










































Robert Owen and the Psychological Monitor


 45

Robert Owen and the Psychological Monitor 
 

Stephen Tomlinson 
University of Alabama 

 
 Socialism, as Robert Owen and his followers 
conceived it, was an experiment in human engineering.  
Believing that the ignorance and selfishness of traditional 
society could be replaced by a new moral world, they devised 
disciplinary practices that taught obedience to the dictates of 
reason, kindness, and cooperation.  The most powerful 
weapon in this pedagogic armory was the “eye of the 
community.” An integral part of the infant school curriculum, 
as it was of community life, the moral force of approbation 
and disgrace that flowed from the public scrutiny of behavior 
proved highly effective in the psychological control of the 
population.  This paper explores the origin and development 
of Owen’s “monitor” and demonstrates how it became a 
central tool in the educational schemes developed at 
Orbiston, the first socialist community established in Britain. 
 On the title page of A New View of Society, Robert 
Owen announces the fundamental axiom of his social 
philosophy. 
 

Any character, from the best to the worst, from the 
most ignorant to the most enlightened, may be given to 
any community, even to the world at large, by 
applying certain means; which are to a great extent at 
the command and under the control, or easily made so, 
of those who possess the government of nations (Owen 
1967, 1: i). 

 
The means to which Owen so confidently alludes had been 
perfected in his twenty-year effort to reform the habits of 
laborers working in his cotton mills.  First in Manchester, 
during the 1790s, and then after the turn of the nineteenth 
century, in the industrial village of New Lanark, Owen 
proved himself one of the most successful managers in the 
textile business, revolutionizing manufacturing through the 
institution of standardized practices that recorded and 
controlled every aspect of the production process.  Central to 
this scheme was a psychological regulator he named the 
“silent monitor,” a four-colored block of wood suspended 
above the machinery to publicly display each operative’s 
level of productivity.  “Gradually the blacks were changed 
for blue, the blues for yellow, and the yellows for white 
(Owen 1967, 1:277).” Soldiering and theft were greatly 
reduced; productivity and profits soared. “Never perhaps in 
the history of the human race,” Owen boasted, “has so simple 
a devise created in such a short period so much order, virtue, 
goodness, and happiness, out of so much ignorance error and 
misery (Owen 1967, 1:136).”    He even claimed that a 
distinctive “expression of countenance” corresponded to the 
color shown, as under the public eye workers gradually 
learned to comply with the moral order (Owen 1967, 1:136). 
 The situation at New Lanark, where Owen owned 
the village in which the majority of his workers lived, 
provided for an even more extensive use of disciplinary 

practices.  Waste and ashes were collected, the streets 
cleaned, pigs and poultry banned, and houses washed and 
whitewashed regularly.  Inspectors even checked for bugs!  
At 10:30 a curfew was imposed and the village was patrolled 
for drunks.  First time offenders were fined, repeated 
intoxication led to expulsion.  Owen even imposed financial 
penalties on men responsible for illegitimate births.  One 
popular measure among the workers was the opening of a 
factory store, the first Co-op, where goods were sold at prices 
well below those of local retailers. If the villagers resented 
Owen’s intrusions in their private affairs, they nonetheless 
grew to accept his paternalism in exchange for higher wages 
and the real advantages of life at New Lanark. 
 But the complete transformation of human nature 
demanded even more radical measures.  Workers and their 
families had to be educated at the showpiece of Owen’s 
industrial village, the Institute for the Formation of 
Character.  Here classes were offered in a variety of practical 
and informative subjects; there were meeting rooms, a 
library, weekly concerts and dances.  But the most 
remarkable feature of the Institute, which drew the attention 
of observers from across Europe, was the infant school.  
Believing that the child’s “temper or disposition is correctly 
or incorrectly formed before he attains his second year,” 
Owen gathered children just as soon as they could walk, 
convinced that by applying the right pedagogic methods at 
the time when the mind is most pliant, the young could be 
fashioned into moral, reasonable, and productive citizens 
(Owen 1967, 1:317).  Adopting this concept, though not 
Owen’s social philosophy, many political and church leaders 
came to see the early education of working class children a 
panacea for the social ills of the new urban-industrial world. 
By the mid 1820s, under the energetic leadership of Samuel 
Wilderspin, the infant schools movement swept the country 
(McCann and Young 1982). 
 While these efforts to ensure the quality and 
efficiency of production made Owen one of the wealthiest 
industrialists of the day, it would be wrong to assume he was 
driven by a lust for capital.  Unlike so many of his fellow 
manufactures--with whom he fought to institute laws 
regulating child labor–Owen was more concerned with the 
moral advancement of the workforce than the quest for profit.  
By 1813, under the influence of William Godwin and other 
radical thinkers, Owen published A New View of Society, 
expanding his ideas on the control of behavior from the 
sphere of industrial production to the formation of a more 
just community.  Five years later, in Report to County of 
New Lanark, his thought matured into the advocacy of 
independent, self-supporting socialist communes, “villages of 
cooperation,” where, eschewing the capitalist economy and 
the perverse character traits it fostered, members would learn 
to think rationally and work for the common good (Owen, 
1969). 



