Robert Tressell - The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

oxford world s classics
THE RAGGED TROUSERED
PHILANTHROPISTS
Robert Tressell was the pen name of Robert Noonan. He was born in Dublin in 1870 and died in Liverpool in 1911. Although he had middle-class roots, Noonan earned his living as a working man in South Africa and, after 1901, in Hastings. He was a skilled painter, decorator, and sign-writer, all elaborate crafts of the day. An active member of the local branch of the Social Democratic Feder- ation, his interests included aeronautics and aviation. The RaggedTrousered Philanthropists did not appear in print until after his early
death and in a much-abridged form. It nevertheless became one of the best-loved novels in the English language, well before it was issued in a restored form in 1955. It now has an indelible position in the history, heritage, and current life of the labour movement around the world as well as attracting a wide constituency of readers to its moving and humorous depiction of working-class life. Peter Miles lectures in English at the University of Wales, Lam- peter and is a Fellow of the English Association. He is co-author (with Malcolm Smith) of Cinema, Literature and Society: Elite andMass Culture in Interwar Britain (1987) and has contributed essays
on Robert Tressell to The Twentieth-Century British Working-ClassNovel (1984) and on Patrick MacGill to Selected Irish Writers from
the Library of John Quinn (2001). He has contributed to such jour
nals as Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography, The Book Collector,The Library, and Studies in Bibliography. He has also edited Arthur
Morrisons A Child of the Jago (1996).

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OXFORD WORLD S CLASSICS
ROBERT TRESSELL
The Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
PETER MILES

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Text copyright Lawrence & Wishart First published by Lawrence & Wishart, London Editorial material Peter Miles The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tressell, Robert, 18701911.
The ragged trousered philanthropists / Robert Tressell; edited with an introduction and notes by Peter Miles. p. cm.(Oxford worlds classics)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. SocialistsFiction.
2. CapitalismFiction.
3. Working classFiction.
4. Social classesFiction.
5. Labor movementFiction.
6. Social conictFiction.
7. Working class familiesFiction.
8. EnglandFiction.
I. Miles, Peter.
II. Title.
III. Series.
PR5671.T85R 823.914dc22 ISBN 019280453 978019280453 Typeset in Ehrhardt
by ReneCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suolk
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc., Suolk

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CONTENTS

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Composition and Publication
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was written in Hastings, on the
Sussex coast, probably between 1906 and 1910, by a skilled Irish housepainter, decorator, and sign-writer. In his daily life he used the name Robert Noonan (having adopted his mothers surname), but he had been born in Dublin in 1870 as the son of an aged Samuel Croker, policeman and magistrate. Noonan rst became known to readers of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists as Robert Tressall and subsequently, more properly, as Robert Tresselltaking his pen name from the portable trestles that constituted an emblem of the painters trade, as also of its uncertainties. (In any case, he joked, he didnt want his book to be seen as the product of a croaker.) Noonan seems to have been born into a comfortable enough middle- class world in Irelandcomfortable enough for memories of it to inuence his recognition of the privations of working peoplebut in his teens he left home for a new life in South Africa. There he worked in the building industry, where he was involved in trade organizations. He married, had a daughter, and subsequently divorced. He developed pro-Boer sympathies and toyed with the idea of joining an Irish Brigade to ght the British in the event of hostilities. As it happened, he left with his child for England in 1901. Here, he settled to work as a painter in Hastings where, however, employment was more precarious than in the Transvaal, working hours longer, and wages lower.
Noonans book about the workers of the building and painting trades in the town (relocated and rechristened Mugsborough) was handwritten in his spare time and the manuscript, stored in a tin box, was eventually placed in the care of his teenage daughter Kathleen. In late 1910 Noonan travelled alone to Liverpool, ostensibly to make arrangements to emigrate to Canada with Kathleen. In Liverpool, however, he fell seriously illand he kept the severity of his condition from his daughter. While he was seldom wholly well, this was his last illness. He died in early 1911 and was buried in the citys Walton cemetery in a paupers grave that

x
Introduction
was only identied and marked with a memorial tombstone in the late 1970s.
A little after his death, Kathleen mentioned the fact of the existence of her fathers manuscript in the presence of a visitor to the house where she worked, a certain Jessie Pope. Pope was a hack writer of simpering verses for children and the childishly minded. Somewhat in the Kate Greenaway tradition, she supplied, for example, numerous verses mimicking the supposed workings of the cutely innocent childs mind for Blackies 1910