Philanthropic women and accounting. Octavia Hill and the exercise of ‘quiet power and sympathy’

Abstract

Philanthropic work involved large numbers of middle-class women in the performance of accounting functions during the nineteenth century. This hitherto ‘hidden’ group of women accountants is explored through a biographical study of housing reformer Octavia Hill. It is revealed that in her early life Octavia Hill practised accounting as the manager of a craft workshop, college secretary and manager of a household. She also taught bookkeeping. Octavia Hill's application of accounting in housing management was founded on contemporary notions of order, hierarchical accountability, debt avoidance, the importance of detail and accuracy, and concepts of stewardship and trust. The manner in which Octavia Hill employed accounting as a technique of watching, disciplining and improving her tenants is also examined. There follows an analysis of the relationship between Octavia Hill's accounting and prevailing concepts of domesticity and gendered spheres. The importance of accounting in the feminised profession of housing management during the interwar period is also discussed. Other examples illustrative of the importance of accounting to women's philanthropic endeavour are alluded to.

Keywords:

• Accounting
• women
• philanthropy
• housing management
• nineteenth century
• Octavia Hill

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for comments received from the two anonymous referees and attendees at presentations given to the Accounting and Business History Research Unit, Cardiff Business School and the Centre for Business History, University of Exeter. Ianthe Maclagan kindly provided access and permission to quote from the ‘Memorials’ of her grandmother, Augusta Maclagan, née Barrington, one of Octavia Hill's lady collectors in Barrett's Court c.1871–1876. Thanks also to Josephine Maltby for alerting me to this source and transcribing the relevant material.

Notes

1. The following offer critiques of Hill's work: Best (1964: pp. 488–489); Owen (1964: p. 387); Wohl (1971); Brion (1995: pp. 14–22).

2. For Southwood Smith's influence see Bell (1942: pp. 1–15); Boyd (1982: pp. 95–98); Darley (1990: pp. 17–41); Darley (2004); Hill (1956: pp. 23–32); Maurice (1913: pp. 1–7).

3. The task of household accounting could have a lighter side. She chastised her sister Miranda, ‘Oh, you old Mirry, what a person you are for a joke! I've found you out! How came you to write that I'd received 6d. from Lord Palmerston, and spent 6d. in seven birds’ nests! Impertinent old thing! I came upon the entries in looking thro' my cash book; and I think Mama will never forget it' (Maurice, 1913: p. 178).

4. Octavia Hill's experiences of family finance instilled recognition that managing a home required sensitivity as well as budgeting: ‘Oh, it is easy to work early and late, to keep accounts, and manage house-keeping, etc; but the gentle voice, the loving word, the ministry, the true, tender spirit, these are great gifts, and will endure when the others have perished. The first are the words of strength, the others of goodness’ (Maurice, 1928: p. 40). Household accounting also featured significantly in Hill's later life. Following a period of absence in 1878–80 to restore her health, she was much occupied in managing the household, including ‘correcting washing books’ (Bell, 1942: p. 179).

5. In relation to the problem of working-class housing in London see Dennis (1989), Dyos (1967, 1968), Morris (2001), Tarn (1966), Wohl (1968) and Yelling (1986).

6. For the concept of ‘5% philanthropy’ see Tarn (1973) and Wohl (1971).

7. Power (1987: p. 14) estimates that Hill was involved in the management of 15,000 properties headed by 50 trained managers.

8. And overseas from the 1890s (Hill, 1895: p. 5; 1909: pp. 6–7).

9. In 1884 her sister wrote that ‘It has come to a point when two peers and a cabinet minister call and consult her in one week’ (Bell, 1942: p. 240).

