Philanthropists From England

"[After being informed of an unnamed 1960s pop singer sleeping with 12 to 14 year olds.] Yes. I would never have time to excuse anything like adults being into children. In fact I'd rather not even opinionate on this. I’ll leave it to the Anthony Clares of this world to sort out the psychology of child abuse. But I will stand up and say this sort of thing is sickening, not part of my world at all."

"The expression which I came to associate with Savile's sex partners was either one used by production assistants or one I made up to summarise their reports ... "under-age subnormals". He targeted the institutionalised, the hospitalised – and this was known. Why did Jimmy Savile go to hospitals? That's where the patients were."

"As a nation at that time we held Savile in our affection as a somewhat eccentric national treasure with a strong commitment to charitable causes. [...] Today's reports show that in reality he was a sickening and prolific sexual abuser who repeatedly exploited the trust of a nation for his own vile purposes."

"I was in my wheelchair, but I just remember [Savile's] hands being everywhere and just lingering those two, three, four seconds slightly too long in places they shouldn't [...] It was in a busy room full of people in a studio so it was quite discreetly done and you don't kind of realise what's happening at the time, especially when you're 14 and it's the first time you've ever been in a studio and you're very excited. But I do remember feeling uncomfortable and he had these huge rings on his fingers."

"Savile was a callous, opportunistic, wicked predator who abused and raped individuals, many of them patients and young people, who expected and had a right to expect to be safe. His actions span five decades – from the 1960s to 2010."

"Savile was a highly unusual personality whose lifestyle, behaviour and offending patterns were equally unusual. As a result of his celebrity, his volunteering, and his fundraising he had exceptional access to a number of NHS hospitals and took the opportunities that that access gave him to abuse patients, staff and others on a remarkable scale. Savile's celebrity and his roles as a volunteer and fundraiser also gave him power and influence within NHS hospitals which meant that his behaviour, which was often evidently inappropriate, was not challenged as it should have been. Savile's ability to continue to pursue his activities without effective challenge was aided by fragmented hospital management arrangements; social attitudes of the times, including reticence in reporting and accepting reports of sexual harassment and abuse, and greater deference than today towards those in positions of influence and power; and less bold and intrusive media reporting. While it might be tempting to dismiss the Savile case as wholly exceptional, a unique result of a perfect storm of circumstances, the evidence we have gathered indicates that there are many elements of the Savile story that could be repeated in the future. There is always a risk of the abuse, including sexual abuse, of people in hospitals. There will always be people who seek to gain undue influence and power within public institutions including in hospitals. And society and individuals continue to have a weakness for celebrities. Hospital organisations need to be aware of the risks posed by these matters and manage them appropriately."

"[When asked about his freedom from emotional attachment to other people.] The tough thing in life is ultimate freedom, that's when the battle starts. Ultimate freedom is what it's all about, because you've got to be very strong to stand for ultimate freedom. Ultimate freedom is the big challenge, now I've got it, and I can tell you there's not many of us that have got ultimate freedom. I've got some considerable clout as well, all over. That is where the battle, the personal battle starts now. I've managed to handle complete and ultimate utter freedom. It's marvellous but it's dangerous. It would be easy to be corrupted by many things, when you've got ultimate freedom, especially when you've got clout. I could be corrupted."

"Louis Theroux: So, why do you say in interviews that you hate children when I've seen you with kids and you clearly enjoy their company and you have a good rapport with them? Jimmy: Right, obviously I don't hate 'em. That's number one. Louis: Yeah. So why would you say that then? Jimmy: Because we live in a very funny world. And it's easier for me, as a single man, to say "I don’t like children" because that puts a lot of salacious tabloid people off the hunt. Louis: Are you basically saying that so tabloids don't, you know, pursue this whole "Is he/isn’t he a paedophile?" line, basically? Jimmy: Yes, yes, yes. Oh, aye. How do they know whether I am or not? How does anybody know whether I am? Nobody knows whether I am or not. I know I'm not, so I can tell you from experience that the easy way of doing it when they're saying "Oh, you have all them children on Jim'll Fix It", say "Yeah, I hate 'em." Louis: Yeah. To me that sounds more, sort of, suspicious in a way though, because it seems so implausible. Jimmy: Well, that's my policy, that's the way it goes. That's what I do. And it's worked a dream. (Pause) Louis: Has it worked? Jimmy: A dream."

