Social Welfare Policy,
Living Standards, and
Self-Help, 1861–1908
To middle-class observers inside and outside the government, there were definite lessons to be learned from the crises of the 1840s and, especially, the 1860s. First, the system used to finance the Poor Law was not able to handle sharp increases in demand for relief. Second, while it was possible to raise large amounts of charitable assistance quickly, that aid, when administered in an indiscriminate manner, often did more harm than good. Third, and perhaps most important, the “principles of 1834” clearly were not being enforced in northern industrial cities or working-class districts of London. Not only were large numbers of able-bodied males still receiving outdoor relief, the 1860s had witnessed an upward trend in numbers on relief and relief spending, which suggested to many that the administration of the Poor Law was becoming more lax. Contemporaries argued that manual workers’ wage rates had been increasing since 1850 or earlier, and that by the 1860s most workers earned enough to protect themselves against income insecurity by saving and joining mutual insurance societies. The fact that numbers on relief had not declined, and appeared to be increasing, was seen as evidence that workers were not saving as much as they should and that self-reliance among the working class might be decreasing. Many believed that there was a simple explanation for workers’ behavior—the generous nature of poor relief and private charity made it unnecessary for workers to protect themselves against insecurity.
During the 1860s and 1870s these issues were addressed by both the central and local governments and by middle-class reformers. Parliament altered the system for financing the Poor Law in a series of measures, culminating with the Union Chargeability Act in 1865 and the Metropolitan Poor Act in 1867, which shifted the cost of relief from parishes to Poor Law unions and in the case of London from individual unions to the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund. The problems of lax relief administration and workers’ lack of self-reliance were addressed by the Crusade Against Outrelief, initiated by the Local Government Board in the early 1870s with the full support of the Charity Organisation Society. The leaders of the crusade asserted that substituting the workhouse test for outdoor relief would both improve the behavior of the poor and reduce local ratepayers’ tax bills.
Section I of this chapter examines the beginnings of the Crusade Against Outrelief and its effects on the administration of poor relief. The crusade was brought about by the combination of the supposed failure of Poor Law administration, in particular the London Poor Law crisis of the 1860s, the rise of a self-help ethic in mid-Victorian England and a resulting hardening of middle-class attitudes toward the poor, and the reaction of middle-class taxpayers to the increase in their poor rates brought about by the Union Chargeability Act. Section II examines trends in living standards and working-class self-help from 1870 to 1910. Membership in mutual insurance organizations and deposits in savings banks increased substantially in the second half of the nineteenth century, but largely remained out of reach of low-skilled workers. The bottom one-third of the working class remained quite vulnerable to unexpected income loss at the beginning of the twentieth century.
I. The Crusade Against Outrelief and the Changing Role of the Poor Law
The early 1870s represent a watershed in the history of the Poor Law. Poor Law unions throughout England and Wales sharply restricted the use of outdoor relief for all types of paupers, and in particular able-bodied males and the elderly. This change in policy, known as the Crusade Against Outrelief, was not driven by legislation—the newly formed Local Government Board strongly encouraged but did not compel unions to restrict outdoor relief. After more than three decades of resisting central government pressure to adhere to the “principles of 1834,” local authorities, especially in urban districts, adopted some form of the workhouse test and made outdoor relief substantially more difficult to obtain. This increase in stinginess had the blessing of local middle-class taxpayers.
In November 1869, in the aftermath of the Poor Law crisis in East London, George Goschen, President of the Poor Law Board, issued a Minute to Poor Law officials in the metropolis criticizing local guardians for granting relief not only to the “actually destitute,” whom they had a legal obligation to assist, but also to “those in receipt of insufficient wages.” The consequence of such policies was to “supplant, in a further portion of the population, the full recognition of the necessity for self-reliance and thrift.” He also criticized local charities for granting food or money to those destitute individuals whom the Poor Law guardians were legally bound to assist. Goschen concluded that “it appears to be a matter of essential importance that an attempt should be made to bring the authorities administering the Poor Laws and those who administer charitable funds to as clear an understanding as possible, so as to avoid the double distribution of relief to the same persons.”1
Two years later, in December 1871, the newly formed Local Government Board issued a circular to all Poor Law inspectors stating that the increase in expenditures on outdoor relief during the 1860s was “so great, as to excite apprehension,” and that generous outdoor relief was destroying self-reliance among the poor. The circular blamed this increase in spending largely on local boards of guardians, contending that many granted outdoor relief “too readily and without sufficient inquiry,” and in particular “in numerous circumstances in which it would be more judicious to apply the workhouse test.” In doing so, guardians often disregarded “the advantages which result not only to the ratepayers but to the poor themselves from the offer of in-door in preference to out-door relief.” The circular concluded that “a certainty of obtaining outdoor relief in his own home whenever he may ask for it extinguishes in the mind of the labourer all motive for husbanding his resources, and induces him to rely exclusively upon the rates instead of upon his own savings for such relief as he may require. It removes every incentive to self-reliance and prudent forethought on his part.”2
The government was not alone in condemning generous poor relief. Beatrice Webb wrote that in the 1860s and 1870s the upper classes became obsessed that “the mass-misery of great cities arose mainly, if not entirely, from spasmodic, indiscriminate and unconditional doles, whether in the form of alms or in that of Poor Law relief.” For example, Thomas Hawksley, in an influential pamphlet on The Charities of London, and Some Errors of Their Administration, calculated that from 1858 to 1868 the London pauperism rate increased from 2.9% to 5.1%. The failure of rapid economic growth to sweep away pauperism, he argued, was a result of the maladministration of the Poor Law, which had created “an abject, miserable race, who now feel it to be no humiliation to be dependent,” and the “want of organization, or the absence of any system in the administration of the charities of London.”3
Contemporaries did not just blame the bad administration of public relief and private charity—they placed much of the blame for the crisis of the 1860s on the behavior of the poor. Mid-Victorian Britain saw the rise of an ethic of respectability and self-help, preached by middle-class reformers who argued that improvements in workers’ living standards had greatly reduced the need for public social welfare policies. An early leader of this movement was Samuel Smiles, who in his book Self-Help argued that “simple industry and thrift will go far towards making any person of ordinary working faculty comparatively independent in his means. Even a working man may be so, provided he will carefully husband his resources.” It was “the duty of the prudent man” to set aside money to provide against income loss due to unemployment and sickness. In a later book, Thrift (1876), Smiles wrote that workers could “economize” by drinking less. In his words, “a glass of beer a day is equal to forty-five shillings a year. This sum will insure a man’s life for a hundred and thirty pounds payable at death. Or, placed in a savings bank, it would amount to a hundred pounds in twenty years.” He added, “The uncertainty of life is a strong inducement to provide against the evil day. To do this is a moral and social as well as a religious duty.”4