10. Writing in 1929, Ellen Chase, who, from 1886-1891, managed the Deptford properties entrusted to Hill, offered insights to the practicalities of cash management: ‘Make sure of the sum of your receipts while on the spot, counting the coin into ten-shilling piles on a book. Pay off all the pence you can for repair work. It is a favour on your part to accept copper. Bank your monies as speedily as possible. In the case of infectious illnesses in the street, boil your money and so kill all germs. Do your arrears so soon as the books are closed. If you carry them and your available repair allowance in mind, you can act with greater effect’ (Chase, 1929: p. 200). She also outlined accounting procedures more generally (Chase, 1929: p. 215):

We keep the entries in their [tenant's] book as carefully as possible, and call the books in as great favour to us at the quarter's end, to check them up by ours and so guard against discrepancies. This is needful where many books are in use, and is also invariably done in the smallest property. They are at this time dated for the coming quarter.

There are small cash-books used in the street, where entries are hastily made of our receipts on the one hand, balanced by our cash in hand, and the several payments for cleaning, sweeping of chimneys, stationery, or larger lumped sums as per docketed vouchers. Later in the week, these entries are carefully transferred to a large ledger and entered in full, after comparison with the accompanying bills. The bank balance is generally found then, and certainly once in every month. The bills are kept in their elastic band, and a half-yearly asset and liability statement is drawn up, and also a quarterly statement, for the Owner.

11. In another letter dated 23 November 1870 she noted her appointments thus (Maurice, 1913: p. 266):

	Friday.-9–1 at home drawing.   1–1½ at Walmer St. Receiving applicants. ¼ to 2 to ¼ to 3 to drawing class at home. ¼ to 3 to 4 Walmer St. (if possible) visiting. 4 to 6 ladies come to see me about work at home. Evening Half-year's accounts for Drury Lane Invited to dine out–don't expect to go.
	Saturday.– 9½ to 11 Latin class at home.   11 to 1 Committee at 151, Marylebone Rd. Afternoon Walmer St. and week's accounts. 7 to 10½ Collecting savings at_______Court.

12. Founded by Miranda Hill in 1875 (Hill, 1956: p. 107).

13. The daughter-in-law of William Nassau Senior (1790–1864), economist and sister of Thomas Hughes (1822–1896) reformer, novelist and Christian Socialist (Maurice, 1913: p. 188; Darley, 1990: pp. 124–125). During the 1870s Jane Nassau Senior became the first woman to be appointed as a Poor Law Inspector (Parker, 1989: p. 16). According to Hill (1956: p. 87) this followed Octavia Hill's recommendation.

14. Following the closure of Nottingham Place School in 1891, Octavia Hill was assisted in this work by her sister Miranda (Darley, 1990: p. 265) According to one commentator, Miranda was ‘better at accounts than her more celebrated sister’ (quoted in Darley, 1990: p. 317).

15. Hill's attraction to the benefits of military discipline are illustrated by the fact that, in 1889, she established the Southwark Cadet Corp where uniformed boys attended classes in military drill (Hill, 1956: pp. 134–143). In chairing the meetings of the officers of the Corp she reminded one contemporary of Elizabeth I, due to her resolute approach and demonstrations of personal favour or antipathy.

16. The first worker to take complete responsibility for a scheme was Hill's long-standing acquaintance, Emma Cons (Bell, 1942: p. 124; Darley, 1990: pp. 132–133). From the early 1870s Cons ‘enrols her own volunteer workers, founds her own classes, clubs, savings’ banks, keeps her own accounts, supervises all the business and all the personal work, and reports to the owners direct' (Hill, 1876: pp. 5–6).

17. In January 1877 she conceded, ‘All the work goes very well… I am happier about its getting so big now we are succeeding better in subdividing it, because that brings the personal interest near to the tenants once more’ (CoWAS, Accession 1605, item 2). Her absence from housing management through illness in 1878–1881 also hastened decentralisation (Hill, 1878: p. 4).

18. It should be stated, however, that while Octavia Hill made public utterances about the immediate and severe consequences of indebtedness by tenants, practices on the ground could be more lenient. Augusta Maclagan recalled, ‘In theory Miss Hill professed never to allow arrears for more than a fortnight without threatening, or a month without putting in the broker, but like many theories [this] often failed in practice. I have known tenants in arrears as much as 11 weeks’ (Memorials, p. 342).

