Will Reason – pictured on the cover of the issue of Social
Service Monthly that contained his obituary
Will Reason: Settlements and education. This piece first appeared in Reason, W. (ed.). (1898). University and Social Settlements. London: Methuen and Co.
Will Reason (1865-1926) was a Congregational minister who worked and campaigned for social justice. He also wrote and edited a number of books (including the one that this article was taken from). His other books and pamphlets included Our Industrial Outcasts (1905), Homes and Housing (1919), The Social Problem for Christian Citizens (1913), Poverty, Drink and the Community (1920), and Christianity and Social Renewal.
Will Reason studied theology at Mansfield College, Oxford (originally founded for nonconformist students in 1838 as Spring Hill College, Birmingham). Entering at the age of 23 in 1888 (a couple of years after the college moved from Birmingham), Will Reason went on to complete his Master’s in Philosophy at the University of London. At Mansfield College, he met Percy Alden who had joined the college with the aim of becoming a Baptist minister. Alden was part of the group working to set up a nonconformist settlement (Mansfield House) in Canning Town and had volunteered to act as warden (Scotland 2007: 138). He became the Congregational minister and warden at the college settlement in 1891. His friend Will Reason soon joined him as a resident, then deputy warden (and married his sister Kate in 1893). ‘To carry out Christ’s teaching’, Will Reason stated in 1893, ‘we felt that a vigorous attack must be made on the evil conditions of life in the district’ (op. cit.: 141). The settlement fostered a wide range of activities which focused on the classic mix of clubs, recreational activities and various classes and university extension lectures plus a penny bank, sick benefit society and loan society. With Frank Tillyard, a barrister who was also a resident, they set up the first Poor Man’s Lawyers (Leat 1975; Bradley 2019).
Reason spent seven years at Mansfield House Settlement, Canning Town before taking up the pastorate at a Congregational Church at New Southgate. He was later to move to the church on Soresby Street, Chesterfield. He was also secretary of the Social Services Committee of the Congregational Union of England and Wales and secretary of the Christian Social Crusade. Will Reason was also a Christian Socialist.
For more on settlements (https://infed.org/mobi/settlements/) and on settlements and adult education (https://infed.org/mobi/settlements-and-adult-education/).
ALL Settlements, both in England and America, seem to be begun upon one uniform principle. The first object, to which every other is subsidiary, is to make friends with the neighbourhood—to become part of its common life; to associate with the people on equal terms, without either patronage on the one side or subserviency on the other; to share in the joys and sorrows, the occupations and amusements of the people; to bring them to regard the members of the Settlements as their friends.
These words of Sir John Gorst admirably sum up the spirit in which a true settler approaches the problem he has determined to grapple with; it may be called a spirit of undifferentiated helpfulness. But, as soon as he has taken up his quarters, and become a veritable neighbour to the living men, women, and children, that helpfulness must necessarily take on some concrete shape. The needs that cry aloud on every hand must be met by something more effective than mere sympathetic feeling; this must be translated into action—the expenditure of positive effort upon actual conditions, with the purpose of achieving a definite result.
There are always two points to be settled: not only ” What needs to be done ? ” but also, ” What can I do ? ” For the power of universal helpfulness belongs to none of us; we have to confine ourselves to those matters that by reason of our differing abilities, opportunities, previous training, and many other considerations, we can do best, leaving the rest to comrades who are strong where we are weak.
Since the first impulse to settlement life came from the Universities, and these still supply most of the men, it is only natural that this question should have been answered in large measure by different forms of educational activity, for this is, as the writer already quoted puts it, the line of least resistance. The field is obviously immense, practically unlimited, and is just the one in which the man fresh from his own studies feels he can do the best work. It is true that actual experience often modifies this confidence in important respects. The scholar is not necessarily a teacher; a man may be able to absorb information as a sponge soaks up water, and yet lack the power of imparting it to others. He must have not only knowledge, but the ability to present it in a manner intelligible to the particular persons he has undertaken to instruct. This means he must speak their language, for which something more than a common mother-tongue is required. The best form of words, from an abstract point of view, will often fail to penetrate minds unaccustomed to that phraseology. I remember hearing a lecturer to an East End audience, who continually corrected ordinary phrases by a more classical diction: “If a glass of beer is allowed to stand for a time, it becomes thick, that is, it attains a mucous viscosity.^’ The teacher must also have a tactful sympathy which enables him to discern just where difficulties are felt—difficulties that would never have been felt or suspected by himself. This is what I mean by ” speaking their language.”
