The following notes form the background to a talk given by Dave Burnham to the Social
Work History Network at King’s College London, 27 November 2014.
Voluntary Effort, the State, the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the
Development of Social Work 1914 – 1924
Introduction: The impact of the Great War on welfare provision was limited…
It is a commonplace that the Second World War and the actions of the Attlee government, heralded
the sort of social work organisations and social workers recognisable to us today:
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Legislation (NHS Act 1946, National Assistance Act and Children Act 1948), introduced what
we refer to as the welfare state, abolishing the Poor Law.
Local Authority Departments were established and people to work with individuals and
families employed. (most were populated initially with Poor Law staff).
The LA departments were they prospered because of secure funding based on economic
stability into the 1970s and increases in funding aligned with increases in responsibilities.
A lobby in Children’s Officers pushed for increased state intervention in family matters.
The optimism of 1918 was similar, with significant plans for ‘reconstruction’ made. The confidence of
working people, the feeling that the ‘sacrifice’ made by people had to be honoured, the
parliamentary vote for women over thirty and all men (about 75% of the adult population rather
than 25% it had been previously) and government commitment to jobs and housing should have
been the precursor to significant national social change. But there were hindrances:
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the 1918 election was, some would argue, ‘fixed’ to ensure an ‘old guard’ was elected.
Lloyd George called an election only weeks after the armistice and many newly
enfranchised men and women were not registered to vote. Some Liberal/Conservative MPs
did deals with each other, agreeing not to stand against a sitting MP.
A short post war boom was followed by an economic decline, lasting through the 1920s.
A wave of industrial disputes, as the controls of wartime labour and wage restraint were
lifted, hardened establishment attitudes to both workers and welfare spending.
The ‘Geddes Axe’ of 1922 (a review of spending plans once the economy dipped) scythed
its way through much welfare spending plans.
There were no loans from the US to ensure that economies of Europe did not collapse.
But we must not think that because the New Jerusalem did not arise the First World War had no
impact on welfare or social work because it did. There some high profile developments:
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The 1918 Maternity and Child Welfare Act obliged LAs to establish child welfare clinics.
In 1919 registration for nursing established the work as a proper, protected profession.
There was a plan in place (Mclean) to improve Mental Health Services.
The Local Government Board, responsible for the administration of local Poor Law Unions
was replaced by the ‘Ministry of Health’. (‘Workhouses’ became ‘Institutions’).
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In 1921 training for Industrial Welfare Officers was formalised.
The 1919 Housing Act obliged LAs to plan for what we would now call social housing.
Funding for infrastructure; the national grid, trunk roads, extending London Underground.
Elizabeth Macadam summing it up in 1944 says ‘a graph of public interest in the social services
during the last quarter century would show a peak of the reconstruction boom after the last war
declining in the early twenties…’ (Macadam 1945). The 1920s saw the Adoption Act of 1926,
Magistrates obliged to employ probation officers in 1925, the Mental Health Act of 1930 and the
Local Government Act (1929) abolishing transferring Poor Law responsibilities to the Local Authority.
But it is a relatively empty legislative landscape compared to the late 1940s.
Developments in Welfare and Social Work before 1914.
In truth a new atmosphere of state responsibility for people in distress was discernible from the
1890s, much of which came to fruition in the 1906 reforming Liberal government. During this pre
war period the numbers of people working in social work or welfare occupations increased and the
number of occupations increased. (It must be said that people in ‘paid’ occupations would not have
been referred to as ‘social workers’ – only people who volunteered were at the time referred to as
‘social workers’). The occupations included:
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Paid Probation Officers were appointed by magistrates from 1908 (1907 Probation of Offenders
Act) and Women Probation Officers were encouraged by the Home Office from 1912.
Education Care Committee Volunteer Co-ordinators were appointed in small numbers after the
1906 Education Act, but were ubiquitous in big towns by the early 1920s.
Central Association for Mental Welfare appointed paid co-ordinators from 1914 (to recruit and
manage volunteers after the Mental deficiency Act of 1913). A National network existed by the
early 1920s.
Specialist Relieving Officers and Lunatics were appointed from 1905.
