Alcott House in Ham, Surrey (now in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames), was the home of a utopian spiritual community and progressive school which lasted from 1838 to 1848. [1] [2] Supporters of Alcott House, or the Concordium, were a key group involved in the formation of the Vegetarian Society in 1847. [3]
The prime mover behind the community was "sacred socialist" and mystic James Pierrepont Greaves, who was influenced by American transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott, and Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. [4] Together with his followers, who included Charles Lane – and with the help of wealthy sponsors, Sophia and Georgiana Chichester – he founded Alcott House on Ham Common in Surrey in 1838. The Ham Common Concordium, as it came to be known, consisted of a working mixed cooperative community and a progressive school for children. The headmaster of Alcott House was Henry Gardiner Wright. [5]
The community was dedicated to a regime of spiritual development and purification – in the words of Greaves, aiming to produce the "most loveful, intelligent and efficient conditions for divine progress in humanity". To this end the members submitted to an austere regime of early rising, strict vegetarianism (usually raw food), no stimulants, celibacy, and simple living, and experimented with various practices such as astrology, hydrotherapy, mesmerism and phrenology. [6] The men grew their hair and beards long and wore loose-fitting clothes, while the women defied convention by not wearing the traditional, restrictive corset.
The community at Alcott House promoted a strict vegan diet, all meals were served cold apart from hot potatoes. [7] Alcott House rejected all animal source foods including meat, butter, cheese, eggs and all stimulants such as chocolate, coffee, tea as well as mustard, salt, vinegar and spices. [7]
Alcott House school was open to children from both inside and outside the community – the latter usually from radical parents who sympathised with its progressive educational stance. The curriculum emphasised moral education and the development of the child's innate spiritual gifts, teaching practical skills such as gardening and cookery as well as book learning. Punishment was frowned upon and education aimed to produce "integral men and women", able to live in a truly cooperative society and not simply playing traditional roles.
In 1848, the community came to an end and the house was purchased in 1849 by John Minter Morgan to provide an orphanage for 70 children, the National Orphan Home for Girls, [8] though still run along vegetarian lines.
In 1856 the foundation stone was laid for the present building, South Lodge, opened in 1862, which could accommodate 200 children. The orphanage closed in 1924. [9] South Lodge has been converted to flats and the grounds have been developed as Bishops Close.
The British and Foreign Society for the Promotion of Humanity and Abstinence from Animal Food was formed at Alcott House by a group of vegetarians in 1843. [10] Unlike other organizations during this time, the Society had an open membership for women and let them hold office. [11] The Society has been described as a forerunner to the Vegetarian Society. [12] Its President was Sophia Chichester. [10]
Amos Bronson Alcott was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a plant-based diet. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights.
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.
A utopia typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, which describes a fictional island society in the New World.
The Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom is a British registered charity. It campaigns for dietary changes, licenses Vegetarian Society Approved trademarks for vegetarian and vegan products, runs a cookery school and organises National Vegetarian Week in the UK.
John Abraham Heraud (1799–1887) was an English journalist and poet. He published two extravagant epic poems, The Descent into Hell (1830), and The Judgment of the Flood (1834). He also wrote plays and travel books.
The Wayside is a historic house in Concord, Massachusetts. The earliest part of the home may date to 1717. Later it successively became the home of the young Louisa May Alcott and her family, who named it Hillside, author Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family, and children's writer Margaret Sidney. It became the first site with literary associations acquired by the National Park Service and is now open to the public as part of Minute Man National Historical Park.
Abigail "Abba" Alcott was an American activist for several causes and one of the first paid social workers in the state of Massachusetts. She was the wife of transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott and mother of four daughters, including Civil War novelist Louisa May Alcott.
Fruitlands was a utopian agrarian commune established in Harvard, Massachusetts, by Amos Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane in the 1840s, based on transcendentalist principles. An account of its less-than-successful activities can be found in Transcendental Wild Oats by Alcott's daughter Louisa May Alcott.
Orchard House is a historic house museum in Concord, Massachusetts, United States, opened to the public on May 27, 1912. It was the longtime home of Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) and his family, including his daughter Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), who wrote and set her novel Little Women (1868–69) there.
Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts, is a museum about multiple visions of America on the site of the short-lived utopian community, Fruitlands. The museum includes the Fruitlands farmhouse, a museum about Shaker life, an art gallery with 19th-century landscape paintings, vernacular American portraits, and other changing exhibitions, and a museum of Native American history. In 2023, readers of USA Today voted to name Fruitlands as one of the ten best history museums in the United States.
Charles Lane was an English-American transcendentalist, abolitionist, and early voluntaryist. Along with Amos Bronson Alcott, he was one of the main founders of Fruitlands and a vegan.
William Andrus Alcott, also known as William Alexander Alcott, was an American educator, educational reformer, physician, vegetarian and author of 108 books. His works, which include a wide range of topics including educational reform, physical education, school house design, family life, and diet, are still widely cited today.
Joseph Michael Palmer was a member of the Fruitlands commune and an associate of Louisa May Alcott and other Transcendentalists.
Transcendental Wild Oats: A Chapter from an Unwritten Romance is a prose satire written by Louisa May Alcott, about her family's involvement with the Transcendentalist community Fruitlands in the early 1840s. The work was first published in a New York newspaper in 1873, and reprinted in 1874, 1876, and 1915 and after.
James Pierrepont Greaves, was an English mystic, educational reformer, socialist and progressive thinker who founded Alcott House, a short-lived utopian community and free school in Surrey. He described himself as a "sacred socialist" and was an advocate of vegetarianism and other health practices.
Sophia Catherine Chichester was an English patron of religious and political unorthodoxy. She supported the work of reformers including Robert Owen and Richard Carlile, and was president of the British and Foreign Society for the Promotion of Humanity and Abstinence from Animal Food. Along with her sister, Georgina Welch, she has been described as "a unique case of upper-class female radicalism in early Victorian England."
Henry Stephen Clubb was an English-American Bible Christian, abolitionist, chartist, journalist and author, who was state senator for Michigan, and founder and first President of the Vegetarian Society of America (VSA).
Cyril Valentine Pink (1894–1965) M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. was a British obstetrician, naturopath, Theosophist, and vegetarianism activist. Pink was an early medical advocate of natural childbirth. He was the co-founder of Stonefield Maternity Home and was a disciple of Maximilian Bircher-Benner.
Georgiana Fletcher Welch was an English patron of religious and political unorthodoxy.
Emily Ronalds was a British social reformer. She supported pioneering cooperative communities, and also had extended theoretical and practical involvement in early childhood education through the formative years of the infant school movement in England.
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