Thomas Wright, the so-called journeyman engineer, went even further in criticizing those who “habitually prey upon charity.” He wrote, “To these pauper-souled cormorants the bread of charity has no bitterness…. It is these self-degraded dwellers on the threshold of mendicancy who in times of special distress among the working classes chiefly profit by the funds which at such times a British public never fails to subscribe.”5
The views of Hawksley, Smiles, and Wright were echoed by the Charity Organisation Society, founded in London in 1869, partly in response to the supposed indiscriminate nature of charitable giving by Londoners in 1866–69.6 Its early leaders—including Octavia Hill, Canon Samuel Barnett, and C.S. Loch—blamed workers’ failure to save on the easy availability of generous outdoor relief and unregulated private charity. Loch, longtime Secretary of the COS, maintained that “the State shares with indiscriminate charity the distinction of being a mighty engine for evil” and that “to foster independence is true charity.” Canon Barnett wrote that “indiscriminate charity is one of the curses of London…. The effect of this charity is that… the people never learn to work or to save.” In his view, charity’s essential role should be “to create a sturdy self-helpful independence” among its recipients. Hill believed that “it was impertinent to the poor and injurious to their character to offer them doles. They should be lifted out of pauperism by being expected to be self-dependent.”7 The goals of the COS were to systematize “the benevolence of the public,” to put an end to indiscriminate charity and the lax administration of poor relief, to separate the “deserving” poor from the “undeserving” poor, and to reach “an understanding with the Poor Law authorities which would mark off from each other the respective spheres of public relief and private charity.” COS officials argued that a return to the “principles of 1834” would improve both the moral and economic conditions of the poor in the long run.8
Government and COS officials asserted that the number of poor relief recipients increased sharply in the 1860s, and that most working-class households earned enough income to protect themselves against economic insecurity. Were these assertions correct? Consider first the earnings of manual workers. Table 3.1 presents estimates of adult male manual workers’ weekly wages and annual income in 1867, calculated by Dudley Baxter. Baxter divides manual workers into three classifications, and further divides each classification into two categories. The highest skilled workers, in category 1, include instrument makers, watchmakers, persons working with gold and silver, and engine drivers. Category 2 includes printers, skilled ironworkers, shipbuilders, and skilled workers in the building trades. The lower-skilled workers include manufacturers of machines and implements, brass and mixed metal workers, copper, tin, zinc, and lead workers (category 3), and skilled workers in cotton and wool, boot and shoe workers, railway workers, and coal miners (category 4). Category 5 includes messengers and porters, policemen, maltsters and brewers, workers in stone and slate quarries, and dock laborers, while category 6 includes agricultural and general laborers.9
The average weekly wage of a “higher skilled” worker in full work was 29.3s., while that of an unskilled laborer was 14.6s. In estimating workers’ average annual income, Baxter deducted 20% from full-time wages of workers in categories 1–5, and 10% from wages of agricultural laborers, to take account of “loss of work from every cause.”10 His calculation takes into account paupers and “non-effectives,” and therefore overadjusts for lost time for those regularly in work. Column 4 presents revised estimates of annual income, in which full-time earnings are reduced by 10% for all categories of manual workers, and column 5 presents revised average weekly wages, calculated by dividing revised earnings by 52. The adjusted average weekly wage for lower-skilled workers was 20.8s., while that for unskilled laborers was 13.2s.
TABLE 3.1. Manual Workers’ Wages and Earnings: England and Wales, 1867 |
|||||
|
Number of Adult Men |
Full Work Average Weekly Wage (s.) |
Baxter Average Annual Earnings (£) |
Revised Average Annual Earnings (£) |
Revised Average Weekly Wage (s.) |
Higher skilled labor |
|
|
|
|
|
Category 1 |
42,200 |
35.0 |
73.0 |
81.9 |
31.50 |
Category 2 |
798,600 |
29.0 |
60.0 |
67.9 |
26.10 |
Lower skilled labor |
|
|
|
|
|
Category 3 |
582,000 |
25.0 |
52.0 |
58.5 |
22.50 |
Category 4 |
1,028,000 |
22.0 |
46.0 |
51.5 |
19.80 |
Unskilled labor |
|
|
|
|
|
Category 5 |
260,360 |
17.5 |
36.8 |
41.0 |
15.75 |
Category 6 |
1,148,500 |
14.0 |
33.0 |
32.8 |
12.60 |
Total |
3,859,660 |
21.4 |
45.6 |
50.0 |
19.22 |
Source: Baxter (1868: 94–95). Note: See text for an explanation of how Baxter calculated annual earnings (column 3) and how I calculated revised annual earnings and revised average weekly wages. |
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How do these wage estimates compare with estimates of the poverty line? In the 1870s, school boards in many English boroughs and Poor Law unions set rudimentary poverty lines—families with incomes below these lines were considered to be in poverty and exempted from paying school fees. These poverty lines varied substantially across locations, in part, one suspects, because school boards did not agree on how to define poverty. The Salford school board in 1871 set the poverty line at 17s. per week for a family of four and 20s. for a family of five; in the same year the Manchester, Jarrow, and Stalybridge school boards set the poverty line at 14s. (after allowing for rent) for a family of four and 15s. for a family of five. Assuming an average weekly rent of 2.5s., the Manchester poverty line was 16.5s. for a family of four and 17.5s. for a family of five. Other boards adopted far less generous poverty lines. The Exeter and Derby school boards set the poverty line at 10.25s. for a family of four and 11.5s. for a family of five.11
Historian Marguerite Dupree calculated that the poverty line for the Potteries in 1861 was 17.2s. per week for a family with two children and 20s. for a family with three children; it increased by 2.8s. for each additional child. G.J. Barnsby estimated that the weekly earnings necessary to maintain a Black Country household consisting of a husband, wife, and two small children in “a minimum standard of comfort” was 28s. in 1860 and 26.75s. in 1870 and 1880. Subtracting expenditures on shoes, clothing, drink, tobacco, durables, and services yields an estimate of weekly “subsistence” expenditures on food, rent, and fuel of 14s. in 1860 and 13.4s. in 1870 and 1880. Barnsby admits that his “food budget is very Spartan” and that his estimate for rent “would provide for an inferior three-roomed house.”12
A comparison of the wage data in Table 3.1 with the estimated poverty scales shows that most unskilled workers in the late 1860s were paid wages that were close to, and often below, the poverty line, and that many lower-skilled workers in category 4 earned only slightly more than a subsistence income. To the extent that wives and older children living at home also worked for pay, family earnings exceeded the wage rates reported in Table 3.1.13 Still, the data suggest that in the 1860s few unskilled workers, and probably no more than half of lower-skilled workers in category 4, would have been able to become “comparatively independent in their means” through “simple industry and thrift.”
Was the fear of rapidly increasing numbers receiving poor relief justified? Hawksley reached his conclusion about the alarming growth of London pauperism by comparing growth in population and number of paupers for London from 1858 to 1868. His data are somewhat misleading because pauperism rates were relatively low in 1858 and because 1868 was at the peak of the crisis of 1866–69. The London pauperism rate was roughly constant from 1861 to 1866 (between 3.3% and 3.5%), then increased to 5.0% in 1868 before declining to 4.6% in 1869 and 4.8% in 1871.14 Pauperism was increasing in the metropolis, but at a slower rate than Hawksley suggested.
The growth in London pauperism was not mirrored in other parts of England. Table 3.2 shows pauperism rates for England’s ten registration divisions for 1861 and 1871. For England as a whole, the pauperism rate increased little over the decade, from 4.2% to 4.5%. By far the largest increase occurred in London, where the pauperism rate rose from 3.5% to 4.8%. It declined slightly in the East and North Midlands, remained constant in the North, and increased by only 0.1% in the South East, South Midlands, and West Midlands. The problem of rapidly increasing numbers on relief identified by the Local Government Board (LGB) occurred only in London.