Lady Child Welfare Visitors were encouraged by the LGB from 1910. By 1923 there were 140 of
them (Assistant Relieving Officers) across England.
OAP and Sickness Benefit Visitors were appointed to assess need and eligibility for the OAP and
visit the sick receiving benefit (1912)
A number of Lady Almoners were at work in voluntary hospitals having by and large replaced
the male ‘Outpatient Supervisors’ who previously had managed the front door.
The State of Social Work in 1914
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Social Work (referred to often as philanthropic work or charitable work) relied a great deal
on affluent social entrepreneurs working at a local level, several in each town, often
women. Such women, active in various voluntary organisations in the town, crucially also
served on School Boards and as Poor Law Guardians. Voluntary Societies covered many
needs; NSPCC, District Nursing Societies, the Girls Friendly Society, Barnardo’s, Deaf Clubs,
Blind Schools, Discharged Prisoners Aid societies… Baby clinics for working women were in
their infancy (first appearing in 1910/11). These societies were often led by women social
entrepreneurs, who introduced ideas, lobbied for improvements, set up initiatives and
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sometimes helped fund them, but they also were involved in direct work, running clubs or
visiting families.
This was the heyday of University Settlements; liberal and paternalistic, their aims were
cultural, educational and offered moral uplift as well as legal and practical help (Eleanor
Rathbone, Elizabeth Macadam, William Beveridge, Clement Attlee all lived for a while in
settlements). But there were not that many – Attlee identifies 27 in London and no more
than 15 across the rest of the UK (Attlee, 1920). Their activities were dwarfed by the
hundreds of Religious Missions operating across the UK, which offered evangelistic activity,
and the widespread provision of food, clothing, shoes, outings for poor children, gifts at
Christmas and entertainments. They also responded to individuals in need. Trades Unions,
Co-operative Societies and Friendly Societies, offered to their tens of thousands of members
programmes of education, leisure activities and mutual support for people in difficulties –
Friendly Societies for instance all employed sick visitors.
Voluntary visiting charities offered help, support and advice to significant numbers of
people, as well as assuming establishment morality in their work. Many different
organisations operated in similar ways across the UK; in England there were over 100
affiliated branches (42 in London) of the COS, overwhelmingly in the south. Guilds of Help
(whose volunteers were less monolithically affluent than the COS) were widespread across
the North and Midlands – about 40 affiliated Guilds.
Poor Law Each Poor Law Board managed the local workhouse, an infirmary, vaccination
officers (smallpox), registrars and doctors. They also part funded local voluntary groups such
as the NSPCC, District Nursing Association and so on. But the ‘front door’ of the Poor Law
was the Relieving Officer, who assessed applicants’ needs; then paid ‘out-relief’ (benefit) for
those eligible (delivered weekly to their home in the case of older people). There were also
Relieving Officers for Lunatics (removing and returning), and Boarding Out committees to
manage regular visiting for children in public care boarded out. Relieving Officers were also
responsible for identifying and proposing to the Guardians children who should be afforded
the protection of being in public care under the 1899 Poor Law Act. In addition in many
places ‘Lady Visitors’ managed:
o Regular visiting for children discharged from public care at the age of 13.
o Visiting and surveillance of children in families receiving ‘out relief’ where there
were reports of neglect, intemperance, TB or other concerns,
o Bastardy orders; court applications and chasing up recalcitrant fathers,
o Infant Life Protection Visiting – visiting children under five privately fostered.
In addition state intervention to support the poor appeared a few years before the war. The OAP,
sickness benefit, unemployment benefit had been introduced in 1910/11. The benefits were limited
to certain ‘respectable‘ groups and were not generous. So their introduction was a principle
established, but was not yet a comprehensive safety net. Other important public health measures
were the introduction of medical examinations of Board School Children in 1907 and obligatory Free
School Meals for poor scholars became an obligation for Local Authorities from 1914.
All this took place within a society where class differences were sharp and cruel. In 1914 officers
were forbidden to carry parcels in the street and travel on omnibuses lest they be thought to be
other ranks. Cricket grounds, shops, servant agencies and grand houses all had separate entrances
for gentlefolk and workers. Officers had all been to public schools, servants in grand houses were
often still given stock names so the owners did not mistake them for human beings.
