Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Foreword and Acknowledgements
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction: Why Bother?
- 1 Origins of a Dilemma
- 2 The Urban Ideal
- 3 The Theory of Social Responsibility (1905–1909)
- 4 The Health of the Body Corporate
- 5 The Craft of the Social Administrator (1911–1914)
- 6 The Practice of Social Administration (1914–1918)
- 7 The End of the Beginning (1919–1924)
- 8 The Birth of a New Philanthropy
- 9 The New Philanthropy Vindicated (1923–1934)
- Conclusion: From Rhetoric to Reality
- Bibliography
1 - Origins of a Dilemma
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Foreword and Acknowledgements
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction: Why Bother?
- 1 Origins of a Dilemma
- 2 The Urban Ideal
- 3 The Theory of Social Responsibility (1905–1909)
- 4 The Health of the Body Corporate
- 5 The Craft of the Social Administrator (1911–1914)
- 6 The Practice of Social Administration (1914–1918)
- 7 The End of the Beginning (1919–1924)
- 8 The Birth of a New Philanthropy
- 9 The New Philanthropy Vindicated (1923–1934)
- Conclusion: From Rhetoric to Reality
- Bibliography
Summary
The common problem of the association of economic success with increasing poverty became exceptionally acute in Liverpool by reason of its peculiar constituency. It was the dilemma of the conflict between individual betterment and social obligation that was to provide D'Aeth with the opportunity to develop his particular talent and, together with the city, to make a unique contribution to the process of social advance.
Seldom can a biographer have confronted such a paucity of information as that which conceals the early life of F. G. D'Aeth. It would be easy enough to build up a picture on the basis of inference; he seems to have been a thoroughly ordinary lad who led a thoroughly ordinary life, typical of the rising middle class of the late Victorian era into which he was born. Yet it has proved curiously difficult to lay hands on anything that would provide a solid base for speculation, such as family photographs, school records or personal reminiscences. In fact, it is significant that his story falls into two very distinct parts, of the first of which little trace remains beyond the bare facts; it seems as if at the age of thirty he deliberately slammed the door on all that had gone before and set out in search of fulfilment: a different person in a different capacity in a different world.
The facts about those first thirty years are straightforward so far as they go. Frederic George D'Aeth was born on 1 June 1875 at 4, Hyde Side Terrace in Edmonton, Middlesex, the fourth of the seven children of Alfred and Elizabeth D'Aeth. The D'Aeth family were of Huguenot origin and, in the late eighteenth century, had come from Ath (a village on the Franco-Belgian border) to take up farming in Suffolk. The family name was originally D'Ath, but was later changed to D'Aeth, presumably because of its English connotations. A couple of generations down the line, Alfred D'Aeth was caught in the prevalent drift into towns and earned his living as a clerk in the Bank of England: of his wife, Elizabeth, nothing is known.
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- From Rhetoric to RealityLife and Work of Frederick D'Aeth, pp. 11 - 26Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2005