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ANTHONY
ASHLEY-COOPER
1801
- 1885
Politiker
 Anthony
Ashley-Cooper gehörte zu den populärsten britischen Politkern
des 19. Jahrhunderts.
Zu seinen Leistungen gehören die Erstellung
des "Factory Acts" (1847 und 1853), des "Lunacy Acts" (1845) und des "Coal
Mines Acts" (1842).
Er setzte sich für das Wohl der Kinder ein
und war Vorsitzender der "Ragges School Union". Er gehörte zu den
Unterstützern von Florence Nightingale, die sich für die moderne
westliche Krankenpflege einsetzte.
Biographie in englisch (aus Wikipedia):
Lord Ashley, as he was styled until his father's
death in 1851, was educated at Manor House school in Chiswick (1809–1813),
Harrow School (1813–1816) and Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained first
class honours in classics in 1822, took his MA in 1832 and appointed DCL
in 1841 Ashley's early family life was loveless, a circumstance common
among the British upper classes, and resembled in that respect the fictional
childhood of Esther Summerson vividly narrated in the early chapters of
Charles Dickens's novel Bleak House G.F.A Best in his biography Shaftesbury
writes that: "Ashley grew up without any experience of parental love. He
saw little of his parents, and when duty or necessity compelled them to
take notice of him they were formal and frightening. This difficult childhood
was softened by the affection he received from his housekeeper Maria Millis,
and his sisters. Millis provided for Ashley a model of Christian love that
would form the basis for much of his later social activism and philanthropic
work, as Best explains: "What did touch him was the reality, and the homely
practicality, of the love which her Christianity made her feel towards
the unhappy child. She told him bible stories, she taught him a prayer.
Despite this powerful reprieve, school became another source of misery
for the young Ashley, whose education at Manor House from 1808 to 1813
introduced a "more disgusting range of horrors" Shaftesbury himself shuddered
to recall those years, "The place was bad, wicked, filthy; and the treatment
was starvation and cruelty."
He was elected as the Tory Member of Parliament
for Woodstock (a pocket borough controlled by the Duke of Marlborough)
in June 1826 and was a strong supporter of the Duke of Wellington After
George Canning replaced Lord Liverpool as Prime Minister, he offered Ashley
a place in the new government, despite Ashley having been in the Commons
for only five months. Ashley politely declined, writing in his diary that
he believed that serving under Canning would be a betrayal of his allegiance
to the Duke of Wellington and that he was not qualified for office
Before he had completed one year in the Commons
he had been appointed to three parliamentary committees. The fourth, the
Select Committee On Pauper Lunatics in the County of Middlesex and on Lunatic
Asylums, he was appointed to in June 1827
The majority of lunatics in London were kept in
madhouses kept by Dr Warburton. The Committee examined many witnesses concerning
one of his madhouses in Bethnal Green, called the White House. Ashley visited
this on the Committee's behalf. The patients were chained up, slept naked
on straw, and went to toilet in their beds. They were left chained from
Saturday afternoon until Monday morning when they were cleared of the accumulated
excrement. They were then washed down in freezing cold water and one towel
was allotted to 160 people, with no soap. It was overcrowded and the meat
provided was "that nasty thick hard muscle a dog could not eat". The White
House had been described as "a mere place for dying" rather than curing
the insane and when the Committee asked Dr MacMichael whether he believed
that "in the lunatic asylums in the neighbourhood of London any curative
process is going on with regard to pauper patients", he replied: "None
at all"
The Committee recommended that "legislative measures
of a remedial character should be introduced at the earliest period at
the next session", and the establishment of a Board of Commissioners appointed
by the Home Secretary possessing extensive powers of licensing, inspection
and control When in February 1828 Robert Gordon, Liberal MP for Cricklade,
introduced a Bill to put these recommendations into law, Ashley seconded
this and delivered his maiden speech in support of the Bill. He wrote in
his diary: "So, by God's blessing, my first effort has been for the advance
of human happiness. May I improve hourly! Fright almost deprived me of
recollection but again thank Heaven, I did not sit down quite a presumptuous
idiot". Ashley was also involved in framing the County Lunatic Asylums
(England) Act 1828 and the Madhouses Act 1828. Through these Acts fifteen
commissioners were appointed for the London area and given extensive powers
of licensing and inspection, one of the commissioners being Ashley.
In July 1845 Ashley sponsored two Lunacy Acts,
‘For the Regulation of lunatic Asylums’ and ‘For the better Care and Treatment
of Lunatics in England and Wales’. They originated in the Report of the
Commissioners in Lunacy which he had commended to Parliament the year before.
