Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T09:18:31.380Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Mutual aid and civil society: friendly societies in nineteenth-century Bristol

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Martin Gorsky
Affiliation:
Dept of Geography, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, PO1 3HE

Abstract

Recent work on ‘civil society’ has made claims for the past capacity of mutual aid associations to generate ‘social capital’: self-help, trust, solidarity. Friendly societies in nineteenth-century Bristol are examined to test these claims. Their origins and growth are explored, as well as their membership and social, convivial and medical roles. Solidarities of class and neighbourhood are set against evidence of exclusion and division. Trust and close personal ties proved insufficient to avert the actuarial risks that threatened financial security.

Type
Dyos Prize
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Meechan, E., Civil Society, (Swindon, 1995);Google ScholarCohen, J.L. and Arato, A., Civil Society and Political Theory (London, 1992), chs 1,2;Google ScholarKeane, J., Democracy and Civil Society (London, 1988), ch. 2.Google Scholar

2 de Tocqueville, A., Democracy in America, ed. Mayer, J.P., trans. G. Lawrence (London, 1988 edn), vol. 2, part II, chs 5,7, quotation 517.Google Scholar

3 Keane, J. (ed.), Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London, 1988), 25Google Scholar, part 3; Agh, A., ‘Citizenship and civil society in Central Europe’, in van Steenbergen, B. (ed.), The Condition of Citizenship (London, 1994), 108–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Tocqueville, De, Democracy in America, 515.Google Scholar

5 Rosanvallon, P., ‘The decline of social visibility’, in Keane, Civil Society, 199220.Google Scholar

6 Meehan, , Civil Society, 79;Google ScholarCohen, and Arato, , Civil Society, 1115.Google Scholar

7 The Commission on Social Justice, Social Justice: Strategies for National Renewal (London, 1994), 306–10;Google ScholarHirst, P., Associative Democracy: New Forms of Economic and Social Governance (Oxford, 1994);Google Scholar see also Yeo, S., ‘Working-class association, private capital, welfare and the state in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, in Parry, N. et al. (ed.), Social Work, Welfare and the State (London, 1979).Google Scholar

8 Putnam, R.D., Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993);Google Scholaridem, ‘The prosperous community: social capital and public life’, The American Prospect (Spring 1993), 3542.Google Scholar

9 Putnam, , Making Democracy Work, 91.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., 139–41, 144–5.

11 Green, D.G., Working Class Patients and the Medical Establishment (Aldershot, 1985);Google Scholaridem, Re-inventing Civil Society: The Rediscovery of Welfare Without Politics (London, 1993).Google Scholar

12 Joseph, Keith, ‘Why the Tories are the real party of the stakeholder’, Daily Telegraph, 12 01 1996;Google ScholarWilletts, David MP, ‘A buccaneer nation dares to be different’, Sunday Times, 25 08 1996;Google ScholarEtzioni, A., The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda (London, 1993), chs 4 and 5, 248, 259–60;Google ScholarSullivan, W.M., ‘Institutions as the infrastructure of democracy’, in Etzioni, A. (ed.), New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions and Communitiers (Chapel Hill, 1995), 170–80;Google Scholar see also Selboume, D., The Principle of Duty: An Essay on the Foundations of the Civic Order (London, 1994), ch. 10;Google ScholarBellah, R. et al. , Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (San Francisco, 1985).Google Scholar

13 Field, F., Making Welfare Work: Reconstructing Welfare for the Millenium (London, 1995), esp. 124–6.Google Scholar

14 Morris, R.J., ‘Voluntary societies and British urban elites, 1780–1850: an analysis’, The Historical Journal, 26, I (1983), 95118;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, ‘Clubs, societies and associations’, in Thompson, F.M.L. (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950. Vol. 3 Social Agencies and Institutions (Cambridge, 1990);Google ScholarProchaska, F., The Voluntary Impulse (London, 1988), ch. II;Google ScholarClark, P., Sociability and Urbanity: Clubs and Societies in the Eighteenth Century City (Leicester, 1986).Google Scholar

15 Morris, , ‘Voluntary societies’, 104–5;Google ScholarBradley, I., The Call to Seriousness. The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London, 1976)Google Scholar, chs 4, 5, 6, 7; Brewer, J., ‘Commercialisation and polities’, in McKendrick, N., Brewer, J. and Plumb, J.H., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth Century England (London, 1982), 217–30;Google ScholarBorsay, P., The English Urban Renaissance (Oxford, 1989).Google Scholar

