ABSTRACT
A good many entries that might have been included here have been scattered elsewhere in the text.
The phenomenon of charitable giving has attracted the attention of two American scholars. Jordan has published several volumes on the period 1480-1660.1024 His work rests in the main on the systematic analysis of thousands of wills and unquestionably presents innumerable important facts about the society studied-in the main the propertied urban classes. Whether, however, the author’s large conclusions can be accepted is another matter. He showers extravagant praise on the charity of the people investigated and believes that they purposefully led the way towards practical and secular ways of investing good will towards the poor. Unfortunately, the analysis ignores too many problems of the statistics presented and fails to allow for a strong bias built into the sources, so that despite the author’s charming enthusiasm reaction has been more critical than favourable. Owen takes over where Jordan leaves off. His book lacks both the broad statistical basis of the other and its dogmatic point of view: exploring rather more types of sources and employing a more literary approach, the author is content with more conventional conclusions.1025 Between them, Jordan and Owen have, however, usefully reminded us of the extent and success of private efforts made in the last 400 years to help ease misery and advance virtue. Self-help among the working classes did not really begin before the nineteenth century, with the formation of bodies to provide some insurance against unemployment and sickness.1026 Self-help of another kind showed itself in the frequent utopian experiments whose hopes to solve the problems of the world by active withdrawal from the world are discussed in a book which runs from puritan sects to garden suburbs and artificial new towns.1027