Government officials and middle-class reformers were overly optimistic about the ability of low-skilled workers to protect themselves against income loss, and at the same time overly pessimistic regarding the trend in numbers receiving poor relief. One-third or more of manual workers in 1867 had earnings close to or below the poverty line, and outside of the metropolis pauperism rates increased slowly if at all during the 1860s. But perceptions often matter more than facts, and many contemporaries believed that pauperism was increasing rapidly due to the maladministration of public and private relief and workers’ lack of thrift.
THE UNION CHARGEABILITY ACT
The second catalyst of the Crusade Against Outrelief was Parliament’s adoption of the Union Chargeability Act in 1865 and the Metropolitan Poor Act in 1867. The Union Chargeability Act placed the entire cost of poor relief on the Poor Law union rather than the parish, and directed that each parish’s contribution to the union common fund be based on its value of taxable property. The adoption of union rating shifted a large share of the cost of relief from working-class to middle-class parishes. The Metropolitan Poor Act, discussed in Chapter 2, shifted some of the costs of poor relief from individual London unions to the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund.
To understand the reasons for the 1865 act’s adoption, it is necessary to examine briefly the issues of Poor Law financing and settlement. The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act led to the grouping of parishes into Poor Law unions, but each parish within a union remained responsible for relieving its own poor. Unions were directed to set up a union common fund to be used to construct or maintain workhouses and for other “establishment charges.” Each parish’s contribution to the common fund was based on its average expenditure for the relief of its own paupers over the previous three years, and not on its rateable value of property. In other words, poor working-class parishes contributed more to the common fund than did wealthier middle-class parishes.
The Poor Law Amendment Act did not alter the law of settlement. Individuals were guaranteed poor relief only in their parish of settlement (typically their parish of birth), and nonsettled persons who applied for relief could be removed from a parish. By the 1830s, migrants made up one-third to one-half, and in some cases more, of the populations of English industrial cities. Urban relief officials used the power of removal to reduce relief expenditures. Those who appeared before the 1847 and 1855 Select Committees on Poor Removal testified that the mere threat of removal was enough to keep large numbers of nonsettled migrants from applying for poor relief.15
The Poor Removal Act of 1846 amended the Settlement Law to make irremovable persons who had continuously resided in a parish for five years, widows whose husbands had been dead for less than a year, and persons “who applied for temporary relief on account of sickness or accident.” The creation of a category of nonsettled but irremovable poor caused relief expenditures of industrial cities to increase. Bradford’s relief spending rose by “perhaps £5,000 annually” as a result of the act, while Leeds’s annual relief spending increased by £3–4,000. Virtually all of the increase was borne by working-class parishes; “the parishes which had a large number of settled poor to relieve had a still larger amount to pay for the relief of the irremovable poor.”16
To help ease the financial burden on urban parishes caused by the Poor Removal Act, Parliament in 1847 adopted Bodkin’s Act, which shifted the cost of relieving irremovable paupers from their parish of residence to the union common fund. However, Bodkin’s Act, which was extended in 1848, did little to aid working-class parishes because contributions to the common fund still were determined by relief expenditures rather than by rateable value of property. In 1854 the President of the Poor Law Board introduced a bill in Parliament to abolish the power of removal, replace the existing parish/union system of finance with complete union rating, and have each parish’s contribution to the common fund be based on its rateable value of property. The bill met with opposition in the House of Commons and was withdrawn. Seven years later, Parliament adopted the Irremovable Poor Act (1861), which reduced the time of continuous residence necessary to become irremovable from five to three years, and directed that parishes contribute to the union common fund according to the value of their rateable property.17
Parliament’s adoption of the Union Chargeability Act in 1865 marked the end of a two-decade-long debate over settlement, removal, and the local financing of poor relief. The act made the Poor Law union the unit of settlement and reduced the period of residence to become irremovable to one year. Most importantly, it “made the union rather than the parish the basic unit for all purposes relating to rating and poor law expenditure,” and, by making all parish contributions to the common fund based on the value of rateable property, it equalized tax rates across parishes within unions.18 The act finalized the shift in the source of funding for relief spending from the individual parishes to the Poor Law unions that began with the creation of union common funds after 1834. Before the adoption of the Irremovable Poor Act in 1861, the vast majority of relief spending was paid for by individual parishes, and poor rates varied substantially across parishes within unions. After the adoption of the 1861 act the share of relief expenditures charged to the union common fund increased to about 50%, on average.19 The Union Chargeability Act, by making all relief spending the responsibility of the union common fund, increased poor rates in middle-class parishes and reduced rates in working-class parishes.
The infusion of money generated by union rateability eased the financial burdens that had plagued the Poor Law, and enabled unions to construct new, and larger, workhouses.20 The increase in tax rates in wealthier parishes also sparked a middle-class reconsideration of the proper role of poor relief. Poor Law unions’ boards of guardians typically were dominated by members from the wealthier parishes, who responded to the increase in their taxes by looking for ways to reduce relief costs.21 The propaganda campaign of the Local Government Board and the Charity Organisation Society therefore fell on ready ears. Both the LGB and the COS claimed that the substitution of relief in workhouses for outdoor relief would reduce relief spending and therefore tax rates, even though the cost per pauper of workhouse relief was substantially higher than the cost of outdoor relief. Overall costs would decline because of the deterrent effect of the workhouse—the vast majority of applicants would refuse to enter workhouses, so that a shift from outdoor relief to workhouse relief would greatly reduce the number of paupers. Edmond Wodehouse, a Poor Law inspector for the LGB, gave the following example in his 1871 report on outdoor relief:
A family applies for relief; if they are given out-relief to the amount of four shillings a week, they will be satisfied; if they come into the workhouse, their maintenance will cost ten shillings a week. The economists therefore argue, that by giving out-relief they will save six shillings a week. Now the very same guardians, who have used this argument, have frequently acknowledged to me, that when the workhouse test is offered, it is not accepted in more than one case out of ten. By offering the workhouse then in ten such cases the Guardians would indeed lose six shillings a week in the one case in which it was accepted, but in each of the remaining nine cases they would save four shillings, so that their total gain upon the ten cases would amount to thirty shillings a week.22
Wodehouse’s assertion that nine out of ten persons offered workhouse relief would refuse it was an exaggeration, but it was accepted by many COS members and boards of guardians.
In the first half of the 1870s boards of guardians throughout England adopted some form of the workhouse test, enticed by the notion that restricting outdoor relief would both improve the morality of the poor and reduce the cost of poor relief. In the words of MacKinnon, “Whether or not guardians and ratepayers agreed with … the COS philosophy, it is easy to understand why they accepted many of the Local Government Board’s recommendations.”23 Some contemporaries were blunter in commenting on guardians’ motives. Beatrice Webb wrote that “it is not surprising that the… tenets of the originators of the idea of charity organisation found ready acceptance among the enlightened members of the propertied class.” Behind the COS’s “array of inductive and deductive proof of the disastrous effect on the wage-earning class of any kind of subvention, there lay the subconscious bias of ‘the Haves’ against taxing themselves for ‘the Have Nots.’ ” Charles Marson, a leader of the Christian Social Union, similarly concluded, “Theories which, on the lips of Canon Barnett, are spiritual, if mistaken; and from the pen of Mr. Loch are able, though fallacious, become in the practice of meaner men merely the gospel of the buttoned pocket.”24
EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADE AGAINST OUTRELIEF
The effect of the Crusade Against Outrelief on pauperism rates is shown in Table 3.3, which presents annual data for England and Wales from 1861 to 1901. Columns 1–3 report “official” estimates of the number of paupers, calculated as the average of the number relieved on January 1 and July 1; column 4 gives the pauperism rate estimated using the numbers in column 3. The day count substantially understates the number of persons receiving poor relief at some point during a year—the LGB calculated in 1892 that the number relieved over a 12-month period was 2.24 times the number recorded in the day counts. Column 5 gives the annual number receiving relief, estimated by multiplying each year’s day count by 2.24. From 1861 to 1871 the share of the population receiving poor relief sometime during the year ranged from 9.2% to 10.9% during the cotton famine.
