¹ For a printed report of proceedings, including a list of those present, see Dartmouth MSS, Staffordshire Record Office, D 1778/V/678. The author gratefully acknowledges permission given by the present earl of Dartmouth to examine these papers.

² Proposal for establishing a society for the suppression of vice and the encouragement of religion and virtue, throughout the United Kingdom (London, n.d.). Various drafts of the Proposal may be found in Dartmouth MSS, D 1778/V/678.

³ An address to the public from the society for the suppression of vice. Part the second (London, 1803), p. 4.Google Scholar

⁴ Quinlan, M. J., Victorian prelude: a history of English manners, 1700–1830 (London, 1965 edn), pp. 202–22Google Scholar; Brown, F. K., Fathers of the Victorians: the age of Wilberforce (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 428–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bradley, I., The call to seriousness: the evangelical impact on the Victorians (London, 1976), pp. 94–118Google Scholar; Bristow, E., Vice and vigilance: purity movements in Britain since 1700(Dublin, 1977), PP. 32–50.Google Scholar

⁵ Radzinowicz, L., A history of English criminal law (4 vols., London, 1948–68), III, 154–60, 174–83Google Scholar; Harrison, B., ‘ State intervention and moral reform in nineteenth-century England’ in Hollis, P. (ed.), Pressure from without in early Victorian England (London, 1974), pp. 289–322Google Scholar; Malcolmson, R., Popular recreations in English society, 1700–1850 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 150–7, 172–3.Google Scholar

⁶ Bradley, , Call to seriousness, p. 97Google Scholar; Bristow, , Vice and vigilance, pp. 3, 33Google Scholar; A., Calder-Marshall, Lewd, blasphemous and obscene (London, 1972), p. 76Google Scholar. Cf. Quinlan, , Victorian prelude, pp. 202–3Google Scholar; and, by implication, Brown, , Fathers of the Victorians, pp. 428–9.Google Scholar

⁷ Address to the public…Part the first (London, 1803), p. 27.Google Scholar

⁸ Curtis, T. C. and Speck, W. A., ‘ The societies for the reformation of manners: a case study in the theory and practice of moral reform’, Literature and History, 111 (1976), 45–64.Google Scholar

⁹ Rudé, G., Hanoverian London (London, 1971), pp. 4, 228. Note also the contemporary belief that London experienced a crime wave during the 1790s. This judgement was reinforced by statistics gathered by Patrick Colquhoun, Westminster magistratê and honorary vice-president of the Vice Society during its early years.Google Scholar

¹⁰ R. I., and Wilberforce, S., The life of William Wilberforce (5 vols., London, 1838), 1, 134; Report of the committee of the society for carrying into effect His Majesty's proclamation against vice and immorality for the year 1799, pp. 11–14.Google Scholar

¹¹ Children and apprentices, servants and skilled tradesmen are identified as forming especially troublesome groups. Wilberforce, Life, 1, 131; Address to the public. Part the second, pp. 48–60; Statement of the proceedings of the society for the suppression of vice (London, 1804), pp. 13–16Google Scholar; Christian Observer, VII (1808), 203; Select committee on the state of the police of the metropolis. Second report (Parl. Papers, 1817, VII), 381, 387–8.Google Scholar

¹² Christie, I., Myth and reality in late-eighteenth-century British politics (London, 1970), p. 314; Proclamation Society. Report for 1799, p. 19.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid. p. 12.

¹⁴ Ibid. pp. 11–15; Address to the public. Part the second, p. 44; Statement of proceedings, p. 12.

¹⁵ Address to the public. Part the second, pp. 46–70; Williams, P. H., ‘Lotteries and government finance in England’, History Today, vi (1956), 557–61Google Scholar; Curtis, and Speck, , ‘Societies for the reformation of manners’, pp. 49, 56.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Proclamation Society. Report for 1802, pp. 15–20; Dartmouth MSS, D 1778/V/678.

¹⁷ Wilberforce, Life, I, 133.

¹⁸ John Bowles to Lord Dartmouth, 29 Nov. 1808, Dartmouth MSS, D 1778/Iii/1726.

