BEVERIDGE WILLIAM HENRY 1879-1963 BARON BEVERIDGE

Tithe Redemption Committee 1921. Correspondence and statistical data.

Tithes were originally payments in kind (crops, wool, milk etc.) comprising an agreed proportion of the yearly profits of cultivation or farming. They were made by parishioners for the support of their parish clergy. In return the clergy maintained the chancel of the church and saw to the provision of church worship. During the Reformation tithe-rights that belonged to monasteries were confiscated by the Crown and granted or sold to various owners known as lay impropriators. From this time, approximately one third of all tithes became owned by lay people. Moreover, some clergymen and ecclesiastical institutions leased the collection of tithes to laymen.

Parliamentary enclosure of land provided an opportunity to allot land to the tithe-owners in lieu of tithe. Over 60 per cent of the 3700 Acts passed between 1757 and 1835 dealt with tithes in this way. The Tithe Commutation act of 1836 converted tithes into rent charge payments based on the prevailing price of grain. New Tithe Acts, notably those of 1891, 1925 and 1936, dealt with changed circumstances. Rent charges finally disappeared in 1936 when landowners began to pay an annuity over 60 years in order to redeem all tithe by 1996.

William Beveridge 1879 - 1963

William Beveridge was educated at Charterhouse and Balliol College, Oxford. He was sub-warden of Toynbee Hall 1903 - 1905, and leader-writer on 'social problems' for the Morning Post 1906 - 1908. From 1905 to 1908 Beveridge was a member of the Central (Unemployed) Body for London, and was also the first Chairman of the Employment Exchanges Committee. He was a member of the Board of Trade 1908 - 1916 and Director of Labour Exchanges 1909 - 1916. During World War I he was Assistant General Secretary of the Ministry of Munitions (1915 - 1916) and Second Secretary in the Ministry of Food (1916 - 1918). In 1919 Beveridge became Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Food. In the same year he was knighted. He then retired from the civil service and was appointed director of the London School of Economics (1919 - 1937). He then moved on to be Master of University College, Oxford (1937 - 1944).

During World War II he was Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Labour (1940) and was Chairman of the Social Service Inquiry (1941 - 1942) he produced Social Insurance and Allied Services, a report prepared for government which proposed a social system 'from the cradle to the grave' for British citizens. This report became known as the "Beveridge Report" and became the blueprint for the welfare-state legislation of 1944 - 1948.

Beveridge was Liberal MP for Berwick on Tweed 1944 - 1945, and was made 1st Baron Beveridge of Tuggal in 1946.

His publications include:

• Unemployment: A problem of industry (1909)
• Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (1939)
• Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942) (Beveridge Report)
• Full Employment in a Free Society (1944)
• The Economics of Full Employment (1944)
• Report on the Methods of Social Advance (1948)
• Voluntary Action (1948)
• A Defence of Free Learning (1959)

Two volumes

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Beveridge, Sir William, Baron Beveridge

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