The Voluntary Response to the War: Their Finest Hour?
As soon as the lamps went out on August 4th 1914 there was a huge burst of voluntary activity.
People gave money from the beginning and consistently through the war. Initially there was great
concern about the distress likely to be suffered by families left by husbands joining up and people
thrown out of work by industries put on hold by the war. By 1915 the latter fear had passed and by
1916 there was as near full employment as at any time during the whole century. But both the
battlefront and at home old needs were intensified and new needs identified. At home many
affluent female social entrepreneurs took it upon themselves to do things previously not thought to
be women’s roles and hundreds of thousands more people, mostly women, joined in. The following
list of contributions to welfare work draws heavily from Kate Adie’s books (Adie, 2003, 2013).
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COS, Guilds of Help and many other visiting charities attracted an increased number of
volunteers. Two government funds were made available for visiting charities immediately,
particularly for families where the soldier’s pay and allowances were slow to come through.
Such visiting societies had so much money available that the pre-war practice in some
voluntary societies of raising funding individually for each ‘client’ became redundant.
The Women’s Defence Relief Corps undertook what men could not do as they were at the
front. One task they took on was helping the injured and homeless after bombing.
Money was raised to support bereaved families and wounded soldiers by the Soldiers and
Sailors Association and War Emergency Workers Committees.
Many factories, schools etc sponsored equipment, vans, hospital wards, beds and so on.
The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry attracted affluent young women. They were encouraged to
bring their own horses.
Voluntary Aid Detachments famously attracted ladies to work alongside trained nurses in
military hospitals. Most worked in the UK, some in France about 75,000 women.
Dr Elsie Inglis’s Scottish Women’s Hospitals – this was an extremely professional outfit with
a UK wide money raising footprint. They ran seven or eight hospitals across Europe.
(Running a hospital was the thing for great ladies. Lady Paget ran a hospital in Skopje. The
Duchess of Sutherland and the Duchess of Westminster both had hospitals in France).
‘The women of Pervyse’ – Elsie Knocker (trained nurse and midwife) and Mairi Chisholm,
initiated and ran a front line first aid and ambulance service. Many other efforts were made
to support men at the front including the Scottish Churches Huts in France and the Young
Farmer’s Ambulance and famously Talbot House (Toc H).
Soldiers Washing and Mending Clothes Bureau. Ladies working parties and sewing circles
operated in every town and village. So, there were organisations sending clothes to the
front, but also Bovril, cigarettes, books...everything. At Christmas 1914 every single soldier
received a tin of ‘comforts’ from Princess Mary.
Almeric Paget’s Military Massage Corps (what we would call physiotherapy) started off with
50 masseuses (all with uniform, and accepted by the war office). This started in November
1914 and was wound up in Jan 1919 with 2000 masseuses.
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Women’s National Land Service Corps was mostly for affluent young women – they were
offered no uniform just advised to go to Harrods and buy the Harrod’s Farm Outfit.
This reveals what a huge proportion of the population wanted to contribute. It also revealed that
the armed forces, industry and commerce were not accustomed to taking much responsibility for
the welfare of their workers. The army medical corps was thin, there were no canteens in factories,
industrial accidents were rife and treated with insouciance. All this voluntary activity attempted to
meet needs previously not recognised and in industry stimulated the occupational welfare
movement. Thousands of welfare officers were appointed during the war years.
State Response
The government established national hardship funds, delegating responsibility for their use to each
town’s ‘Mayor’s Hardship Fund Committee’. The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) took
unprecedented powers over transport, employment and a whole range of behaviours. In the
manufacture of munitions, uniforms, vehicles and so on the government was indirectly paying the
wages of a growing proportion of workers. The government also sponsored new support
organisations, taking over work previously done by men.
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WRNS and WRAF attracted middle class girls. WAAC had affluent ‘officers’ but generally
working class women. All three, because of concerns about how women would cope, had
medical officers and welfare officers.
A Women’s Land Army was established and attracted about 150,000 women.