The short-run effects of the crusade are evident in the pauperism data for the 1870s. From 1871 to 1877, the official number of persons receiving poor relief declined by one-third, from 983,000 to 660,000, while the share of the population receiving relief (year count) declined from 9.8% to 6.1%. After 1875 the pauperism rate never again exceeded 6.5%. The crusade put an end to the use of the Poor Law to assist those temporarily in need during economic dislocations. From the 1840s through the 1860s, numbers on relief varied with the trade cycle, increasing during downturns and declining during booms. The Lancashire cotton famine, which affected only a small part of England and Wales, is clearly discernible in Table 3.3. After 1870 there is no hint of the trade cycle in the aggregate pauperism statistics. The unemployment rate increased from an average of 3.1% in 1871–75 to 9.5% in 1878 and 11.1% in 1879, and yet the share receiving relief declined from 1871 to 1878–79.25
The sharp drop in numbers relieved largely was caused by the policy change associated with the crusade, and in particular with the increased use of the workhouse test. In the 1860s, 12–15% of paupers were relieved in workhouses (column 7); by 1878 the share relieved indoors had increased to 21%, and it continued to rise thereafter, until by 1901 nearly 30% of paupers were relieved indoors. The strong deterrent effect associated with the workhouse test is revealed by comparing changes in numbers receiving indoor and outdoor relief. From 1871 to 1881, the number of persons receiving outdoor relief fell by 282,000 (a decline of 33%), while the number relieved in workhouses increased by only 21,000. Many of those offered indoor relief removed themselves from the relief roles rather than enter a workhouse, and others simply chose not to apply for relief.
The effect of the Crusade on Poor Law expenditures is not as straightforward. Table 3.4 shows that from 1871 to 1881 nominal spending on outdoor relief declined by just over £1 million, while spending on workhouse relief increased by £314,000. However, “other” costs, a combination of “bricks and mortar” costs and administrative costs, increased by 31.7% due to the increased costs associated with workhouse relief. As a result, total expenditures declined by only £72,000 (1.0%) from 1871 to 1881, despite the fact that the number of persons in receipt of poor relief (day count) declined by 261,000, and the share of the population receiving relief fell by 27%. Panel (b) shows that real expenditures on indoor plus outdoor relief declined by 6% from 1871 to 1881, while “other” costs increased by 42.8%. Real total expenditures increased by 7.3%; real per capita spending declined, but only by 2.6%. In sum, while the crusade led to a sharp reduction in numbers on relief, as the COS and LGB predicted, their assertion that the workhouse test would reduce local poor rates was not correct, at least not in the short run.26
Table 3.5 shows the number of able-bodied and non-able-bodied persons receiving poor relief in each English registration division on January 1, 1871 and 1881. Non-able-bodied paupers consisted mainly of old people and the disabled. The data show that the crusade was aimed at all paupers, not just the able-bodied—the number of able-bodied and non-able-bodied paupers receiving outdoor relief declined in all ten divisions over the decade. For England as a whole, the number of able-bodied adults and their children in receipt of outdoor relief declined by 42% from 1871 to 1881, while the number of non-able-bodied persons relieved outdoors declined by 31%. The number of non-able-bodied paupers relieved in workhouses increased in eight divisions and declined slightly in two rural southern divisions, while the number of able-bodied paupers relieved indoors declined throughout the South and in the rural North Midlands, and increased in the three northern divisions and the more industrial West Midlands. That is, one effect of the crusade was to change the demographic makeup of workhouse inmates. The deterrent effect of the workhouse test was stronger for the able-bodied than for the elderly, many of whom had few alternatives to accepting whatever form of poor relief they were offered.
The final two columns of Table 3.5 give the overall pauperism rate and the share relieved in workhouses in 1871 and 1881 for each division. The pauperism rate declined everywhere over the decade, but the extent of decline was much larger in London and the South than in the Midlands or the North. As a result, the North-South differential in pauperism rates, which had existed since at least the late eighteenth century, declined in the 1870s.27 The use of the workhouse increased in every division, although the data indicate that the crusade was centered more in urban than rural districts. By far the largest increase occurred in London, where the share relieved indoors increased from 22.8% in 1871 to 52.2% in 1881. The fact that the COS was based in London and that one of the major catalysts of the crusade was the London poor relief crisis of the 1860s explains why the crusade was particularly strong in the metropolis.
After declining sharply from 1871 to 1877, the pauperism rate continued to fall, but at a much slower pace, thereafter. The share of the population receiving relief during a year fell from 6.3% in 1881 to 5.3% in 1891 and 4.8% in 1901.28 The post-1881 decline was caused in part by improvements in material living standards and an increase in working-class self-help, as will be shown in Section II. Some part of the decline, however, was a result of changes in working-class attitudes toward the Poor Law. One of the crusade’s aims was to make reliance on the Poor Law during times of “personal distress” a less palatable option for workers, and in this regard it was very successful. Prior to 1870, the working class regarded access to public relief as a legal right, although they rejected the workhouse as a form of relief. In the words of Lees, it is necessary “to distinguish between the rejection by the poor of specific welfare institutions and their adamant insistence upon their own entitlement to parish relief.”29 Opinions changed after 1870, however, and by the end of the century many within the working class viewed poor relief as stigmatizing. This change in perceptions led many poor people to go to great lengths to avoid applying for relief. According to Thompson, working-class resolve “not to touch poor relief at all except in sickness, had become a matter of avoiding social disgrace… above all avoiding disparagement and humiliation in front of friends and neighbors…. Resort to poor relief, in other words, came to be equated with the loss of respectability, a concept nourished and enforced by local communities and peer groups.”30 MacKinnon provides a more nuanced view of late Victorian working-class perceptions of the Poor Law. Friends and neighbors strongly disparaged the acceptance of poor relief by healthy able-bodied adults, but there was “little or no stigma attached” to outdoor relief for the old, which was widespread—“it was considered normal for the elderly to live on a combination of charity and poor relief.” She also gives another reason why working-class households strived to remain off the Poor Law. The ability to obtain credit was “vitally important to the very poor,” and shopkeepers and landlords viewed the application for poor relief as “a clear signal of increased risk of default.”31
In sum, there were economic, institutional, and cultural reasons for the decline in pauperism from 1871 to 1901. The sharp drop in numbers relieved in the 1870s was driven by the Crusade Against Outrelief and the widespread adoption of the workhouse test. The impact of this institutional change was reinforced by a change in working-class attitudes toward poor relief. Finally, some share of the decline was a result of improvements in working-class living standards and a rise in self-help. Victorian reformers, and in particular COS officials, maintained that improving living standards played the most important role in causing the fall in pauperism. However, evidence presented in Section II indicates that the living standards of the bottom one-third or so of the working class improved little in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.