"But Gary [Glitter] has not tried to sell them [images of child pornography], not tried to show them in public or anything like that. It were for his own gratification. Whether it was right or wrong is, of course, it's up to him as a person. But they didn't do anything wrong but they are then demonised. If you said to that copper, what's Gary Glitter done wrong? Well nothing really. He's just sat at home watching dodgy films."

"Anthony Clare asked me my feelings towards children, and I said, "I couldn't eat a whole one . . . I hate them!" [...] But that is because I want to shut up someone who's trying to go down that dirty, sordid road with questions like that."

"[When asked if "rumours that he had been a psychopath, practised necrophilia and was into young girls might turn out to be true" in 2001.] Bollocks to my legacy [...[ If I'm gone that's that . . . Whatever is said after I'm gone is irrelevant."

"My business, there's women looking for a few quid, we always get something like this coming up for Christmas, because we want a few quid for Christmas, right. And normally you can brush them away like midges and it’s not much of a price to pay for the lifestyle."

"An interviewer once asked what I did as part of my voluntary work [there] and I said, "Everything, from taking milk into the wards, to taking the lately deceased from the wards," and that suddenly became "he’s into" necrophilia. But that doesn’t bother me at all."

"[As a nightclub manager in Leeds, late 1950s] A high-ranking lady police officer came in one night and showed me the picture of an attractive girl who had run away from a remand home. "Ah," says I, all serious, "if she comes in I'll bring her back tomorrow but I'll keep her all night first as my reward." The law lady, new to the area, was nonplussed. Back at the station she asked "Is he serious?" It is God's truth that the absconder came in [to the club] that night. Taking her into the office, I said, "Run now if you want but you can't run for the rest of your life." She listened to the alternative and agreed that I hand her over if she could stay at the dance, come home with me, and that I would promise to see her when they let her out. At 11.30 the next morning she was willingly presented to an astounded lady of the law. The officeress was dissuaded from bringing charges against me by her colleagues, for it was well known that, were I to go, I would probably take half the station with me."

"[T]here have been trains and, with apologies to the hit parade, boats and planes (I am a member of the 40,000ft club) and bushes and fields, corridors, doorways, floors, chairs, slag heaps, desks and probably everything except the celebrated chandelier and ironing board[.]"

"[On Stoke Mandeville Hospital] I own this hospital, NHS runs it, I own it, and that's not bad."

"[T]he true story is his victims, and how the BBC, Department of Health, Conservative party, Catholic church, police forces, local councils and libel law let them down. ... a monster for whom the British establishment – political, royal, broadcasting, ecclesiastical, medical, charitable – provided a dazzling shield."

"I drive up to Woodlands Cemetery and work out from newspaper photos where Savile’s grave must be. His headstone – a vast granite triptych with the inscription It Was Good While It Lasted, a DJ’s last glib jingle – was pulverised at midnight two years before, its fragments used for landfill. Someone appears to have laid a single flower on the grassy knoll, unless the wind filched a tribute from an undisgraced grave. A tag with the council logo is tied on the fence behind, in line with the mound. Is that so they know where he is in case of exhumation or removal? Others seem to be following this ghoulish route; a group arrive as I leave. There is a sense of not being able to believe the scale of the fall until seeing what was an extravagant shrine (to a man called “a saint” in BBC coverage) but is now just scruffy lawn."

