Description:Norman Chamberlain was the paternal cousin of Neville Chamberlain. He was Chairman of the Parks Committee of Birmingham City Council between 1912 and 1914, when he volunteered to serve in the First World War.
Norman was born at Augustus Road, Edgbaston in 1884. He attended Eton College, and studied History at the University of Oxford. He became interested in social work after leaving Oxford, and moved back to Birmingham in 1907, living at Calthorpe Cottage in Edgbaston. He was active in several social welfare organisations for young people from deprived backgrounds, including the Street Children’s Union. He established a Boys Club for paper sellers and unemployed boys and young men who spent their time in and around New Street station. He expressed his concern about the demoralising effects on these young people of unemployment and poor nutrition, and wanted the Boys Club to provide them with guidance in gaining and keeping a job, as well as organising games and leisure activities.<sup><small>1</small></sup> He paid for several boys to emigrate to Canada, and assisted at Juvenile Police Courts in Birmingham, speaking for defendants, and organising probation work for those convicted.
Norman’s commitment to working-class youth welfare is evident in his initiatives as Chairman of the Parks Committee. He was instrumental in establishing a programme of <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1739"> ‘Organised Games’</a> for both boys and girls in Birmingham’s parks and recreation grounds during the summer of 1910, which included ball games, skipping, hopscotch, and ‘ring games’.<sup><small>2</small></sup> During the first year the scheme was run by voluntary workers and the following year Norman met half the costs of employing experienced teachers as play organisers and instructors. The Parks Committee funded the scheme from 1912, and it continued until 1916 when it was threatened by lack of funds. It was only reinstated after the intervention of the Bishop of Birmingham, who was concerned about the need to promote good behaviour as well as ‘healthy physical development’ in children whose fathers were away serving in the war.<sup><small>3</small></sup> Norman was killed in action on 1 December 1917.
Norman clearly saw himself as a mentor and friend to the boys he helped <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1751">(letter to Boys Club members)</a> and his achievements on the Parks Committee included increasing the number of playing fields and recreation grounds available for games and organised leisure. The driving principles of his welfare work were informed by social imperialism; he thought it was essential to improve the character and stamina of Birmingham’s working class youth through moral guidance and structured physical activities, so that they would be fit to defend the British Empire. He would presumably have seen his service, and death, in the First World War as a contribution to the same cause.
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> Neville Chamberlain, Norman Chamberlain: A Memoir (London, 1923), pp.37-42
<sup>2</sup> Norman Chamberlain (ed), Organised Games: A Birmingham Experiment (Birmingham, 1911)
<sup>3</sup> Letter from the Bishop of Birmingham quoted in the report of the administration sub-committee at a meeting of the Parks Committee, 3 April 1916 [BA&H: BCC 1/BO/1/1/3]</small></font>