The Charity Commission and the Age of Reform

The first major Royal Commission of Inquiry in the area of social policy sat from 1818 to 1837 and inquired into the chaotic organization of charities. But because it deviated from expected patterns for a reform commission in that it neither followed on from a major movement for a reform, nor produced a bureaucratic offspring, it has previously attracted little critical attention. This paradox is examined through an analysis of common assumptions about reform in The Charity Commission and the Age of Reform (originally published in 1979). The setting for the Commission is outlined in a discussion of inquiries in general, and the state of charities in particular. The experience of the Commission is then reconstructed in a thorough analysis, concluding with a review of the cost and benefit of the Commission. With its examination of almost 29,000 charities completed, the Commission stopped, concluded its business in 1837 and completed the publication of its report in 1843. Ten years later a permanent Board of Charity Commissioners was established. To those who looked to the permanent Board as the culmination of reform, the Commission had failed. Yet a re-examination of that judgment by the author in the context of the many inquiries made during the first half of the nineteenth century suggests just the opposite, that the Commission report and the subsequent Board were substantial successes. From these conclusions, suggested criteria are set out for broadening our understanding of the Age of Reform through the study of commissions of inquiry.