¹⁹ There were 34 committee members in 1805 of whom 25 can be traced in contemporary London directories, law lists, etc. Of these 25 there were 9 clergy, 3 barristers, 3 attorneys, 4 civil servants, 1 army officer, 3 bankers, 1 stockbroker and 1 book-publisher.

²⁰ Proclamation Society. Report for 1799, p. 3, and Report for 1802, p. 12. Relations between the societies may be traced in the Vice Society's Proposal, p. 2; Dartmouth MSS, D 1778/V/678; Address to the public. Part the second, pp. 93–6; Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, v (1803), 396–7. The Proclamation Society virtually confined its activities to fund-raising on behalf of the Vice Society in late 1803 and, with Wilberforce's encouragement, ceased operations altogether in 1805 when its president, Bishop Porteus of London, became too frail to oversee its remaining business: Wilberforce, Life, 111, 236.

²¹ Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, v (1803), 396.Google Scholar

²² Wilberforce, , Life, 1, 134; Proclamation Society. Report for 1799, p. 16, and Report for 1802, p. 11Google Scholar. Cf. Pearson, J., The life of William Hey (2 vols., London, 1822), 11, 115–20.Google Scholar

²³ Statement of proceedings, p. 10; S.C. on police (P.P. 1817, vii), 381, 387.

²⁴ Dartmouth MSS, D 1778/V/678; Address to the public. Part the first, pp. 5–20Google Scholar; Address to the public. Part the second, p. 93Google Scholar; Watson, R., A sermon preached before the society for the suppression of vice …To which are added the plan of the society, a summary of its proceedings, and a list of its members (B.L. shelf-mark 4473.f.2(10)) (London, 1804), pp. 41–72Google Scholar; Statement of proceedings, p. 20. There appear to be no surviving membership lists between 1804 and 1825 (when membership had dropped to 236): Society for the suppression of vice [:Report] (London, 1826), pp. 13–21.Google Scholar

²⁵ The society at Oxford, whose proceedings are described in Occasional report of the society for the suppression of vice, No. VI (London, 1812), p. 10, apparently never existed. (See endorsement on Bodleian Library copy of the report.) Between 1802 and 1812 the London committee reported the establishment of at least thirteen provincial societies (apart from Oxford) and claimed to be in correspondence with individuals in several other places. Activities seem to have been most marked in large ports (Hull, Bristol), naval bases (Chatham) and county towns or fashionable resorts (Gloucester, York, Brighton). The London parish societies are less well documented: the preferred method of operation appears to have been through existing parish officers. There is, however, a detailed account of the foundation and work of the Shoreditch society (founded 1806) in S.C. on police (P.P. 1817, vii), 381–8.Google Scholar

²⁶ The Proclamation Society set a two-guinea annual subscription; the Vice Society ‘suggested’ an annual contribution of one guinea. The Proclamation Society in its final throes agreed to the entry of women members but appears never to have enrolled any: Proclamation Society. Report for 1800, p. 9. The Vice Society subscription list for 1803 shows that thirty-one per cent of its subscribers were women, and the 1804 list thirty-three per cent. Both these figures are unusually high when compared with figures for other contemporary voluntary societies: Prochaska, F. K., ‘Women in English philanthropy 1790–1830’, International Review of Social History, xix (1974), 442–5.Google Scholar

²⁷ By 1804, c. 40 members of the Proclamation Society had joined the Vice Society. See also Dartmouth MSS, D 1778/V/678: ‘List of names for which the society is indebted to the Rt.Hon. Lord Radstock’. This list of 210 names (dated June 1804) is weighted heavily towards the titled.

²⁸ Proposal, p. 1; Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, 1 (1801), 428.Google Scholar

²⁹ Address to the public. Part the first, pp. 27–31.M

³⁰ Ibid. pp. 93–4, 98.

³¹ Emsley, C., British society and the French wars 1793–1815 (London, 1979), pp. 91–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harvey, A. D., Britain in the early nineteenth century (London, 1978), pp. 127–35, 230.Google Scholar

³² Quinlan, , Victorian prelude, pp. 203–4.Google Scholar

³³ Address to the public. Part the first, p. 38; Anti-Jacobin Review, xv (1803), 95–6; Cobbett's Political Register, v (1804), 77.

³⁴ The two colleagues were Francis Freeling of the General Post Office and John Bowles, loyalist pamphleteer: Black, E. C., The association: British extraparliamentary political organization 1769–1793 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 240, 242–3.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid. p. 233.