16 Morris, R.J., Class, Sect and Party. The Making of the British Middle Class, Leeds 1820–1850 (Manchester, 1990);Google ScholarBarry, J., ‘Review article: the making of the middle class?’, Past and Present, 145 (1995), 194208;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, ‘Introduction’ and ‘Bourgeois collectivism? Urban association and the middling sort’, in idem and Brooks, C. (eds), The Middling Sort of People. Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550–1800 (London, 1994).Google Scholar

17 Orme, N., ‘The guild of kalendars, Bristol’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, xcvi (1978), 3252;Google ScholarWestlake, H.F., The Parish Gilds of Mediaeval England (London, 1919), ch. iv, 42–4.Google Scholar

18 The following discussion draws on sources in Bristol Record Office (hereafter BRO). Guilds: BRO 9748 Bakers (1623), BRO 08155 Bakers (1499–1732), BRO 04369(1) Joiners (1606); BRO 01244 Drapers (1654), BRO 08156 (2) Feltmakers, etc. (1673–1865), BRO 08019 Whitawers, etc. (1735–81), BRO 35684 (15) Merchant Taylors (1707–1818); friendly societies: BRO Quarter Sessions (hereafter QS), 2, 8, 10, 11, 12, 18a, 24a, 30a; also Rogers, F.H., ‘The Bristol craft guilds during the 16th and 17th centuries’ (University of Bristol M.A. thesis 1949), 90, 104, 110–11;Google ScholarVeale, E.W.W. (ed.), The Great Red Book of Bristol, part I (Bristol, 1933), 26–7, 74–5, 118, 150–1, 153, 160–1, part III (Bristol, 1951), 75, 116;Google ScholarBickley, F. (ed.), The Little Red Book of Bristol (Bristol, 1900), part I, xxvii–iii, part II, 186–92;Google ScholarFuller, M., West Country Friendly Societies (Reading, 1964), 51–2;Google ScholarHowkins, A., ‘The taming of Whitsun in nineteenth century Oxfordshire’, in , E. and Yeo, S. (eds), Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590–1914: Explorations in the History of Labour and Leisure (London, 1981), 187208.Google Scholar

19 Walker, M.J., ‘The extent of guild control of trades in England, c.1660–1820’ (unpublished University of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1986), 326–8, 332–5.Google Scholar

20 Moffrey, R.W., A Century of Oddfellowship (Manchester, 1910), 25–7;Google ScholarOdd Fellows Magazine, lxxxii (03 1951), 91.Google Scholar

21 Walker, , ‘Extent of guild control’, 62–3, 102, 332, 361, 345, 389;Google ScholarLeeson, R.A., Travelling Brothers: The Six Centuries' Road from Craft Fellowship to Trade Unionism (London, 1979), 77–8Google Scholar, ch. 16; Dobson, C.R., Masters and Journeymen: A Prehistory of Industrial Relations 1717–1800 (London, 1980);Google ScholarRule, J., The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England, 1750–1850 (London, 1986), 255–65.Google Scholar

22 van Genabeek, J., ‘Mutual labour insurance in the nineteenth century: the Netherlands internationally compared’ (forthcoming Free University of Amsterdam Ph.D. thesis);Google Scholarvan Gerwen, J. and Lucassen, J., ‘Mutual societies in the Netherlands from the sixteenth century to the present’, IISH Research Paper 15 (Amsterdam, 1995).Google Scholar

23 BRO QS, 4a, 7a, 18a, 21a, 34a; Barry, J., ‘The cultural life of Bristol, 1640–1775’ (unpublished University of Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1985), 172, note 3.Google Scholar

24 Southall, H.R., ‘Unionization’, in Langton, J. and Morris, R.J. (eds), Atlas of Industrializing Britain (London, 1986), 189–93.Google Scholar

25 Moffrey, , Century of Oddfellowship, 16.Google Scholar

26 Bergeron, D.M., English Civic Pageantry 1558–1642 (London, 1971);Google Scholar BRO 08155 Bakers (1720); BRO 08019 Whitawers, etc. (1735–36); BRO 35684 (15) Merchant Taylors (1737); Dobson, W. and Harland, J., A History of Preston Guild (Preston, 1862), 5471.Google Scholar

27 Rose, G., Observations on the Poor Laws (1805).Google Scholar

28 Chief Registrar (Friendly Societies) Annual Report (hereafter CR's Report) 1892, PP 18931894, Ixxxiv.Google Scholar

29 BRO QS Friendly Society Articles of Association; PRO FS 1 and 2, Gloucestershire; Abstract of the Answers and Returns made pursuant to ‘An Act for procuring Returns relative to the Expence and Maintenance of the Poor in England’, PP 18031804, xiii.Google Scholar

30 Supple, B., ‘Legislation and virtue: an essay on working class self-help and the state in the early nineteenth century’, in McKendrick, N. (ed.), Historical Perspectives, Studies in English Thought and Society, in Honour of J.H. Plumb (London, 1974);Google Scholar for society investments, see CR's Report 1878, PP 1878–79, Ixv.

