“The Testing Place of our Canadian Citizenship is Going to be Our Cities”: J.S. Woodsworth and the Settlement Movement in Britain and Canada.”

Katherine Wilson-Smith

“A View From the Roof of the Residence.” Twenty One Years at Mansfield House, 1890-1911. Plaistow: W. S. Caines, 1911. 1.

“From the roof of the Settlement one looks over a vast, monotonous, dingy sea of houses, acre upon acre, mile upon mile, in long rigid rows – like frozen waves of the grey sea – broken only by gaunt chimneys and tapering masts to show the limit of the docks.”¹

On 11 December 1899, this bleak scene greeted J.S. Woodsworth upon his arrival at Mansfield House, in London’s East End, where he spent two weeks over the Christmas break. Woodsworth resided at Mansfield House for a short time, but his daughter credited this brief sojourn with putting her father on the path to becoming the eventual leader of the CCF: the poverty he witnessed during his short time in the East End was both personally shocking and a jolt towards practical action.² Less than a decade later, Woodsworth became the superintendent of the All People’s Mission in Winnipeg. There, his leadership would be inspired by the principles and practices he had observed in London and in particular, the use of Christian socialist values to foster a non-denominational environment in which the whole community was welcome. This somewhat overlooked period of Woodsworth’s life and his ties with the settlement movement are essential to understanding his political and ideological development, which is reflective of the broader climate of transnational socialism at the turn of the century.

Mansfield House was in Canning Town, an extremely poor neighbourhood that was reliant on the docks for work and home to large pockets of immigrants, east of the Metropolitan area of London and just before the Essex marshes. The settlement, which took up residence in a row of former shops, brought the charm and middle-class respectability of Mansfield College, Oxford to the notorious slum. Residents living at Mansfield were Oxford students and professors, “slumming” in the East End, simultaneously investigating the lives of locals and living among them.³ The public-facing rooms in the settlement were intended to be aspirational, as the house opened its doors to the community every day. Pre-arranged activities were held during the day for boys and girls clubs and in the evening for working adults. If sporadic visits occurred, there was also staff always on call to assist people on the doorstep.⁴

‘The Reception Room’, Twenty One Years at Mansfield House, 1890-1911, p.13.

Mansfield College was the first Oxford college to be associated with non-conformist Christianity, and this attracted Woodsworth as the son of a prominent Methodist minister. He was never fully enrolled in the university, choosing instead to attend lectures and write an essay under the supervision of the college president, A.M. Fairbairn, without matriculating. Fairbairn was a prominent Christian socialist who, in 1884, discussed the need to bring religion to the industrial working classes with more practical engagement first and then spiritual. This was a message which the settlement movement incorporated into their work.⁵ The college, therefore, fostered a strong Christian socialist environment and encouraged its students to take up social causes as an expression of their faith.

The settlement movement sought to bring men (and, in some cases, women) from Britain’s most prestigious universities to its poorest areas, in order to educate the people and investigate their condition.⁶ By moving away from religious charity and towards social investigation carried out by trained “experts,” the settlement could engage more people and experiment with long-term solutions to social problems. Expert investigation and advice were increasingly seen as key to practical socialism, a view reflected in movements such as the Fabian society and, in Canada, the League for Social Reconstruction. Some settlement workers may have been motivated by religious beliefs, but this was not at the forefront of the practical aspects of their work.

Woodsworth was surprised by Mansfield House’s range of secular activities, from the Poor Man’s Lawyer service to lectures and ‘Pleasant Sunday Afternoon’ (PSA) discussions, but acknowledged that non-religious activities attracted crowds that religious activities could not. The weekly PSA discussions were a feature common to most settlements, as many held lively debates and discussions as ways to introduce expert guidance to an increasingly engaged, opinionated, and enfranchised people. A ‘culture of debate’ developed in Britain after the Third Reform Act (1884) and subsequent municipal franchise expansion, which encouraged a rowdy and populist political culture both in the press and among the public.⁷ This unruly debate culture sparked the rise of the “music hall jingo,” a reactionary figure singled out by Mansfield’s warden Percy Alden as a caricature often mistaken for the “true” voice of the people.⁸ Christian socialists argued that the “true” thoughts of the people were fundamentally good but were prone to being led astray by the loudest shouters. Therefore, having residents facilitating debate and appropriately educating debaters on the issues before they spoke on them sought to counteract this. The emphasis on education at settlements carried into left-wing policy, where the education of workers was central to producing a strong left-wing movement.

