The Good Samaritan, friendly societies and the gift economy

Social History

Volumn 31, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 319-336

  Weinbren, Daniel ^a  

^a OPEN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 33745935177     PISSN: 03071022     EISSN: 14701200     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03071020600764464     Document Type: Article

References (131)

1. J. Lawson, A Man's Life (London, 1932).
2. For the parable, see Luke 10: 25-37.
3. G. A. Williams, 'Introduction' in J. Gorman, Banner Bright. An Illustrated History of the Banners of the British Trade Union Movement (London, 1973), 11
4. H. Benyon and T. Austin, 'The iconography of the Durham miners' gala', Journal of Historical Sociology, II, 1 (1989) noted the frequent references to brotherly love and co-operation on banners.
5. The Samaritan featured on many of the banners of branches of the Foresters and the Druids and also on the Wiltshire Friendly Society and the Grand United Order of Oddfellows, Churnet Valley. Unless stated otherwise, information about the images on banners is derived from the database of banners created by the People's History Museum, Manchester. I am very grateful to the museum for allowing me access to this database.
6. N. Mansfield, Radical Rhymes and Union Jacks: A Search for Evidence of Ideologies in the Symbolism of Nineteenth-century Banners (University of Manchester Working Papers in Economic and Social History, no. 45, Manchester, 2000), 2.
7. On other images which appeared on banners see D. Weinbren, 'Beneath the all-seeing eye. Fraternal order and friendly societies' banners in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain', Cultural and Social History, III, 2 (2006).
8. On the popularity of the image see R. Samuel, 'Editorial Introduction', History Workshop Journal, VI (1978), 105.
9. On its absence from the banners of Northern Irish Protestants see A. D. Buckley, 'The chosen few. Biblical texts in a society with secrets' in A. D. Buckley and M. C. Kenney (eds), Negotiating Identity. Rhetoric, Metaphor and Social Drama in Northern Ireland (Washington, 1995), 190. There were also Jewish friendly societies on whose banners the image did not appear.
10. The records of the principal manufacturer were destroyed during the Second World War. Many friendly society branch minutes have not survived and those examined have revealed little.
11. On the variety of societies see D. Weinbren, '"Imagined families": research on friendly societies', Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts für die Geschichte der sozialen Bewegungen, XXVII (2002).
12. For a discussion of the variation in the approximations of membership of friendly societies see D. Weinbren and B. James, 'Getting a grip - the roles of friendly societies in Australia and the UK reappraised', Labour History, LXXXVIII (2005).
13. R. D. Putnam, 'Let's play together', The Observer (25 March 2001).
14. Marcel Mauss, The Gift. Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnison (London, 1954; first published 1925), 1.
15. For example, see Margaret Fisher and David Viner, '"Go thou and do likewise": The Ebrington Friendly Society (1856-1920) and its banners', Folk Life, XXXVII (1998-9)
16. M. D. Fuller, West Country Friendly Societies (Reading, 1964), 99 describes the Stogursey Friendly Society banner as including a picture of the Samaritan below the words 'Go and do thou likewise'.
17. E. Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York, 1933).
18. Mauss, op. cit., I, 67.
19. Oddfellows Magazine (April 1844).
20. Oddfellow. Preface to the Rules, 1855.
21. J. Larkin, Leisure Moments: A Collection of Miscellaneous Poems (Woolwich, 1849), 85.
22. Cited in G. Crossick, An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society. Kentish London 1840-1880 (London, 1978), 196.
23. On the rural culture of survival through mutual aid see J. Berger, Pig Earth (London, 1979), 195-213.
24. A. O'Dowd, Meitheal: A Study of Co-operative Labour in Rural Ireland (Dublin, 1981)
25. D. Weinbren, 'Relative value: The financing of families', Family and Community History, II, 1 (1999)
26. Gary J. West, 'Charity labour gatherings in rural Perthshire 1850-1950', Scottish Studies, XXXIII (1999), 134.
27. J. Haslam, 'On the Prescribing of Accounting and Accounting Publicity by the State in Early to Mid-nineteenth-century Britain: Accounting History as Critique' (Ph.D., Essex, 1991), 141-2.