 46

 
Philosophical Antecedents 

 Godwin, in particular, seems to have exerted a great 
deal of influence on Owen. In common with Priestly, though 
combining and even more strident critique of government 
(inherited from Rousseau), he combined the 
environmentalism of Holbach and Helvétius with the 
tradition of English dissent to formulate a moral 
necessiterianism in which mind and character would 
gradually be perfected by the inevitable force of truth and 
reason.  The chief impediments to progress were institutions 
such as the church and aristocracy that created a dependent 
child-like population.  But education was more powerful than 
government, and Godwin was convinced that freed from state 
control, schooling could shape all children into independent 
citizens able to act upon the central maxim of his utilitarian 
social philosophy, that personal well being coincides with the 
happiness of all.   
 Perhaps the greatest of ancient errors was the belief 
that people inherited different abilities according to their 
station in life, a notion cemented in the predestination thesis 
of the Calvinist worldview.  Godwin was adamant "that the 
actions an dispositions of mankind are the offspring of 
circumstances and events, and not of any original 
determination that they bring into the world (Simon 1972, 
32).”  Reason, character, and virtue all flowed from the 
association of sensible impressions. There was "no essential 
difference between the child of the lord and of the porter," 
and if switched at birth, each would naturally learn to fulfill 
their appointed roles in life (Simon 1972, 33). 
 Priestly had interpreted the American and French 
revolutions as instruments of Providence, historical events 
that, by instituting radical principles, would bring about a 
time of peace and Christian piety.  Godwin took this 
argument a step further.  Extending the nonconformist 
commitment to free thought and independent action, he 
rejected all forms of political organization that placed private 
interests before public virtue – love of country, friends, even 
family were not to interfere with moral duty.  He envisioned 
a society free of specialization and hierarchical divisions.  
Unencumbered by excessive wealth or poverty, people would 
live off the land in small face-to-face pastoral communities 
that promoted intellectual independence, and, through 
intimate social arrangements, moral dependence.  The 
community was to behold the behavior of all in its gaze.  
“There is no terror” he asserted, “that comes home to the 
heart of vice, like the terror of being exhibited to the public 
eye . . . [and] no reward worthy to be bestowed upon eminent 
virtue but this one, the plain, unvarnished proclamation of its 
excellence in the face of the world.” Sociability, not 
coercion, had to be the engine of social reform (Godwin 
1793, 1:644). 
 It was not until the severe social distress of the late 
1810s that Owen started to advocate the kind of economic 
and political arrangements proposed by Godwin.  Painted as 
an atheist and a subversive by industrialists and property 
owners opposed to his factory reforms, Owen’s plan to 
construct alternative, small scale agricultural communities in 
order to combat the widespread unemployment and famine 

resulting from the failure of capitalism in the years after the 
Napoleonic Wars was widely received with a mixture of 
incredulity, ridicule, and fear.   
 Such responses were not surprising, for in addition 
to replacing money and the ethic of self-interest with labor 
notes and cooperation, Owen also proposed a radical revision 
of even the most basic social institution, the family.  Openly 
opposed to the traditional marriage contract – which, he 
argued, reflected unions based on financial gain rather than 
bonds of affection – he painted the traditional home as a 
breeding ground of vice and self-interest.  It was here that 
children 
  

acquired all the most mean and ignorant selfish 
feelings that can be generated in the human character.  
The children within these dens of selfishness and 
hypocrisy are taught to consider their own individual 
family their own world, and that it is the duty of all 
within this little orb to do whatever they can to 
promote the advantage of all legitimate members of it.  
With these persons, it is my house, my wife, my estate, 
my children, or my husband . . . thus is every family 
made a little exclusive world seeking its own 
advantage, regardless, and to a great extent in 
opposition to all other families (Claeys 1989, 78). 

 
Natural Pedagogy 

To secure genuine communal spirit, the whole of society had 
to become the child’s family.  As Plato had argued in the 
Republic for the education of the philosopher kings, so Owen 
demanded the separation of children from their parents in 
order to foster a truly social personality.  Transferred to 
dormitories as soon as they could walk, the children of his 
utopia would be educated in infant, primary, and industrial 
schools that taught communitarian values, rational attitudes, 
and socially useful skills.  Drawing upon the natural 
pedagogy developed by English followers of Rousseau, 
Owen designed a progressive curriculum that stressed play, 
sense learning, and scientific knowledge.  Comparing 
discipline in the old and the new systems, he promised to 
substitute reason and kindness for ignorance and brutality.  
Punishment and emulation would be replaced by intrinsic 
motivation, and the meaningless memorization of words 
superseded by the goal of understanding the natural and 
social worlds.  Above all, children would learn to live 
"without party." Free of class distinctions, they would 
discover that their personal well being coincided with the 
good of the community.  The central site of these moral 
lessons was the playground, a miniature society free from the 
disciplinary constraints of the classroom, where every 
spontaneous act of pride, greed, and aggression could be 
monitored and corrected.  Owen’s goal was to develop an 
internal monitor, a social conscience that would guide the 
child from within -- and his instruments, the Lockian 
mechanisms of praise and disgrace.  Shame, in particular was 
a powerful motivator.  On of the most effective techniques 
Owen developed was to focus the power of the eye on 
offenders by having the entire class sit in judgment over their 
peers.  As James Simpson, director of the Edinburgh Infant 



 47

School later explained some years later, children “rarely 
failed to take a just view of the matter and give a just 
punishment (Simpson, 1836, 239).” 
 Typical among Simpson’s many anecdotes was the 
story of J.H., a boy who, having spied another child's lost 
penny under the stove, returned two hours later to claim his 
prize.  When his crime came to light, J.H. was put on trial 
before the school.  Humiliated before his friends, his 
embarrassment proved far more effective than the “few pats 
on the hand” to which he was sentenced.  Asked some time 
later what he had learned from his experience, the boy 
replied that he had never stolen since. Why?  Because “I 
listened to the thing in my breast, and that told me it was a 
crime (Simpson 1836, 241).” 
 Other socialists were quick to recognize the power 
of Owen’s disciplinary practices.  Adapting the silent 
monitor to the classroom, T. E. Craig produced an abacus-
like board of colored cubes that displayed every student’s 
behavior at the front of the classroom--and kept a register of 
these readings in his “Classometer.” Together, Craig 
reported, these devices “powerfully stimulated the pupil to 
moral and intellectual exertion and rectitude of conduct, by 
appealing to those faculties of the mind which are the best 
instruments in the hands of a judicious teacher for the 
rational development of the superior faculties (Stewart and 
McCann 1967, 1:162).”  Simpson produced a similar register 
of daily behaviors tied to the activity of the student’s 
phrenological organs.  And George Mudie, editor of the 
Economist (1821-1822) and a founder of the London 
Cooperative and Economical Society, explained how 
members earnest on psychological improvement would team 
up to monitor one another and admonish any faults that might 
endanger the “general harmony and mutual esteem and 
goodwill (Podmore 1924, 353).”  
 

