Godfrey Lushington
Sir Godfrey Lushington was a British civil servant. A promoter of prison reform, Lushington served as Permanent [Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office] of the United Kingdom from 1886 to 1895.
Biography
Lushington was born in Westminster, on 8 March 1832, to Stephen and Sarah Grace Lushington; his twin brother was Vernon Lushington, Q.C., a county court judge. Educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford, he received his degree in 1854, and was List of presidents of the [Oxford Union|President of the Oxford Union] in 1853–1854 and was elected a fellow of All Souls in 1854. Two years later, in 1856, he wrote a "rather scathing essay on his Alma Mater" in The [Oxford and Cambridge Magazine].In 1865, he married Beatrice Anne Shore Smith, daughter of barrister Samuel Smith and granddaughter of William Smith. She was also a cousin of Florence Nightingale and of Barbara Bodichon.
With his brother Vernon, he advocated positivist philosophy, motivated by the ideas of Auguste Comte. A supporter of labour movements, he, and fellow positivist intellectuals A.J. Mundella, Edward Spencer Beesly, Henry Crompton, and Frederic Harrison, played a leading role in the acceptance of trades' union legitimacy.
Influenced by Frederick Denison Maurice, Lushington joined his brother, and Frederic Harrison, as a teacher at the Working Men's College, and became a benefactor and member of the College governing corporation.
He rose to Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office in 1885, and was knighted in 1892. During his Home Office tenure the Whitechapel Murders (1888-91)|Whitechapel Murders] gripped attention and imagination; a Jewish and Anarchist connection was seriously considered. The chalked Goulston Street message was seen by Commissioner Charles Warren to have potential for increased religious tension; Warren explained to Lushington that reason for the immediate removal of the message.
He retired from the civil service in 1895 and became an alderman of London County Council, a position held until 1898 when he became one of the British Government delegates to the Rome Anti-Anarchist Congress, with Sir Philip Currie and Sir C. Howard Vincent.
After retirement, Lushington gave evidence to the Gladstone Committee on prison reform: "I regard as unfavourable to reformation the status of a prisoner throughout his whole career; the crushing of self-respect, the starving of all moral instinct he may possess, the absence of all opportunity to do or receive a kindness, the continual association of none but criminals, the forced labour, and the denial of all liberty. I believe the true method of reforming a man, of restoring him to society, is exactly in the opposite direction to all these."