From Chantry to Oxfam: Short History of Charity and Charity Legislation: A Short History of Charity and Charity Legislation

by Norman Alvey

From Chantry to Oxfam

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[jzthompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been on my active 'To Read' pile for nearly a year, and it took me a long train ride to get beyond the first chapter. It's a little dry and text-booky at times, but worth sticking with. I often found when I studied this stuff full time, putting the law in its historical context helps it make a lot of sense, and that holds true here.

There were also a few fun historical anecdotes I'm going to do my best to work into conversation, like the trust to rescue English men and women held as slaves in Barbary that failed when the trustees couldn't *find* any English slaves in Barbary.

It was also interesting to see how many of our contemporary debates about aid money, development, etc have a long historical pedigree - the judge who worried about educating the poor would make them discontent with their lot in life or the complaints about Victorian charities spending too much of their endowment on administration and entertainment could have come been published about [the organisation for which I work] in the last year or so...

At nearly 25 years old this is probably no use at all as a guide to the contemporary law, but very rewarding all the same.