Councils took on women administrative workers, tram conductors, even street cleaners.
Munitions factories employed something like 750,000 women. (Again welfare officers were
employed to look after women’s ‘special needs’).
From 1916 War Pensions were introduced which were paid to wounded men and war widows,
reducing still further the financial hardship so feared at the beginning of the war.
The Welfare Efforts in One Town, Bolton:
I have looked at five significant organisations involved in welfare work through the war in Bolton,
concentrating on the final two on the list below.
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Guild of Help – 400 volunteers immediately jumped to a 1000 by the end of 1914.
Women’s Defence Relief Corps (July 1915) attracted 200 members, all had a uniform.
Bolton War Emergency Workers Committee (Sept 1914) addressed the needs of working
people suffering financial hardship as a result of the war
Bolton Women’s Local Government Association (est 1900) – See below
Bolton Women’s Suffrage Society (est 1908) – see below
One of the notable features of pre-war welfare activity is the connection between the women (and
some male supporters) involved in local Poor Law administration as Guardians, local voluntary social
work activity and the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Many of the women involved in one of these
activities were involved in all. This was a national phenomenon. For instance:
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Emmeline Pankhurst (leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) worked in
Chorlton Poor Law Union as a Registrar but was also a Poor Law Guardian in the 1890s.
Sylvia Pankhurst, WSPU, who split from her mother in 1914, was active throughout the war
as Poor Law Guardian, and worked with poor women in Lambeth, setting up a toy making
workshop, (work for local women) and distributing food in the East End.
Charlotte Despard, committed suffragist and founder of the Women’s Freedom League (an
alternative to the WSPU) was a Guardian and social worker in Battersea through the war.
Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, secretary of the WSPU, had worked as a ‘sister of the people’
at a London Mission, running girls clubs and establishing the Esperance Club for poor girls.
Edith Rigby, the Suffragette who burned down Lord Leverhulme’s Bungalow in 1913, started
her public life setting up an educational group for working class girls and was a prison visitor.
In Bolton in 1913 there were 12 female Poor Law Guardians (from a total, of, I think, 38), nine of
whom were sponsored by the Bolton Women’s Local Government Association (BWLGA). Mary
Haslam, one of the first five women elected as a Guardian in 1895 was the leader of the progressive
faction of the Guardians. Many of these Guardians and other BWLGA members were also leading
members of the Bolton Women’s Suffrage Society - Mrs Hulton, Mrs Taylor, Mrs Barnes, Miss
Barlow, Mrs Barlow, Miss Reddish, Miss Bridson, and Mary Haslam herself, who was the driving
force, setting up the Bolton Women’s Suffrage Society (BWSS) in 1908. Mary Haslam was also a
leading light in the Bolton Guild of Help, a committee member of the NSPCC, the District Nursing
Association, the Mental Deficiency Committee and was a champion of Bolton Health Week, an
annual event which provided education and advice about tuberculosis. Each of these women
followed their own charitable and social work interests. Miss Reddish for instance was working class
and secretary of the Women’s Co-operative Guild, founder member of the BWSS and a Poor Law
Guardian. She set up and championed the voluntary Mother and Baby Clinic, the ‘Babies Welcome’.
