Godfrey Lushington

Sir Godfrey Lushington (8 March 1832 – 5 February 1907) was a British civil servant. A promoter of prison reform, Lushington served as Permanent Under-Secretary of State at 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 received his degree in 1854, and was President of the Oxford Union in 1853–1854 and was elected a fellow of All Souls in 1854. Two years later, in 1856, he wrote a "rather scathing essay on his Alma Mater" in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. In 1865 he married Beatrice Anne Shore Smith (1835–1914), daughter of barrister Samuel Smith and granddaughter of William Smith. She was also a cousin of Florence Nightingale and of Barbara Bodichon. 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.