It is pretty certain, also, that a little experience will considerably modify the teacher’s estimate of his own educational superiority, without assuming at all that he was conceited about it to start with. He will find that even a University curriculum, with all its apparatus of tutors, lectures, classes, and libraries, leaves large provinces of knowledge untouched, and is in many ways not so successful in training the powers of observation and judgment as is the rough schooling of a knock-about practical life. While he has been dealing with books and abstract ideas, these men he has begun to teach have been handling concrete things. Many of them have travelled a good deal and seen many aspects of life hidden even from the first-class voyager through many lands. He will learn from them to look at matters from points of view that are to him startlingly new, and will, sooner or later, come to regard himself as one offering his contributions to the common stock of practical wisdom, rather than as one standing in the relation of teacher to pupils. Such, at least, has been the experience of the present writer.
But, for all this, the man who is educated in the conventional sense of the word, has, truly, unbounded opportunities of usefulness, if he will bear in mind these considerations and lay aside all ” superior person ” notions. For the man of books possesses many advantages over those whose life has led them almost entirely among things of immediate practical import; and there are round him, wherever he pitches his tent in East or South London, thousands of minds starving for the food he can give, hitherto denied them, or only doled out in scraps that make the hunger more sorely felt; and thousands more that may, by appropriate stimulus, be brought to feel and satisfy a need of which they were before but dimly conscious. It is not only what he can give directly; it is the training in methods of study that he has received, and his ability to point the way to the immense stores of accumulated information that so often are within reach but missed for lack of a little guidance, that make his help so valuable.
As for the field itself, it is exceedingly varied. Just as one finds, on exploration, that the region called vaguely, in common parlance, ” the East End,” is really a congeries of many large and distinct districts, each with a special character of its own, in spite of the wearisome monotony in external features, so one finds, also, of the people, that it is not only a gross libel for Tennyson’s Farmer to say, ” the poor in a lump is bad “; it is absurdly inaccurate to say they are anything in a lump. It is only those persons, possessed of one idea, who work in one rut, that meet only one kind of poor people; as, for example, some who confine themselves to sifting out applicants for charity, come to believe that all poor folk are cadgers.
So the settler finds that he may use his powers in many different ways of helping or education.
I. To begin with, there are a very great number of men and women of a pre-Board School age. All those born thirteen years before the passing of the Elementary Education Act—roughly, all those of more than thirty-five or forty years of age—come within this term; and it is not astonishing that a considerable portion of these are not able to read and write. But the expression must not be pressed too strictly from a chronological point of view, for the passing of the Act was naturally not followed by a perfect system of gathering the children into the schools. The meshes of education are still wide enough to let many slip through,, and when fees had to be paid the number was much greater.
These grown men and women do not care to make use of the evening classes provided by the School Boards. They are out of place among the boys and girls not long out of the day schools, and are sensitive about displaying their ignorance before a number of possibly not too sympathetic young people of superior attainments. There is also a rigidity in these classes that is unavoidable where grants must be earned and a certain kind of discipline maintained, which makes them uncongenial to those who are heads of families and do not love to put themselves “under authority” overmuch.
The best way of helping such is to form classes of a freer social character, where they will meet only those in much the same position as themselves, and will have the least possible sense of going back to school again. The Friends have shown one most successful way of doing this in their early ” Sunday Morning Adult Schools,” which have been so widely imitated. In these the elementary subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic are taken first, and afterwards the class turns to discussion of religious topics. From the simply educational point of view, of course, it is the discussion, not the subject, that is essential. Where teachers and members prefer it, the range may be over social, literary, or scientific topics. The main thing is to obviate the drudgery of elementary learning by an atmosphere of good fellowship and the introduction of what working-men dearly love – discussion on some matter of live human interest. Other matters must be modified to suit local exigencies.
II. Then there are those who have passed the school age, the younger men and women who want to use their powers that have been trained, so far, in adding to the smattering of learning gained in their all-too-short a course. The Board’s Continuation Classes are doing excellent work, but they do not by any means absorb all these. They are at present very largely composed of boys and girls who have only recently left school, for whose capabilities and natures the discipline and methods of school are still most appropriate; and their subjects are limited in scope by practical considerations. This makes them unsuitable for a great many who, without being in any sense unruly spirits, find the conditions in force to be restrictions that hamper rather than assist; who also desire to pursue lines of study not yet found in the curriculum.