³⁶ Memoirs of William Stevens (London, 1812), p. 155Google Scholar; Bowles, J., Reflections on the political and moral stale of society at the close of the eighteenth century (London, 1800), p. 154.Google Scholar

³⁷ See, for the loyalist activities of a leading Proclamation Society supporter, Pearson, Life of Hey, 11, 138–9, and generally, V. Kiernan, ‘Evangelicalism and the French revolution’, Past and Present, 1 (1952), 44–56.

³⁸ Anthony Clarke, stockbroker, chairman of the inaugural meeting and early co-treasurer of the society, was a supporter of evangelical causes: Annual Biography and Obituary, v (1836), 20. The Revd Henry Budd, chaplain of Bridewell Hospital (1801–31), foundation member and early committee man was a well-known evangelical, as was Henry Hoare, banker and long-serving co-treasurer of the society. Perhaps a third of early vice-presidents and committee members can be assumed to be evangelicals on the basis of their support for contemporary evangelical causes such as the Church Missionary Society and (from 1804) the British and Foreign Bible Society.

³⁹ Wilberforce first appears in the membership lists of the society in mid-1804, shortly after his earliest known diary reference to the society: Wilberforce, Life, 111, 186. (I have not been able to locate the original of this diary entry. It no longer appears among the Wrangham MSS, which hold the only surviving entries between 1801 and 1814.I am grateful to C. E. Wrangham, Esq., Rosemary House, Catterick, for permission to consult these MSS.) Wilberforce held no office in the society during these early years. The first prominent Clapham evangelical to hold office was Lord Teignmouth who joined the society as vice-president in 1805.

⁴⁰ See note 30 above.

⁴¹ See generally, Quinlan, Victorian prelude, pp. 96 ff.; Harrison, J. F. C., The second coming: popular millenarianism 1780–1850 (London, 1979), pp. 66Google Scholar ff. For an example drawn from the writings of an evangelical founder-member of the Vice Society, see A memoir of the Rev. Henry Budd (London, 1855), p. 82:‘[17June 1803] Well, we have war again! A respite of two years has been given us, and we have neglected to improve it. Peace has brought prosperity, and prosperity licentiousness, and licentiousness has brought back the Divine anger. When it will cease, God only knows! It may cease in our ruin. It is idle to say, the French are worse than ourselves. They are the sword in the hand of God. He punishes commonly the better nation by the worse.’Google Scholar

⁴² Gentleman's Magazine, LXXXIX, 2 (1819), 565.Google Scholar

⁴³ Hansard, 1st ser., xiv (1809), 321; A. Aspinall, Politics and the press c. 1780–1850 (London, 1949). PP. 163. 166.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ The phrase is Cobbett's though the assessment has been accepted by some later writers: Cobbett's Political Register, xv (1809), 601 ff.Google Scholar; Quinlan, , Victorian prelude, p. 99Google Scholar; Bristow, , Vice and vigilance, p. 41.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ William Cobbett to William Windham, 20 Jan. 1802 [?1803], Windham papers, British Library Add. MSS 37853, fos. 66–7.

⁴⁶ Ibid.; J. Bowles, Reflections at the conclusion of the war (London, 1801)Google Scholar; [Letters between William Adam and John Bowles respecting the duke of Bedford] (London, 1803)Google Scholar; Bowles, J., Thoughts on the late general election as demonstrative of the progress of jacobinism (London, 1802).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Bowles, J., Reflections on the political and moral state of society at the close of the eighteenth century (London, 1800), pp. 134, 172Google Scholar; Bowles, J., A dispassionate inquiry into the best means of national safety (London, 1806), pp. 107–8Google Scholar. There is a danger here of arguing in a circle because it is probable that Bowles himself was the author of much of the Vice Society's early publicity. (See note 49 below.) There is, however, some evidence that Bowles's ideas (if they were his) were edited by more moderate colleagues before publication: Anti-Jacobin Review, xiv (1803), 288–9. And we have independent evidence of similar modes of thought among other activists, e.g. in S.C. on police (P.P. 1817, VII), 381.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Churton, E., Memoir of Joshua Watson (London, 1861),1, 85Google Scholar; Webster, A. B., Joshua Watson: the story of a layman 1771–1855 (London, 1954), pp. 15, 24.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, iv (1803), 14–15Google Scholar; Annual Review and History of Literature, 111 (1805), 225. Before joining the Vice Society, Bowles makes a brief appearance as a member of the Proclamation Society: Proclamation Society. Report for 1802.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Address to the public. Part the first, pp. 71–3.