The interconnectivity of these women’s activities was beyond formal politics. In Bolton for instance
two of the long standing leaders were Mary Haslam and Sarah Reddish. Haslam was rich as Croesus
and a Liberal. Reddish was working class and a Socialist. This did not seem to hinder their working
relationship. In 1911 when Sarah Reddish said she would stand down as a Guardian due to pressure
of work, Mary Haslam persuaded her to stay on. No, the interconnectivity of activity was based on
their gender. Women with a social conscience, a political commitment, or who just wanted to
contribute to the Great World had very limited choices in 1914. They could seek out charitable
work; visiting individuals or working on committees – work associated with women’s traditional
caring role. From 1894, after the Parish Councils Act, they could stand as Poor Law Guardians. As
the Poor Law was about relieving poverty and managing the sick and the poor, this dovetailed with
any charitable work they did. They could of course also work in one of the mainstream political
parties or the ILP or other socialist bodies, but this did not give them access to real power. Some
working women, especially in heavily industrialised areas (Lancashire, Yorkshire) took on leadership
roles in Trades Unions. But that was it; there was almost no access to professions and limited access
to formal education. On the other hand a significant attraction to ambitious women was the
burgeoning women’s suffrage movement. This had been a slow burn affair in the last decade of the
nineteenth century, led in 1900 by the National Association of Women’s Suffrage Societies, chaired
by Millicent Fawcett. The NAWSS was middle class, constitutionalist and operated by back door
influence. The movement was ignited by the appearance of the Pankhurst’s WSPU in 1903 and the
radical activity which followed. Suffrage societies unsurprisingly raised other issues relating to
women’s citizenship – work, marriage, child care. So existence of links between suffrage activity,
Local Government activity and social work is unsurprising. There is of course debate about the
varying motivations driving those involved. Women primarily interested in suffrage worked with
those whose passion was for the extension of women’s access to work and the wider shores of
citizenship. But women wanting to ensure middle class moral values were taken up by the poor, or
those with a strong religious commitment, were equally able to contribute to campaigns with the
more politically minded. There were of course women whose initial motivation might simply have
been to get out of the house and do something! See Cowman (2004) for a full discussion.
When the war began there were some women who decided to campaign for peace, Charlotte
Despard and Sylvia and Adele Pankhurst amongst them. Some took the opposite line, like Emmeline
Pankhurst (who hated Germans, see Fortune 2014) vigorously supported the war and women’s
contribution to it. Most active women seemed to have taken a pragmatic line, accepting that
whether they supported the war or not there would be hardship for many and therefore work to be
done. As expected, no elections were held during the war, making the political work of the BWLGA
redundant. The NUWSS nationally called a halt to ‘ordinary propaganda’ and so the BWSS too
looked to other activities. It should not surprise us then that within the first year of the war starting
the BWLGA became involved in:
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Visiting women whose husbands were in the army, whose behaviour was ‘unsatisfactory’
(getting drunk, neglecting children, or being seen about with other men).
Police court visiting, the BWLGA particularly being on the lookout for women about to be
brought before the court for immoral behaviour (under the 1912 Criminal Law Amendment
Act). The purpose of their presence was to ensure proper treatment by the authorities
and/or to persuade the women out of immoral lifestyles.
Representation on the County Council Mental Deficiency Committee,
Discussion of Women’s Patrols (which sought out and dissuaded couples from immoral
behaviour and ensured women out on their own were not seduced into immoral behaviour),
The aftercare of children leaving public care,
Support for Royal Commission on VD’s proposals, which were to establish local clinics run by
the LA and ensure education was available locally, both moral and practical.
The BWSS became involved in:
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Nominating members to help with school dinners, nine volunteers a day being needed.
o Representation on; the War Emergency Worker’s Committee, the Mayor’s Fund
Committee, the Women’s Relief Corps, the local War Pensions Committee.
Providing two helpers a day at the Poor Protection League, a visiting charity.
Supporting the extension of the Mother and Baby Clinic using the grant to the Local
Authority from the LGB.
Setting up a kitchen for mothers, to train and advise and provide cheap food for poor
mothers. By late 1915 with increased employment, attendance at the kitchen collapsed.
After that BWSS was clearly looking out for something else to do…
…In 1916 the BWSS exec responded enthusiastically to a suggestion from the Manchester
Federation of WSSs that they work with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals (SWH) to establish a
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hospital in Serbia. Bolton WSS set a target of £100 to contribute to the £2000 required.
Eventually they raised over £260 and supported the hospital when it was set up for Serbian
refugees in Corsica. (This, of course is another example of Women’s ‘Interconnectedness’.
SWH, hospitals, brainchild of Dr Elsie Inglis, was run from Edinburgh, yet had a UK wide
fundraising operation, principally, I would imagine amongst women’s organisations).
They lobbied central government about VD, the Criminal Law Amendment act...and
vigorously opposed women being asked to leave court during immorality cases.