To illustrate by a practical example. I was once returning with a party of East Enders who had been spending Whit-Monday at Oxford. Our compartment was occupied by young men, all being somewhere in the early twenties or even less. The conversation turned on their favourite fiction, and one young iron-worker quite simply mentioned, as the author he appreciated most—George Meredith. The rest, almost without exception, named other writers of quite great rank.
This is only one of many experiences that have convinced us who have lived in familiar intercourse with working people, that one of the saddest features of our social system is the enormous waste of intellect. One wonders at the tremendous force of brain power that would be at the service of the nation, if all these were given ample scope for development. As it is, countless numbers are discouraged and let their abilities run waste, being turned by social pressure away from their natural channels. Others plod on, but for want of that free association of mind with mind, that constitutes so valuable a part of University training, they make for themselves ruts, and are apt to become narrow in their appreciations. We meet • constantly with men who have read with astonishing results as to the mastery of detail in their favourite authors, but who give one a second shock of surprise that, knowing so much, they should yet know so little.
It is just here the man of wider culture may make his personal efforts most valuable. By means of circles for study, rather than classes, he can introduce new authorities, elicit what each student has read, give helpful suggestions as to filling up the gaps of knowledge, and illuminate the points that rise for discussion out of his wider reading. It is here, too, that his own culture will be most helped, for those ideas which he has learned to hold in a merely traditional or academic manner—not unknown at our Universities—he will be compelled to re-examine from fresh points of view, as he is called upon to defend them. Nor is there any sphere of helpfulness in which a man can more readily win the trust and gratitude of those he is trying to aid. Even in the troublous regions of sociology and economics, in which, from the intimate relation they bear to the conditions of the worker’s daily life, such strong feelings are mingled with intellectual concepts, difference of opinion will never alter friendship, if the opinion be urged without dogmatism, and with a transparent desire to ascertain the truth.
How wide is the range of such circles or classes may be seen by the reports of the different Settlements, notably that of the educational work at Toynbee Hall. Partly from being ” the Mother of Settlements,” and having had a longer experience than all others, partly from having laid great stress on the educational side from the beginning, and partly from its extremely favourable situation, which is so central and easily accessible, Toynbee Hall is far ahead of all other Settlements in this respect. It may be likened to a People’s University. There are classes in the literature of classical (including Hebrew) and modern languages, in languages themselves; in different branches of natural science; in history; in economics; in ethics; in such technical subjects as shorthand, book-keeping, friendly, society finance, drawing, ambulance, nursing, swimming, etc. There are also classes for men of the character indicated in the previous section, and afternoon classes for girls in subjects ranging from domestic economy to hygiene, through ordinary class subjects to such things as musical drill, wood-carving, and swimming. (See Appendix E)
Other Settlements have laid more stress on other lines of work, and are, from their greater distance from Central London, not so well able to get a sufficient supply of able teachers. Still, a good deal of excellent work has been achieved which is likely to increase every year. The better part of the results cannot of course be put into figures or tangible form. We have to remember
All the world’s coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account.
But even in the more sternly practical matter of making it easier for poor students to win certificates that will help them on in the struggle for a living, a goodly record could be compiled, which would appeal to the most matter-of-fact persons. Speaking for our own Settlement, Mansfield House, our students have gained certificates in connection with the Society of Arts, London Matriculation, and St John’s Ambulance Society, all of which are in their respective ways commercially valuable; I have also by special request coached two men who were seeking appointment as Factory Inspectors, but cannot at the moment speak as to the result.
It seems to me there are great possibilities to be developed here. I have several times mentioned the Continuation Classes under the School Boards, and indicated that there is no rivalry with these, but an endeavour to be complementary. As a matter of fact, by complying with certain structural requirements and putting the classes under the supervision of H.M. Inspectors, it is possible to receive the same financial aid and recognition by the Education Department that the Board’s classes receive. Nor need this at all interfere with the greater freedom I have laid stress upon. One has only to satisfy the Inspector that education is really given, and that attendances have been properly registered; there is no cast-iron examination to be dreaded, and I understand that this greater elasticity of method is no drawback, but a positive merit in the eyes of H.M. Inspectors.
In the movement to develop a real teaching University for London out of existing material, there is no reason why University Settlements should not bear a useful, though humble, part. In the endeavour to make a complete ladder from the Board School to the University the need of kindly hands to help the student up the rungs must not be forgotten, and it is to offer these that the Settlements exist.
