friendly societies

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friendly societies of working men can be traced back to the late 17th cent., but their rapid growth began about 1760. In return for a small weekly or monthly contribution paid into a common fund, they provided sickness and funeral benefits. The members met monthly in a local public house to transact business and have a convivial time. An annual feast was held, and the funerals of deceased members were usually followed by a supper. Ceremony and ritual were essential parts of the societies' life. They held open-air processions with bands, banners, and uniforms. Indoors they conducted initiation rites, using mystical symbols, grandiloquent titles, and regalia, similar to the freemasons. Originally friendly societies were local institutions with seldom more than 100 members. But in the 1830s and 1840s these were eclipsed by the affiliated orders, with their organization into a unity (headquarters), districts, and lodges: the Oddfellows, Foresters, Druids, Ancient Britons, Antediluvian Buffaloes, and Rechabites. From an estimated 925,000 members in 1815 they grew to about 4 million in 1872—more than any social organization except the churches. By 1892 probably 80 per cent of the 7 million male industrial workers were members of friendly societies. Governments had ambivalent views about friendly societies, on the one hand encouraging and regulating them as instruments of thrift and self-help, on the other suspecting them as independent working-class institutions similar to trade unions (with which in their early days they sometimes overlapped), and regretting the ‘waste’ of resources on festivities. After 1875 the insurance aspect of the societies became increasingly important; and under the 1911 National Insurance Act the societies were given a new role as agents in the state scheme of national health insurance.

John F. C. Harrison

friendly societies were working class self‐help associations, collecting regular subscriptions out of which members could draw financial support at times of illness and from which death benefits and funeral expenses could be paid, while also offering opportunities for sociability and recreation. They received legal recognition in an Irish act of 1797 and a United Kingdom act of 1829. Two hundred and eighty‐one Irish friendly societies, 119 of which were in Dublin, registered under the latter act in 1831; however, not all societies necessarily took the opportunity to register. Some Irish friendly societies were branches of English organizations such as the Oddfellows. In the late 1870s, however, the Irish National Foresters, a distinctively Irish body with a strong nationalist tone, seceded from the British‐based Ancient Order of Foresters and went on to become the largest Irish friendly society. Membership of societies of all kinds declined after the First World War, as the gradual expansion of state welfare benefits undermined the original self‐help function.

friendly societies of working men can be traced back to the late 17th cent., but their rapid growth began about 1760. In return for a small weekly or monthly contribution paid into a common fund, they provided sickness and funeral benefits. Originally friendly societies were local institutions with seldom more than 100 members. But in the 1830s and 1840s these were eclipsed by the affiliated orders, with their organization into a unity (headquarters), districts, and lodges: the Oddfellows, Foresters, Druids, Ancient Britons, Antediluvian Buffaloes, and Rechabites. From an estimated 925,000 members in 1815 they grew to about 4 million in 1872. After 1875 the insurance aspect of the societies became increasingly important; and under the 1911 National Insurance Act the societies were given a new role as agents in the state scheme of national health insurance.

friendly societies Associations established in Britain to provide insurance against sickness, old age and funeral expenses. Started in the 17th century, they became a conventional alternative to parish relief and charitable assistance. They spread quickly, and in the Victorian age were the most important form of insurance for the working-class. In the USA, benefit societies filled a similar role.