Godfrey Lushington

Sir Godfrey Lushington, GCMG, KCB (8 March 1832 – 5 February 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.