Orbiston: The First Society of Adherents to Divine 
Revelation 

 Perhaps the most interesting application of Owen’s 
ideas on pedagogy and the formation of character was 
Orbiston, the first socialist community established in Britain.  
Situated 16 miles west of New Lanark, Orbiston drew 300 
men, women, and children to live and work under Owen's 
theories.  Based upon the agricultural, architectural, 
economic, and educational principles laid out in Owen's 
Report, the society’s leader Abram Combe formed the 
community around seven departments of industry and public 
works (Cullen 1971). The latest technology, scientific 
practices, and rational methods would ensure productivity 
and social order.  Deep spade cultivation and other modern 
farming techniques would help produce food more 
efficiently; a clothing section would manufacture cheap 
tunics; and a common kitchen, dining room, laundry, and 
central heating system would avoid unnecessary duplication 
of domestic recourses.  The non-profit general store would 
sell products for labor notes and a sense of solidarity would 
be fostered through open management, communal meeting 
halls, and integrated living spaces. As at New Lanark, 
however, the nucleus of system was the regulation of 
character.  Once admitted adults would gradually be adapted 

to the superior habits required for full membership, while 
children would be schooled from infancy according to the 
principles pioneered by Owen. 
 In contrast to Owen, Combe found a deep religious 
significance in this quest to fashion mind and character.  He 
would engineer a truly Christian personality.  Fusing 
Owenism and New Testament ethics into a liberal creed he 
provocatively named "The Doctrine of Divine Revelation 
(according to Reason)," Combe identified the laws of nature 
and morality as the instruments by which God's will was to 
realized on earth. Christ was the first and greatest teacher of 
this secular gospel, and Owen its leading prophet.  The key to 
human happiness was the elimination of all ideas, 
ceremonies, and practices that contained unnatural or 
irrational beliefs. Whatever was contradicted by experience 
or could not be understood by reason, had to be the product 
of the human imagination, a power most evident in religious 
myths and social traditions that distorted reality to match 
human desires.  By ordering life according to the truths of 
reason and nature Orbiston would not only solve the problem 
of poverty, it would also demonstrate to the world "the utility 
and inestimable value of the practical precepts of 
Christianity." It would, Combe insisted 
 

demonstrate that UNION is better for all, than 
division and opposition is for any . . .. that all children 
may be trained to prefer Temperance and Industry to 
Dissipation and Idleness, and Charity and Good-Will 
to anger and Animosity . . . that at least nine tenths of 
the misery that has so long afflicted humanity, is not a 
necessary consequence of the work of our Creator in 
our nature; formation; but that it proceeds from the 
removable Ignorances of Man, on account of which he 
has been induced to listen to the evidences of his own 
imagination, in preference to the knowledge which 
God has revealed to his sense and to his understanding 
(Combe 1823a, 61). 

 
 To enter Orbiston applicants had to accept eleven 
articles of agreement. The first indicated that no distinctions 
would be recognized “except those of Nature and which arise 
from superior habits and attainments (Combe 1825, 33).”  
Men and women, it stated, were to be regarded as having 
equal rights in all respects.  In practice, however, Orbiston 
was very much a male dominated society. There were 
separate meetings and facilities for the two sexes, and Combe 
stipulated that women would only be allowed half the credit 
men received at the store.  Old society, he charged, had 
corrupted female nature, training women “to live entirely 
secluded form their fellow creatures, in a state of sloth and 
negligence, and in the daily practice of many pernicious 
habits” and “irrational notions (Register 1827, Wednesday 
March 14th 1827, 30).” 
 Other articles explained that members had the 
freedom to work as and when they pleased; that everyone 
would determine the monetary value their own labor; that the 
education of the children would be paid for by the 
community; and that Orbiston would be run by elected 
general manger – seemingly styled on Owen -- who, while 



 48

not subject to the majority’s wishes, could be removed if he 
or she lost the confidence of the group.  Finally, article XI 
required that all applicants had "to give, to the Spirit of 
Religion, of Loyalty, and of Ambition, which exists in the 
Human Mind, the direction which Experience proves to be 
most conducive to the general welfare and happiness of 
Mankind (Combe 1825, 34)." Here was Combe’s license to 
manufacture character in accord with the principles of the 
new system.  The members of the Orbiston community 
would become adherents to divine revelation, as slowly but 
surely they learned to follow the dictates of reason and 
experience.  And the method?  “All that is requisite” in 
regulating human desire, Combe confidently asserted, was to 
let “individuals know the nature of the impressions which 
their conduct makes upon the community,” or rather, as he 
later qualified his argument, “the rational portion of Society 
(Combe 1825, 47).”  “The Eye of the Community, and the 
inward feeling produced, will soon either create a change of 
conduct, or make the individual retire form the Society 
(Register, II, Wednesday January 31st, 1827, 9-10).” 
 In his analysis of motives Combe demonstrated his 
willingness to infuse Owen’s teachings with the hereditarian 
insights of phrenology – he was, after all the brother of 
Britain’s leading advocate of the new science, George 
Combe.  "The Phrenological mode of arranging the faculties" 
he argued, promised to revolutionize education, teaching 
children "in a few hours, to have a more correct idea of the 
powers of the human mind, than those 'philosophers' have 
been able to obtain, by their own system, devoted to this one 
object." Combe, The Sphere for Joint Stock Companies, 28-
29) Yet his own classification of instincts remained 
somewhat heterodox and obviously colored by his overriding 
commitment to the plasticity of human nature.  Under 
ambition he identified seven basic instincts (the love of 
approbation and desires for knowledge, propagation, 
nourishment, exercise, comfort, and accommodation). The 
key to happiness was to tie these natural impulses to the 
concrete realities of life, as revealed by experience, rather 
than the artificial desires manufactured by the imagination.  
Introducing his own version of the monitor, Combe 
explained how each member’s character would be quantified 
on a scale of goodness.  If positive and negative habits on a 
given trait balanced, a score of 4 would be awarded, yielding 
a composite of 28 for all seven instincts.  This number would 
then be recorded and each individual ranked in the society.  
As a person's behavior improved a committee of peers would 
then vote to elevate his of her standing -- the same practice 
would also be adopted with children, rendering, Combe 
believed "all other rewards and punishments unnecessary 
(Combe 1825, 53)."  At first a natural aristocracy would rule 
the community.  But as character improved, and individuals 
rose in rank, a society of equals would emerge.  The extent to 
which these procedures were followed is unclear, but there is 
ample evidence in the pages of the Orbiston Register to show 
that public praise and disgrace were frequently and 
effectively used to shape behavior in the community.  
 

