‘The Principle of Mutual Support’: Female Friendly Societies in Scotland, c. 1789–1830

Abstract

Friendly societies gave working people an element of security through mutual insurance against sickness, while also offering opportunities for regular, sometimes ritual-based, sociability. Their history has often been viewed as a part of labour history and dominated by the associational patterns of skilled men. More recently much has been done by social historians to explore friendly societies as fraternal associations through which different kinds of identities, including gender identities, might be developed. The regional diversity and the heterogeneity of male societies before 1830 have been emphasised. This paper examines the appearance of female friendly societies in Scotland between c. 1790 and 1830, set against the growth of male friendly societies: sixty-six female societies and over 1500 male societies have been identified. The previously unexplored development of female friendly societies in Scotland has also been compared to existing literature on such societies in England and Wales. Like them, Scottish women's societies were unlikely to be occupationally based, and much more likely to relate to neighbourhood and community ties and to be committed to values of respectability. Their regulations were likely to reflect women's dual identities as workers and carers for their families. Elite women found in them opportunities to extend their own local influence in a philanthropy directed towards mutual self-help. But the growth of Scottish female societies followed a different chronology from those of England and Wales, and had a different regional distribution, concentrated in south-west Scotland and largely absent from major cities.