"[[w:Marjorie Wallace (SANE)|[Marjorie] Wallace]] remembers witnessing a brief encounter while visiting the twins. "Jimmy Savile jumped up onto this table," she said. "He looked at the two girls, pointed and said to June 'I’ll have you firs' and then to Jennifer 'you’ll be second'." "I said, 'Jimmy, you better get off,' and he just jumped off. And that's when the two girls pointed to their heads and said, 'We thought we were the mad ones'." She added: "I felt a chill when I looked into his eyes … I wrote to the Department of Health, expressing great concern about his behaviour in Broadmoor. I got nowhere.""

"Although already well advanced on becoming one of history’s most prolific criminal sex offenders, Savile shows a peculiar proclivity for public near-confession. In his book God’ll Fix It, he admits to being “an abuser of things and bodies and people”, a formula that can in retrospect allude to both sexual abuse and necrophilia (“bodies” and “people” are oddly differentiated). Elsewhere in God’ll Fix It, he repeats his regular hope (also expressed in many interviews) that his good works will provide enough “on the credit side” for God Almighty to overlook the “debit side”. As he boasts that the black lines in the ledger add up to tens of millions of charitable donations, he is effectively confessing that the red entries have nearly equal value. How much bad would you need to do to require so much good? At the time, it never occurs to us his accounting is absolutely precise."

"Late on the night of our last ever interview, almost a year before his death, Savile was slumped in his armchair, sucking on a giant cigar and drinking a succession of double whiskies. He maintained that he had only started drinking alcohol after his quadruple heart bypass in 1997. Perhaps it was the scotch, but he was in an unusually reflective mood, troubled even, when he suddenly launched into a bitter and totally unsolicited diatribe about the conviction of Gary Glitter. He was adamant that the glam rock star, real name Paul Gadd, had done nothing wrong beyond having "a few dirty pictures" on his personal computer. Savile proceeded to lay the blame for Glitter's demise squarely with the press. I countered that the singer had, in fact, been convicted and imprisoned for a series of sexual abuse charges involving minors. We were seated in the front room that overlooked Scarborough Bay. That was where I left him."

"[On his mother who he nicknamed the "Duchess"] When she died she was all mine. She looked marvellous. She belonged to me. It's wonderful, is death."

"It was good while it lasted."

"My dad, Vince, who was a bookmaker's clerk, gave me a drag on one [a cigar] at Christmas, thinking it would put me off them forever, but it had the opposite effect."

"Because I've never done anybody any harm in my entire life, 'cos… there's no need to [...] No need to chase girls, I've thousands of them on Top of the Pops, thousands on Radio 1. No need to take liberties with them, out of the question, and anyway it's not my nature."

"When you’re doing Top of the Pops and Radio 1, what you don't do, is assault women, they assault you, that's for sure, and you don't have to, because you've got plenty of girls about, and all that, so dealing with something like this, is out of the question and totally wrong, full stop"

"Now then, guys and gals."

"I struggle to write the next paragraph but [Janet] Smith, in her section 5: 262, records what happened with the pellucid neutrality of legal prose: He said “hello” to everyone except [Saville’s victim, legally codenamed] C23. Then he stood beside her, grabbed her round the waist with his right hand, put his legs round her left thigh (so that her leg was between his two legs) and rubbed his crotch up and down. So far as C23 can remember, he did not say anything. She felt that he was giving a performance. Fortunately Mr Lawson saw what was happening, came over and distracted Savile, then positioned himself between Savile and C23. The interview took place. There is one detail Smith omits for the proper reason that it is experienced by a witness not a victim. When I block Savile, he is furious, thwarted. His strength is extraordinary for a man four months away from 80 but I have enough height and heft to hold him off, though not without briefly feeling his erection against my leg. (Many have suggested that his favoured baggy leisure wear was doubly calculated for easy removal and to advertise his arousal to his prey without doubt.) Let me be clear that this experience is nothing at all compared to the impacts on his victims, but it is a weird memory to have and gives me some tiny insight into the suffering he inflicted."

