| AdminHistory | The Ratcliff Mutual Improvement Society (MIS) was formed formed by the teachers and worshippers of Ratcliff Meeting under the auspices of the Ratcliff (Quaker) Meeting. Its first meeting took place at the Friends Mission Institute (FMI) in Commercial Road on 12 January 1893. Like many similar societies, the Ratcliff MIS published a journal.
The Ratcliff Meeting was founded in 1655, when a Captain Brock opened his home in Mile End to Quakers. In 1666 land was bought for the building of a (Ratcliff) meeting house, which covered the area between Wapping and Limehouse (1). During the 19th century, the building was taken over by the Bedford Institute. In 1935, the building was declared a dangerous structure, and demolished. Consequently, Ratcliff Meeting had no permanent home, and met at Toynbee Hall for many years as the Ratcliff and Barking Monthly Meeting (2). The 1941 Book of Meetings records that the Ratcliff Meeting consisted of thirty members (3). A new meeting house was built in 1959, but attendances declined, and the building was sold (4).
The Ratcliff MIS reflected the philosophy of Mutual Improvement Societies, a movement which started in London at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and spread northward from c.1825. Its radical outlook, including education for working people, attracted both religious and secular membership (5). Dissenting academies and adult schools became similarly committed. By the late 19th century, chapels throughout the North and Midlands had established local societies (6).
The Ratcliff Meeting sponsored sister organisations such as Ratcliff Adult School which held its 'annual breakfast meeting ' (7) at the FMI. The Ratcliff Friends Temperance Mission held its inaugural meeting there. Attendees heard messages about how 'drinking counteracted the efforts to elevate people of the neighbourhood' (8) and the 'baneful influence of the public houses' (9).
The eighth annual session of the nearby Mile End Road Chapel was told how 'the rust of indolence corrodes ... the mind' (10). The Society would not 'profess to help people who are not willing to help themselves' (11). Its objective would be 'the moral intellectual and spiritual Improvement of the young' (12).
Today the Ratcliff Meeting functions as part of Bethnal Green Quakers and meets in a rented room at the premises of Quaker Social Action (13).
Sources of information:
quakers.org.uk
1/2. Quakers in Shoreditch Exhibition (1998) : text by P. Daniels studymore.org.uk
3. East London Family History Website via studymore.org.uk
4. Quakers in Shoreditch (Ibid)
5/6. C. Ratcliffe ( July 2006) : Mutual Improvement Societies and The Forging of Working Class Political Consciousness in 19th Century England
7. 'Ratcliff Adult School' : p.2 in East London Observer, Saturday 10 January 1908 (BNA)
8/9. 'The Ratcliff Friends Mission Temperance Society' : p.4 in Tower Hamlets Independent and East End Local Advertiser, Saturday 9 January 1869 (BNA)
10/11/12. 'Mile End Road Chapel Mutual Improvement Society' : p.5 in East London Observer, Saturday 7 October 1871. (BNA)
13. northeastthamesquaker.org |