28. J. P. Kay, The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed in Cotton Manufacture in Manchester, 1832 (New York, 1970), 49-51.
29. For examples of the granting of such rate payments see Mary Barker-Read, 'The Treatment of the Aged Poor in Five Selected West Kent Parishes from Settlement to Speenhamland (1662-1797)' (Ph.D., Open University, 1988), 60
30. S. B. Black, 'Local Government, Law and Order in a Pre-reform Kentish Parish: Farningham 1790-1834' (Ph.D., Kent, 1991), 60.
31. On the payment of arrears up to and after 1834 see R. P. Hastings, Essays in North Riding History 1780-1850 (North Yorkshire, 1981), 117-18.
32. P. H. J. H. Gosden, The Friendly Societies in England (Manchester, 1961), 17
33. H. M. Coombs and J. R. Edwards, 'The evolution of the District Audit', Financial Accountability and Management (1990)
34. S. Cordery, 'John Tidd Pratt', Friendly Societies Research Group Newsletter, X (May 2003).
35. J. R. Edwards and R. Chandler, 'Contextualizing the process of accounting regulation: A study of nineteenth-century British friendly societies', Abacus, XXXVII, 2 (2001), 195.
36. N. Doran, 'Risky business: Codifying embodied experience in the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows', Journal of Historical Sociology, VII, 2 (March 1994), 134.
37. Kentish Mercury, 29 August 1865, cited in Crossick, op. cit., 179.
38. B. Supple, The Royal Exchange Assurance: A History of British Insurance 1720-1970 (Cambridge, 1970), 310.
39. M. Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (Yale, 1989), 9.
40. Mauss, op. cit., 67, 61.
41. E. J. Hobsbawm, 'Custom, wages and workload in nineteenth-century industry' in A. Briggs and J. Saville (eds), Essays in Labour History (London, 1960), 113-39.
42. E. J. Hobsbawm, 'Artisan or labour aristocrat?', Economic History Review, XXXVII, 3 (1984), 361;
43. E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (Manchester, 1959), 152-4.
44. P. Joyce, Visions of the People (Cambridge, 1991), 91, 100.
45. M. Huberman, Escape from the Market: Negotiating Work in Lancashire (Cambridge, 1996), chap. 5.
46. J. A. Jaffe, Striking a Bargain. Work and Industrial Relations in England 1815-1865 (Manchester, 2000), 136-7.
47. J. Benson, 'Coalminers, coal owners and collaboration: The miners' permanent relief fund movement in England, 1860-1895', Labour History Review, LXVIII, 2 (August 2003), 184, 191.
48. A. Offer, 'Between the gift and the market: The economy of regard', Economic History Review, L, 3 (1997), 455.
49. E. J. Hobsbawm, 'Introduction: Inventing tradition' in E. J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 4-9.
50. Mont Abbott, as told to Sheila Stewart, Lifting the Latch. A Life on the Land (Oxfordshire, 1987), 30.
51. Anon., The Complete Manual of Oddfellowship (Manchester, 1879), 94.
52. Mauss, op. cit., 16.
53. M. Gorsky, 'The growth and distribution of English friendly societies in the early nineteenth century', Economic History Review, LI, 3 (1998), 503.
54. G. Stedman Jones, Outcast London (Cambridge, 1970)
55. J. H. Treble, 'The seasonal demand for adult labour in Glasgow, 1890-1914', Social History, III, 1 (1978), 43-60.
56. This emblem is reproduced on the endpapers of R. A. Leeson, Travelling Brothers (London, 1980).
57. Information in this paragraph is derived from ibid., 17, 124, 125, 151, 172, 174-80, 193, 210, 213, 214, 215.
58. It is possibly for similar reasons that St Christopher, who helped Jesus to cross a stream and is the patron saint of travellers, appears on the arms of the Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds.
59. Crossick, op. cit., 177.
60. Hastings, op. cit., 115.
61. J. Macnicol, The Politics of Retirement in Britain, 1878-1948 (Cambridge, 1998), 118-19.
62. This account is derived from Cappe's own writings cited in S. Lloyd, 'Pleasing spectacles and elegant dinners: Conviviality, benevolence and charity anniversaries in eighteenth-century London', Journal of British Studies, XLI (January 2002), 54-5.