These two groups also ran and contributed to conferences….one of which called for the abolition of
liquor during the war. The BWLGA also received a letter demanding that cinema owners abided by
the regulations. They were also regularly concerned about the behaviour of women on their own –
especially in relation to drink – the visiting of women ‘behaving inappropriately’. Latterly both
groups became interested in ‘activities for adolescents’.
So these ‘political’ groups were active in social work throughout the war. There were several
features of their activities:
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They were committed, determined, extraordinarily hard working and very effective.
They grasped opportunities as they arose. A government grant for setting up maternity
clinics was used and the voluntary ‘Babies Welcome’ merged with an LA run scheme – even
though at first there was a feeling that the LA would not want to get involved.
They had a clear sense of entitlement and used social connections (confronting MPs,
lobbying the Chief Constable personally etc).
From a hundred years on, their responses seem to be a mixture of conservative actions
(managing women’s ‘unsatisfactory’ behaviour) and ‘progressive’ actions (supporting
women’s rights in at work and in court for instance).
Moral Panics: hindering or driving change?
Some changes in society wrought by the war, though notable were practical and innocuous; the
introduction of paper money for instance, wristwatches for men, ready rolled and packeted
cigarettes. Other changes although equally practical were seen by some as undermining previous
norms; more women going about their business on their own; women in uniform; women doctors
operating on men; shorter skirt lengths. Such changes caused an unease in some about what it
might lead to. There are several examples of such concerns spilling over into what might today be
called moral panics. Outlined below are a number of societal concerns stimulated by the war. Viv
Cree’s presentation addresses the background to these fears and response to them.
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The Spy Scare, associated with fear and hatred of everything German.
The panic amongst the authorities about people’s reaction to bombing.
Juvenile Crime
The influence of the cinema
Women:
o Behaviour, being offered freedom, women might get up to anything!
o Clothing and immodesty
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Work and how it might change women, toughen them up, make them less
‘feminine’
Drunkenness
Immoral behaviour, sexual activity and it consequences
 Pregnancy and abortion
 illegitimate babies
 VD
Prostitution,
Post War Changes associated with the War:
Visiting Charities’ role was severely diminished because:
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Many visiting charities were contracted by government to assess the need for war pensions.
This compromised the independence of such charities in the longer term, becoming
associated as they inevitably did, with Local Authority or Poor Law officials.
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The ‘market’ for visiting charities shrank after the war:
o The opening of creches for working women and Local Authority baby clinics ensured
better health care and nutrition for infants. Infant mortality dropped through the
war and during the interwar period.
o Free school meals for poor scholars (600,000 by 1914) improved nutrition of young
people, height and weight of poor young people all increasing from 1914 onwards.
o Better wages for working people allowed them eat more – better nutrition gave
better protection against illness and infection.
o Unemployment benefits for workers (though not initially domestic servants and
agricultural workers) turned being laid off into a big problem rather a catastrophe.
o Sickness benefits did the same for short term illnesses.
o The Old Age Pension was perhaps the biggest blow to visiting charities. In 1908 the
legislation offered up to 5/- a week to people over 70. A ‘character’ test application
was carried out by OAP assessors. Of the 2m people over 70 by the end of 1909
596,000 had claimed the OAP. In 1919 this was doubled to 10/- a week. In 1925 a
contributory, non means tested scheme was introduced and the age reduced to 65.
o War Pensions for crippled soldiers (2.4m) offered some financial security.
There were also fewer young women who could afford to volunteer. Death Duties,
Land taxes and an increase in income tax from 6% (in 1914) to 30% (in 1918) reduced
the numbers of families which could live off private incomes. And younger women
coming to adulthood during the war had a different attitude. Attlee quotes one young
woman, ‘”What did people do before the war?” She did not wish to go in for the more
or less futile social life that was the lot of many in pre war days and could not conceive
of life without work’, Attlee, The Social Worker, (1920), page 28. Visiting charities did
not disappear overnight but shrank and although the COS became known primarily for
teeth and spectacles, some such charities began to focus their attention more on
personal problems than poverty – see Attlee’s The Social Worker, 1920.