31 Bristol Mercury, 18 01 1868.Google Scholar

32 Gosden, P.H.J.H., The Friendly Societies in England, 1835–3875 (Manchester, 1961)Google Scholar, ch. 8; Treble, J.H., ‘The attitudes of friendly societies towards the movement in Great Britain for state pensions, 1878–1908’, International Review of Social History, 15 (1970), 284–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 See, for example, PP 1840 II, A Bill for the Registration of Medical Practitioners, 89;Google ScholarGosden, , Friendly Societies, 145.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 211–14; Doran, N., ‘Risky business: codifying embodied experience in the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 7, 2 (1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Quotation from Supple, B., The Royal Exchange Assurance: A History of British Insurance, 1720–1970 (Cambridge, 1970), 54.Google Scholar

36 Clark, Sociability and Urbanity; compare also Weisser, M.R., A Brotherhood of Memory: Jewish Landmanschaften in the New World (New York, 1985)Google Scholar and Little, K., Urbanization as a Social Process: An Essay on Movement and Change in Contemporary Africa (London, 1974), 8894.Google Scholar

37 Gorsky, M., ‘The growth and distribution of friendly societies in the early nineteenth century’, Economic History Review, 51, 3 (1998), 489511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Barry, , ‘Cultural life’, 179–81;Google ScholarFelix Farley's Bristol Journal (hereafter FFBJ), 5, 19 03, 9 07, 6, 15,27 Aug., 10,17 Sep., 16 Nov. 1774.Google Scholar

39 Bristol Gazette, 10 06 1806.Google Scholar

40 Supple, Royal Exchange; see also Morris, R.J., ‘The middle class and the property cycle during the Industrial Revolution’, in Smout, T.C. (ed.), The Search for Wealth and Stability (London, 1979).Google Scholar

41 State of the Prudent Man's Friend Society for the year 1814 (Bristol, 1814);Google ScholarFriendly and Benefit Building Societies Commission: Reports of the Assistant Commissioners, Southern and Eastern Counties, by Sir George Young, Bart: PP 1874, xxiii, pt. 2 (hereafter Young), 504.Google Scholar

42 Davidoff, L. and Hall, C., Family Fortunes. Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (London, 1987), 300, 427–8.Google Scholar

43 Black, A., Gilds and Civil Society in European Political Thought (1984), 32, 237–41.Google Scholar

44 Keane, J., Democracy and Civil Society (London, 1988), 5664;Google ScholarWood, E. Meiksins, Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Cambridge, 1995), ch. 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963), 456–69.Google Scholar

46 Foster, J., Class Struggle in the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns (London, 1974), 216–18, 341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 Lewins Mead Chapel Working and Visiting Society 3rd Annual Report (1837).Google Scholar

48 Young, , 502.Google Scholar

49 BRO QS 7b, 7c, 15, 30c, 32a, 33a and b; see Mathias, P., The Brewing Industry in England 1700–1830 (Cambridge, 1959), xxiiiGoogle Scholar, ch. 4, 277–8; Fuller, , West Country Friendly Societies, 53, 5860, 103–5.Google Scholar

50 PRO FS 1 Gloucestershire 581.

51 PP 1883, Ixvii, CR's Report 1880, part 2.

52 The Medical Directory for 1891 (London, 1891).Google Scholar

53 BRO 35893/21/e-i, State of the Bristol Infirmary, 18461903.Google Scholar

54 FFBJ, 1 07 1797.Google Scholar

55 Dobson, W. and Harland, J., A History of Preston Guild (Preston, 1862), 5471.Google Scholar

56 FFBJ, 27 06 1846; Bristol Mercury, 3 07 1858.Google Scholar

57 Harrison, M., Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns 1790–1835 (Cambridge, 1988).Google Scholar

58 Bristol Mercury, 24 07 1858.Google Scholar

59 St George's Brandon Hill Log, 28 Jul. 1871, cited in Humphries, S., ‘Schooling and the working class in Bristol, 1870–1914’, Southern History, 1 (1979), 187.Google Scholar