"Once you’re head of a public company you are expected to perform; you’re like an unpaid greyhound on a racetrack called the stock market. They’d take bets on us, but not add anything at all."

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is with no ordinary feelings, I assure you, that I rise on this occasion to thank you for the very flattering manner in which you have received the last toast, and for the good wishes expressed therein. I cannot look around me, and see this vast assemblage of my friends and workpeople, without being moved. I feel gratified at this day's proceedings; I also feel greatly honoured by the presence of the nobleman at my side. I am more than all delighted at the presence of this vast assemblage of my workpeople. Perhaps it may be permitted me to remark that ten or twelve years ago I was looking forward to this day (on which I complete my his fiftieth year) as the period when I hoped to retire from business and enjoy myself in agricultural pursuits, which would be quite congenial to my mind and inclination. As the time drew near, looking at my large family (five of them being sons) I reversed that decision, and resolved to proceed a little longer and remain at the head of the firm. Having thus determined, I at once made up my mind to leave Bradford. I did not like to be a party to increasing that already overcrowded borough, but I looked around for a site suitable for a large manufacturing establishment, and I fixed upon this, as offering every capability for a first rate manufacturing and commercial establishment. It is also, from the beauty of its situation, and the salubrity of the air, a most desirable place for the erection of dwellings. Far be it from me to do anything to pollute the air or the water of the district. I shall do my utmost to avoid these evils, and I have no doubt of being successful. I hope to draw around me a population that will enjoy the beauties of this neighbourhood—a population of well paid, contented, happy operatives. I have given instructions to my architects (who are competent to carry them out) that nothing shall be spared to render the dwellings of the operatives a pattern to the country, and if my life is spared by Divine Providence, I hope to see satisfaction, contentment, and happiness around me."

"He held a unique position in his time as one who was equally respected by his tory allies, by such orthodox whigs as Brougham and Sydney Smith, and by such radicals as Romilly and Bentham. His relations to his own family seem to have been perfect, and no one had warmer or more lasting friendships. Though some injudicious admirers tried to raise his merits by depreciating the claims of his allies and predecessors in the anti-slavery movement, it may safely be said that there are few heroes of philanthropy whose careers will better stand an impartial investigation."

"The sensibility of the Victorian middle class was nurtured in the 1790s by frightened gentry who had seen miners, potters and cutiers reading Rights of Man, and its foster-parents were William Wilberforce and Hannah More. It was in these counter-revolutionary decades that the humanitarian tradition became warped beyond recognition. The abuses which Howard had exposed in the prisons in the 1770s and 1780s crept back in the 1790s and 1800s; and Sir Samuel Romilly, in the first decade of the 19th century, found that his efforts to reform the criminal law were met with hostility and timidity; the French Revolution had produced (he recalled) —"among the higher orders ... a horror of every kind of innovation". "Everything rung and was connected with the Revolution in France," recalled Lord Cockburn (of his Scottish youth): "Everything, not this thing or that thing, but literally everything, was soaked in this one event.""

"The scene at prayers is a most curious one. There is a bell which rings when Mr W begins to dress; another when he finishes dressing; upon which Mr Barningham begins to play a hymn upon the organ and to sing a solo, and by degrees the family come down to the entrance hall where the psalmody goes on; first one joins in and then another; Lizzy calling out "Don't go near dear Mama, she sings so dreadfully out of tune, dear", and William, "Don't look at Papa, he does make such dreadful faces." So he does, waving his arms about, and occasionally pulling the leaves off the geraniums and smelling them, singing out louder and louder in a tone of hilarity: "Trust Him, praise Him, trust Him, praise Him ever more." Sometimes he exclaims "Astonishing! How very affecting! Only think of Abraham, a fine old man, just a kind of man one should naturally pull off one's hat to, with long grey hairs, and looking like an old aloe—but you don't know what an aloe is perhaps: its a tree—no a plant which flowers..." and he wanders off into a dissertation about plants and flowers."