Many of the residents believed the working class could achieve deeper insight than their middle-class counterparts with the right teaching, as they were considered “more honest” and “less beholden to respectability.” A recount of a debate entitled, “Is there room for the competitive idea in the kingdom of Jesus?” demonstrated the way residents viewed the debaters using this lens. The resident observing the debate slotted the opinions of the working men in attendance (some of whom were not religious) into philosophical positions.⁹ The resident mused that one man was “a thin-faced dialectician, who a year ago was a convinced materialist, thus, demonstrating that the working men were more than capable of deep and complex academic thought.

J. S. Woodsworth was at Mansfield House for a short portion of his time at Oxford, but his experiences there fuelled both his desire to be involved in the Canadian settlement movement and the values he carried into it. Those weeks at Mansfield House provided direct exposure to the urban poverty that was often described by the Christian socialists teaching him. Years later in Winnipeg, Woodsworth lamented Canadians’ naivety about the dangers of the city to the moral health of working people, especially compared to the British, and he sought to enlighten them through his work.

Woodsworth became superintendent of the All People’s Mission, a Methodist settlement, in 1907 and saw an opportunity to shape a rapidly expanding city. He likely viewed the mission as an early intervention to prevent the entrenched poverty and social issues he had witnessed in London’s East End. Unlike London, Winnipeg was a city still establishing itself. The population rose from 42,340 in 1901 to 139,863 in 1908, after the Canadian Pacific Railway routed its line through the city, ensuring Winnipeg’s status as the Gateway to the West.¹⁰ The rapid expansion brought with it the anxieties provoked by all urban centres, and the settlement movement provided an important way of tackling them.

As an overtly religious settlement, the All People’s Missions’ understandings of Christianity were influenced by their settlement principles. Woodsworth evoked the medieval church in his description of the mission’s aims, a common feature of late nineteenth century socialism. He described the church as central to the social life of medieval society; it was the place where people would meet, and charity would be dispensed. The role of a settlement such as the All People’s Mission was arguably similar, providing religious instruction, a meeting space, and charitable aid to those in need. It sought to create a sense of community in the city in the same way that a country parish would.

Another influence on the way the settlement carried out its role can be seen following the largest migration to Canada in the twentieth century, between 1909 and 1913. By 1913, half of the foreign born population had arrived in the past five years.¹¹ Therefore, settlements were not only shaping expanding cities, but also the numerous recent immigrants who filled them. The mission was at the forefront of making “new Canadians,” and promoted education as a means for assimilation and political participation. Preparing different ethnic and religious groups for assimilation into Canadian society began with investigating their cultural practices. Expert analysis was central to this. Woodsworth dissected the cultural traditions of groups that interacted with the mission in his 1911 book, My Neighbor. He described the “love of the dramatic” which made Italians a “nation of children, born to turn their world into a stage.” This immensely patronizing if somewhat positive view is indicative of the value judgements made about different cultures by the “experts” investigating them. Woodsworth clearly believed he saw the best in the cultures he described, while also categorizing them using standards where they would always be found lacking. The settlement’s ideas about investigating the poor, as observed at Mansfield, took on a new edge when faced with different ethnic groups in Winnipeg, as settlement workers were keen to categorize immigrants in order to then target their needs.

Programmes were therefore designed to specifically engage with different ethnic groups. The Polish Institute provided an English language night school, and outreach at the Polish Church. The night school lectures were on “British and Canadian history,” and aimed to providing the context required to teach the students about the British constitution and British ideals.¹² The approach to citizenship here privileged British ideas above all else and saw these values as the gateway to Canadian citizenship. Woodsworth praised the trade union movement in Britain for educating newly enfranchised men about British history and democracy in order to make them “more responsible” and “engaged” citizens. He envisioned similar principles being fostered by the settlement.

One of the mission’s events in particular, the Sunday Afternoon Grand Theatre Meetings (more commonly known as ‘The People’s Forum’), reflected the spirit of public education central to settlements on both sides of the Atlantic. Woodsworth took direct inspiration from Mansfield House here. A newspaper article about the Forum declared the event was ‘founded on much the same lines as the old country “Pleasant Sunday Afternoons.”¹³ However, the name “The People’s Forum” implies a more political, egalitarian and debate-focused atmosphere. The cards advertising the lectures read “Free Admission … Free Discussion,” which was indicative of this ethos, although maybe not always the reality.¹⁴

People’s Forum Cards in J S Woodsworth Scrapbook. Canadiana.

