Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/144

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Toynbee
138
Toynbee

ning manners, and great power of expression, above all his transparent sincerity and high-mindedness, won the respect and affection of all with whom he came into contact, whether as pupil, teacher, or fellow worker in social causes. His intellectual and moral gifts made themselves equally felt in the academic world of Oxford and among the manufacturers and workmen of the great industrial centres where he delivered his popular addresses.

As an undergraduate Toynbee attracted the notice of Professor Jowett, master of Balliol, and became one of his intimate friends. He was also closely associated at Oxford with Professor T. H. Green and Richard Lewis Nettleship [q. v.], and, in his work among the poor of East London, with Canon Barnett, vicar of St. Jude's, Whitechapel (afterwards Canon of Westminster), and founder of the first university settlement, Toynbee Hall, which was established soon after Toynbee's death. Toynbee has often been called a socialist; but he was not a socialist of the revolutionary type, nor did he ever adopt the doctrines of collectivism. But he was opposed to the extreme individualism of some of the earlier English economists, and believed earnestly in the power of free corporate effort, such as that of co-operative and friendly societies and of trade unions, to raise the standard of life among the mass of the people, and in the duty of the state to assist such effort by free education, by the regulation of the conditions of labour, and by contributing to voluntary insurance funds intended to provide for the labourer in sickness and old age. Toynbee's economic views never took the shape of a fully developed system of economic philosophy. This was perhaps owing to his early death; but even if he had lived longer, it is likely that he would have devoted himself rather to the history of industrial development, and its bearing on the questions of the day, than to the more theoretical side of political economy. In the last year of his life he was deeply interested in the agitation which arose out of Henry George's book on ‘Progress and Poverty’ (New York, 1880; London, 1881). Convinced of the onesidedness of that remarkable work, and alarmed by what he considered the bad and misleading influence which it was exercising upon the leaders of working-class opinion, he did his best to combat the doctrine of land nationalisation by speech and writing. Two lectures which he delivered on the subject, first in Oxford and then at St. Andrew's Hall, Newman Street, London, were his last efforts as a teacher on social questions. For some time he had been greatly overworked, and the physical and mental strain attending the delivery of these lectures hastened the complete breakdown of his health. He died at Wimbledon on 9 March 1883. At the time of his death Toynbee, who had been made bursar of Balliol in 1881, was just about to be appointed a fellow of that college. Shortly after his death his friends established in his memory, under the guidance of Canon Barnett, Toynbee Hall (in Commercial Street, Whitechapel), an institution designed to encourage closer relations between the working classes and those educated at the universities. This ‘university settlement’ was the first of its kind, and has formed the model of similar institutions in other districts.

Toynbee married, in June 1879, Miss Charlotte Atwood, who survived him. He had no children.

The ‘Industrial Revolution’ was first published in 1884. The second edition appeared in 1887, the third and fourth in 1890 and 1894 respectively. To the fourth edition are added the two lectures on Henry George, delivered in St. Andrew's Hall in February 1883.

[An excellent life by Professor F. C. Montague, published in the Johns Hopkins Historical Series, 1889; and ‘Arnold Toynbee: a Reminiscence,’ by the present writer, 1895.]

A. M.-r.

TOYNBEE, JOSEPH (1815–1866), aural surgeon, second son of George Toynbee, a landowner and a large tenant-farmer in Lincolnshire, was born at Heckington in that county on 30 Dec. 1815. He was educated at King's Lynn grammar school, and at the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to William Wade of the Westminster general dispensary in Gerrard Street, Soho. He studied anatomy under George Derby Dermott at the Little Windmill Street school of medicine, and from him he learnt to be an enthusiastic dissector. He then attended the practice of St. George's and University College Hospitals, and was admitted a member of the College of Surgeons of England in 1838. Aural studies powerfully attracted him even during his student life, for as early as 1836 several of his letters, under the initials ‘J. T.,’ appeared in the ‘Lancet.’ In 1838 he assisted (Sir) Richard Owen (1804–1892) [q. v.], who was then conservator of the Hunterian Museum at the College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and he was soon afterwards elected one of the surgeons to the St. James's and St. George's Dispensary, where he established a most useful Samaritan fund. He was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society in 1842 for his researches