"His transparent kindliness and simplicity made him, like Fox, lovable even to his antagonists. His freedom from the coarser indulgences which stained Fox's private life implied also a certain unfitness for the rough game of politics. He escaped contamination at the cost of standing aside from the world of corruption and devoting himself to purely philanthropical measures. The charm of his character enabled him to take the part of moral censor without being morose; and the religious views which in other members of his sect were generally regarded as gloomy, if not pharisaical, were shown by his example to be compatible with indomitable gaiety and sociability. Though profoundly convinced of the corruption of human nature in general, he loved almost every particular human being. His extraordinary breadth and quickness of sympathy led to his taking part in a vast variety of undertakings, which taxed the strength of a delicate constitution and prompted an almost reckless generosity."

"Wilberforce's Practical View of the Religious System of professed Christians...contrasted with Real Christianity (1797) had an astonishing influence in transforming the whole character and tone of social life among "the Higher and Middle Classes of this Country," to whom it was explicitly addressed."

"[I]t can be truly said that, more than to any other single factor, the victory of the Abolitionists was due to the untiring energy, devotion and resourcesfulness of William Wilberforce."

"The funeral of that most excellent man Mr. Wilberforce, eminent through the course of his long life for his public and private virtues, for his sterling patriotism, his Christian piety, and his universal feeling of philanthropy, took place on Saturday... thus conferring the highest possible honour on the memory of Mr. Wilberforce, and giving to the world (for of Mr. Wilberforce it may be said, that he was not the property of a nook, but of the world) an exalted testimony of the esteem in which he was held by the rank, talent, and virtue of the country, and of the friendship which his mild manners and noble qualities had won him."

"Rightly or wrongly, Wilberforce spoke and voted for repressing agitation; but at the same time he pleaded for positive measures to remedy the ills on which agitation fed—the destitution and the ignorance of the masses... [I]n 1802 Wilberforce ardently supported Sir Robert Peel (the elder) in establishing the first Factory Act, and only criticised the measure for not going far enough. In 1812 he was the prime mover in promoting "An Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor." In 1826, during a period of unrest and strikes, he directed a movement of private charity in Yorkshire to relieve the suffering of the people and to reconcile employers and employed. He took an active interest in prison reform, the abolition of the death penalty or transportation for minor offences, the protection of chimney-sweeps (the "climbing boys"), and the education of the poor. No other politician of his time had a more honourable record."

"One of the best ways to face this problem of self-centeredness is to discover some cause and some purpose, some loyalty outside of yourself and give yourself to that something... you are then able to live because you have given your life to something outside and something that is meaningful, objectified. You rise above this self-absorption to something outside. We look through history. We see that biography is a running commentary of this. We see Wilberforce. We see him somehow satisfying his desire by absorbing his life in the slave trade, those who are victims of the slave trade."

"Of these William Wilberforce was perhaps the most important, partly because his influence was chiefly exercised upon the upper class of society, whose support was clearly necessary if gospel-preaching and the profession of "seriousness" were to be freed from the taint of sedition and dissent; and partly because in his Practical View, published in 1797, he was able to stir the consciences of thousands who were confronted for the first time by a frank exposure of the shallowness and deceitfulness of professing a Christianity which was purely nominal and wholly untouched by the leaven of a living faith."

"There was within him a vein of sheer gold – a warmth of feeling and lightness of heart which captivated an audience, confounded his critics, and made even the most vehement radical or the most austere orthodox clergyman admit, after meeting him, that he had been utterly disarmed by his encounter with a man who expressed so fully in his own life and character the true spirit of Christianity and living faith."