19. At this time Hill specifically sought volunteers to assist with the accounts due to the expansion of housing work (Hill, 1901: p. 8).

20. Quarterly rental accounts were submitted in relation to properties managed for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (Upcott, 1962).

21. These reports began in 1872 as ‘Letter Accompanying the Account of Donations Received for Work Amongst the Poor’ and were later titled ‘Letter to My Fellow-Workers, to which is added an account of Donations Received for Work Amongst the Poor’ (Hill, 1956: p. 195). In this paper these documents are referred to throughout as Letter to My Fellow-Workers. A full set may be found in the British Library (ref: 08286.d.102).

22. In a letter of 17 March 1887 Octavia Hill refers to the printing of 500 copies of the Letter to My Fellow-Workers (DMisc 84/2, item 2; DMisc 84/3, item 37).

23. Hill received such donations partly in consequence of her work for the Charity Organisation Society (Bell, 1942: p. 117).

24. See Owen (1964: pp. 225–227) for a discussion of the emergence of this approach.

25. The collection of savings on Saturday evenings proceeded as follows (Hill, 1883a: pp. 49–50):

	Picture a low, rather long room, one of my assistants and myself sitting in state, with pen and ink and bags for money, at a deal table under a flaring gas-jet; the door, which leads straight into the court, standing wide open … round the open door there are gathered a set of wild, dirty faces looking in upon us …
	The eager, watchful eyes of one of our little scrubbers next attract attention; there she stands, with her savings-card in her hand, waiting till we enter the sixpences she has earned from us during the week. ‘How much have I got?’ she says eyeing the written sixpences with delight, ‘because mother says, please, I'm to draw out next Saturday; she's going to buy me a pair of boots.’
	‘Take two shillings on the card and four shillings rent,’ a proudly happy woman will say, as she lays down a piece of bright gold, a rare sight this in the court, but her husband has been in regular work for some little time.

26. Ruskin later extolled the retreat of women entirely to the domestic scene (Lloyd, 1995: pp. 344–345).

27. Mr Fletcher also assisted Hill with the preparation of her donations balance sheet (CoWAS, DMisc 84/3, item 37).

28. Octavia Hill's object as a teacher of drawing and bookkeeping in Nottingham Place had been ‘to inculcate “habits of neatness, punctuality, self-reliance and such practical power and forethought as will make them [girls] helpful in their homes”’ (Darley, 1990: p. 84, emphasis added).

29. The notion that housing management was an extension of women's domestic function was asserted by other contemporary practitioners of the craft. In 1900, Alice Lewis, who managed blocks for the Tenement Dwellings Co. Ltd, and also invoked Ruskin's concept of ‘queenliness’, asserted: ‘Women's peculiar work has always been keeping house; it is now almost an instinct, and house management is only house-keeping on a large scale. Instead of one house to keep clean, wholesome, and happy, some of us have two or three hundred; instead of one dispute to settle among the children, we may have a score to settle among the tenants; instead of £10 house-keeping money, we may have £100’ (Lewis, 1900: p. 5). Similarly, in February 1907, Annie Hankinson advocated housing management as a profession for ladies possessed of ‘“housekeeping” talents’ (Hankinson, 1907: p. 8).

30. The other technical fields were rates and property taxes, finance (‘unless the owners are represented by lawyers or men of business’), property law, property repair management, and advising on the design of houses and homes.

31. Similar organisations were established overseas as knowledge of Hill's methods spread (Hill, 1956: pp. 184–86; see also Bremner, 1965; Brion, 1995: pp. 79–82; Robinson, 1998; Mackay, 2000; Adam, 2002).

32. Following merger the organisation became the Institute of Housing Managers in 1965, received a royal charter in 1984 and subsequently became The Chartered Institute of Housing. It currently has 18,000 members.