Talk:Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

Family
Please insert the following information: Anthony 7th Earl of Shaftesbury and Emily had 10 children: Antony, Francis, Maurice, Evelyn, Lionel, Victoria, Mary, Constance, Edity and Cecil. I obtained this information from the genealogy of the Ashley-Cooper Family in "The Seventh Earl" By Grace Irwin

Saints banner and category
Based on this individual being included in the Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Australia), I am adding the Category:Anglican saints and the Saints WikiProject banner to this article. I am awaiting reliable sources which can be used to add the content to the article. John Carter 16:51, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Text from parallel article Anthony Ashley Cooper, 9th Earl of Shaftesbury, reformatted to wrap properly but with typos intact. This reads like an old article from The Children's Encyclopedia, but I don't know if that's where it came from:

Piccadilly Circus is the centre of London where many streets meet. In the middle of the Piccadilly there is a small island of stone, and on the island there is a statue called Eros. Eros holds a bow and arrow, and leans forward as if he is flying over London.On the steps below him women used to sit with baskets of violets and snowdrops, or bunches of pink carnations and tight little rosebuds.

All around are buses and lorries, and taxis and cars coming from north and south and east and west.Day and night the busy London traffic swirls round the small, stone island, and day after day people hurry past on their way to shops and theatres and staions and offices.

Everyone knowws Eros. Taxi drivers look up at him and say,

"Ah,Eros!Here we are at Piccadilly!"

Children, holding tightly to their mothers' hands as they cross the road, try to catch a gimpse of him between the rows of traffic. But no one seems to have time to go up the steps, and read the words that are written below the statue. Many people, though they know Eros so well, don't know at all why he is there.

He is there to remind them opf a story about a man called the Earl of Shaftesbury, who spent his whole life heping children.

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Dcoetzee 03:27, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Terribly unbalanced article
The article is utterly misleading, because it focuses on a very minor aspect of Shaftesbury's life. His main interest was in the improvement of conditions for the poor, where he transformed UK legislation. This gets only a skimpy paragraph. By contrast there is endless stuff about Israel.

Can someone with time and knowledge rebalance this? 213.123.44.130 (talk) 12:51, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. He is known foremost as a social reformer and to give such weight to a minor issue is to leave the article unbalanced. I have made a start.--Britannicus (talk) 23:12, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree too, although I think Britannicus went a bit far by deleting the other topic completely. I will add something back in commensurate with the current balance. Oncenawhile (talk) 09:29, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * There is still too much about his support for a Jewish homeland. I've read his Oxford DNB entry and there is nothing about his support for this cause, just a sentence about his support for a Protestant bishopric in Jerusalem. Georgina Battiscombe's biography doesn't contain anything about this either. For this to take up so much space in the article gives undue weight to it.--Britannicus (talk) 17:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the original poster of this section. One area of social reform for the poor and disabled is the creation of the Shaftesbury society (now livability.org.uk after joining with John Grooms, another social reformer, and also Prospects.

Livability is the sum of the merger of three long-standing charities: The Shaftesbury Society and John Grooms in 2007, and Prospects in 2016

See article on livability website for the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury https://www.livability.org.uk/people/patrons/nicholas-ashley-cooper-earl-of-shaftesbury/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dbridge276 (talk • contribs) 17:54, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Opium
Shaftesbury was a leading critic of the opium wars and trade, and there's no mention of this in the entry. It deserves a full section. Please message me if you can help me. I'm only a WikiGnome and not used to adding content. --StringRay (talk) 21:18, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

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Not clear
It is not clear how long Cooper was at Manor House school. He is said to have started there in 1808 and 1812. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.21.169 (talk) 11:46, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Manor House school in Chiswick in London seems to have closed down some time ago. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.21.169 (talk) 13:22, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It had been turned into an asylum by 1845. See https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol7/pp95-99 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.21.169 (talk) 13:25, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It seems to have closed down between 1835 and 1845. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.21.169 (talk) 13:35, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

confused within Reform of the Lunacy Laws
Re: 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".[14]

Did Shaftesbury oppose or support that "early treatment of insanity was essential if there was to be any prospect of a cure"? This seems to say he opposed.

Was it the Committee or Shaftesbury that supported "a magistrate's signature on a certificate of lunacy be made compulsory"?

