Toynbee Hall is the original university settlement house. Founded in 1884 in Commercial Street, Whitechapel in the East End of London, it is still active today. A centre for social reform, Toynbee Hall was founded by Samuel and Henrietta Barnett with support from Balliol and Wadham colleges at Oxford University, and named after their friend and fellow reformer, Oxford historian Arnold Toynbee.
The radical idea behind Toynbee Hall that became the basis for settlement houses throughout England and the United States (Hull House) was that middle-class reformers would go to live in the poor neighbourhoods, providing direct aid—in the words of Samuel Barnett 'to learn as much as to teach; to receive as much to give'.
Toynbee was born in London as the son of the physician Joseph Toynbee, a pioneering otolaryngologist in his time; the more famous universal historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975), with whom he is often confused, was his nephew.
Toynbee suggests to distinguish between "a struggle for mere existence and a struggle for a particular kind of existence." From the very beginning of history, he argues, all human civilization was essentially designed to "interfere with this brute struggle.
For Toynbee, early industrial capitalism and the situation of the working class in it was not only a subject of ivory-tower studies; he was actively involved in improving the living conditions of the proletariat.
ToynbeeHall is the original university settlement house of the settlement movement.
A centre for social reform, ToynbeeHall was founded by Arnold Toynbee with support from Balliol and Wadham colleges at Oxford University, and named after their friend and fellow reformer, Oxfordhistorian Arnold Toynbee.
The politician John Profumo dedicated much of his time to the Hall from the 1960s onwards after the Profumo Affair.
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