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The Language of poverty changed - ‘Pauperism’ to ‘Unemployment’. One of the planks for
COS thinking was that if people were given relief too easily they would become ‘pauperised’,
i.e. dependent on hand outs. They would lose self respect and cease to have any chance of
being a contributing member of society. The continuing high numbers who were poor in
late Victorian and Edwardian Britain and the numbers clamouring for relief seemed to bear
this analysis out. However by the middle years of the Great War there was almost no
unemployment – people offered opportunities to work or join up took them. In my view this
undermined the ‘pauperisation’ argument. It is significant I think, and one of the
unremarked changes in language brought about by the Great War (like the disappearance of
Anglo Saxon first names – Oswald, Maud, Agatha, Stanley) that the use of the word pauper
and pauperisation diminished in the 1920s replaced by the word ‘unemployment’, which
implies poverty, yes, but with less of the implication of harm brought on oneself.
The approach to mental ill health and is not mentioned above, but the numbers of men
suffering from shell shock and the controversies about placing them in ordinary asylums and
the plethora of methods tested out in their treatment raised the profile of mental health
treatment. This is not the subject of this note, but the collision of ideas in both the medical,
educational, social work communities and in the public mind led to the emergence of Child
guidance Clinics, psychotherapeutic practice, the vogue for spiritualism and intelligence
testing and the training of psychiatric social workers in the 1920s. Language is important
here too, as the language of moral education in social work began to be replaced by the
language of scientific method. ‘Pauperization’ began to be replaced by ‘Maladjustment’.
Opportunities for women to establish a career were greater after the war – both in terms of
social acceptability and work available. This was the case up and down the social scale. The
Restoration of Pre War Practices Act of 1919 was the basis on which many women were
forced out of war work; clippies, post office workers, teachers and so on, but women had
colonised some jobs which in 1914 were men’s. Office work after the war became the
preserve of young women. Similarly women ‘typewriters’ were taken on in numbers during
the war for the frits time in the UK. The Sex Disqualification Act (Dec 1919) opened up
opportunities for work in the law, banking, accountancy – then later the civil service.
Oxford at last offer degrees to women students. Examples relevant to our study include:
o Nursing (Nursing Registration Act of 1919 finally put nursing on a professional
footing, in effect banishing the motley band of rich women and their ‘gels’ from
pitching up at any battle front claiming to be nurses).
o Women police (from 1919)
o first women barrister called to the bar in 1922
o opportunities for paid work with children blossomed:
 Poor Law Guardians began establishing women visitor posts.
 Education Care Committees relied on volunteers but employed paid coordinators.
 Moral Welfare Committees were established in many places during the war
and in the 1920s and the first Moral Welfare Outworkers were appointed.
 The creche movement took off, some run by trained social workers.
o Occupational Welfare Officers had set up a national association in 1913 with 60
members. By 1918 there were thousands of occupational welfare officers, in
factories, but also in the armed services.
There had been women factory inspectors before the war but the war saw scores
appointed.
o University based training for both Poor Law and Voluntary Social Workers, started in
1905 was extensive enough by 1916 for a Joint University Council for Social Studies
and Public Administration to be set up and require a permanent Honorary Secretary,
Elizabeth Macadam.
And the myth of the disappearance of a generation of young men allowed women who
would have been obliged to marry in 1914, a way to carve out an independent life – more
work and professional opportunities. This allowed the likes of Geraldine Aves, Eileen
Younghusband and Lucy Faithful the freedom to live lives of their choosing.
By the end of the war there was increased demand for adoption to be formalised. Three
societies took the lead in dealing with child adoption from 1918 onwards: the National Child
Adoption Association (NCAA), founded by Clara Andrew; the National Adoption Society
(NAS); and the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (NCUMC). All three
philanthropic organisations, created between 1917 and 1918, were concerned that adopted
children should only be taken by respectable people who were committed to providing a
stable home.