63. H. Marland, Medicine and Society in Wakefield and Huddersfield 1780-1870 (Cambridge, 1987), 196.
64. A. Berry, 'Patronage, Funding and the Hospital Patient c.1750-1815: Three English Regional Case Studies' (Ph.D., Oxford, 1995), 109-10.
65. Hastings, op. cit., 113, 115
66. J. Obelkevich, Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey 1825-1875 (Oxford, 1976), 87
67. C. M. Cluley, 'Mutuality, Discipline and Respectability: With Special Reference to Nineteenth-century Friendly Societies in Mid-Warwickshire' (M.A., Warwick, 1997), 22, 26
68. F. Eden, Observations on Friendly Societies, vol. II (London, 1801), 565-70.
69. Berry, op. cit., 109-10, 163, 200
70. E. T. Hurren, 'Welfare-to-work schemes and a crusade against outdoor relief in the Brixworth Union, Northamptonshire in the 1880s', Family and Community History, IV, 1 (May 2001).
71. F. Edwards, 'The Treatment of Poverty in Nantwich and Crewe, 1730-1914' (M.A., Keele, 1990), 543, 546-7.
72. S. J. Woodall, The Manor House Hospital, a Personal Record (London, 1966).
73. J. C. Riley, Sick not Dead: The Health of British Workingmen during the Mortality Decline (Baltimore and London, 1997), 99-104.
74. On friendly societies and the correlation between associational density and political participation see M. Gorsky, 'Mutual aid and civil society: Friendly societies in nineteenth-century Bristol', Urban History, XXV, 3 (1998), 316
75. D. Green, Working-class Patients and the Medical Establishment: Self-help in Britain from the Mid-nineteenth Century to 1948 (Aldershot, 1985)
76. J. Garrard, Democratization in Britain (Basingstoke, 2001), 6, 184.
77. Foresters' Miscellany (March 1850).
78. Some friendly societies' banners indicated the extent of their wealth. For example, the 1894 banner of the Loyal Lodge, Provincial and Humane, No. 1448, Portsmouth District of the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows, includes information about its longevity ('Estd 1844') and its security ('Members: 2000, Capital: £27,000').
79. Mauss, op. cit., 73.
80. W. M. Kuhn, Democratic Royalism. The Transformation of the British Monarchy, 1861-1914 (London, 1996), 140.
81. D. Cannadine, Ornamentalism. How the British saw their Empire (London, 2001), 4, 85, 99, 105.
82. Williams, op. cit., 13.
83. There were other images of women available. Suffrage banners featured a diverse range of heroines. L. Tickner, The Spectacle of Women. Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907-1914 (London, 1987), 66-9.
84. Reckitt and Colman Archives, cited in R. Church, 'Advertising consumer goods in nineteenth-century Britain: Reinterpretations', Economic History Review, LIII, 4 (2000), 641.
85. Minutes quoted in R. L. D. Cooper, An Introduction to the Origins and History of the Order of Free Gardeners (London, 2000), 8.
86. Dowlais and Merthyr Unity of the Ancient Order of Britons, 1860 Lodge Charter. Copy in the Museum of Welsh Life, Cardiff, cited in S. L. Evans, 'A Study of the Socio-economic Changes in Merthyr Tydfil that Contributed to the Development and Perpetuation of the Friendly Societies' (M.A., Wales, 1994), 45. Merthyr Tydfil was full of recent arrivals. It became the largest town in Wales when the population increased more than fourfold between 1801 and 1831.
87. Kentish Mercury, 21 February 1874
88. cited in Crossick, op. cit., 193.
89. K. McClelland, 'Masculinity and the "representative artisan" in Britain, 1850-80' in M. Roper, and J. Tosh (eds), Manful Assertions. Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London, 1991), 82.
90. J. Tosh, 'What should historians do with masculinity?', History Workshop Journal, XXXVIII (1994), 186-7.
91. See, for example, J. Filkes, 'A sermon, on behalf of those useful and benevolent institutions called friendly societies', 2nd edn (London, 1804),
92. cited in D. C. Barnett, 'Ideas on Social Welfare, 1780-1834, with Special Reference to Friendly Societies and Allotment Schemes' (M.A., Nottingham, 1961), 45.
