ABSTRACT
Toynbee Hall and the other ‘settlements’ which followed it were experiments in religious and social action, conducted by people who accepted a responsibility as Christians and gentlemen to live for a time among the urban working classes. The founders of settlements believed that clergymen alone would never succeed in the slums without the partnership of squires. ‘The dwellers in the East end of our towns,’ wrote a clergyman,
will not be converted by missionaries and tracts sent by dwellers in the West End. The dwellers in the West End must go to the dwellers in the East themselves, share with the East those pleasures which give interest and delight to the dwellers in the West, and make up the fulness of their life. When the dwellers in the West go thus to the dwellers in the East they will be themselves converted, for they will have turned to Christ and accepted His yoke of personal service, and the dwellers in the East, recognizing the true helpfulness of the Christian life, will be converted too. 506
The settlers hoped by their presence both to civilize working-class people and to make them Christians.