Shaftesbury, Earl of (1801-1885), was a British politician and social reformer. He served nearly continuously in the British Parliament from 1826 until his death. He was known as the “poor man’s earl” because he sought to improve living conditions for the poor.
The future Earl of Shaftesbury was born Anthony Ashley Cooper on April 28, 1801, in London. He graduated from Oxford University in 1822 and entered Parliament in 1826. He served in the House of Commons from 1826 to 1846 and from 1847 to 1851 and in the House of Lords from 1851 to 1885. Although he was associated with the Conservative Party, he took independent positions on a number of matters. His political ideas often reflected his evangelical Christian beliefs.
Cooper pushed for labor and social reform throughout his political career. In 1833, he led a campaign to improve working conditions in factories and mines. He supported legislation that established a limit of 10 work hours per day for factory employees. He promoted the regulation of asylums (institutions for people with mental illness), and from 1834 until his death he served as chairman of a government agency called the Lunacy Commission. In 1844, Cooper became president of the Ragged Schools Union, an organization for the education of Christian children.
Cooper became the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury after his father—Cropley Ashley Cooper, the sixth Earl of Shaftesbury—died in 1851. The seventh earl died on Oct. 1, 1885, in Kent. The famous Eros statue, built in 1894, stands in London’s Piccadilly Circus as a memorial to Shaftesbury.
See also Eros ; United Kingdom, History of the (Social conditions improve) .