III. Another organisation which maybe both used and helped by Settlements is the Society for the Extension of University Teaching. I have made a separate section for this, because, in this case, the teaching is supplied from outside the ranks of the Settlement and its helpers. What is left for these to do is to stimulate the necessary interest, provide the local organisation, and sometimes lend the Hall in which the lectures are to be given. Toynbee Hall has no less than nine of these courses in its twelfth year’s report. Mansfield House supplied the original stimulus in its district, and for some time provided premises and a secretary, and, since the Corporation of West Ham made the lectures a part of its Technical Education Scheme, it has had other lectures in its own hall. The Warden of Browning Hall is secretary for his district; Bermondsey Settlement includes among its residents the secretary of the London Society itself; Cambridge House, and the Passmore Edwards Settlement, which have developed from Trinity Court and University Hall respectively, will certainly carry on the practice of their progenitors in this respect; while Oxford House has made a start this last year, with the aid of the London County Council.
I can speak from personal experience of the keenness with which the students at these lectures take up their study, the pointed nature of their queries, for the most part, and the continuance of the same students in the successive courses; while the examiners’ reports testify to the excellence of the work done.
IV. It has been assumed in all the previous sections that regular attendance is practicable. A very large number, however, either cannot, or will not, set aside a certain hour each week, and consequently cannot receive the benefit of systematic study in one subject.
As regards those that cannot, this is mostly due to the irregular nature of their work. Of those in constant employment, many have to work in alternating periods of day and night shifts; others are liable to be called upon for overtime; while in the dock districts many callings, being dependent upon the arrival of ships, can hardly be said to have any regularity at all. Every day that a vessel remains in the docks is grudged. Dockers to unload, shipwrights to repair, and stevedores to load again, crowd upon each others’ heels, working often night and day until the job is done; and, of course, where special cargoes are carried, such as grain or coal, the “cornies” or the ” coalies” are under the same conditions. All this is discouraging to those who hold classes and those who wish to attend them, but needs must when Mammon drives, and the only thing to be done is to devise some way of meeting the circumstances.
Then one has to consider the great mass whose own natures are incapable of sustained effort, but who will gladly give an hour or so now and then for acquiring knowledge that is pleasantly put. For what I have said above as to the capabilities of some by no means applies to the great mass of East and South Londoners; these are for the most part what their circumstances make them.
The requirements of both these cases are met by single lectures. They must be held at some regular time and place, so as to be readily found when opportunity and inclination agree; but each must be complete in itself, so as to be perfectly intelligible without regard to anything said on an occasion when the listener was not there. If limelight views can be added, so much the better.
Most Settlements have tried these and found them a great success. The best times are undoubtedly Saturday and Sunday evenings, for then the largest proportion of the population is likely to be free. Toynbee Hall undoubtedly takes the lead in the pre-eminence of its lecturers. Here, for example, are some of the names taken from the list of 1896-7—Rev. Canon Barnett; Sir Alfred C. Lyall, K.C.B., K.C.I.E., K.C.S.I.; Colonel C. Cooper King; Arthur Sidgwick, M.A.; J. Franck Bright, D.D.; Dr J. D. M’Clure; Leslie Stephen ; W. H. Preece, C.B., F.R.S.; Frederic Harrison; Sir Charles Elliott, K.C.S.I.; Prof. J. W. Hales; Prof. A. V. Dicey; Prof. Victor Horsley, M.A., F.R.S.; Sir W. Martin Conway; Prof. Clifford Allbutt, F.R.S.; Major-Gen. Sir Francis Grenfell; Prof. Flinders Petrie; Sir Walter Besant; Augustine Birrell, Q.C., M.P.; Dr A. M. Fairbairn; Sir Herbert Maxwell, M.P.; Prof. J. E. Carpenter, etc., etc. Other Settlements, though at a great disadvantage from their remoter situations, are yet able to maintain a very high level in this respect, and it is a remarkably healthy sign that those who have won so deservedly high a reputation in the subjects they have made their own are willing, at considerable sacrifice of time and convenience, to give of their best so freely to those who are only able to offer their grateful and earnest attention in return.