⁵¹ For information about the religious and other predispositions of the periodical press I have drawn chiefly on Mineka, F. E., The dissidence of dissent: the Monthly Repository, 1806–1838 (Chapel Hill, N. Carolina, 1944), pp. 47–84.Google Scholar

⁵² British Critic, xxiv (1804), 213 14Google Scholar; Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, 1 (1801), 428–9, and iv (1803), 114–16Google Scholar; Anti-Jacobin Review, xiii (1802), 198–9, and xiv (1803), 281–94.Google Scholar

⁵³ Annual Review, 111 (1805), 225–31Google Scholar; Monthly Magazine, xix (1805), 641.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Cobbett's Political Register, iv (1803), 528–31, and v (1804), 54–7, 76–80, 112–21Google Scholar. See also the attack in Gentleman's Magazine, LXXV, I (1805), 554.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Christian Observer, 11 (1803), 298–301, and vi (1807), 736Google Scholar; Evangelical Magazine, xi (1803), 407, and xv (1807), 530Google Scholar; Monthly Repository, vi (1811), 411–15.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Address to the public. Part the second, pp. 11, 46–68, 87–91; Statement of proceedings, pp. 4–9, 13–17. In addition to the 623 Sunday trading convictions, the society recorded another 2–3,000 ‘warnings’ or conditional discharges for Sunday trading offences.

⁵⁷ Address to the public. Part the second, pp. 14–45; Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, v (1803), 423.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ibid, vi (1804), 401–4.

⁵⁹ Statement of proceedings, pp. 17–23.

⁶⁰ Ibid. pp. 9–10; Society for the suppression of vice: occasional report, containing a letter from ‘a lover of real pleasure and decency’ (London, 1805), pp. 7–9.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Black, , The association, p. 264Google Scholar; Quinlan, , Victorian prelude, pp. 71–2.Google Scholar

⁶² Christian Observer, 11 (1803), 301; Pratt, J., Eclectic notes (London, 1865 edn), p. 306Google Scholar; Cobbetfs Political Register, v (1804), 56Google Scholar. Note also A letter to a member of the society for the suppression of vice: in which its principles and proceedings are examined and condemned (London, 1805)Google Scholar. (I have been unable to locate a copy of this pamphlet, but the copious extracts reprinted in the Anti-Jacobin Review, xxiii (1806), 195–202, reveal that the anonymous author claimed a ‘warm and undeviating attachment’ to the established church. His attitude to volunteer reformers and ‘puritans’ was closely similar to Cobbett's.)Google Scholar

⁶³ Address to the public. Part the second, pp. 32, 37–8. See also the approving remarks of Bishop Watson in his Sermon preached before the society for the suppression of vice (London, 1804), pp. 13–15Google Scholar. In spite of these endorsements from the eminent, users of ‘artifice’ ran some practical risks. For example outraged juries might refuse to convict the ‘victims’ of deception, and the publicity generated by such cases might increase rather than depress the trade of the accused: Annual Review, 111 (1805), 230.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Cobbett's Political Register, v (1804), 78–9.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ The British Press, 18 Feb. 1805, p. 3, col. 4.

