Arthur Sherwell (1863-1942): Temperance Reformer and Liberal MP.

Arthur Sherwell has no entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Most British historians are unlikely to recognize his name. Even specialists in the temperance movement probably remember him only as the co-author of The Temperance Problem and Social Reform (1899). (1) Sherwell deserves to be rescued from such obscurity. Studying Sherwell's varied career adds to our understanding of late Victorian and early-twentieth century British history.

As a writer and organizer, Sherwell contributed massively to the agitation in Britain for disinterested (or non-commercial) pub management as a method of temperance reform. (2) Most late-Victorian and Edwardian men and women who saw themselves as respectable believed that there was a drink problem. They disagreed about how to solve it. Only a minority favored referendums for local prohibition known as Direct Local Veto, but those who did provided the energy animating the temperance movement.

The drink problem was worse in large cities, so Sherwell regarded Local Veto as irrelevant. Urban voters would not ban the sale of drink. Nor would urban workingmen honor local prohibition if it were enacted. Sherwell proposed as a practical alternative replacing the old boozy pubs with reformed public houses under non-commercial management that discouraged drunkenness.

Although not a teetotaler, Sherwell was honorary secretary of the organization that lobbied on behalf of disinterested management, the Temperance Legislation League, and was a frequent contributor to its publications. Prime Minister H.H. Asquith (who disliked prohibition) had a high regard for Sherwell who represented "the best and sanest opinion" among temperance reformers. (3)

Sherwell was more than a temperance reformer. His Life in West London: A Study and a Contrast (1897), helped pioneer urban sociology, in particular the sociology of urban poverty. Sherwell was also a late-Victorian feminist, an ally of Emmeline Pethick and Mary Neal in their break from the West London Wesleyan Mission. Not only a champion of temperance and feminism, Sherwell was proud of the British Empire and hoped that the settler colonies would get a seat in the British Cabinet. A member of Parliament for about a dozen years, he sacrificed his political career by opposing wartime military conscription. Although Sherwell often is considered an old-fashioned libertarian Radical, he joined the 1917 Club, named after Russia's February Revolution. In that year, inching his way even further leftward, he called for an immediate end to indirect taxes, the main taxes borne by the working class. (4) When a Labour Government created the Royal Commission on Licensing (England and Wales), 1929-1931, chaired by William Mackenzie, 1st Baron Amulree, Sherwell served as a member.

So why is such an important--and interesting--character so little remembered by history? The neglect of Arthur Sherwell is partly explained by "his widow[having] destroyed most of his papers after his death, and on her death what little remained, mainly the manuscripts of his books, passed to the Rowntree Trust and subsequently to the L.S.E," that is, the London School of Economics. (5) This paper aims to return Sherwell to his place in history.

On April 11th, 1863, Arthur James Sherwell was born in the Tower Hamlets of London as the second son of a prosperous coach maker, John Viney Sherwell (1822-95), originally from south Devon, and his wife Mary Onion (1825-1901). Arthur Sherwell's Who Was Who entry says that he was educated privately, which is not true. He presumably wrote the entry which raises the question, why did he mislead readers? In fact, he spent a year at the Tredegar School, two years at North London Grammar School, and three years at Handsworth Technical College in Birmingham. Although his family was Anglican, Sherwell sought as a young man to become a Wesleyan minister. The Wesleyan Methodists attracted him because of their democratic organization and interest in social reform. He regarded social problems as religious as much as economic. Sherwell was never ordained, but he preached as a probationer for several years, including at St. Paul's Wesleyan Church in the west Yorkshire town of Brighouse

In the mid-1890s he was part of the ministerial staff of the West London Wesleyan Mission headed by Hugh Price Hughes. He presented Sunday afternoon lectures on social questions at Prince's Hall, Piccadilly. He sought a large audience and did not care that few of those attending were Methodists. Sherwell returned to Brighouse for a Mission rally early in 1894. He pointed out that the Mission addressed the needs of a half million Londoners, most of them wretchedly poor. He emphasized that "the London problem was practically the great problem of the future of England... [and] in solving that problem would be determined the destiny of this great Empire." (6)

In the late 1800s women were increasingly active in religious and moral reform organizations. Although accepted as workers, they were not seen as leaders, and men often discouraged independent-minded women who wanted to escape patriarchal control. Sherwell, ever the feminist, supported a group of such independent-minded middle-class women when they wanted to live among the poor as a religious community. (7) At first Hugh Price Hughes was opposed, although his wife was a champion of the "Sisters of the People." Sherwell dedicated the third edition of his first book to two of these women, Emmeline Pethick (later Lawrence) and Mary Neal. In the earlier editions the dedication was more discreet, to "My Comrades." Sherwell had worked with them at Cleveland Hall, a Mission facility for poor young women.

The Methodist Who's Who said that Sherwell "resigned [from the West London Methodist Mission] on theological grounds" but does not say what they were. (8) Sherwell turned from preaching to writing about social problems.

Unlike the leaders of his party, Sherwell strongly supported women's suffrage. In a letter published in 1909 condemning the violent tactics of militants, he said that they did not diminish his support for women's suffrage. He advocated votes for women not "merely [because of] abstract principles of social justice, but [because of] personal observation and investigation of the working of women's suffrage in other lands." (9) Despite this, Eva Gore-Booth and other militant suffragists opposed him at a parliamentary election because he was a Liberal, and the Liberal government would not support a suffrage bill. (10) Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom did not have universal male suffrage, which complicated the British campaign for women's suffrage. Some male reformers would not give parliamentary votes to any women unless all men could vote too.

Sherwell focused much of his work on the urban poor. (11) For three years he spent his afternoons interviewing the local unemployed for the St. James district committee of the Charity Organisation Society. In 1893, at his own expense, he established a home for alcoholic workingmen. Dressed as a dosser or tramp, he visited working-class shelters and lodging houses. Too middle class to sleep there, he arranged to change into respectable clothes at a public bath before returning home. He wrote about these visits in Advance!, a reform magazine...