JDE 84.13.33.197 (talk) 10:37, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Letter in the Times
Some years ago you added the Colonial Times article (which is actually a reprint from The Times of August 26, 1840, pp. 5–6 and carries 1839 dates). How do you know that Shaftesbury wrote it, as I can't see him named there? I don't doubt it, since I think I recall reading about it, but I can't find that now. Thanks. Zerotalk 06:59, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * , it was also printed by Sokolow here:
 * It would be excellent to replace it with the original Times publication; I have never been able to find it. Onceinawhile (talk) 09:29, 4 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I can replace it by The Times' version, but I'm still not satisfied that Shaftesbury wrote it. What you linked to (starting p229) is a letter from Shaftesbury dated a month after The Times' article. The Times' article is printed after that (starting p231) without an indication of authorship. I have been unable to find a mention of it in Sokolow's book to check if he discusses authorship, but frankly I don't think it is Shaftesbury's style (compare the two). I've also been unable to find out anything about "a periodical entitled Memorials concerning God's Ancient People of Israel". Zerotalk 11:57, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I have found the below from 2007. I would like to find a 19th century work attributing it to Shaftesbury though.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 12:29, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I would imagine it is covered in but I don't have an electronic copy. Onceinawhile (talk) 12:38, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The biography based on his diary doesn't mention it. Onceinawhile (talk) 15:32, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I have found the section of Sokolow where it is described: . He says "The articles in The Times, to which Lord Shaftesbury refers, appeared in that newspaper at various periods. On the 9th March, 1840 (p. 3), The Times published the following notice... This Memorandum (Appendix liv) is written entirely from a Christian point of view. Lord Shaftesbury, although himself a staunch believer in Christianity, was more inclined to give the project a practical character."
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 16:52, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * So Sokolow doesn't think Shaftesbury wrote it. I don't either, for the same reason. I think we need to remove it, alas, but I'll prepare the version from The Times for Christian Zionism etc. It would be good to have an original document to replace it by in this article. An image of a diary page would be great. I don't have access to Lewis' book either and can't even use interlibrary loan (apparently there is some virus going around). Zerotalk 02:44, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
 * His Quarterly Review article on Lord Lindsay's book could work, but I just looked through and the visual effect is not great.
 * All of this leaves the question of who do the most relevant scholars think wrote the memorandum. I have seen reference to it being written by the Church of Scotland (e.g. ) but I am not yet convinced.
 * Onceinawhile (talk) 08:27, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Does the printed letter have a name at the foot? In modern editions of The Times, it is usual for letters from Peers to be italically introduced as 'From e.g. The Earl of Shaftesbury' and the signature to be his title without the grade of peerage given. In 1839-40 the subject of this page was NOT YET Earl of Shaftesbury and would surely at the time signed any public letter to The Times as 'Ashley', reflecting his then courtesy title Lord Ashley? Cloptonson (talk) 10:17, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no signature. Zerotalk 12:18, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no signature. Zerotalk 12:18, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

did you ever figure out who might have written this? It shows up in a number of places in our encyclopedia, and the attribution needs to be corrected. Onceinawhile (talk) 18:02, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I have an essay of Gershon Shafir (no ignoramus) who says "In 1841, a mission of inquiry sent by the Church of Scotland to Palestine issued a Memorandum to Protestant Monarchs of Europe for the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine, and called on them to take on the mantle of Cyrus and restore the people of Israel to their native land.6 A member of the mission, a Scottish clergyman named Alexander Keith, was the first to speak of ‘a people without a country; even as their own land...'" Reference 6 is "Abigail Green, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero, Cambridge (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2010), p146". Page 146 of Green does not specify who wrote it (but it carefully avoids saying that Ashley wrote it even though Ashley is the subject of the passage). Green's reference is Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism, 1800-1918, 2 vols. (London, 1919), 1:124, 2:231-232, 235. I didn't check that yet. (Discussed above.) My opinion is still that the tone and style of the Memorandum exclude it from being Ashley's work; actually it screams "clergy" in line with Shafir's assertion. Zerotalk 00:51, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Dubious quotation
added and I am removing this:
 * In an article entitled "State and Restoration of the Jews" in The London Quarterly Review ( vol 64) in 1839, Shaftesbury referred to British Jews as “ stiff-necked, dark hearted people, and sunk in moral degradation, obduracy, and ignorance of the Gospel”

This quotation, though usually not in such a misleadingly clipped form, appears in many places, with several versions of the reference. I believe it is fake, but I'll take that back if someone can prove otherwise. The "London Quarterly Review" was the American edition of The Quarterly Review. However, page 104 of Vol 64, 1939, contains nothing similar. Searching for the the solution, I thought it might just have the wrong volume number, since page 104 of Vol 63, 1939 sits in an article of Ashley Cooper called "State and Prospects of the Jews". That article has plenty about the Jews, but I believe it doesn't have the passage quoted here (can you find it?). Some other sources cite this quotation directly to "State and Prospects of the Jews" in the British edition, where it appears at page 166 of Vol 63. But the quotation isn't there either. Just to be sure, page 104 of Vol 64 in the British edition doesn't have it either. I see a journal article that attributes it to a 1908 book of Gidney, but it isn't there. I suspect that someone in the past wrote what they considered a paraphrase then others took it up as a quotation. Meanwhile, Onamynous needs to read WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. Zerotalk 13:53, 10 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your edit. i accept the removal. I took the quote from a secondary source. but looking up primary source now,  I must couldnt find the quote in the primary source either Onamynous (talk) 10:21, 16 March 2024 (UTC)