“ See, a mighty host advancing
Troops of little bright eyes glancing
Uncle Toby’s joys enhancing
Sitting in his chair They are bands of Mercy’s teachers
Father Chirpie’s little preachers
Pledged to show to helpless creatures
Kindness Everywhere”

This verse from a little ditty, which was set to the tune of the old ballad ‘Men of Harlech’, was sung by children all over the world in the late 19th century. It formed part of one of the songs composed for the ‘Dicky Bird Society’, an organisation formed under the guidance of William Adams, editor of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle – a society which, at one point, had a staggering 130,000 members across the globe. All its members pledged to show kindness to all animals and to wild birds in particular and, with such a wide membership, there is a chance that one of your youthful ancestors may have been a member.

The origins of the Dicky Bird Society can be traced back to 1876. It was then that ‘Uncle Toby’ first introduced the idea of environmental concern into his ‘Children’s Corner’ in the Chronicle. His main mantra, as the song suggests, was ‘Kindness Everywhere’. ‘How delightful it would be,’ he wrote in his first column, ‘if children would pledge themselves to treat birds and animals with tenderness and affection.’

There was reason for his concern, as he pointed out, since there was a considerable amount of cruelty in the cities in particular and the practice of taking eggs or ‘bird-nesting’ was, in his view, disappointingly common. The founder of ‘Children’s Corner’ had named himself after My Uncle Toby, a character in Lawrence Sterne’s popular novel Tristram Shandy. It was the original My Uncle Toby’s kindness towards a fly that had particularly moved the Chronicle writer. In the original book, Uncle Toby caught a bluebottle, which had been pestering him for some time. What did he do then? The Chronicle’s Uncle Toby explained:

Instead of killing his tormentor, he carried it to the window, lifted the sash and drove the fly from the room, saying as it passed out into the sunshine, ‘Go, poor fly, get thee gone; Why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and us.’

The society was thus formed in order to persuade children in north-east England to adopt a similar attitude and its concentration on our feathered friends soon earned it the nickname the Dicky Bird Society – a name which clearly stuck.

The growth of the DBS was staggering, with all members signing a pledge to both feed and protect all birds.

Although the Chronicle was a regional newspaper, among the first hundred members were 39 pupils from a school in St Ives, Cornwall. By January 1877, there were 400 members and the Society’s organiser wrote in his column:

Uncle Toby has set his whole heart and whole mind on having 5,000 members in the Society and when we grow up to this and, supposing each member only feeds with crumbs ten birds, we shall have 50,000 pensioners.

By March 1877 there were 1,000 members; two years later there were 30,000 and by August 1883, 70,000. In the summer of 1886, membership of the Dicky Bird Club reached the magic 100,000. Already it had attracted members from overseas. A Norwegian branch was set up in 1877 then the floodgates opened – at first in the British Empire from Nova Scotia to New Zealand, then letting in the rest of the world, leaving Uncle Toby to note proudly:

Indeed it may be said that there is scarcely a district in any quarter of the globe in which English people have settled that does not contain members of the Dicky Bird Society.

In the summer of 1886, a special Chronicle article devoted to the Society proudly reported a membership of 130,000 and a huge gathering was organised to celebrate this achievement. On 26 July 1886, you couldn’t move in the city despite the torrential rain. The Tyne Theatre was ‘crowded from floor to ceiling’ and groups of youngsters got up on stage to sing songs they had composed (including the one in this article). Such was the fuss over this event that all had to be repeated three days later when the Tyne Theatre was once more packed to capacity. An estimated 8,000 people attended the two entertainments.

At both meetings, Uncle Toby made references to a number of early members of the Society but singled out one Tommy Smith for special praise. Tommy had been caught by a member of the society, Charley Tait, and given a good hiding for mistreating a sparrow. The poor bird had been hung over a lamppost by a piece of string and was being dangled in front of Tommy’s dog when Charley intervened. Charley’s brother, William, then wrote to ‘Children’s Corner’ about the incident and told the Chronicle’s Uncle Toby that his brother was going to bash Tommy again unless he joined the Society.

The story now becomes even more interesting as William noted in a second letter. Tommy Smith became friends with the Taits, joined the Society and, showing the zeal of a convert, set out to find new members. The initial results were disastrous. On one occasion he came straight home from school and headed for a rough part of the city armed with paper and pencil and in hopes of recruiting new members. Having reached the local pond, Tommy was pelted with clay. Still, he wouldn’t give up on his mission and sat by the pond watching the children playing and hoping to speak to them again. Meanwhile one of the lads crept up behind him and pushed him in. William Tait said that Tommy was covered in yellow clay and looked like ‘the Yellow Dwarf in the pantomime’. In his praise of Tommy, Uncle Toby noted that this had not put him off and that the youngster was still working to find new members.

By the middle of the 1880s, an Uncle Toby industry had also grown up, producing and selling Uncle Toby sweets, glasses and, disturbingly, tobacco. You could even buy Uncle Toby antimacassars to put over the back of your armchair!

By 1887, the Society had become so popular and successful that a huge article was written about it for the Monthly Chronicle of North Country Lore and Legend. Here it was claimed that the Society had been around so long that many of its early members were now themselves fathers and mothers of members. Its work was eventually rewarded with the much-coveted Diploma from the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals (now the RSPCA).

Environmentally advanced, the Society appears to have been socially ‘Victorian’ in attitude with massive differentiation between boys and girls when it came to activities and expectations. As to the promise, for example, girls were asked to be kind to all birds, to feed them with crumbs and to teach all their friends to be kind to birds too. Boys, on the other hand, had to make an additional promise not to take a nest or to kill or hurt any of the young birds.

What exactly became of the Dicky Bird Society is not entirely clear and it would be fruitless to speculate until further research is carried out. Sadly, it would seem to have fallen away from its days of greatness although justified in the claim that ‘the lives of millions of birds’ were saved thanks to its influence. It is sad too that today we may find one of its many triumphal statements faintly amusing:

Boys are no longer the little savages they were before we commenced our operations; girls have learnt that it is their duty to interpose and remonstrate when evil is being done.

Ah – were it just so! Yet we can dream and hope to move forward once more – echoing the final words of the DBS anthem –

With Uncle Toby’s banner o’er us
Cruelty shall flee before us
While we raise the loving chorus
Kindness Everywhere