⁶⁶ Pratt, Eclectic notes, 356–8; Christian Observer, iv (1805), 156–9Google Scholar: ‘Report of a committee of the society of the friends of immorality, vice and irreligion.’ Meacham, S., Henry Thornton of Clapham 1760–1815 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), p. 165, identifies the author of this last article as Henry Thornton but fails to recognize the satirical intention behind the piece, describing it as a ‘heavy-handed attack on critics of societies for the prevention of vice’.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁷ Wilberforce to Dartmouth, 11 May 1805, Historical manuscripts commission: 15th report, appendix, part I (Dartmouth MSS) (3 vols., London, 1896), 111, 288–9. The original is now among the Dartmouth MSS on deposit at Stafford R.O., D 1778./111/475. I have been unable to trace any reply by Dartmouth to this letter, but the reply of one of the vice-presidents lobbied (unsuccessfully) at the same time survives: J. A. Park to Wilberforce, 13 May 1805, William Wilberforce papers, William Perkins Library, Duke University, North Carolina.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ The British Press, 17 May 1805, p. 3, col. 3; Wilberforce, Life, 111, 236: diary entries for 12 and 28 May 1805. The original diary entries for this period are apparently lost (see note 39 above) and the printed sections have been expurgated. The description of‘ E. a lawyer, coarse, but able, their [i.e., justifiers’ of artifice] grand advocate’ must surely, however, refer to Bowles.

⁶⁹ John Bowles to Lord Dartmouth, 29 Nov. 1808, Dartmouth MSS, D 1778/Iii/1726.

⁷⁰ S.C. on police (P.P. 1817, vi), 388, 392, 482; Society for the suppression of vice: occasional report, no. V (London, 1810), pp. 1–6.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Thetrial of Joseph Powell, the fortune-teller (London, 1808), pp. 17–21. Note also the evidence in S.C. on police (P.P. 1817, vii), 388, describing the inability of Shoreditch activists to recruit paid agents after 1808 when their existing agents declined offers of re-appointment ‘from motives of personal safety’.Google Scholar

⁷² Edinburgh Review, xiii (1809), 333–43.Google Scholar

⁷³ Society for the suppression of vice: occasional report, no. V, pp. 7–9, and no. VI (London, 1812), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Edinburgh Review, xiii (1809), 338–9.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Harvey, , Britain in the early nineteenth century, pp. 155–6, 206, 242.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Hansard, 1st ser., xiv (1809), 308–9; Cobbett ‘Political Register, xv (1809), 601–11Google Scholar. The Dutch commissioners’ financial position was a complex one and they made lively efforts to rebut the allegations. Judgement was finally given against them in the court of Exchequer and they were ordered to refund £100,000 to the government. In giving judgement, however, the bench cleared the commissioners of any intention to defraud and, much to Bowles's satisfaction, praised them for having performed their business ‘with great diligence, industry, integrity, and talent’: The English Reports, cxxxxvi, 884–911Google Scholar; Churton, , Memoir of Joshua Watson, pp. 91–2.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Meacham, , Henry Thornton, p. 83. Thornton refers disparagingly to ‘my new friend Bowles’ when discussing Hannah More's unhappy relations with journalists in a letter to William Wilberforce dated 19 Sept. 1804 (Wrangham MSS). His 1805 attack on Bowles in the Christian Observer has already been mentioned (note 66 above).Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Harvey, , Britain in the early nineteenth century, p. 76Google Scholar. For full modern discussion, see Martin, R. H., ‘The pan-evangelical impulse in Britain 1795–1830’ (Oxford D. Phil., 1974).Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Harvey, , Britain in the early nineteenth century, pp. 77–8Google Scholar; Webster, , Joshua Watson, p. 34Google Scholar. John Bowles, it is worth noting, though driven from public life in 1809, took full advantage of the following upsurge in high church sentiment. In 1811, in company with Watson and H. H. Norris, he played a central role in the foundation of the National Society (the Church's answer to the British and Foreign School Society) ‘though it was not thought expedient that his name should appear upon the committee’: Churton, Memoir of Joshua Watson, 1, 91, 102 ff. Bowles's high church friends remained loyal to the end. When he died in 1819 they erected a tablet to his memory in Bath abbey: Gentleman's Magazine, xc, 2 (1820), 305.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Christian Observer, x (1811), 181Google Scholar. For examples of attacks on the Bible Society by leading supporters of the Vice Society, see Anti-Jacobin Review, xxiii (1806), 197–8; also Marianne Thornton to Hannah More [1805 ?], Thornton MSS, Cambridge University Library, Add. 7674/1/L, vol. 111, fo. 114. (This last letter refers to Lord Radstock's resignation from the Bible Society. Radstock was an enthusiastic supporter of the Vice Society - see note 27 above.)Google Scholar

⁸¹ Christian Observer, ix (1810), 524; xi (1812), 851. In addition to its non-exclusive membership policy, the 1810 society also adopted rules requiring its members to act personally (not through agents) and to support a policy committing the society to pursuit of all offenders, regardless of social rank.Google Scholar

⁸² Bowles to Dartmouth, 29 Nov. 1808, Dartmouth MSS, D 1778/Iii/1726.

