Samuel Barnett (reformer)
Samuel Augustus Barnett was a Church of England cleric and social reformer who was particularly associated with the establishment of the first university settlement, Toynbee Hall, in east London in 1884. He is often referred to as Canon Barnett, having served as Canon of Westminster Abbey from 1906 until death.
Samuel Augustus Barnett by George Frederic Watts
Toynbee Hall 1902
Litchfield Way, Hampstead Garden Suburb
Toynbee Hall is a charitable institution that works to address the causes and impacts of poverty in the East End of London and elsewhere. Established in 1884, it is based in Commercial Street, Spitalfields, and was the first university-affiliated institution of the worldwide settlement movement—a reformist social agenda that strove to get the rich and poor to live more closely together in an interdependent community. It was founded by Henrietta and Samuel Barnett in the economically depressed East End, and was named in memory of their friend and fellow reformer, Oxford historian Arnold Toynbee, who had died the previous year.
Toynbee Hall
Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, founders of Toynbee Hall: a portrait by Hubert Herkomer
An East End street in 1902 (Dorset Street, Spitalfields), photographed for Jack London's book The People of the Abyss
Toynbee Hall, circa 1902