These Acts consolidated and amended previous lunacy laws, providing better
record keeping and more strict certification regulations to ensure patients
against unwarranted detention. They also ordered, instead of merely permitting,
the construction of country lunatic asylums with and establishing an ongoing
Lunacy Commission with Ashley as its chairman.
In support of these measures, Ashley gave a speech
in which he claimed that although since 1828 there had been an improvement,
more still needed to be done. He cited the case of a Welsh lunatic girl,
Mary Jones, who had for more than a decade been locked in a tiny loft with
one boarded-up window with little air and no light. The room was extremely
filthy and was filled with an intolerable smell. She could only squat in
a bent position in the room and this had caused her to become deformed.
In early 1858 a Select Committee was appointed
over concerns that sane persons were detained in lunatic asylums. Lord
Shaftesbury (as Ashley had become upon his father's death in 1851) was
the chief witness and opposed the suggestion that the certification of
insanity be made more difficult and that early treatment of insanity was
essential if there was to be any prospect of a cure. He claimed that only
one or two people in his time dealing with lunacy had been detained in
an asylum without sufficient grounds and that commissioners should be granted
more not fewer powers. The Committee's Report endorsed all of Shaftesbury's
recommendations except for one: that a magistrate's signature on a certificate
of lunacy be made compulsory. This was not put into law chiefly due to
Shaftesbury's opposition to it. The Report also agreed with Shaftesbury
that unwarranted detentions were "extremely rare".
In July 1877 Shaftesbury gave evidence before
the Select Committee on the Lunacy Laws, which had been appointed in February
over concerns that it was too easy for sane persons to be detained in asylums.
Shaftesbury feared that because of his advanced age he would be taken over
by forgetfulness whilst given evidence and was greatly stressed in the
months leading up to his giving evidence: "Shall fifty years of toil, anxiety
and prayer, crowned by marvellous and unlooked-for success, bring me in
the end only sorrow and disgrace?" When "the hour of trial" arrived Shaftesbury
defended the Lunacy Commission and claimed he was now the only person alive
who could speak with personal knowledge of the state of care of lunatics
before the Lunacy Commission was established in 1828. It had been "a state
of things such as would pass all belief". In the Committee's Report, the
members of the Committee agreed with Shaftesbury's evidence on all points.
In 1884 the husband of Mrs Georgina Weldon tried
to have her detained in a lunatic asylum because she believed that her
pug dog had a soul and that the spirit of her dead mother had entered into
her pet rabbit. She commenced legal action against Shaftesbury and other
lunacy commissioners although they failed. In May Shaftesbury spoke in
the Lords against a motion declaring the lunacy laws unsatisfactory but
the motion passed Parliament. The Lord Chancellor Selborne supported a
Lunacy Law Amendment Bill and Shaftesbury wanted to resign from the Lunacy
Commission as he believed he was honour bound not to oppose a Bill supported
by the Lord Chancellor. However Selborne implored him not to resign so
Shaftesbury refrained. However when the Bill was introduced and it contained
the provision which made it compulsory for a certificate of lunacy to be
signed by a magistrate or a judge, he resigned. The government fell, however,
and the Bill was withdrawn and Shaftesbury resumed his chairmanship of
the Lunacy Commission.
Shaftesbury's work in improving the care of the
insane remains one of his most important, though less well known, of his
achievements. He wrote: "Beyond the circle of my own Commissioners and
the lunatics that I visit, not a soul, in great or small life, not even
my associates in my works of philanthropy, has any notion of the years
of toil and care that, under God, I have bestowed on this melancholy and
awful question".
In March 1833 Ashley introduced the Ten Hours
Act 1833 into the Commons, which provided that children working in the
cotton and woollen industries must be aged nine or above; no person under
the age of eighteen was to work more than ten hours a day or eight hours
on a Saturday; and no one under twenty-five was to work nights. However
the Whig government, by a majority of 145, amended this to substitute "thirteen"
in place of "eighteen" and the Act as it passed ensured that no child under
thirteen worked more than nine hours, insisted they should go to school,
and appointed inspectors to enforce the law.
In June 1836 another Ten Hours Bill was introduced
into the Commons and although Ashley considered this Bill ill-timed, he
supported it. In July one member of the Lancashire committees set up to
support the Bill wrote that: "If there was one man in England more devoted
to the interests of the factory people than another, it was Lord Ashley.
They might always rely on him as a ready, steadfast and willing friend".[18]
In July 1837 he accused the government of ignoring the breaches of the
1833 Act and moved the resolution that the House regretted the regulation
of the working hours of children had been found to be unsatisfactory. It
was lost by fifteen votes.