As to this, however, it may be confidently said that there is no better audience than one of working men and women. None follow a lecture more closely, none are so hearty in their genuine applause, and, if it be a debatable matter, none so ready and frank in questions and criticism. This is the reason, I am convinced, why those who have something worth saying are so ready to say it without other reward. As to the benefits conferred, there is no room for question. Looking over the reports from the different Settlements, one notes that they range over every topic of human interest. At these lectures the dwellers in the dreary monotonous regions of Poorer London are taken into other lands by the vivid descriptions of travellers who have been there themselves, often aided by splendid lantern views; are initiated into the many-sided wonders of natural science j are introduced to the great men and women of all ages and all lands, and led to share their thoughts; are helped to appreciate the masterpieces of literature, art, and music; or are instructed in the facts which must be taken into account in the solution of those social problems in which they, of, all people, are most vitally concerned. It is, indeed, a liberal education, and one wishes that the centres at which it is given could be indefinitely multiplied. In East London alone, including West Ham, there are at least a million and a quarter of people whose conditions tend inevitably to keep them ignorant and to narrow their outlook upon life, and this leaves South London and large tracts in other parts to be reckoned with also. When one runs over the list of centres such as have been described, and calculates the accommodation offered, the question rises, with a sigh, “What are these among so many? ”
V. In summing up the educational efforts of Settlements, a prominent place should be given to the Picture Exhibitions, introduced by Canon Barnett at Toynbee Hall. The example thus set has been followed by the Warden of Mansfield House, who has arranged three annual exhibitions on behalf of West Ham Corporation, and in this last year by Bermondsey Settlement. At these shows the working folk are introduced to the works of many of our foremost artists, and, as far as possible, guides are provided who are able to give necessary explanations and information. The numbers of visitors at the three centres show how keenly the exhibitions were appreciated: Toynbee Hall (nineteen days), 63,000; Canning Town and Stratford (four weeks), 120,000; Bermondsey (one week), 11,675.
VI. I now come to a most important field in which the settler may spend himself on behalf of education, one which might well have a chapter to itself—viz. School Board work. The machinery and the cost of public elementary education are supplied, as they should be, by the community, but money and organisation are of little worth without the right men to use them. For the administration of the Education Act two sets of persons are required—members of School Boards, whose duty is to care for the needs of their entire district, and on whom all the financial responsibility rests; and members of local Boards of Managers, with special groups of schools under their care, who are entrusted with such duties as visitation of schools, reporting upon particular needs, primary selection of teachers, etc. The great bulk of the metropolitan area is under the London Board, which is of such size and importance that it attracts men and women of more than local influence and reputation, though my own personal belief is that Boards of normal size controlling the separate districts would do much better work, and that the reasons for a united municipal London do not exist in educational affairs. West Ham, however, has a separate Board, and there are districts distinctly metropolitan in character or rapidly becoming so—e.g. Hornsey and Tottenham—which would be greatly benefited by Settlements in their midst and settlement members on their School Boards.
For the settler has at least three important qualifications for this post. He—or she—is in the first place educated himself, which, with all due respect, cannot be said of all those elected to supervise the education of others. Secondly, being a settler, he has a detachment of interest which sets him free to make this education his first object. For it must be sorrowfully recorded that election is too frequently sought on other grounds. Some are put forward mainly to keep down the rates; others on one side or the other of the great ecclesiastical strife; others with a pure Labour policy; while some appear to run with an eye to the advertisement of themselves and their business. Except for the last, no doubt much can be said for these. We need good businessmen to control the finances and check waste, always provided that the economy is not of that short-sighted kind that is of all things most wasteful. We need, while theological controversies are still allowed to intrude into the education of our children, a due balance of denominational interests. We need bona fide workingmen to keep an eye on the conditions of labour for those directly or indirectly employed by the Board. But we need, above all, those who lay the greatest stress on their primary function—education. Nor is there any reason why the settler should not be well qualified to act in these other directions also.
Thirdly, the settler, if worth his salt, has a considerable knowledge of the actual conditions of the children’s homelife, and is in touch with the thoughts and desires of the parents themselves, good and bad. This cannot fail to be of immense service in the practical details of his work. For the Boards are mainly administrative, not legislative, and the chief business is done in committees. It is here that particulars are thrashed out, and the complexities of practical matters are considered. Having been closely connected with West Ham School Board as member or as chairman of managers for nearly six years, I have had some experience of this. Suppose it is a question of Continuation Classes in his district; the settler knows pretty well what is the demand for them, and what should be their character. Or when sitting at Attendance Committee with grim magisterial functions, he knows whether the excuses are likely to be true, will sometimes be acquainted with the actual circumstances. Conversely, many cases with which he can most fittingly deal as member of a settlement, become known to him, first, as member of the Board; and in such questions as cheap or free dinners, boot supply, and others that are outside the legal scope of the Board, but are intimately related to its practical action, the settler should be of great service.
