Frederick James Gould

Frederick James Gould (19 December 1855 – 6 April 1938) was an English teacher, writer, and pioneer secular humanist.

Early life and career Gould was born in Brighton, the son of William James Gould and his wife Julia, who were evangelical Anglicans. After growing up in London, he was sent at age seven to sing in the choir at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, where he also studied. He then attended school in Chenies, Buckinghamshire, where he became a day and Sunday school teacher. At the age of fifteen, he thought he heard voices in his head exclaiming "How wonderful is the love of God!", following which he studied theology "in a kind of devout fury".

Gould moved to London in 1879, married, and began working as a teacher in publicly funded board schools in poorer parts of the East End. By the early 1880s he had become actively involved in the Secularist movement. Coit helped Gould set up the East London Ethical Society, for whom Gould then devised a series of ethical lessons for use in Sunday schools, which he later developed into a four-volume book, The Children's Book of Moral Lessons (1897).

Gould later worked as a lecturer and demonstrator, initially for the Moral Education League, and from 1919 to 1927 was Honorary Secretary to the International Moral Education Congress. After his son, Julian Gould, was killed in action at Arras in 1917, he became increasingly interested in the work of the League of Nations and world peace. He wrote many books and pamphlets covering a wide range of subjects, including religious history, Biblical criticism and educational methods. He wrote The Life-Story of a Humanist (1923), as well as a biography of Auguste Comte.

Collections Gould's personal papers are held at University College London's Institute of Education. The collections include pamphlets, press cuttings, and correspondence.