In 1842 Ashley wrote twice to the Prime Minister,
Sir Robert Peel, to urge the government to support a new Factory Act. Peel
wrote in reply that he would not support one and Ashley wrote to the Short
Time Committees of Chesire, Lancashire and Yorkshire who desired a Ten
hours Act:
Though painfully disappointed,
I am not disheartened, nor am I at a loss either what course to take, or
what advice to give. I shall preserver unto my last hour, and so must you;
we must exhaust every legitimate means that the Constitution afford, in
petitions to Parliament, in public meetings, and in friendly conferences
with your employers; but you must infringe no law, and offend no proprieties;
we must all work together as sensible men, who will one day give an account
of their motives and actions; if this course is approved, no consideration
shall detach me from your cause; if not, you must elect another advocate.
I know that, in resolving on this step, I exclude myself altogether from
the tenure of office; I rejoice in the sacrifice, happy to devote the remainder
of my days, be they many or be they few, as God in His wisdom shall determine,
to an effort, however laborious, to ameliorate your moral and social condition.
In March 1844 Ashley moved an amendment to a Factory
Bill limiting the working hours of adolescents to ten hours after Sir James
Graham[disambiguation needed] had introduced a Bill aiming to limit their
working hours to twelve hours. Ashley's amendment was passed by eight votes,
the first time the Commons had approved of the Ten Hour principle. However
in a later vote his amendment was defeated by seven votes and the Bill
was withdrawn.[20] Later that month Graham introduced another Bill which
again would limit the employment of adolescents to twelve hours. Ashley
supported this Bill except that he wanted ten hours not twelve as the limit.
In May he moved an amendment to limit the hours worked to ten hours but
this was lost by 138 votes.
In 1846 whilst he was out of Parliament, Ashley
strongly supported John Fielden's Ten Hours Bill, which was lost by ten
votes. In January 1847 Fielden reintroduced his Bill and it finally passed
through Parliament to become the Ten Hours Act.
Ashley introduced the Mines and Collieries Act
1842 in Parliament to outlaw the employment of women and children underground
in coal mines. He made a speech in support of the Act and the Prince Consort
wrote to him afterwards, sending him the "best wishes for your total success".
At the end of his speech, his opponent on the Ten Hours issue, Cobden,
walked over to Ashley and said: "You know how opposed I have been to your
views; but I don't think I have ever been put into such a frame of mind
in the whole course of my life as I have been by your speech".
Ashley was a strong supporter of prohibiting the
employment of boys as chimney sweeps. Many climbing boys were illegitimate
who had been sold by their parents. They suffered from scorched and lacerated
skin, their eyes and throats filled with soot, with the danger of suffocation
and their occupational disease—cancer of the scrotum. In 1840 a Bill was
introduced into the Commons outlawing the employment of boys as chimney
sweeps, and strongly supported by Ashley. Despite being enforced in London,
elsewhere the Act did not stop the employment of child chimney sweeps and
this led to the foundation of the Climbing-Boys' Society with Ashley as
its chairman. In 1851, 1853 and 1855 Shaftesbury introduced Bills into
Parliament to deal with the ongoing use of boy chimney sweeps but these
were all defeated. He succeeded in passing the Chimney Sweepers Regulation
Act 1864 but like its predecessors it remained ineffectual. Shaftesbury
finally persuaded Parliament to pass the Chimney Sweepers Act 1875 which
ensured the annual licensing of chimney sweeps and the enforcement of the
law by the police. This finally eradicated the employment of boys as chimney
sweeps.
After Shaftesbury discovered that a boy chimney
sweep was living behind his house in Brock Street, London, he rescued the
child and sent him to "the Union School at Norwood Hill, where, under God's
blessing and special merciful grace, he will be trained in the knowledge
and love and faith of our common Saviour".[27]
In 1844 Ashley became president of the Ragged
School Union that promoted ragged schools. These schools were for poor
children and sprang up from volunteers. Ashley wrote that "If the Ragged
School system were to fail I should not die in the course of nature, I
should die of a broken heart".[28]
Shaftesbury's interest in the Jews has become
a major area of study in light of Donald Lewis' recent work The Origins
of Christian Zionism (CUP, 2010). Shaftesbury was an early proponent of
the Restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land, providing the first proposal
by a major politician to resettle Jews in Palestine. The conquest of Greater
Syria in 1831 by Muhammad Ali of Egypt changed the conditions under which
European power politics operated in the Near East. As a consequence of
that shift, Shaftesbury was able to help persuade Foreign Minister Palmerston
to send a British consul to Jerusalem in 1838. A committed Christian and
a loyal Englishman, Shaftesbury argued for a Jewish return because of what
he saw as the political and economic advantages to England and because
he believed that it was God's will. In January 1839, Shaftesbury published
an article in the Quarterly Review, which although initially commenting
on the 1838 Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land (1838) by Lord Lindsay,
provided the first proposal by a major politician to resettle Jews in Palestine:
The soil and climate of Palestine
are singularly adapted to the growth of produce required for the exigencies
of Great Britain; the finest cotton may be obtained in almost unlimited
abundance; silk and madder are the staple of the country, and olive oil
is now, as it ever was, the very fatness of the land. Capital and skill
are alone required: the presence of a British officer, and the increased
security of property which his presence will confer, may invite them from
these islands to the cultivation of Palestine; and the Jews', who will
betake themselves to agriculture in no other land, having found, in the
English consul, a mediator between their people and the Pacha, will probably
return in yet greater numbers, and become once more the husbandmen of Judaea
and Galilee.