60 Gorsky, M., ‘Charity, mutuality and philanthropy: voluntary provision in Bristol 1800–70’ (unpublished University of Bristol Ph.D. thesis, 1995), ch. 6.Google Scholar

61 Neave, D., Mutual Aid in the Victorian Countryside: Friendly Societies in the Rural East Riding 1830–1914 (Hull, 1991).Google Scholar

62 Davidoff, and Hall, , Family Fortunes, 23–4.Google Scholar

63 Young, 494.Google Scholar

64 Bristol Gazette, 26 05 1836.Google Scholar

65 McClelland, K., ‘Masculinity and the “representative artisan” in Britain, 1850–80’, in Roper, M. and Tosh, J. (eds), Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London, 1991).Google Scholar

66 House of Commons Journal, 2 06 1828Google Scholar; Prothero, I., Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth Century London (Chatham, 1979), ch. 12.Google Scholar

67 Bush, G., Bristol and its Municipal Government 1820–1851 (Bristol, 1976), 55–8.Google Scholar

68 FFBJ, 24 10 1846;Google ScholarYoung, 501.

69 Pro FS 1 Gloucestershire 561; Jackson, E., A Study in Democracy: Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Industrial Co-operation in Bristol (Manchester, 1911), 1824.Google Scholar

70 Riley, J.C., Sick Not Dead: The Health of British Workingmen during the Mortality Decline (London, 1997), 112–13;Google ScholarCR's Report 1888, PP part 2,164.

71 Minute Book of Court City of Bristol A.O. F., passim.

72 Young, 482; see also 547–8, 576.Google Scholar

73 Tomassini, L., ‘Mutual benefit societies in Italy, 1861–1922’, in van der Linden, M. (ed.), Social Security Mutualism: The Comparative History of Mutual Benefit Societies (Berne, 1996), 225–71, esp. 237.Google Scholar

74 Joyce, P., ‘The factory politics of Lancashire in the later nineteenth century’, The Historical Journal, xviii, 3 (1975), 525–53;Google ScholarVincent, J., Pollbooks: How Victorians Voted (London, 1967).Google Scholar

75 For example, The Trades' Newspaper, 20 08 1826.Google Scholar

76 Gosden, , Friendly Societies, 205–10.Google Scholar

77 Ibid., 113; O'Neill, J., ‘A search for independence? Friendly societies in Nottinghamshire 1724–1912’, Bulletin of Local History, East Midland Region (1988), 12; Young, 498.Google Scholar

78 Friendly and Benefit Building Societies Commission, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners, Cheshire etc, 316–17;Google Scholar4th Report, Appendix xiii, 1–9, 3rd Report, 110–11; also CR's Report 1881, PP 1882, lxvi, 8.Google Scholar

79 Archer, I., Jordan, S. and Ramsay, K., Abstract of Bristol Historical Statistics Part 1: Poor Law Statistics 1835–1948 (Bristol, 1997), 15.Google Scholar

80 Appendix to the First Report from the Commissioners on the Poor Laws, Town Queries, Bristol, no. 32, PP 1834, xxviii, 512; PP 1854, xii Select Committee on Medical Relief, 503–5.Google Scholar

81 Minute Book of Court City of Bristol A.O. F., Feb. 1845.

82 Annual Report of the Hampshire Friendly Society, passim.

83 Young, 492–3.Google Scholar

84 Ibid., 468.

85 PRO FS1 Gloucestershire 596.

86 Burnett, J., Vincent, D. and Mayall, D., The Autobiography of the Working Class: An Annotated Critical Biography. Volume 1, 1790–1900 (Brighton, 1984); only 19 of 1,028 entries mention friendly societies.Google Scholar

87 Riley, J.C., Sickness, Recovery and Death: A History and Forecast of III Health (London, 1989), Ch. 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88 Treble, , ‘Attitudes of friendly societies’.Google Scholar

89 Wuthnow, R., ‘The voluntary sector: legacy of the past, hope for the future?’Google Scholar, in idem, (ed.), The Voluntary Sector in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, 1991), 22–5;Google ScholarHennock, E.P., British Social Reform and German Precedents: The Case of Social Insurance 1880–1914 (Oxford, 1987), 114–15, 121, 140–1, 174–9, 188–95, 198, 204–5.Google Scholar