Pretty much the same may be said of the settler as School Manager. Here it is his business to make himself at home in the schools, to become the friend both of teachers and scholars, to smooth away friction,, to make helpful suggestions, to go thoroughly into complaints and requests that are sent up to the managers from the schools, so that decisions may be made with knowledge. There is also a considerable activity in schools that goes beyond the legal requirements. Many teachers devote a good deal of energy and time to such things as clubs, concerts, etc., which add wonderfully to the life and esprit de corps of the school. The manager can do much to help this spirit where it exists and to stimulate it where it does not. In fact, there is much more than enough to take all the time that he (or she) can devote to it. Lastly, outside the actual holding of office. Settlements can be very useful allies of School Boards in what may be described as filling up the gaps.
In the first place, while the leading men are keen on education, there are still a large number of poor folk who are in daily life in practical antagonism to the School Board, personified in their visiting officer, who is always spoken of as if he were the entire Board in himself. The hard circumstances of their lot are principally responsible for this. It is extremely difficult for them to judge of the relative importance of Johnnie’s being given a better start in life, or of being allowed to earn a few coppers as an errand boy; and it must go very much against the grain to let Nell go to school, when it would be so much more convenient to have her at home looking after the baby—or as is too often the case, the babies. The poor, having to live daily from hand to mouth, do not look far ahead; moreover, looking ahead seldom discloses any cheerful prospect. Settlements can do much to strengthen the belief in the value of education for the children, and make these poor people ready to undergo still greater sacrifices for it than they already do. What these sacrifices are only those who have received the entrée into their life can know.
But there is a more definite way of helping that has been discovered. In all poor districts there are a most distressing number of children who are physically unfit to attend school. In West Ham, for example, we find any number of cripples, who could not possibly mix with the boisterous throng that rush with whoop and yell round the playgrounds, nor climb the steep stairs that have become so familiar a feature of our “three-decker”‘ schools; in most cases they could not get to the schools at all. The Women’s Settlement in Canning Town have taken these helpless little ones under their wing, and opened a morning school for them. The children, or such of them as require it, are collected by means of a donkey-carriage; then school “goes on from 9.30 to 12, and consists of singing, drilling (!), handwork of various kinds, reading, arithmetic, and simple object-lessons.” The results have given ample encouragement. In many cases proper instruments have been supplied and have given great relief; while all will sympathise with the closing words of the report:—”The children show marked improvement, not only in acquisition of the ‘ learned arts’ (!) but in general intelligence and joy of life; and in this we specially rejoice, for it is indeed a good thing to bring brightness and happiness to children whose lot should naturally be joyous, who yet travel such a weary road.”
References
Barnett, S. A. (1898) ‘University settlements’ in W. Reason (ed.) (1898) University and Social Settlements, London: Methuen. [Available in the infed archives]
Bradley, K. (2019) Lawyers for the Poor: Legal Advice, Voluntary Action and Citizenship in England, 1890-1990. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Curthoys, M. C. and Wales, T. (2005). Alden, Sir Percy (1865–1944), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/39606. Retrieved: January 7, 2020].
Leat, D. (1975). The Rise and Rôle of the Poor Man’s Lawyer, British Journal of Law and Society Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter, 1975), pp. 166-181
Reason, W. (ed.). (1898). University and Social Settlements. London: Methuen and Co.
Reason, W. (ed.). (1905). Our Industrial Outcasts. By members of the Christian Social Brotherhood. London : Andrew Melrose.
Reason, W. (1913). The Social Problem for Christian Citizens. [S.l.] : National Council of Evangelical Free Churches
Reason, W. (1919). Homes and Housing. London : Congregational Union.
Reason, W. (1919). Christianity and Social Renewal. London : Student Christian Movement.
Reason, W. (1922). Drink and the Community. London : S.C.M.
Reason, W. (undated). The Land Problem for Christian Citizens. London : National Council of Evangelical Free Churches.
Scotland, N. (2007). Squires in the Slums. Settlements and missions in Late-Victorian London: London I B Taurus.
Social Service Monthly (1927) Will Reason. Social Servants. CCXV, Social Service Monthly 273, January.
Acknowledgements: Matthew Reason, a relative of Will Reason, kindly provided details of Reason’s life and the image used here.