II. Trends in Manual Workers’ Earnings and Self-Help, 1860–1913
Officials of the LGB and the COS predicted that working-class self-help would increase over time as a result of increases in earnings and improvements in morals and thriftiness brought about by changes in the administration of poor relief. Were these predictions correct? How much did manual workers’ purchasing power improve in late Victorian England? What share of working-class households took steps to protect themselves against income insecurity, through depositing money in savings banks and joining mutual insurance organizations? This section addresses these questions.
British economic growth in the second half of the nineteenth century typically is divided into two periods, the Victorian boom from 1850 until roughly 1873, followed by a period of slower growth, sometimes known as the Great Depression, from the mid-1870s to the late 1890s. By most measures the economy remained sluggish from 1899 to 1913. Real disposable income per head increased at an annual rate of 1.7% from 1856 to 1873 and 1.0% from 1873 to 1913.32
The late nineteenth-century slowdown in economic growth was reflected in a slowdown in earnings growth. Table 3.6 presents estimates of the average rate of growth of manual workers’ nominal and real earnings for 1855–1913 and for three subperiods.33 For the period as a whole, real earnings grew at an annual rate of 1.27%. There were significant differences in rates of earnings growth across subperiods. Real (and nominal) earnings grew much faster during the Victorian boom from the 1850s to the early 1870s than during the last quarter of the century, and real earnings growth was even slower from 1899 to 1913. Panel (b) presents estimates of real earnings growth for five sectors—agriculture, building, coal mining, cotton textiles, and engineering, shipbuilding, and vehicles. For all sectors except engineering, the growth rate of real earnings was greater from 1855 to 1874 than from 1874 to 1913. Real earnings in the building trades and engineering declined from 1899 to 1913, and earnings in agriculture and cotton textiles were virtually constant. What effect did the late Victorian slowdown in the rate of growth in purchasing power have on the growth in working-class self-help?
TABLE 3.6. Trends in Weekly Earnings of Manual Workers, 1855–1913 |
||||
|
1855–1913 |
1855–74 |
1874 –99 |
1899–1913 |
(A) ALL MANUAL WORKERS (ANNUAL PERCENTAGE GROWTH RATES) |
|
|||
Money earnings |
1.09 |
1.84 |
0.42 |
1.27 |
Cost of living |
−0.17 |
−0.22 |
−0.77 |
0.97 |
Real earnings |
1.27 |
2.07 |
1.20 |
0.30 |
(B) REAL EARNINGS BY SECTOR (ANNUAL PERCENTAGE GROWTH RATES) |
|
|||
Agriculture |
0.95 |
1.54 |
1.01 |
0.05 |
Building |
1.04 |
1.75 |
1.40 |
−0.55 |
Coal |
1.16 |
2.29 |
0.53 |
0.77 |
Cotton |
1.49 |
2.65 |
1.38 |
0.12 |
Engineering, etc. |
0.91 |
0.96 |
1.52 |
−0.23 |
Source: Calculated from data in Feinstein (1995). |
||||
GROWTH IN SELF-HELP, 1850–1913
A major assumption of the Crusade Against Outrelief was that the workhouse test would lead workers to protect themselves against unexpected income loss. To determine if workers responded to changes in policy as middle-class reformers assumed they would, it is useful to begin by examining the growth in self-help in the decades leading up to the crusade.
Deposits in savings banks and membership in friendly societies grew rapidly from 1850 to 1870 (see Tables 3.7 through 3.9). The combined membership of the Manchester Unity Oddfellows and the Foresters was nearly 811,000 in 1870, a 140% increase over 1846. By 1872, membership in registered friendly societies was about 1.86 million, and the Royal Commission on Friendly Societies (1870–74) estimated that overall friendly society membership was about 4 million (Table 3.8). This last figure is likely an overestimate; total membership was closer to 3.0–3.5 million. The number in societies that paid sickness benefits was smaller, perhaps 2.1–2.4 million, or 36–41% of the adult male population.34
Total friendly society expenditures are not known. Expenditure data are available for the Manchester Oddfellows and the Foresters, the two largest affiliated societies; in 1870 they paid out £653,000 in sickness and funeral benefits.35 Slightly more than one-third of friendly society members eligible for sickness benefits were in one of these two affiliated societies. If the Manchester Oddfellows and Foresters accounted for one-third of expenditures by those societies offering sickness benefits, then total friendly society spending in 1870 was £1.96 million, or 38% of poor relief expenditures.36
The weekly benefits paid by friendly societies and the Poor Law were similar from 1850 to 1870. The level of poor relief benefits given to an unemployed or sick worker was determined by the size of the worker’s family and the income earned by other family members. Benefit levels were similar across towns and over time, typically 2–3s. for a single adult male per week, and 1s. 6d.–2s. per week for each additional family member. An unemployed man with a wife and two (three) children would receive about 8s. (10s.) per week if the family had no other sources of income, less if other family members were working. Friendly society sickness benefits varied across societies, but were on average 8–10s. per week in the 1850s and 1860s. The median weekly wage for manual workers was about 18s. in 1860, and the upper quartile averaged 22.5s.37 Since most friendly society members would have been from the upper half of the income distribution, the sickness benefit likely replaced between a third and a half of their wages.
Table 3.9 shows that, from 1850 to 1871, the number of working-class deposits in the Trustee Savings Banks and the newly formed Post Office Savings Bank increased from about 750,000 to 1.9 million, an increase of more than 150%.38 The real value of workers’ savings bank deposits roughly doubled from 1850 to 1870. To put the extent of workers’ savings in some perspective, in 1870 the value of working-class savings deposits was more than three times the annual expenditures on poor relief (Table 3.7).
In sum, working-class self-help increased substantially in the two decades leading up to the Crusade Against Outrelief; indeed it was increasing at the very time that, according to the LGB, the growth in poor relief spending was “so great, as to excite apprehension.” Relief spending and self-help increased at the same time because they were associated with different parts of the working class. In 1870 less than one-half of working-class households had savings accounts or were members of friendly societies paying sickness benefits. “Friendly society membership was the badge of the skilled worker,” and the same can be said about having a bank account. Few low-skilled workers were able to save, nor could they afford the premiums charged by friendly societies offering sickness benefits.39 When they lost any significant amount of work time, they were forced to turn to the Poor Law, private charity, or family and friends for assistance.
By 1870, then, there were distinct differences in the methods used by skilled and unskilled workers to cope with income insecurity. Skilled workers largely had accepted the Victorian ethic of respectability and self-help, and protected themselves against income loss by saving and joining friendly societies. Few skilled workers ever used the Poor Law, although some applied for relief during prolonged periods of unemployment or when they were elderly. For a large share of low-skilled workers, however, the Poor Law provided an important safety net that they turned to periodically. Most laborers would have preferred the strategy of self-help, but their wages were too low to make this a viable option. Behavior that the LGB and the COS attributed to character flaws largely was a result of low incomes.
The last third of the nineteenth century saw a continuation of the self-help movement, spurred on by the Crusade Against Outrelief. The number of accounts in the Post Office Savings Bank and Trustee Savings Banks nearly quadrupled from 1871 to 1911, by which date there were about 7.2 million working-class depositors (see Table 3.9).40 In real terms, deposits in workers’ savings accounts increased by 141% from 1870 to 1890, and by another 94% from 1890 to 1913.
