Notebook of Robert Aglionby Slaney

Description:These pages are from a series of notebooks kept by Robert Aglionby Slaney, who served as MP for Shrewsbury for several periods between the 1820s and early 1860s. He was interested in social, economic and agricultural reform, and was particularly concerned with improvements to the lives and living conditions of working class people who had moved into Britain’s growing towns and cities as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Slaney was chair of the Select Committee on Public Walks which was set up to establish what open space was available for public use in major towns in Britain, and to recommend action to ensure adequate provision in the future.^{<small>1</small>} The Committee’s report emphasised the great need for public parks, and the benefits they could bring people, and was presented to Parliament in 1833.

Slaney’s involvement in the movement to provide public parks and recreation grounds continued into the 1850s, when he promoted the Recreation Grounds Act of 1859,^{<small>2</small>} and was driven by his desire to promote better health of working class people living in towns, by providing open space where they could enjoy fresher air. He also had the fear, common to many nineteenth century philanthropists and commentators, that poorer people were being exposed to temptations as a result of living in close proximity to the wealthy, and needed to be given opportunities for education and recreation to prevent theft, drunkenness, and social unrest.

Slaney corresponded with others interested in the provision of public parks, including Lord Egerton, who recommended that ‘ornamental sheds’ be constructed in parks to allow people to shelter from the rain, remarking ‘it is painful to see the effects of a sudden storm on a Sunday’,^{<small>3</small>} and Lady Janet Kaye Shuttleworth who praised the attitude in Germany towards public gardens and compared it unfavourably with the situation in England.^{<small>4</small>}

Slaney’s anxieties reflect widespread attitudes among middle and upper class reformers, as expressed in efforts to control working class patterns of recreation during the first part of the nineteenth century by providing public parks for families to use on Sundays and other holidays, particularly during the summer months. The development of parks was made easier by the Recreation Grounds Act of 1859 which encouraged the donation of money or land to local authorities for recreation, and the Public Improvements Act 1860 which gave local authorities powers to acquire, hold and manage open spaces using rate payments.^{<small>5</small>} This legislation is likely to have been a factor in encouraging the gifts of land for Birmingham’s first park, Adderley Park, in 1856, donated by Charles Bowyer Adderley, and in the lease of land for Calthorpe Park from Lord Calthorpe, in 1857. Other benefactors donated or leased land during the second half of the nineteenth century, and Birmingham City Council was also able to acquire land for public parks.


<font color="#666633"><small>¹ Hazel Conway, People’s Parks: the design and development of Victorian parks in Britain
(Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.21
² Conway
³ Lord Egerton to Robert Aglionby Slaney, 17 June 1855 [UBSC: Eyton Letters EYT154]
⁴ Lady Janet Kaye Shuttleworth to Robert Aglionby Slaney, 19 March 1861
[UBSC: Eyton Letters EYT160]
⁵ Conway, p.63</small></font>