Napoleon knew well the value
of an Hebrew alliance; and endeavoured to reproduce, in the capital of
France, the spectacle of the ancient Sanhedrin, which, basking in the sunshine
of imperial favour, might give laws to the whole body of the Jews throughout
the habitable world, and aid him, no doubt, in his audacious plans against
Poland and the East. His scheme, it is true, proved abortive; for the mass
of the Israelites were by no means inclined to merge their hopes in the
destinies of the Empire—exchange Zion for Montmartre, and Jerusalem for
Paris. The few liberal unbelievers whom he attracted to his views ruined
his projects with the people by their impious flattery; and averted the
whole body of the nation by blending, on the 15th of August, the cipher
of Napoleon and Josephine with the unutterable name of Jehovah, and elevating
the imperial eagle above the representation of the Ark of the Covenant.
A misconception, in fact of the character of the people has vitiated all
the attempts of various Sovereigns to better their condition ; they have
sought to amalgamate them with the body of their subjects, not knowing,
or not regarding the temper of the Hebrews, and the plain language of Scripture,
that ' the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the
nations.' That which Napoleon designed in his violence and ambition, thinking
' to destroy nations not a few,' we may wisely and legitimately undertake
for the maintenance of our Empire.
Later in 1839 he published an article in the Times
under the title «The State and the rebirth of the Jews». In
it he urged the Jews to return to Palestine in order, according to him,
to seize the lands of Galilee and Judea.
The lead-up to the Crimean War (1854), like the
military expansionism of Muhammad Ali two decades earlier, signalled an
opening for realignments in the Near East. In July 1853, Shaftesbury wrote
to Prime Minister Aberdeen that Greater Syria was “a country without a
nation” in need of “a nation without a country... Is there such a thing?
To be sure there is, the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!"
In his diary that year he wrote “these vast and fertile regions will soon
be without a ruler, without a known and acknowledged power to claim dominion.
The territory must be assigned to some one or other... There is a country
without a nation; and God now in his wisdom and mercy, directs us to a
nation without a country." This is commonly cited as an early use of the
phrase, "A land without a people for a people without a land" by which
Shaftesbury was echoing another British proponent of the restoration of
the Jews to Israel, (Dr Alexander Keith.)
Original-signierter Briefumschlag (ca. Postkartenformat),
Glasgow 1867 Price in Euro 69.- (sehr selten)
(Foto ist nicht Bestandteil des Angebots)
Anthony Ashley-Cooper signierte seine Briefe
etc. oftmals schlicht mit Shaftesbury. |
Vaclav
Jaroslav Klofac was born in 1868 in Nemecky Brod. Klofá? became
the best known radical nationalist Czech politicians in the Habsburg Monarchy.
Vaclav Klofac grew up in humble circumstances, the son of a courtroom messenger,
he knew poverty and went through a number of experiences that allowed him
to understand and sympathize with the working-class. Klofá?’s education
began in Nemecky Brod Gymnasium and then at the University of Prague in
the late 1880s. He was originally enrolled in the Universities Medical
School but transferred into the school of arts and sciences where he studied
philosophy. Václav participated in journalism and student politics.
His political career began during his years as a student at Charles University
in Prague. While attending the University Klofá? became co-founder
of the Czech students progressive movement. He was also involved in the
Young Czech Party, who defeated the Old Czechs in the Reichstrat election
of 1891, and frequently wrote for the ?asopis Pokrového Studentstva.
After graduation, Julius Gregr editor of Národní Listy convinced
Klofá? to write for the paper where he was quickly promoted to editor.
But Koflá? became unhappy with what he viewed as the excessive compromising
of the Young Czechs with the Habsburg government.
JUDr. Jan Podlipný
(24. srpna 1848, Hn?v?eves – 19. b?ezna 1914, Praha) byl pražský
advokát, starosta m?sta Prahy (1897–1900) a poslanec ?eského
zemského sn?mu za mlado?eskou stranu, první starosta ?eské
obce sokolské (1889–1906).
