Benefit Clubs

Abstract In 1801 Sir Frederick Eden estimated that there were 7,200 friendly societies in England and Wales, with about 648,000 members. Two years later poor law returns to Parliament recorded 9,672 societies and more than 704,000 participants. These figures almost certainly underestimate the incidence of clubs and scale of membership. Even so, they suggest that about 40 per cent of the working population in London were members of a friendly society, while at Oldham in Lancashire half the adult male inhabitants belonged to the town’s fifteen clubs, and the position was similar in South Wales. Moreover, unlike most other types of voluntary association, which were almost wholly based in towns, a growing number of box clubs sprang up in the English and Welsh countryside.1 Over the border in Scotland nearly 400 friendly societies had been registered by 1800 (again a serious under-count), major clusters occurring in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, but clubs also appearing in lesser towns and some Lowland villages. Already in 1779 Glasgow’s eighty or so clubs claimed to represent 12,000 members, and in 1800 the eighteen societies at Dumfries had over 2,000 brethren. In contrast, Ireland returned only seven societies at the end of the century, the incidence probably affected by the political upheavals in the country, as well as by growing economic problems; in 1831 the figure was a more respectable 281 clubs, although getting on for half were concentrated in the Dublin area.