A friend to the prisoner: Edward Grubb's American tour of 1904 and Quaker social action

In January 1904 Edward Grubb, a prominent member of the British Society of Friends, began a two months tour of the Eastern, Southeastern and Mid-Western United States, with stops along the way at places as diverse as the White House in Washington and Hull House in Chicago. As Secretary of the British-based Howard Association, an organization of Victorian origin which sought to maintain the legacy of Quaker prison reform advocate John Howard, Grubb had remarkably easy access to public officials from President Theodore Roosevelt to state governors and prison wardens; as a journalist and social reformer troubled by the American "color question", Grubb met and questioned a considerable array of eminent Americans of the Progressive era.;Edward Grubb's personal account of his journey, preserved in a previously unpublished "Journal", is the centerpiece of this study. But an attempt is also made to go beyond the inherently interesting experiences and interviews recounted in Grubb's "Diary" and to view Edward Grubb as spiritual missionary as well as social reformer. Grubb's interest in penal reform arose not only from the long-standing Quaker tradition of compassion for the prisoner as reflected in the life and work of John Howard but also from the late-nineteenth century reappraisal and revitalization of the British Society of Friends which has been called the "Quaker Renaissance".;Edward Grubb was one of the leaders of a group of younger, better-educated English Friends who sought to return Quakerism to its radical seventeenth century roots while simultaneously embracing the ideas and methods of modern science and scholarship. These men and women rejected the evangelical principles adopted by many Victorian Quakers for what they perceived as the "primitive Christianity" advocated by Quaker founder George Fox and his early followers. For them, Christianity was less a set of beliefs than a way of life whose purpose was to inspire and to aid humanity in its mission to create God's Kingdom on earth. Viewed from this perspective Edward Grubb's work for the prisoner was more than simple advocacy of reform to improve human existence; it was, indeed, primarily a spiritual quest to fulfill the promise of Christ's life and death within the unique spiritual framework of the Quaker Renaissance. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).