Membership in registered friendly societies increased from 1.86 million in 1872 to 3.6 million in 1887 (Table 3.8), although some of this increase likely represented a greater registration of existing societies. Total membership in ordinary and affiliated societies increased from 3.76 million in 1886 to 5.47 million in 1901, and 6.42 million in 1911 (Table 3.8, column 5).41 Following Neave, I estimate that the total number of friendly society members in 1891 was 4.5 million, and that the membership of societies paying sickness benefits probably was about 3.37 million.42 This represented 45% of the adult male population in 1891. Johnson estimates that the number of friendly society members eligible for sickness benefits was 4.14 million in 1901 and 4.43 million in 1911. If we multiply his numbers by 1.08 to take account of those (relatively few) nonregistered members in societies with sickness benefits, we get estimates of friendly society members eligible for sickness benefits of 4.47 million in 1901 and 4.78 million in 1911 (Table 3.9).43 The 1911 figure represented 47% of adult males, up from 41% in 1871 and 29% in 1850. If three-quarters of adult males were members of the working class, then in 1911 62% of adult working-class males were members of friendly societies that provided sickness benefits, up from 55% in 1871 and 38% in 1850.
Annual expenditure data on benefits are available for 14 large societies from 1886 onward, and rough estimates can be made of total friendly society expenditures (see Table 3.10). Edward Brabrook, the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies, estimated that in 1891 total friendly society expenditures on benefits was £4,277,000.44 The 14 societies for which data are available accounted for 52% of this total. If this ratio held throughout the period, then friendly society expenditures increased from £3.48 million in 1886 to £8.20 million in 1913. Friendly society spending was 81% of poor relief expenditures in 1886; it rose to 104% by 1908.
TRADE UNIONS AND MUTUAL INSURANCE
Adding to this was mutual-insurance spending by trade unions. The last three decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a rapid growth in union membership. The Trades Union Congress claimed to have 289,000 members in 1871. Union membership increased sharply in the following three years, then declined during the downturn of the late 1870s, although at its lowest point in 1881 membership was about 460,000, more than 50% above its 1871 level. By 1888 there were about 750,000 adult male trade union members, increasing to 1.5 million in 1898 and 2.1 million in 1908. Union density was 15.2% in 1898 and 19.0% in 1908.45
The rapid union growth after 1870 was accompanied by the spread of mutual insurance benefits to a broad range of occupations. Craft unions provided their members with insurance against unemployment, sickness, and accidents, pensions for retired members, and death benefits to ensure workers and their wives a proper funeral. The importance attached by workers to unions’ insurance function can be seen in the objectives listed in union rules. The Boilermakers and Iron and Steel Shipbuilders, for example, sought “to provide against a train of evils of the most serious magnitude, which evils, when they arise from any cause except sickness, are not provided for by any of the ordinary ‘Benefit Societies.’ ” Similarly, the rules of the Friendly Society of Iron Founders stated that “the objects of this society are the establishment of a fund for the relief of its members out of work, and for the mutual support of its members in case of sickness, accident, or superannuation,” as well as “the promotion of their trade interests and general welfare.”46
The number of workers with trade union benefits was relatively small compared to the membership of friendly societies. In 1892, 728,000 trade union members (8% of the adult male workforce) were eligible for unemployment benefits, 580,000 for sickness benefits, and 429,000 for old age (superannuation) benefits. By 1908, 1,474,000 workers (12% of the male workforce) were eligible for unemployment benefits, and 729,000 were eligible for sickness benefits.47 Unemployment insurance was the most important of the union-provided benefits because it was not offered by friendly societies.48 The relatively small number of union members eligible for sickness and old age benefits was due largely to their being provided by friendly societies and the fact that many union members also were members of friendly societies.
The benefit packages offered by unions differed markedly across occupations. In metals, engineering, shipbuilding, and the building trades, most unions provided unemployment, sickness, accident, old age, and death benefits. Most mining and textile unions provided death benefits, and several provided unemployment benefits under certain conditions (when a mine or factory was shut down). Few, however, provided sickness or old age benefits. Unions of low-skilled workers typically provided only death and accident benefits. Only a third of low-skilled union members were eligible for sickness or old age benefits, and fewer than 10% were eligible for unemployment benefits.49
Table 3.10 (column 3) presents data on insurance benefits paid out by trade unions for selected years from 1870 to 1913. Before 1890 union expenditures were small, and concentrated among a few unions of skilled workers. The number of unions offering insurance benefits expanded in the 1890s; still, as late as 1908, seven large unions accounted for 51% of total spending.50 Annual expenditures on insurance benefits increased sharply after 1892 and peaked at nearly £2.34 million during the downturn of 1908. Spending on unemployment benefits typically exceeded spending on every other type of benefit, and in cyclical downturns, such as 1886 and 1908, unemployment benefits accounted for most of union benefit expenditures.
BENEFIT LEVELS AND TOTAL SPENDING ON MUTUAL INSURANCE
The benefits paid by friendly societies and trade unions to sick or unemployed members grew over time, but at a slower rate than wages. The average weekly sickness benefit paid by friendly societies increased from 10s. in the 1870s to 12s. by 1900, and remained at that level until 1914.51 The typical trade union sickness or unemployment benefit was 9–10s. per week in 1892. Benefits increased little if at all in the next two decades; in 1908 the median union sickness or unemployment benefit was 9.25–10s. per week.52 The median weekly wage for adult male workers was 24.17s. in 1886 and 29.33s. in 1906. Thus, the average friendly society benefit replaced about 45% of lost wages in 1886 and 40% of lost wages in 1906, while the typical union benefit replaced somewhat less. Benefit payments were enough to feed a moderate-sized family in 1900, but not high enough to also cover rent, fuel, clothing, and sundries.53 They needed to be supplemented by other sources of income, but they served “as a nucleus” and kept their recipients from having to apply for public relief.54
Some workers obtained additional sickness insurance by joining more than one friendly society, or by belonging to both a friendly society and a trade union paying sickness benefits. William Allen, the Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, commented in 1867 that a “great many” members of the union “join other benefit societies… in order to have a sufficient amount during illness.” As part of his 1899 analysis of poverty in York, Rowntree surveyed 400 men with sickness insurance through either a trade union or a friendly society and found that 185 (46%) belonged either to more than one friendly society or to a union and one or more friendly societies.55
The combined expenditures of friendly societies and trade unions on insurance benefits increased from £2.2 million in 1870 to £5.2 million in 1892, and £10.1 million in 1913 (Table 3.10). In 1870 spending by friendly societies and trade unions was less than half of poor relief expenditures. From 1870 to 1886, poor relief spending declined by £808,000, while spending by friendly societies increased by £1,524,000, and benefit payments by trade unions increased by slightly more than £300,000. In 1886 spending by friendly societies and trade unions was 93% of poor relief expenditures, and 40% greater than poor relief expenditures in 1908. In real terms, the expenditure of friendly societies and trade unions in 1908 was 4.5 times greater than in 1870.
The data in Tables 3.7–3.10 suggest that the Victorian self-help movement was a resounding success in terms of its own objectives. Workers responded to the Crusade Against Outrelief by protecting themselves against financial insecurity, as COS officials had predicted, and the increase in benefit payments made by mutual insurance organizations from 1870 to 1900 was greater than the decline in Poor Law expenditures. The real value of working-class savings deposits, another form of insurance, increased by nearly 450% from 1870 to 1908. These data and the fact that the day count pauperism rate was below 2.5% from 1891 onward led many observers to conclude that by the turn of the century poverty had been virtually eliminated.
