James Pierrepont Greaves was born in
Merton, Surrey, on 1 February 1777, the son of Charles Greaves, a
draper, and Ann Pierrepont, and spent his early life engaged as a
merchant and draper in
London. According to one account the firm in which he was a partner became bankrupt in 1806 owing to the
Milan and
Berlin decrees of
Napoleon which blocked trade between Britain and the continent; another source says that "after getting rich in commerce he lost his fortune by imprudent speculations". He surrendered all his property to his creditors, and lived for some time on the income allowed him for winding up the affairs of his establishment. He eventually rebuilt his business. In 1817, Greaves experienced "some strong interior visitations" which led him to a belief in the "divine in man" and convinced him that he had a spiritual mission in life to share his commitment to the love of God with others. In 1818, he joined
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, the Swiss educational reformer, then established at
Yverdon, where he taught English. From the 1830s onwards he referred to himself as a "sacred socialist". Greaves worked with Charles and
Elizabeth Mayo to found the
Home and Colonial School Society in
Gray's Inn Road in 1836. This teaching institution was dedicated to
Pestalozzi whose educational ideas ignored the idea of rote-learning. The new organization included a model infant school where these ideas could be developed. Greaves and his followers founded
Alcott House, in
Ham, Surrey (now in
Richmond in
Greater London), a
utopian spiritual community and progressive school which lasted from 1838 to 1848. It was named after
Amos Bronson Alcott, the American transcendentalist, with whom Greaves had a long correspondence, and who visited the community in 1842. Religious writer
Francis Foster Barham (1808–1871), a member of Greaves' Aesthetic Society, considered him as essentially a superior man to
Coleridge, and with much higher spiritual attainments and experience. He wrote, "his numerous acquaintances regarded him as a moral phenomenon, as a unique specimen of human character, as a study, as a curiosity, and an absolute undefinable". An acquaintance whom Greaves frequently visited observed that he was often in financial distress, as he did not attach great importance to conventional notions of earning a living. In his lifetime, Greaves published none of his writings separately, but printed a few of them in obscure periodicals. His last years were spent at Alcott House, where he died on 11 March 1842, aged 65. Two volumes were afterwards published from his manuscripts. Some minor publications, also posthumous, appeared in the British Museum catalogue. ==Vegetarianism==