93. M. Bee, 'Providence with patronage: The Royal Berkshire Friendly Society 1872-1972', Southern History, XVI (1994), 106
94. D. Neave 'Anglican clergy and the Affiliated Order friendly societies' in E. Royle (ed.), Regional Studies in the History of Religion in Britain since the Later Middle Ages (Hull, 1984), 184-9
95. Obelkevich, op. cit., 88
96. P. Bell (ed.), 'Diary entry of the Revd G. D. Newbolt of Souldrop 1856-1895' in Some Bedfordshire Diaries. The Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Records Society, XL (Streatley, 1959), 206-21
97. A. Armstrong, Farmworkers. A Social and Economic History, 1770-1980 (London, 1988), 108
98. A. James, 'Religion - the extent of its influence on the community of Weobley, Herefordshire during the decade 1850-1860' in L. Faulkner and R. Finnegan (eds), Project Reports in Family and Community History, CD-ROM (CDR0008) (1996).
99. Warwick Advertiser, 8 June 1845
100. quoted in Cluley, op. cit., 22.
101. Hastings, op. cit., 115.
102. Fuller, op. cit., 48-9.
103. Oddfellows Magazine (April 1859).
104. Quoted in T. R. Tholfsen, Working Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England (London, 1976), 292
105. and Foresters' Miscellany (December 1850), cited 297.
106. Kent Archive Office, P145/25/52, P145/25/54, cited in Black, op. cit., 45, 46, 55. Records are incomplete. Donations may have gone on for longer.
107. A. Howkins, Reshaping Rural England. A Social History 1850-1925 (New York, 1991), 75, 80
108. C. Walsh, 'The incarnation and the Christian Socialist conscience in the Victorian Church of England', Journal of British Studies, XXXIV (1995), 374.
109. B. Harrison, 'For church, Queen and family: The Girls' Friendly Society 1874-1920', Past and Present, LXI (1973), 106-38.
110. See also P. Mitchell, 'Girls' Friendly Society', Friendly Societies Research Group Newsletter, IX (2002), 2-3
111. and J. Bush, 'Edwardian ladies and the "race" dimensions of British imperialism', Women's Studies International Forum, XXI, 3 (1998), 277-89.
112. The Montgomeryshire Express, 12 March 1901, 8. My thanks to W. T. R. Pryce for this reference.
113. B. B. Gilbert, 'The decay of nineteenth century provident societies and the coming of old age pensions in Great Britain', Economic History Review, XVIII (1965).
114. Obelkevich, op. cit., 89.
115. T. W. Laqueur, Religion and Respectability. Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture 1780-1850 (New Haven and London, 1976), xi.
116. There is a reproduction of an advertisement for Sunday school banners in J. Harvey, The Art of Piety. The Visual Culture of Welsh Nonconformity (Cardiff, 1995), 22.
117. On Tutills see Gorman, op. cit., 49-55.
118. R. Samuel, 'Editorial Introduction', History Workshop Journal, VI (1978), 104-5.
119. Fuller, op. cit., 96.
120. A. P. Wadsworth, 'The first Manchester Sunday schools' in M. W. Flinn and T. C. Smout (eds), Essays in Social History (Oxford, 1974), 101, 117, 119.
121. Angus Bethune Reach in the Morning Chronicle is quoted in ibid., 117-18.
122. Gosden, op. cit., 20-1.
123. K. D. M. Snell, 'The Sunday school movement in England and Wales: Child labour, denominational control and working-class culture', Past and Present, CLXIV (August 1999), 130-1.
124. Laqueur, op. cit., 172-4.
125. Edwards, op. cit., 439-43, 512.
126. E. A. Wrigley, Population and History (London, 1969), fig. 5.3.
127. Laqueur, op. cit., 163-4.
128. Fuller, op. cit., 100.
129. Laqueur, op. cit., 201.
130. For these and other examples see Barnett, op. cit., 87-8.
131. http://www.derbyarboretum.co.uk/grand_opening_procession.htm (accessed on 15 December 2004).