ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief account of some of the pioneers of social advance who marked the nineteenth century in Britain. After Lord Shaftesbury and his forerunners the pioneers are given in the order of their birth. The manual workers are as sparsely represented in the author's list of pioneers as are the aristocrats. Even the founder of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, though he started as an operative and was born the son of an operative, came of stock which had been middle class. The men and women described here are the pioneers of Philanthropy rather than the pioneers of Mutual Aid. The foundation of one of the pioneering trade unions of the nineteenth century is sufficiently associated with one man—William Newton—for him to appear in this chapter of biographies.
