Sir Godfrey Lushington KCB GCMG (March 8, 1832 – February 5, 1907), British
civil servant and promoter of
prison reform, was Permanent Under-Secretary of State of the
Home Office of the
United Kingdom from 1886 to 1895.
Lushington was born in
Westminster,
London, in 1832 to
Stephen and Sarah Grace (née Carr) Lushington; his twin brother was
Vernon Lushington,
Q.C., a county court judge. Educated at
Rugby School and
Balliol College,
Oxford, he later became a
fellow of
All Souls and the
President of the Oxford Union. He married Beatrice Anne Shore Smith (b. 3 June 1865), daughter of barrister Samuel Smith.
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 at the Home Office in 1885, and was
knighted in 1892. During his Home Office tenure the
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, (24 November to 21 December 1898,) with
Sir Philip Currie and Sir C. Howard Vincent.
After retirement, Lushington gave evidence to the
Gladstone Committee on
prison reform:[4] “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.”[5]