Victorian Clerks and Voluntary Associations in Liverpool and Manchester

Abstract

WHILEHISTORIANS have long been concerned with the working-class institutions and ideology of Victorian society they have conspicuously and consistently neglected the lower middle class. It is the purpose of this paper, by examining the functions of two of the most important voluntary associations catering for Victorian clerks, to redress the balance. What emerges is not only a greater understanding of the ideology and economic needs of clerks but also fresh insights into how the clerical labour market was organized. The associations in which clerks participated were broadly of two main types. On the one hand there were those which provided, on the face of it anyway, mainly social, leisure or religious facilities, the most important being the Volunteer Rifle Clubs and the Young Men's Christian Association, and on the other there were those which, providing for clerks' economic needs, were, in effect, friendly or benefit societies. At one level clerks joined a movement like the Volunteers in order to express in the words of one historian 'the association they felt with the social system'. 2 The Volunteers provided clerks with the opportunity of both meeting men from a similar occupational and social background and of rubbing shoulders with the employer class who often provided the Volunteers' officers. There were other reasons why clerks joined the movement. Sometimes they were directed to enroll by their employers. In 1866 the directors of the Bank of England in London, for example, 'authorised their clerks to form themselves into a company and allotted them a room for custody of their arms'.3 Subsequently, one hundred and forty clerks formed a company under Captain Currie, one of the Bank's directors. Certainly no clerk could consider joining a volunteer regiment without first consulting his employer. Involvement in the volunteers demanded