Discipline and Pedagogy 

 Combe knew that the long-term future of the 
community rested with the education of the children.  Aware 
of the old adage, that  
 

Youth, like the softened wax, with ease will take 
Those images which first impressions make 

 
he embedded the Owenite principle that infants should be 
separated from their parents at age 2 into the very structure of 
the Orbiston estate (Register, 24, Wednesday December 13th 
1826, 180).  On either side of the main building dormitories 
were to be constructed with accompanying rooms to house 
"the infant children of both sexes, and the females under 18 
years" at one end, "the children above six years of age, and 
males under 18 years, at the other (Combe, 1825, 68)."  
Breaking down the family was both a pivotal and a 
controversial axiom of the community. In addition to 
promoting a sound constitution, "good tempers and habits," 
the curriculum would ensure facility “in reading, writing, and 
accounts . . . the elements of most useful sciences; including 
Geography and Natural History," and a practical knowledge 
of agriculture and domestic economy, plus" a trade useful for 
employment and the improvement of mental and physical 
powers ("Rules and Regulations” 1822, 53).” Children would 
be eased into the work of the community, an hour a week at 
age eight, two at nine, and so on until they reached full-time 
labor at fourteen – he did not think anyone should toil more 
than six hours a day.  Finally, the child was to acquire a 
knowledge of himself and human nature," so as to "form him 
into a rational being, and render him charitable, kind, and 
benevolent to all his fellow creatures." (Register, II, 
Wednesday March 14th, 1827; 30)  As for pedagogy, Combe 
embraced the methods employed at New Lanark and 
promised to establish a Normal School in order that the 
science of character formation could be refined and 
developed for other communities. 
 Secure in the revealed truth of God’s moral 
government, Combe was in no mood to wait for investors. 
On March 18th 1825, with the sale of stock just beginning, 
100 men were hired to construct the main building using 
stone mined from a quarry just 500 yards from the house.  
The dining room, kitchen, bake house, and the majority of 
one wing were completed in only six months.  Next came the 
erection of the workshop, a five floor complex situated close 
by on the banks of the river, containing space for 
blacksmiths, weavers, carpenters, wheelwrights, printers, 
painters, shoemakers, and tailors.  As the work progressed 
Combe commenced publication of the weekly Register, to 
teach his doctrines to new members and provide the world an 
accurate account of his momentous experiment. The first 
issue, on November 10th, explained the meaning of the term 
Divine Revelation – distinguishing the truths of reason and 
sense from the contents of the Bible – and laid out the 
principles the community would follow.  There was an 
account of the building’s progress addressed to the London 
Cooperative Society and some discussion of drinking among 
the workers. The second number contained a light hearted dig 
at Hamilton’s organ of Wit for his reaction to hearing that 
Orbiston had been nicknamed “Babylon” by the locals; an 



 49

exposition of how each individual could wield the principle 
of Divine Revelation as the “line and plummet” of truth; a 
justification for the Society’s name; and some discussion of 
the character of the people applying for residence. This was 
to become an important issue for Combe in the following 
weeks as he struggled to reconcile his principles with the 
obvious dangers of admitting applicants of low character and 
ability.  Unwilling to blame anyone for the effects of the old 
system he simply refused to turn anyone away who professed 
a sincere desire for membership. Those that faked interest, he 
consoled himself, would soon leave as they found the eyes of 
the community upon them.  More positively, he distilled his 
views on knowledge and character formation into a series of 
seven lessons so that adherents would understand where their 
interests lay and how they might bring their physical and 
mental desires under rational control.  A Catechism was 
printed so that all who entered could assent to the 
community’s principles.  If an applicant did not agree with a 
particular item, they could submit their reasons in writing, 
but given the background of the majority who came to 
Orbiston, it is doubtful that many took this step seriously.  In 
the third number, published as the roofers were busy laying 
slates and the carpenters modeling the interior, Combe 
tackled the thorny issue of who was to pay for the ambitious 
educational plan laid out in the Joint Stock proposal, given 
that many would enter the society without children.  His 
solution was to advance each child a loan repayable, with 
interest, through future labor within the community.  This 
would this be a sound investment for friends of the 
experiment, and, he was certain, a small debt of perhaps six 
months of labor the rising generation would gladly pay for 
the good of the society. 
 By April, as first stage of the project neared 
completion, Combe dismissed the workers and opened 
Orbiston to anyone willing to help finish the construction and 
start life under the new system.  This proved to be something 
of a mistake, for as the Register indicates, without proper 
training, residents were still struggling with the building a 
year later. Originally the plan had been to advertise for 
members, but as word of the site spread, people flooded to 
Orbiston on their own accord, and to Hamilton’s disgust, 
none were turned away. Combe himself recognized that most 
“had come to avoid the evils of the old system, rather than 
obtain the advantages of the new” (Register, 16, Saturday, 
August 19, 1826; 121).  Some were physically incapable of 
hard work, others had no trade or useful skill. There was also 
great deal of confusion over the system of payment. At the 
end of the first week, for example, several new members 
approached Combe demanding payment for the week they 
had been allocated to organize their apartments. Calling a 
general meeting he explained that everyone was to join a 
department according to their talents and interests and 
everyone would be paid for the value of the labor they chose 
to perform.  But a month on this system proved a disaster.  
After an initial burst of enthusiasm listlessness and discontent 
quickly pervaded the community; work went undone and, 
fueled by factional divisions, members started avoiding the 
dining rooms and communal spaces.  At first Combe thought 
it best to wait until individuals came face to face with the 