But the aggregate data tell only part of the story. Self-help worked well for those who could afford to save or join mutual insurance organizations, but it remained largely outside the sphere of the bottom third of the income distribution. As late as 1911, only two-thirds of adult working-class males were members of friendly societies or trade unions offering sickness benefits. Fewer were eligible for old age benefits, and only 12% of the adult male workforce was eligible for trade union unemployment benefits. Most working-class households had savings accounts by 1901, but the balances in those accounts typically were quite small. In 1899, 83% of all Post Office Savings Bank accounts had balances of £25 or less. The average balance in these accounts was £4, and the median balance was smaller; £4 was the equivalent of less than 2.5 weeks’ pay for a machinist or a skilled worker in the building trades, and less than four weeks’ pay for a police constable or a bricklayer’s laborer.56
The fact that many manual workers had little savings and were not members of friendly societies frustrated some turn-of-the-century observers, who criticized the low-skilled for their “thoughtlessness,” “self-indulgence,” or “ignorance.” For example, Helen Bosanquet, a leader of the COS, wrote in 1904 that the “mental horizon” of the poor “tends to be limited to a stretch of seven days, and many feel that they have amply satisfied the claims of providence if they can see their way clear to next Saturday…. The habit of short views seems to make it impossible for him (or his wife) to save for the weeks out of work.”57 However, the low wages of unskilled workers made saving difficult. As noted above, the average full-time earnings of adult male unskilled laborers in 1906 was 21.7s. per week. This was close enough to the poverty line that only those with incredible willpower could set aside money each week to deposit in a savings account or pay friendly society dues.58
Despite the increasing earnings of manual workers and the rise of a culture of self-help, the bottom one-third of the working class remained vulnerable to unexpected income loss at the beginning of the twentieth century. The workhouse test and the propaganda of the Crusade Against Outrelief were successful at convincing the working class to attach a stigma to the acceptance of poor relief. Indeed the propaganda campaign was too successful, for it led many poor working-class households unable to protect themselves to refuse to turn to the Poor Law for assistance. As a result, the Poor Law data significantly understate the true level of poverty. For example, Rowntree concluded that in 1899 some 7,230 persons in York (9.9% of the population) were living in primary poverty, while the “total number of different persons who received relief” in 1900 was 3,571, or 4.6% of the population.59 The number of persons living in poverty was more than twice the number who received poor relief at some point over the course of the year.
III. Conclusion
The period from the mid-1870s to 1901 was the nadir of English social welfare policy. Convinced that overly generous public relief and private charity were reducing the thriftiness, self-respect, and morality of the working class, and encouraged by the LGB and the Charity Organisation Society, local Poor Law guardians throughout England and Wales adopted the “principles of 1834” and restricted the granting of outdoor relief to the poor. The pauperism rate declined sharply in the early 1870s and continued to creep downward for the next three decades. As numbers on relief declined, working-class attitudes toward the Poor Law changed, so that by the turn of the century many of the poor went to great lengths to avoid applying for relief.
The last three decades of the nineteenth century saw a continued rise in working-class self-help, as a larger share of households joined friendly societies and deposited money in savings banks. To some observers, the increase in self-help and the decline in pauperism were evidence that the ideology of respectability preached by COS officials had become well entrenched in working-class culture. However, self-help remained largely outside the sphere of the bottom third of the income distribution. The assertion of Smiles, Hill, and others that almost all workers, assuming they were thrifty, could protect themselves against income loss due to sickness, unemployment, and old age was incorrect in the 1870s and remained incorrect at the turn of the twentieth century.
In the decade before the First World War, Parliament adopted several pieces of social welfare legislation collectively known as the Liberal Welfare Reforms, which created government programs to provide benefits that large numbers of workers already obtained privately through friendly societies and trade unions. I argue in Chapter 6 that the continued economic insecurity among the lower third of the income distribution and its political ramifications were the reasons for this about-face in government policy.
1. The text of Goschen’s minute is in Parl. Papers, Twenty-Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Board (1870, XXXV), pp. 9–12.
2. The text of the 1871 Circular is in Parl. Papers, First Annual Report of the Local Government Board (1872, XXVIII), pp. 63–68.
3. Webb (1926: 200); Hawksley (1869: 7–14).
4. Smiles ([1866] 2002: 254); Smiles (1876: 33, 35).
5. Wright (1868: 287–88).
6. On the beginnings of the COS, see Mowat (1961), Owen (1964: 215–39), Jones (1971: 256–80), Himmelfarb (1991: 185–206), and Humphreys (1995: 50–63; 2001: 1–59).
7. The quotes relating to Loch are from Webb (1926: 196); those for Barnett and Hill are from Barnett (1918: 35, 83, 86). Canon Barnett and his wife left the COS in the mid-1880s and turned to socialism. According to Webb (1926: 207), their 12-year residence in London’s East End led them to discover “that there was a deeper and more continuous evil than unrestricted and unregulated charity, namely, unrestricted and unregulated capitalism and landlordism.”
8. See Owen (1964: 221–22) and MacKinnon (1987: 605–8).
9. Baxter (1868: 88–93).
10. Baxter (1868: 47–49).
11. Gillie (2008) provides a detailed discussion of the poverty lines estimated by school boards throughout England and Wales. The examples in the text are from Gillie (2008: 307–9).
12. Dupree (1995: 356–58); Barnsby (1971: 228–29). Dupree’s poverty scale is based on a revision of Rowntree’s (1901) primary poverty scale for York. Barnsby’s estimate of subsistence income, which includes no spending on clothing, is almost certainly below Rowntree’s poverty scale.
13. The labor force participation rate of married women was slightly below 25% in the 1860s. Burnette (2008: 306–7).
14. One-day pauperism rates were calculated using data from the Annual Reports of the Local Government Board.
15. Parl. Papers, Report from the Select Committee on Settlement and Poor Removal (1847, XI); Parl. Papers, Report from the Select Committee on Poor Removal (1854–55, XIII). Urban guardians were selective in the threat of removal—nonsettled temporarily unemployed able-bodied males often were granted short-term relief. Boyer (1990: 255–57).
16. Rose (1976: 29, 41); Ashforth (1985: 79); Green (2010: 224–29); Glen (1866: 12).
17. For more on the debate over settlement, removal, and union rateability, see Webb and Webb (1929: 419–31), Rose (1976), and Caplan (1978).
18. Green (2010: 232–33); Caplan (1978: 290–96); MacKinnon (1987: 613–14); Webb and Webb (1929: 430–31).
19. Caplan (1978: 290).
20. Expenditures on workhouse construction increased sharply after the adoption of the Union Chargeability Act. Williams (1981: 218–19).
21. MacKinnon (1987: 607–8).
22. Parl. Papers, First Annual Report of the Local Government Board (1872: XXVIII), pp. 88–103. The quote is on p. 97.
23. MacKinnon (1987: 625).
24. Webb (1926: 201); Marson quote cited in Owen (1964: 215).
25. The unemployment data are from Table 4.1.
26. The extent of workhouses’ deterrent effects and the high administrative costs of indoor relief are discussed in MacKinnon (1987), Kiniria (2016), and Lindert (2004: 51–55). Kiniria (2016: 30), who has done the most detailed empirical study of the cost-effectiveness of the welfare reforms of the 1870s, concluded that the costs associated with building and maintaining workhouses and administering indoor relief “precluded the Crusade Against Outrelief from achieving the savings that it anticipated. In this sense, the Crusade can be seen as an ideological success and a financial failure.”
