Loch’s 'well-directed' charity principles

Social work history in 20 books

In this second post on Loch’s How to help cases of distress (Loch, 1883), I shall look at the explanatory discussion of the role of charity and public bodies in helping people in distress. In the next (third) post on his book, I look at his general account of the various bodes providing help to different groups of people in London and provide a table which lays out the various services available at the time. In the following post, I shall say something about the role of the London Charity Organisation Society which makes it a forerunner of social work.

It is obvious, then, that we are not talking about social work here. But we are talking about a systematic presentation in the 1880s of important ideas that were informing thinking about what was to become an aspect of social work services. In discussing Loch’s generalised account of charitable work, I am looking at an influence on how social work started out. Indeed, in his later years, he would have regarded it as ‘proto-social work’, even though social work in London at that time was more an idea that there should be social provision for those who need it, which you would follow up with what needs might be met by it. In particular, Loch’s methods are very much a forerunner of early practice in social work.

It is also clear that Loch is mainly talking about people in poverty, a class in society of ‘the poor’, although he might have reserved the term ‘paupers’ for people calling on the help of the Poor Law guardians and their workhouses, or, as we shall see, unrecoverable indigents. His help, therefore, is about distress caused by poverty that prevents people from providing necessities from their own resources. We saw this in his comments on the ‘poor man’s greatest foe’; he expected everyone to provide financially for themselves, and men to provide for their families.

A general note on Loch’s gendered attitudes and terminology, by the way: his writing, typical of the period, uses the male pronoun he/his/him to refer to both sexes in general statements; she/her only when specifically talking about women. Because I’m covering, and often quoting from, his work, I’ve accepted his convention in what follows, although I don’t accept his probable gender assumptions. For example, he talks about an individual and ‘his’ family; I see families as a group of people of both sexes sharing kinship, a man does not own his kin.