Forum meetings had a similar format to those at Mansfield, taking the form of a lecture by a guest speaker, followed by a discussion in which the audience were encouraged to participate, regardless of their views. The guest speakers were drawn from the clergy, university professors, politicians, and union leaders. Bringing middle-class culture to the lower classes served by the mission was still a priority, but here the emphasis shifted from class to ethnicity, with a focus on demonstrating the superiority of Anglo-Protestant culture. The topics were still variable, ranging from travelogues with lantern slides and lectures on Tennyson, the latter given by Woodsworth, to discussions of the impact of the industrial revolution and the reforms needed.¹⁵

The All People’s Mission was also clearly seeking to moderate political involvement through these debates, introducing immigrant groups to the “right” forms of political engagement and hosting debates on contemporary political issues. Once again, reports of the discussions demonstrate that the voices of the labouring classes were a prized part of the forum, as a representation of the true opinion of the people. A well-attended political forum took place in January 1910, where ex-union leader Richard A. Rigg spoke on the “Ideals of Organized Labour,” introducing the history and goals of the trade union movement. Rigg advocated for trade unions in the British model, as opposed to the radicalism associated with Russian Jewish groups, and included a section on the ‘social paradise’ of the middle ages compared to the advent of wage labour.¹⁶ He had trained to be a Methodist minister in England, and his medievalist ideas aligned with the wider mission values, evoked by Woodsworth, about socialism rooted in a traditionally British model. The frontier nature of Winnipeg also invited this reflection, as those running the settlement believed themselves to be at the forefront of shaping a new society, demonstrating the way both wider Christian socialist thought and local concerns were intertwined in individual settlements.

Woodsworth’s involvement with the settlement movement is an insight into both his personal development and the climate of transnational Christian socialism. These ideas were forged in a British context, but found their place across the English-speaking world, including in Canada. Woodsworth would go on to be one of the founders the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (the CCF), where he continued to have a high regard for social investigation and a belief in using grassroots organization to influence policy. Canadians such as Woodsworth facilitated the flow and adaptation of ideas across the Atlantic. For him, a stay in Oxford showed much more than just the dreaming spires.

Katherine is a second year masters student at McGill University. Her work largely focuses on religion and immigrant identity.

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1. Mansfield House University Settlement, Twenty One Years at Mansfield House, 1890-1911. Mansfield House University Settlement, 1911. 5 ↩︎
2. Mansfield House University Settlement. Twenty One Years at Mansfield House, 1890-1911, 5. ↩︎
3. Koven, Seth. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton University Press, 2004. ↩︎
4. Mansfield House University Settlement. Twenty One Years at Mansfield House, 1890-1911, 15. ↩︎
5. Fairbairn, A.M. “The Industrial Classes and Religion” Studies in Religion and Theology. Hodder and Stoughton, 1910. ↩︎
6. Women’s settlements were often separate from but associated with university settlements, reflecting the highly gender-segregated nature of Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Mansfield House had an offshoot in the same area, named The Canning Town Women’s Settlement. Walker, John, and Jane Skelding. “The Canning Town Women’s Settlement: Its Workers and the Women Who Wanted to Help.” E7 Now & Then, 8 March 2024. https://www.e7-nowandthen.org/2024/03/the-canning-town-womens-settlement-its.html ↩︎
7. Matthew, H.C.G. “Rhetoric and Politics in Great Britain, 1860-1950” Politics and Social Change in Modern Britain, edited by P.J Waller. The Harvester Press, 1987. ↩︎
8. Mansfield House. Mansfield House Magazine (December 1899): Mansfield College, 217. ↩︎
9. Mansfield House University Settlement, Twenty One Years at Mansfield House, 1890-1911, 17-18. ↩︎
10. Korneski, Kurt. “Britishness, Canadianness, Class, and Race: Winnipeg and the British World, 1880s-1910s.” Journal of Canadian Studies 41, no. 2 (2007): 161–84; Woodsworth, My Neighbor. ↩︎
11. Edmonston, Barry Edmonston. “Canada’s Immigration Trends and Patterns.” Canadian Studies in Population [ARCHIVES] 43, no. 1–2 (2016): 1–2; “Canada’s Immigration Trends and Patterns,” 1–2. ↩︎
12. The Winnipeg Church Extension and City Mission Association of the Methodist Church. Practical Christianity: 1910-1911 Reports from the Various Branches of the All Peoples’ Mission. ↩︎
13. “People’s Forum” Winnipeg Free Press (Winnipeg), 20 November 1911. Canadiana, https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c13074. ↩︎
14. “People’s Forum Cards.” J.S. Woodsworth Scrapbook. J.S. Woodsworth Fonds. Canadiana https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c13074. ↩︎
15. “People’s Forum Cards” J.S. Woodsworth Scrapbook. J.S. Woodsworth Fonds. Canadiana https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c13074. ↩︎
16. “Organised Labour At People’s Forum” Winnipeg Tribune, 15 January 1910, Canadiana, https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_c13074; Hiebert, Daniel. ‘Class, Ethnicity and Residential Structure: The Social Geography of Winnipeg, 1901–1921.’ Journal of Historical Geography 17, no. 1 (1 January 1991): 56–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-7488(91)90005-G. ↩︎