The earliest occurrences of soup kitchens are difficult to identify. Throughout history, societies have invariably recognized a
moral obligation to feed hungry people. The philosopher
Simone Weil wrote that feeding the hungry when one has resources to do so is the most obvious obligation of all. She also said that as far back as
Ancient Egypt, it was believed that people needed to show they had helped the hungry in order to justify themselves in the afterlife. Soup has long been one of the most economical and simple ways to supply nutritious food to large numbers of people. In the
Ayyubid dynasty, soup kitchens called "Takiyyas" emerged, besides providing food to the poor, they also served as shelters, and often served religious purposes. One of the earliest known such soup kitchens is the
Abrahamic hospice in the
Old City of Hebron, established in 1279CE by
Sultan Qalawun, it continues to operate to this day. The Christian church had been providing food to hungry people since
St Paul's day, and since at least the early Middle Ages such nourishment was sometimes provided in the form of soup. Social historian
Karl Polanyi wrote that before markets became the world's dominant form of economic organisation in the 19th century, most human societies would generally either starve all together or not at all; because communities would naturally share their food. As markets began to replace the older forms of resource allocation such as
redistribution,
reciprocity, and
autarky, society's overall level of
food security would typically rise. But food insecurity could become worse for the poorest section of society, and the need arose for more formal methods for providing them with food.
Emergence of the modern soup kitchen , 1783The earliest modern soup kitchens were established by the inventor
Sir Benjamin Thompson, who was employed as an
aide-de-camp to the
Elector of Bavaria in the 1790s. Thompson was an American loyalist refugee from New England and an inventor who was ennobled by Bavaria as Count Rumford. The Count was a prominent advocate of hunger relief, writing pamphlets that were widely read across Europe. Count Rumford's message was especially well received in
Great Britain, where he had previously held a senior government position for several years and was known as "the Colonel". An urgent need had recently arisen in Britain for hunger relief, due to her leading role in driving the
Industrial Revolution. While technological development and economic reforms were rapidly increasing overall prosperity, conditions for the poorest were often made worse, as traditional ways of life were disrupted. In the closing years of the 18th century, soup kitchens run on the principles pioneered by Rumford were to be found throughout England, Wales, and Scotland, with about 60,000 people being fed by them daily in London alone. Prohibition against soup kitchens was soon relaxed on mainland Britain too, though they never again became as prevalent as they had been in the early 19th century, partly as from the 1850s onwards, economic conditions generally began to improve even for the poorest. For the first few decades after the return of soup kitchens to mainland Britain, they were at first heavily regulated, run by groups like the
Charity Organization Society. Even in the early 20th century, campaigning journalists like
Bart Kennedy would criticize them for their long queues, and for the degrading questions staff would ask hungry people before giving out any soup. The term "breadline" entered the popular lexicon in the 1880s, when a bakery in New York City instituted a policy of distributing unsold baked goods to the poor, who would line up at the end of the day. In the decades following the 1870s, the ad-hoc system of food relief, such as the "breadline", came to be seen by a new generation of reformers as inefficient and a potential encouragement of dependency. This led to the rise of the
Scientific Charity Movement, which aimed to organize and centralize relief efforts. Chapters of the
Charity Organization Society (COS) were created in the US during the late 1870s and 1880s. The COS did not dispense relief itself, but acted as a clearinghouse, investigating individual cases of need to determine the "deserving poor" and coordinating the work of the city's disparate charitable groups to avoid duplication of effort and promote self-sufficiency over simple handouts. The new, organized approach to charity was put to a severe test during the nationwide economic depression known as the
Panic of 1893. There was widespread unemployment overwhelming the capacity of the COS and other established charities. Emergency soup kitchens were established by various citizens' committees and benevolent societies, drawing massive lines of thousands of unemployed men and their families. preparing soup kitchen meals in 1932 ,
Occupied Denmark, 1943 Soup kitchens were an iconic image of the early
Great Depression particularly in the early days when emergency privately funded soup kitchens were set up. One soup kitchen in
Chicago was sponsored by American mobster
Al Capone in an apparent effort to clean up his image. This began to change with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
New Deal in 1933. Federal programs, particularly the
Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and the
Civil Works Administration (CWA), funneled millions of dollars for direct cash relief and work-relief jobs. This strategy fundamentally shifted the social safety net from private, direct-food charity to government-funded employment and assistance. As thousands began receiving a federal paycheck or a relief check, the massive emergency soup kitchens of the early Depression were gradually diminished, superseded by a new national system of support. With the improved economic conditions that followed the Second World War, and federal food relief programs, there was less need for soup kitchens in advanced economies. However, with the scaling back of welfare provision in the 1980s under
President Ronald Reagan's administration, there was a rapid rise in activity from grass roots hunger relief agencies such as soup kitchens. According to a comprehensive government survey completed in 2002, over 90% of food banks, about 80% of emergency kitchens, and all known food rescue organisations, were established in the US after Reagan took office in 1981. ==In the 21st century==