consequence of their actions, after all, that was how God 
governed the world.  But after discussions with more 
orthodox Owenites within the society, he hit upon the idea of 
reorganizing Orbiston along military lines.  The community, 
he reasoned, was rather like a group of raw recruits who 
needed to be drilled in squads and organized into companies 
before they could operate as a whole.  But Combe’s new 
scheme did not get off the ground.  With only a few squads 
formed, he overexerted himself digging in the fields and 
suffered a physical collapse. Forced to return to Edinburgh 
and the care of his brother Andrew for two weeks, he faced 
up to the task before him. The population was course, 
boisterous and plagued with revolting habits.  Drinking and 
the use of tobacco were on the rise, and dunghills were 
appearing below windows, even though the proprietors had 
employed a local man to empty pots. Calling the population a 
herd of animals, the resident and proprietor Captain Robert 
O’Brian, wrote to Combe cautioning him that “complete 
failure was now inevitable, unless we dismissed a great 
proportion of the present inhabitants, and supplied their 
places with a selection of superior workmen.” (Registrar, 16, 
August 19th, 1826, 125.)  Given these remarks, it is 
understandable why O’Brian was so annoyed when Combe 
publishing his letter in the Register.  To make matters worse, 
property values had dropped in the slump of 1826, and 
Orbiston was mortgaged way beyond it value.  Such 
conditions presented a sever test.  But Combe did not waiver 
in his commitment. Orbiston would meet both challenges; 
reforming the character of the most retched and promoting 
the interests of the capitalist even in an economic recession.  
 Valuing union and mutual cooperation over the 
principle of equal distribution, Combe considered ways to 
stimulate members to work.  His chance came when a 
number of tenets asked permission to establish an iron 
foundry.  Believing it was inappropriate that they should sink 
their labor and capital into such a project without any 
opportunity of reward, Combe suspended the community’s 
rules and turned the group into an independent company 
where workers earned double stock from the profits of their 
labor.  Not everyone was happy with the introduction of 
individual enterprise, but given the pressures on the 
community, Combe carried the day. The change was 
instantaneous.  In a few weeks the industry and intelligence 
of group surpassed his fondest expectations.  Similar plans 
were devised for other departments, and in short order the 
gardeners, shoemakers, printers, weavers, masons, and 
carpenters all had their own companies.  By late August 
Combe was nearly ecstatic about the possibility of 
commercial success – the community would soon be able to 
afford holiday homes in Edinburgh and the Highlands, and 
workers might even retire at age 35.  Recognizing that 
success still rested with the development of character, Combe 
redoubled his efforts to mold new citizens, only now he took 
a more piecemeal approach imploring sobriety and pleading 
with parents to curb the loud and boisterous behavior of their 
children. Combe was greatly aided in this endeavor by 
Catherine Whitwell, one of the teachers who had worked at 
the school in New Lanark.  A committed Owenite with 
strong religious sentiments; she brought energy and 



 50

experience to the task of schooling the community’s younger 
children.  She also lectured on the Christian duty of parents, 
revealing to the Society that the entire history of vice and 
virtue could be accounted for by the character training 
individuals received by their seventh year. This was an 
important lesson. With one half of the building yet to be 
constructed, and parts of the existing wing still unfinished, 
many of Orbiston’s 86 children were still forced to sleep in 
their parents quarters.  Those who were housed in the 
dormitories lacked adequate supervision: washing facilities 
were inadequate, and, according to later accounts, many were 
dressed in dirty or torn clothing.  Add to this the problem of 
loud and rowdy games in the corridors and hallways, truancy 
and rebelliousness in the schools and it becomes obvious 
why, given the community’s diminishing recourses, 
education became such a pressing problem.  Of great concern 
was the behavior of a few older boys whose unruly actions 
had been observed and reported by a correspondent from the 
Glasgow Free Press.  These lads, Henry Kirkpatrick, the new 
editor the Register explained, were in the most unfortunate 
position of “having been born a little too soon.” Because of 
its disorganized state, the community had done nothing to 
address all the bad habits they had acquired from their 
infancy and childhood in the old word.  But now, as reason 
was developing, positive efforts were underway.  Miss 
Whitwell had undertaken evening instruction in good habits 
and morals, “writing and arithmetic, geometry, drawing, 
music and dancing, geography, general history, etc.,” and 
Alexander Campbell, a Glasgow carpenter who later joined 
the Ham Common Socialists, was superintending them 
during the day (Donnachie 1971, 28).  Campbell reports that 
after explaining the essentials of order to twenty of the boys, 
they agreed to record all cases of misconduct in a book and 
elected superintendents to report on their behavior at each 
general meeting (Register, 24, Wednesday December 13, 
1826).  Their conduct, Campbell later reported, continued to 
improve.  They met every Sunday to discuss the events of the 
previous week and the majority was gainfully employed 
learning useful trades.  “So ardent were they in their 
proceedings,” he cheerfully concluded, “that I am completely 
convinced that these boys, under proper management, will, in 
the course of a few years, be the most useful members of the 
community (Register, 25, Supplement, Wednesday 
December 27, 1826, 200.).” Every day, Kirkpatrick 
continued, brought new and exciting evidence that their great 
experiment in human nature was a resounding success.  The 
“power of public opinion, so concentrated as it necessarily is 
under our present arrangements,” was improving both young 
and old.  Drunkenness, swearing, and smoking were all 
reduced; industriousness and virtue were on the rise. He was 
“very much inclined to think, that no character whatever 
could long resist the improving effects of this manner of 
living together (Register, 24, Wednesday December 13, 
1826; 181.).” 
 Abram Combe, by now restricted to his bed in 
Edinburgh after a second collapse, also had reason to be 
hopeful.  In his absence the community, under Hamilton’s 
stewardship, had taken a radical turn.  Crashing a meeting 
called to consider whether the joiners and carpenters should 

