family settled in Massachusetts, possibly in order to be close to William Harrison Riley who, as we have seen, had settled in Shirley. One of Shaw’s daughters married in the town of Carlisle in 1884; another in Concord in 1887; and Shaw’s wife, Harriet, died in Boston at the age of 49 in September 1888. Sometime thereafter—it is not clear when—Shaw, now widowed, made his final return to England and to Sheffield.
Shaw settled in Margaret Street, Highfield, near the centre of Sheffield. Following her husband’s death in 1884, Mary Ann Maloy worked as a nurse to the family of the cutlery manufacturer, Henry Gibbins (1820-1896) of Joseph Gibbins & Sons, and lived with them at Darnall Hall.
The fact that the trial of communism at Totley had ended in failure and had disappointed its principal participants—communists and Ruskin alike—is clear enough. But it did not shatter everyone’s faith in radicalism.
Both Mrs Maloy and Joseph Sharpe went on to join Edward Carpenter’s Sheffield Socialist Society. Aged about seventy, Sharpe told Carpenter, “To belong to a Communistic society has always been the dream of my life, and I don’t despair of it now. Peace and goodwill and true fraternity—that’s what we want” (Carpenter (1908) p. 74).
As the leader of the Sheffield Socialists, Carpenter contributed regular reports to The Commonweal in which his connection with Mrs Maloy is evident. He described how in August 1886 Mrs Maloy, one of the original 44 members of his Socialist Society, took part in “an animated discussion” that followed an open-air meeting of 200-300 socialists at the corner of Fargate and Surrey Street. (2:33 (28 August 1886) p. 176).
By the time a third open-air meeting took place at the same spot, in late September of the same year, the police noted the names and addresses of the speakers—which included Carpenter, Mrs Maloy, and a radical called John Furniss who would be involved in the later history of Totley as we shall see. The Sheffield Socialists were officially notified that such meetings required the permission of the borough surveyor. The warning was disregarded and, undaunted, the socialists went ahead with their meeting regardless (see 2:37 (25 September 1886) p. 208). As Andrew Lee has shown in his study The Red Flag of Anarchy, in August 1887 Mrs Maloy led a debate on “The Best Means of Making the Land National Property” (p. 67). In December she addressed for 40 minutes a “large and very intelligent audience” on “Force no Remedy” (a debate about the direct and confrontational strategy of the anarchists), and it must say a great deal about her style and manner as well as her intellect that her hearers “listened with close attention” (Lee, p. 62).
But there is a suggestion that the firebrand Mrs Maloy was volatile. For example, Sally Goldsmith has pointed out that in April 1888 Mrs Maloy was voted off the Sheffield Socialist Society’s committee and was in a fury about it (see Goldsmith, p. 53).
And here’s the unexpected twist.
On 10 September 1891 Mary Ann Maloy married George Shaw at Sheffield Register Office. Shaw described himself on the marriage certificate as an “artist”, but this appears to be a piece of mischief. At any rate, by the time the census was conducted in 1901 the couple were living at 178 Southampton Street in the London borough of Camberwell (near where Ruskin had grown up). George once again described himself in more familiar terms as a “leather seller and boot repairer”. There had been London bootmakers in Mary Ann’s family. Her brother-in-law, James Henry Kinder (c1840-1890), who had married Mary Ann’s sister Cecilia Berry (1845-1918) in 1868, was a successful bootmaker in and around Aldgate and the East End, with premises in East India Road, Bromley, and later in Essex Road, Islington. Another sister, Eliza Berry (1844-1925), had assisted Kinder for a while as a saleswoman.
By 1911, George and Mary Ann Shaw had settled in Prittlewell, in Southend-on-Sea in Essex. Why they made the move is not clear, but by then Mary Ann’s sisters, Cecilia and Eliza, lived only a mile-and-a-half away in Westcliff-on-Sea with Cecilia’s daughter Mary Williams and her husband (who worked as a French polisher). George Shaw described himself in the 1911 census as an “out of work leather and bootmaker” writing in the column headed “Infirmity”: “bad cripple”. He was over 75 and this is a reminder than the poor could not choose retirement, even though Shaw almost certainly received the new state pension of five shillings per week introduced on 1 January 1909. Under the “Infirmity” column for Mary Ann, Shaw appears to have written in shaky handwriting, “poor [since] 11 years old” (not a valid “infirmity” under the census guidlines).
George Shaw died of senility aged 79 on 3 April 1914, after more than 30 years of marriage to the woman who had anonymously criticised him in public. By 1921, Marry Ann’s sister Eliza had come to live with her. Both of them died in 1925. Mary Ann succumbed to broncho-pneumonia after a short illness on 29 December at the age of 86. But there remains more of her story to tell…
Next time we will examine the causes of the failure of this first phase of Ruskin’s Totley experiment. And we will trace more of the afterlives of its members, including more on the Maloys…
Sources Cited
Anon: “Veteran’s Link With Ruskin and Carpenter” in Daily Independent (17 January 1938)
Burdon, James: Reminiscences of Ruskin by a St George’s Companion (1919)
Carpenter, Edward: Sketches from Life in Town and Country, and Some Verse (George Allen, 1908)
Frost, Mark: The Lost Companions and Ruskin’s Guild of St George: A Revisionary History (Anthem Press, 2014)
Goldsmith, Sally: Thirteen Acres: John Ruskin and the Totley Communists (Guild of St George, 2016)
Maloy, M.A.: “St George’s Farm” [a letter] in Commonweal, vol. 5, no. 176 (25 May 1889) pp.164-165
[Maloy, Mary Ann] (M.A.M): “Mr Ruskin and Socialists” (A Letter) in Sheffield Daily Telegraph (13 January 1890)
Meynell, Alice: John Ruskin (William Blackwood & Sons, 1900)
[Pearson, George] (G.P.T.): “Ruskin Communism at Totley” in Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 9 January 1926
W.H.C.: “Modern English Communism” in The Co-operative News (25 August 1877)
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