page_title: National Association for the Promotion of Social Science
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: National Association for the Promotion of Social Science / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Engraving of the 1879 Social Science Congress, Manchester, England, from The Graphic.
context_page_description: The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, often known as the Social Science Association, was a British reformist group founded in 1857 by Lord Brougham. It pursued issues in public health, industrial relations, penal reform, and female education. It was dissolved in 1886.
context_section_description: The efforts of George Hastings brought together three groups of the 1850s to form the NAPSS: the Society for Promoting the Amendment of the Law, the National Reformatory Union, and the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (the Langham Place Group). It took as model the British Association for the Advancement of Science, holding an itinerant annual meeting, which provided a forum for social reformers.
  The objectives of the Association was defined as "to coordinate the efforts of the experts and the politicians". One factor in the eventual decline of the NSPSS was that the objectives of medical reformers changed. Legislation and the efforts of central government to improve public health became less important to them.
  Its first secretary was Isa Knox.
caption: The Social Science Congress 1879, illustration from The Graphic
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