⁸³ Prichard is first mentioned as secretary in 1806: H.M.C., Dartmouth MSS, 111, 290–1. By 1817 he was clearly in control of the general business of the society: see his evidence before S.C. on police (P.P. 1817, vii), 390 ff. His influence in the society must have been sustained because he was able to ensure in 1836 that his son succeeded him as society secretary: Boase, F., Modern English Biography (6 vols., London, 1965 edn), 11, 1639.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Dartmouth was lord chamberlain to George III. He appears to have resigned as president of the Vice Society at the end of 1808. His reasons for resigning are not clear. He was already in ill health (he died in 1810) but it is probable that he wished to cut his links with the society in any case. Bowles, in attempting to dissuade him from resigning, speaks of his belief that ‘the downfall of the Society… would be greatly accelerated by the misfortune [of Dartmouth's resignation]’, an admission which suggests that the society was already in trouble: Dartmouth MSS, D 1778/1ii/1726.

⁸⁵ Society for the suppression of vice: occasional report, no. V, p. 1.

⁸⁶ Ibid. no. VI, p. 1.

⁸⁷ Bristow, , Vice and vigilance, p. 42Google Scholar; Wickwar, W. H., The struggle for the freedom of the press 1819–1832 (London, 1928), pp. 36–7. The society did not entirely lose interest in other fields. For post-1810 Sunday trading activities, see the society's Occasional report, no. VI, pp. 1–2, and evidence of the society's secretary to S.C. on police (P.P. 1817, vii), 390. In spite of the single-object societies founded in 1809–10 (see note 81 above), no permanent organization emerged to relieve the Vice Society of this task until the Lord's Day Observance Society was founded in 1831.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Society for the suppression of vice: occasional report, no. VI, p. 5.

⁸⁹ Christian Observer, ix (1810), 319–20, and x (1811), 180–90.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Compare, for example, the activities of the anti-slavery movement described by Howard Temperley in Hollis (ed.), Pressure from without, pp. 31–3.

⁹¹ Hollis in ibid. pp. 14–20; Hamer, D., The politics of electoral pressure: a study in the history of Victorian reform agitations (Hassocks, 1977), pp. 9–37.Google Scholar

⁹² Address to the public. Part the first, pp. 60–2, Part the second, pp. 46–9, 62–3; Society for the suppression of vice: occasional report, no. V, p. 8; S.C. on police (P.P. 1817, vii), 390, 482, 533–4. On the hostility/indifference of later moral reform societies to state involvement in the enforcement of morals (though not to the enactment of legislation declaratory of‘principle’), see Harrison in Hollis (ed.), Pressure from without, pp. 304–7.

⁹³ Honey, J., Tom Brown's universe: the development of the Victorian public school (London, 1977), pp. 194–6Google Scholar, documents a similar mutation of meanings taking place at the same time in a rather different social setting. For a sketch of a general pattern of moral evolution into which both examples might fit as illustrations of transition from an era of ‘social control’ to an era of ‘socialization’ (cultivation of individual conscience), see Wilson, B. R., Contemporary transforma tions of religion (Oxfdrd, 1976), pp. 18–20.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Trial of Joseph Powell, pp. 17, 25–7, and see notes 41 and 47 above.

⁹⁵ On police and public order, see Radzinowicz, ,History, 111Google Scholar; also note 9 above. On popular literature, see Webb, R. K., The British working class reader 1790–1848(London, 1955), pp. 36–45Google Scholar. On schools, and the overlap of motives between supporters of the early Sunday schools and supporters of the Vice Society, see A. Wadsworth, ‘The first Manchester Sunday schools’ in Flinn, M. and Smout, T. (eds.), Essays in social history (Oxford, 1974), pp. 100–5Google Scholar, supplemented by Laqueur, T., Religion and respectability: Sunday schools and working class culture 1780–1850 (London, 1976), pp. 21 ff. The educational enthusiasms of john Bowles are referred to in note 79 above.Google Scholar