"The Hammonds...rarely mention Wilberforce save to sneer at his conservatism and his piety. Certainly a picture sketched from references in their pages would be viciously untrue to the real Wilberforce. But the Hammonds are not without clerical associates. Canon Raven, in his Christian Socialism, charges that Wilberforce "never realised that, while he was bringing liberty to negroes in the plantations, the white slaves of industry in mine and factory were being made the victims of a tyranny a thousandfold more cruel," and that Wilberforce "consistently opposed every single attempt to benefit the condition of the workers by legislation." Had Canon Raven read a few copies of Zachary Macaulay's Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter he would have rushed less thoughtlessly into his extravagant rhetoric that tyranny in factories was "a thousandfold more cruel" than tyranny on slave plantations. And had he read the Life of Wilberforce more carefully he would have found that Wilberforce did not "consistently oppose every single attempt" to benefit factory workers by legislation, but rather that he ardently supported the first attempt ever made to benefit them by legislation, and objected only...that the act did not go far enough."

"William Wilberforce, whose private life was a shining example of consistent and earnest goodness, who had a real belief in freedom and spent years in the struggle for the abolition of slavery, and who never realised that, while he was bringing liberty to negroes in the plantations, the white slaves of industry in mine and factory were being made the victims of a tyranny a thousandfold more cruel. Persons who think reverently of the hero of the anti-slavery movement should remember such facts as those revealed by Richard Oastler in his letters on Slavery in Yorkshire; and should remember too that Wilberforce had consistently opposed every single attempt to benefit the condition of the workers by legislation and was reckoned by Cobbett to be the worst enemy of the people then living."

"Yes, Wilberforce had been brave. But he had also been wise. The combination of such selfless devotion to a cause has seldom gone with such cool temper and judgement. This silver-tongued orator, the darling of the world of wit, of fashion, and of politics, the bosom friend of Pitt himself, had in early youth a primrose path spread before his feet. He chose instead a rugged track that led away from office, away from his friend, away from the "respectabilities" of the closing century, and led him among unfashionable and unpopular allies—Quakers, dissenters, infidels, and whigs—who upheld his cause when it had few friends among slumbrous churchmen and hard-faced Tories. Yet he himself was all the while a churchman and a Tory. It was a difficult path to tread, and he trod it with the sure foot of absolute sincerity and single-mindedness, and ended by being the leader of the whole nation without distinction of party and sect."

"[T]he pure and saintly character, and the noble career, of Mr. Wilberforce."

"The abolition of the slave trade was supposed to be the certain death of slavery. Cut off the stream, and the pond will dry up, was the common notion at the time. Wilberforce and Clarkson, clear-sighted as they were, took this view; and the American statesmen, in providing for the abolition of the slave trade, thought they were providing for the abolition of the slavery. This view is quite consistent with the history of the times."

"Abt. a quarter before 10 oClock, the family assembled to prayers, which were read by Wilberforce in the dining room. As we passed from the drawing room I saw all the servants standing in regular order, the woemen ranged in a line against the wall & the men the same. There were 7 woemen & 6 men.—When the whole were collected in the dining room, all knelt down each against a chair or Sopha, and Wilberforce knelt at a table in the middle of the room, and after a little pause began to read a prayer, which He did very slowly in a low, solemnly awful voice. This was followed by 2 other prayers & the grace. It occupied abt. 10 minutes, and had the best effect as to the manner of it."

"Let true Christians then, with becoming earnestness, strive in all things to recommend their profession, and to put to silence the vain scoffs of ignorant objectors. Let them boldly assert the cause of Christ in an age when so many, who bear the name of Christians, are ashamed of Him: and let them consider as devolved on Them the important duty of suspending for a while the fall of their country, and, perhaps, of performing a still more extensive service to society at large; not by busy interference in politics, in which it cannot but be confessed there is much uncertainty; but rather by that sure and radical benefit of restoring the influence of Religion, and of raising the standard of morality."

"The very loss of our church establishment, though, as in all human institutions, some defects may be found in it, would in itself be attended with the most fatal consequences. No prudent man dares hastily pronounce how for its destruction might not greatly endanger our civil institutions."

"If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large."