form a company patterned after that of the foundry men, 
several of the more orthodox Owenites challenged the 
ethicacy of policies that undermined the philosophy of the 
community.  Defenders of individualism argued that “the 
minds of some members were not yet prepared to go the full 
length of the system” and that without the stimulus of profit 
it would be impossible to maintain productivity (Register, 24, 
Wednesday December 13, 1826; 181.). The Owenites 
responded that “the generous motive would always far 
surpass the selfish” and that if anyone were found remiss in 
his duty, the eyes of the whole community would be upon 
them (Register, 24, Wednesday December 13, 1826; 181.).” 
In the end collectivism won the day, and a proposal was 
accepted, with some opposition, that any surplus should be 
shared by all members, “according to the time occupied by 
each.” Combined with the promise that expenditure would be 
trimmed and funds saved in order to purchase the 
community, the proprietors cautiously embraced the tenant’s 
declaration.  To prove their commitment to this new order, 
members had to assent to Owen’s doctrine that “character is 
formed for and not by the individual” and meet the test of re-
election in a secret ballot.  While nobody was ostracized in 
this process, this bloodless revolution was not without its 
wounds. Combe also supported the move to equal 
distribution, but thought it rather precipitous, and cautioned 
the group not to force its will on the approximately one-third 
of the Society who opposed the new system. They had to 
learn the value of this principle for themselves.  Even so, he 
was insistent that greater order be brought to the enterprise 
and, extending his earlier notion of squads, instituted a 
system of supervision, which broke all work down into 
divisions and branches.  In weekly meetings directors and 
superintendents would report on productivity, expenditure, 
and the performance of all the workers. 
 Anger with the new regime and the course of the 
community’s affairs boiled to the surface when the outspoken 
O’Brian submitted a fiery letter to the Register.  Published in 
the first issue of the New Year, he declared himself and his 
friends fundamentally opposed to equal distribution (a 
scheme, he charged, that had been instituted to profit the elite 
who directed the community), the selection of tenants, and 
the care and education of children.  He also resented being 
“impressed, into a Society under the nick-name of Adherents 
to Divine Revelation, where nothing was meant, than natural 
religion, to the exclusion of revelation, as received amongst 
mankind (Register, II, 262, Wednesday January 17th, 1827, 
p. 2.).”  Evidently considering himself a cut above the 
“brawny labourers” whose idle ways, course language, and 
rude manners had subverted the entire experiment, he feared 
for the mind and morals of his children.  Indeed, education 
was dear to O’Brian’s heart.  Without casting any aspirations 
on Catherine Whitwell, “whose zeal, disinterestedness, good 
feeling, perseverance, and talents” were beyond question, he 
deplored the lack of organization and investment in what was 
after all the community’s most important division (Register, 
II, 262, Wednesday January 17th, 1827, p. 2.).  O’Brian had a 
bold solution.  Establish a boarding school, “a manufacture 
of mind,” for between one and two hundred fee paying 
students.  The money generated would then fund all the 



 51

expenses of rearing Orbiston’s children, including a “school 
of labour” – he had no “objection to the amalgamation of the 
two classes of children, as soon as their habits of cleanliness 
and acquirements justified such mixture (Register, II, 262, 
Wednesday January 17th, 1827, 5.).”  Both could be run by 
the same teachers, and he had in mind a fully qualified 
assistant for Miss Whitwell and two gentlemen from 
Switzerland who had studied with Pestalozzi for 9 and 12 
years.  The sticking point, he explained, was that to 
accommodate the new inmates, the Society’s children would 
have to vacate their dormitory and sleep in the attic until the 
new wind of the building was complete.  Combe, who 
admitted his neglect of the of children while he struggled to 
assure the economic security of the Society claimed that he 
“felt a considerable aversion to hire teachers at a high salary, 
both because our funds required to be managed with 
economy, and because I thought a that men who required to 
be tempted with money to engage in such an undertaking, 
were by this very circumstance disqualified for this office 
(Register, II, 28, Wednesday February 14th, 1827, 18.).”  It 
should be noted however, that the Society did have several 
other paid employees, including the director of the 
Agricultural department. As for O’Brien’s views on the 
admission of tenants, Combe responded that it was he who 
was unacceptable.  Orbiston had been established “to Banish 
Poverty and Vice, and to ascertain to what height the lowest 
of the working classes could be raised by their own industry, 
under a system of Justice and Equity.” Register, II, 28, 
Wednesday February 14th, 1827, 15.  How could this object 
be achieved if he was forced to “look upon a poor or even 
vicious individual as unworthy of admission?” Register, II, 
28, Wednesday Feburary 14th, 1827, 15. “I am still 
compelled to think I acted judiciously in rejecting none of the 
applicants,” he concluded. Register, II, 28, Wednesday 
February 14th, 1827, 15. 
 Such public battles did not help heal the divisions 
within the community, which as time passed, appear to have 
solidified into three distinct camps: the Owenites who ruled 
the management committee and through the press controlled 
the official voice of the community; the defenders of 
individualism, who grew increasingly unhappy with the new 
order, its methods of control, and its austerity measures; and 
the laborers, who less concerned with ideological struggles,  
remained in the community to meet their immediate needs.  
Orbiston limped along.  Generally reports were optimistic.  
The Register boasted of the Society’s increasing refinement – 
it theatre, coral music society, and public lectures. With over 
a thousand pear and apple trees planted, a dairy and piggary 
established, the agricultural department proudly 
demonstrated that it could easily support 100 families on 300 
acres of land. The press even apologized for its failure to 
publish the Register due to a backlog of orders.  When after 
months of suffering, Abram Combe finally succumbed on 
August 11th, 1827 he died believing that Orbiston “was 
established beyond the point of failure (Podmore 1924, 
371).”  “If any epitaph is written on me,” he pleaded, “may it 
simply be . . . THAT HIS CONDUCT IN LIFE MET THE 
APPROBATION OF HIS OWN MIND AT THE HOUR OF 
HIS DEATH.” Orbiston Register, II, 34 Wednesday 