27. Regional differences in pauperism rates are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.
28. While the number of paupers in all categories declined, the largest rate of decline was among prime-age adults. On March 31, 1906, only 0.97% of persons aged 16–60 were in receipt of poor relief. Parl. Papers, Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress, Appendix Vol. XXV (1910: LIII), p. 50.
29. Lees (1998: 162–65); Hunt (1981: 215).
30. Thompson (1988: 352–53). See also Lees (1998: 294–301).
31. MacKinnon (1984: 172–73). On the important role played by credit in working-class life, see Johnson (1985: chap. 6).
32. Matthews, Feinstein, and Odling-Smee (1982: 498); Feinstein (1990b: 339). The data are for the United Kingdom as a whole.
33. The wage data series were constructed by Feinstein (1995: 259–65). The estimated rates of growth are for weekly earnings.
34. These estimates are based on the assumption that 75% of registered friendly society members were in societies that paid sickness benefits, and that 60% of members of nonregistered or local societies were eligible for sickness benefits. If 75% of all members were in societies paying sickness benefits, then the total number eligible for sickness benefits in 1872 was 2.25–2.63 million. If, on the other hand, we assume that there were 4 million total members, and that 50% of members of nonregistered or local societies were in societies paying sickness benefits, then the total number eligible for sickness benefits was 2.46 million.
35. Neison (1877: 74–75). The expenditure per member on sickness and funeral benefits in 1870 was 16.1s.
36. The above calculations are based on the assumption that the total number of members of friendly societies paying sickness benefits was 2.4 million. To calculate an upper-bound estimate of friendly society spending, suppose that membership in societies paying sickness benefits was 3 million. Then the Manchester Oddfellows and Foresters made up 27% of total membership. If they also accounted for 27% of expenditures, then total friendly society spending in 1870 was about £2.42 million, 47% of poor relief expenditures.
37. Average Poor Law benefit levels from Rose (1965: 195–96). Riley (1997: 281) maintains that the average friendly society benefit was 8s. per week in 1860. Hopkins (1995: 34) states that the typical weekly benefit was 8–10s.; Neave (1996: 55) maintains that the typical benefit was 10s. Median wage estimates from Bowley (1937: 46).
38. In 1871 there were 2.7 million total depositors in savings banks. I estimate that 1.8–2.0 million were from the working class.
39. Gilbert (1966a: 166–67); Johnson (1985: 57–63). The conclusion that few low-skilled workers were members of friendly societies has been challenged by Riley (1997: 31–34), who contends that the records of individual clubs show that many poorly paid workers joined friendly societies. By the mid-1860s, membership in the IOOMU and the AOF was spreading into agricultural counties (Gosden 1961: 44–45). However, there seems little doubt that in 1870 the share of low-skilled workers who were members of friendly societies offering sickness benefits was small.
40. There were 10.3 million savings accounts in 1911. Johnson estimates that 70% of the accounts were held by members of the working class. See Johnson (1985: 91–92, 104–5).
41. I have not been able to determine what accounts for the discrepancies between the number of registered friendly society members in column 4 and Johnson’s estimates in column 5. Johnson’s figures are for registered affiliated and ordinary—those with only one office—societies. Not all friendly societies were registered. The number of unregistered members probably was relatively small; Wilkinson’s (1891: 191) estimate for 1889 put total membership at 4.4 million, 7% greater than the number of registered members in 1891.
42. Neave (1996: 49–50). I assume that the share of OFS + AFS members eligible for sickness benefits in 1891 was the same as in 1901, and that two-thirds of the 390,000 friendly society members not included in ordinary or affiliated friendly societies (4.5 million− 4.11 million) were in societies paying sickness benefits. There are two very different estimates of the total number of friendly society members in 1889–92: Wilkinson’s estimate of 4.4 million members in 1889 and Brabrook’s estimate of 6 million in 1892. Neave (1996: 49–50) contends that Wilkinson’s estimate is much closer to the actual number, and gives his own estimate of 4.5 million for 1891.
43. Johnson (1985: 57). My estimates for 1891 suggest that the total number of friendly society members with sickness benefits was about 8% greater than the number of OFS + AFS members with sickness benefits.
44. Brabrook’s estimates are in Parl. Papers, Royal Commission on Labour, Fourth Report, Minutes of Evidence (1893–94, XXXIX, Pt. 1), q. 1321.
45. Trade union membership data for 1870 and 1881 from Pollard (1965: 102). Data for 1888 from Clegg, Fox, and Thompson (1964: 1). Data for 1898 and 1908 from Bain and Price (1980: 39).
46. Board of Trade, Statistical Tables and Report on Trade Unions (1887: 7). On the important role played by unions’ mutual insurance benefits, see Webb and Webb (1897: pt. 2, chap. 1) and Boyer (1988).
47. Data for 1892 from Board of Trade, Seventh Annual Report on Trade Unions (1895: 5). Data for 1908 from Board of Trade, Report on Trade Unions in 1908–10 (1912: xxxv). Data on the adult male workforce and total union membership in 1892 and 1908 from Bain and Price (1980: 37).
48. The reason why friendly societies did not offer unemployment benefits is discussed in Chapter 4.
49. Boyer (1988: 326–28).
50. These unions were the Amalgamated Engineers, Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners, Operative Bricklayers, Iron and Steel Shipbuilders, Friendly Society of Ironfounders, Durham Miners, and Amalgamated Cotton Spinners. Their combined membership was 434,000. Expenditure data for 1908 from Board of Trade, Report on Trade Unions in 1908–10 (1912: 80–113).
51. The estimates of average sickness benefits from Riley (1997: 280–81), who states that some societies paid as much as 15s. per week. Johnson (1985: 61) reckons that the average benefit might have been as high as 14s. in the decade before 1914.
52. Union benefit levels in 1892 from Parl. Papers, Royal Commission on Labour: Rules of Associations of Employers and of Employed (1892, XXXVI). Benefit levels in 1908 from Board of Trade, Report on Trade Unions in 1908–10 (1912: xxxv).
53. Wage data from Bowley (1937: 42). Rowntree (1901: 110) estimated that minimum necessary food expenditure for a family consisting of a husband, wife, and two children was 10.5s. per week in 1899. Minimum expenditure on rent, fuel, clothing, and sundries was 8.33s. Minimum weekly food expenditure for a family with three children was 12.75s.
54. Beveridge (1909: 225).
55. The Allen quote is cited in Boyer (1988: 330). Rowntree (1901: 356–58).
56. Data on savings account balances from Johnson (1985: 101). Wage data from Board of Trade, Eighth Abstract of Labour Statistics (1902: 34–45).
57. Bosanquet (1904: 136–37). See also the quotes of middle-class observers in Johnson (1985: 217–19).
58. Rowntree (1901: 110) calculated that in York the minimum necessary expenditure for a family of five in 1899 was 21.67s. per week. In 1906 prices, the poverty line for a family of five was 22.7s.
59. Rowntree (1901: 143–51, 365–67). Persons living in households with incomes below the poverty line were deemed to be in primary poverty. Rowntree’s survey is discussed in detail in Chapter 6.