The charity’s founder, Elfrida Rathbone, was part of a family who made their name both in business and in working for social justice. The Rathbones made their initial fortune in 18th century Liverpool in the timber trade, merchant shipping and banking, at the height of the city’s importance as a transatlantic trading centre. The Quaker / Unitarian Rathbone family were acutely conscious of their social responsibilities and went on to be prominent as wealthy philanthropists in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In the late 18th and early 19th century, William Rathbone III and his son were opposed to the slave trade, refusing to supply companies who built slave ships with timber. As founding members of the Liverpool Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, they were connected to other Abolitionists, including other prominent business people like Josiah Wedgewood, founder of Wedgewood pottery. The family were well connected by marriage and business interests with other pioneering philanthropists like the Darby’s of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire and the Greg’s of Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, Cheshire.

The Rathbone family retained their social conscience as their business interests expanded. By 1824, their business Rathbone Brothers & Co was a renowned merchant company trading in a wealth of products including American cotton, Brazilian coffee and Chinese tea and silks.

William Rathbone VI founded the District Nursing Service in Liverpool and worked with Florence Nightingale, one of the pioneers of nursing. He also supported the foundation of the Liverpool Institute in the 1870s, a forerunner to the University of Liverpool. The family maintained their involvement with the university over the years, endowing professorships and chairs, and gifting the university property as it expanded. William Rathbone IV, as Liberal MP for Caernarvonshire, promoted compulsory state funded education in Wales and helped establish the University of North Wales in Bangor in 1884.

The women of the Rathbone family were also deeply involved in the social issues of their day. Eleanor Rathbone, William Rathbone IV’s daughter, was one of the first women magistrates and became an independent MP in 1929. She campaigned for social and political reforms in housing, votes for women and for family allowances, paid directly to mothers. In 1945, a year before her death, family allowances were made law.

Eleanor’s cousin Elfrida was a pioneering campaigner for children’s rights, particularly championing the right of children with learning difficulties to receive an education. She established a Montesorri school in Liverpool and when she moved to London in 1916 she established a school in Kings Cross for children with learning difficulties. Elfrida believed that ‘all children can learn’. She fought for children’s right to be educated at school. Her Kings Cross school grew and included an occupational centre for children excluded from school, and a centre with crèche facilities for women with learning and physical disabilities. Elfrida Rathbone died in 1940, but her inspirational work led to the formation of the Rathbone Society in 1969.

The Birth of Rathbone

The Rathbone Society continued the work that Elfrida Rathbone had pioneered, and in 1995, joined forces with Community Industry, a similar charity, to become Rathbone CI.

Today, simply dialled ‘Rathbone’, the charity still works to support young people whose needs may not have been met by their experience in education or who need our support to overcome barriers to learning, training or employment.

Rathbone currently provides opportunities for young people to transform their life circumstances. They help young people to re-engage with learning, discover their ability to succeed and achieve progression into further study at college, training like Apprenticeships and employment. Each year, over 17,000 young people join Rathbone’s programmes across the UK.