September 19th, 1827,. 69. Owen, who was visiting from 
New Harmony, arrived at Combe’s bedside just six hours 
later. 
 With William Combe now in charge of finances, it 
became evident that hefty interest payments left little profit 
with which to pay off the community’s £40,000 debt. The 
foundry, for example, reported only a small surplus of £232.  
Fueled by O’Brien’s warnings that the community was on the 
verge of breaking up several proprietors refused to meet their 
financial obligations, and funds became scarce.  In March 
William Combe wrote to Hamilton complaining of the 
Society’s lack of funds.  Without an immediate infusion of 
cash, he warned, “the consequences may be very serious 
(Donnachie 1971, 156).”  Money was advanced to carry the 
group until harvest time, but was evidently either insufficient 
or poorly managed. As gloom spread, the Orbiston’s 
problems were further exacerbated by the rise of soldiering, 
the reporting of false hours, and the pilthering of food from 
the Society’s storehouse – presumably given or sold to 
family and friends in the locality.  Preaching more self-denial 
and generous conduct the Register asked how, under such 
burdens, the group could ever hope to create stock?  Workers 
started to lose confidence in the enterprise, and the value of 
the stock plummeted – Robert Hicks left selling his shares at 
50% of their original value. As austerity measures were 
increased and the prospect of acquiring any real wealth 
diminished, life under the eye of the community proved too 
much for many residents. Positive till the end, the final issue 
of Register followed George Combe’s “Memoir of Mr. 
Abram Combe” with a bucolic picture of residents eagerly 
and cheerfully reaping in the corn. There was with none “of 
that brutal swearing and obscene jesting which are most 
commonly so disgusting in the in the harvest field,” but a 
polite and intelligent discourse “on interesting topics related 
to the community (Register, II, 34, Wednesday September 
19th, 1827, 71.).” The whole tenor of the place had changed.  
Men, women, and children all showed striking improvements 
in character.  Where once residents spent their Sundays idling 
in their rooms, they now found on the benches clean and well 
dressed, quietly “reading books or contemplating the beauties 
of the scenery, being evidently pleased and satisfied with the 
circumstances in which they are placed (Register, II, 34, 
Wednesday September 19th, 1827, 71.).” 
 The whole affair finally came to a head as the 
Society defaulted upon its mortgage payments and the 
Scottish Union Insurance Company elected to call in its 
£16,000 loan.  This meant the immediate liquidation of the 
company and all its assets.  Just three months after Abram’s 
death, an eviction note was served to the residents.  Taking 
charge of the auction, George Combe sold the community’s 
produce and machinery without reserve, and place the 
building a property up for sale.  Of little use to other 
manufacturers, Orbiston remained on the market for over two 
years until it was purchased by a neighboring landowner for 
only ₤15,000.  A longtime opponent of the experiment, she 
immediately had the building razed.  Not a stone remains to 
mark the site.  Several members of the foundry company 
wound up in debtor’s prison and William Combe fled to 
America, where as his brother George later put it, “he 



 52

displays the same want of energy on the other side of the 
Atlantic that formed so striking a feature of his character on 
this (Cullen 1971, 324).” 
 In 1841 Owen presented A Development of the 
Principles and Plans on Which to Establish Self-Sustaining 
Home Colonies.  As his subtitle indicated, the father of 
socialism was still convinced that “Ignorance. Poverty, and 
Crime” could be permanently removed and the material 
benefit of all classes assured, “by giving a Right Application 
to the now Greatly Misdirected Powers of the Human 
Faculties (Owen 1841, app 1).”  To support his argument, 
Owen included in his appendix a chapter from George 
Combe’s Moral Philosophy (Combe, 1846).  Owen clearly 
approved of Combe’s analysis of the Old World – his critique 
of Capitalism and the social institutions that brutified the 
minds of the population.  Turning men and women into 
“labouring animals” was hardly God’s plan for humankind.  
Throughout history, Combe observed, certain individuals 
have glimpsed a more natural state in which justice and 
benevolence could reign.  Plato’s Republic was perhaps the 
first example of such a utopia, others had been envisioned by 
leaders of religious sects, such George Rapp of the 
Harmonites in Indiana.  More recently, Owen had drawn on 
the social sciences in his efforts to engineer the same end.  
Blessed with favorable conditions and a strong leadership 
that ensured complete solidarity to religious principles, the 
Harmonites had enjoyed great prosperity and the delights of 
life governed by the moral and rational faculties.  Owen’s 
scheme proved less successful.  By opening his doors to all 
who professed his principles he admitted men and women 
who were constitutionally incapable of acting “in accordance 
with the dictates of the moral sentiments and intellect (Owen, 
1841, app 7: 7).” The same was true of Abram’s experiment. 
Without “efficient direction or superintendence . . . and no 
habitual supremacy of the moral and intellectual powers . . . 
to animate [operatives] with a love of the public good . . . the 
result was melancholy and speedy.” (Owen 1841, app 1:9) 
Combe reiterated this conclusion in his private 
correspondence. “The great error in Orbiston” he told 
William, “has been the putting the cart before the horse 
(Gibbon 1878, 1:206).”  “To produce union and cooperation 
there must be harmony of principle,” and this demanded 
“highly enlightened and moralized” individuals (Gibbon 
1878, 1:206).” A person of “great and commanding mind, 
who is thoroughly persuaded of its truth he,” could hold 
individuals together by strong religious enthusiasm, but this 
was not Abram’s nature. (Gibbon 1878, 1:206).  There was a 
great difference  
 

between feeling in favor of union and co-operation, 
and intellectually understanding the principles of 
human nature and percieving how to suit external 
circumstances to its wants.  I have considered our late 
lamented brother Abram, and the founder of Orbiston 
more in the first condition than the last.  In short, as 
reason and benovelence were to form the bonds of 
union, the establishment should have been delayed 
until, by educaion or by books, a sufficient number of 
individuals had been prepared -- by the ascendency fo 

these principles in their minds – for carrying their 
principles into practical effect (Gibbon 1878, 1:206). 

 
 “A higher, purer, and happier state of society” was 
possible if, as “the success of Mr. Rapp” demonstrated “the 
animal propensities [could] be controlled by the strength of 
moral and religious principle (Owen 1841, app 1:10).”  Owen 
agreed, pointing to the success of 15 other communities in 
North America that had banished private property. Combe 
was more circumspect. Before submitting to “poetical 
fancies” on the basis of “this almost solitary example,” he 
suggested a careful examination of human nature to 
determine “whether such capacities were “laying dormant 
within us (Owen, 1841, app 1:10).”  His conclusion was less 
optimistic.  Men and women would advance to this moral 
end, but it would take generations lived in accord with the 
laws of inheritance and exercise.  Nonetheless, it was to 
Owen’s disciplinary pedagogy, suitably infused with 
phrenological theory and his brother’s practical Christianity 
that Combe and his co-worker, James Simpson, turned in the 
effort to promote this happy state.  Together with Samuel 
Wilderspin, Thomas Wyse, William Rathbone, and other 
members of the prestigious Central Society, Combe and 
Simpson spearheaded the national campaign for Infant 
schooling and a secular system of national education that 
swept the country in the decade after the debacle at Orbiston. 
But that is another story (Tomlinson 2001). 
 

References 
 
Claeys, Gregory. 1989. Citizens and Saints: Politics and 

Anti-politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press. 

Combe, Abram. 1823. Observations on the New and Old 
Views, and their Effects on the Conduct of 
Individuals: as Manifested in the Proceedings of the 
Edinburgh Christian Instructor and Mr. Owen. 
Edinburgh: James Auchie. 

Combe, Abram. 1823. Metaphorical Sketches of the Old and 
New Systems: with Opinions on Interesting Subjects. 
Edinburgh: J. Auchie. 

Combe, Abram. 1825. The Sphere for Joint Stock 
Companies; or the Way to Increase the Value of Land, 
Capital, and Labour: with an Account of the 
Establishment at Orbiston in Lanarkshire. Edinburgh: 
Bell & Bradfute. 

Combe, George. 1846. Moral philosophy: or, the Duties of 
Man Considered in his Individual, Social, and 
Domestic Capacities. New York: W. H. Colyer. 

Cullen, Alexander. 1971. Adventures in Socialism: New 
Lanark Establishment. New York: AMS Press. 

The Register for the First Society of Adherents to Divine 
Revelation at Orbiston. 1827. Orbiston, Lanarkshire: 
Orbiston Press.  34 vols. 

"Rules and Regulations of a Community," Proceedings of the 
General Meeting of the British and Foreign 
Philanthropic Society. 1822. London: A. Taylor. 

Donnachie, Ian.  1971. “Orbiston: A Scottish Owenite 
Community 1825-28,” in Robert Owen of New 



 53

Lanark, 1771-1858, ed. J. Butt, I. Donnachie, and J. 
Hume. Glasgow: Department of Economic History, 
University of Strathclyde. 

Gibbon, Charles. 1878. Life of George Combe: Author of the 
Constitution of Man. 2 vols. London: Macmillan. 

Godwin, William.  1793. An Enquiry concerning Political 
Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and 
Happiness. 2 vols. London: G. G. & J. Robinson. 

Owen, Robert. 1857/1967. The Life of Robert Owen; Written 
by Himself, with Selections from his Writings & 
Correspondence. 2 vols. London: A. M. Kelley 
Publishers. 

Owen, Robert. 1969. A new view of society and Report to the 
County of Lanark. London: Penguin. 

Owen, Robert. 1841. A Development of the Principles and 
Plans on Which to Establish Self-Sustaining           
Home Colonies. London: The Home and Colonization 
Society. 

   

Podmore, Frank. 1924. Robert Owen: A Biography. London: 
D. Appleton and Company. 

McCann, Phillip and Young, Francis. 1982. Samuel 
Wilderspin and the Infant School Movement London: 
Croom Helm. 

Simon, Brian. 1954. The Radical Tradition in Education in 
Britain London: Lawrence and Wishart. 

Simpson, James. 1836. The Philosophy of Education: With 
its Practical Application to a System and Plan of 
Popular Education as a National Object. London: A. 
& C. Black. 

Tomlinson, Stephen. 2001.  "The Secular School" in 
Curriculum History 2001, ed. L Burlbaw. College 
Station,  TX. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