The Great War shifted the relationship between voluntary welfare effort and state
responsibility for welfare (Lewis 1991, Taylor 1965). The Great War saw the zenith in the
contribution and influence of voluntary activity. But this wartime effort could not be
maintained in peacetime. Also with DORA, people became used to state direction. By 1919
the War Office and other arms of government had taken responsibility for:
• In the military
o medical and nursing service,
o An incipient NAAFI and arrangements for entertaining troops,
o Welfare officers for troops,
o A physiotherapy service run by the War Office and the Ministry of
Pensions (this replaced Almeric Paget’s voluntary massage service),
• War pensions and a system and staff for assessing need,
• OAP visitors, OAPs for a broader range of people at a better rate than in 1914,
more people covered by the sickness and unemployment legislation
• State (Local government) responsibility for ante natal and maternity care,
activities for juveniles, adoption and so on…
The responsibilities taken on by the government could not be abandoned. War pensions
and so on all required government spending. Proportionate spend of GDP by the
government was maintained after 1918 (1913 it was 12.7% and by 1920 it was 27.4%, rising
slowly in the interwar years, rather than falling).
If the pre war relationship between volunteer social workers and paid workers was that the
volunteers were the more trusted, the inter war theme was moving towards state
employed workers co-ordinating volunteers: This included:
• Boarding Out Committees
• Education Care Committees
• Moral Welfare Committees
• Poor Law/Local Authority Women Visitors and child care sections.
o
•
•
•
•
•
•
Paid Welfare officers in many factories – overwhelmingly women
Macadam referred to the situation as a ‘unique structure of social services’, albeit one with
‘scrappiness…inadequate provision here, the overlapping there, the delays, the waste of time, effort
and money, the unconstructive unscientific attitude and above all the absence of any plan for
…suitable education and training’.
Four overriding themes then:
1. The sheer breadth of the many needs, both old and new, revealed by the war swamped
voluntary provision. An acceptance spread that the state had a responsibility to support
people if the state wanted to survive and prosper. People employed (i.e. paid) by the state
were not referred to as social workers (See Attlee The Social Worker) but undertook many of
the functions we would regard as social work.
2. More support for poor people and the sick and unemployed undermined the strength of
voluntary visiting charities in ‘leading’ social work and began to shift the focus of social
workers towards more individualised support. It was in the 1920s that ‘casework’ in the
sense of personal work with individuals was developed by organisations like the COS, forced
out of their original much more comprehensive role.
3. As more financial support became available from the state, the language of poverty and the
assumed superiority of affluent volunteers over the poor people they served, was replaced
amongst social workers by a more ‘scientific’ analysis of need and shifted their focus to
identifying people’s psychological state as needing attention. Slowly the focus of attention
amongst trained social workers and emerging social work professions shifted from helping
prevent ‘pauperisation’ to helping the ‘maladjusted’.
4. The optimism about an extension of state support for those in need in 1919/1920 was
palpable – for much was in place; acceptance of state responsibility, work now accepted for
women, fierce debates about working conditions, birth control, child welfare, mental health
and an acceptance of new radical ideas about how people behaved and what a society
should expect of itself. So although the New Jerusalem was postponed a lot had changed as
a result of the experience of people between 1914 and 1918.
Resources
Abbot, Edith (1943) Juvenile Delinquency during the First World War Notes on the British
Experience, 1914-18, Social Service Review, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Jun), pp. 192-212.
Adie, Kate (2003) Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War, Hodder and Stoughton
Adie, Kate (2013) Fighting on the Home Front: the legacy of women in World War On, Hodder and
Stoughton
Attlee C (1920) The Social Worker, Bell
Todman, Dan (2005) The Great War, Myth and Memory, Hambledon and London
Barham, Peter (2004) Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War, Yale University Press
Bohlman, Julia (2013) Early Cinema and Juvenile Crime in Scotland: Edinburgh’s Chief Constable at
the 1917 Cinema Commission, http://www.academia.edu/5945509
Bolton Social Worker’s Handbook 1914, Bolton History Centre, B361 BoL.
Bolton Watch Committee Minutes - 1914 – 1918, Bolton History Centre, AB/24/1
Bolton Women’s Local Government Association Executive Committee Minute Book Feb 1912 – Oct
1918, Bolton History centre, FW1
Bolton Women’s Citizen Association Minute Book, Jan 1923 – Nov 1928, Bolton History Centre, FW3
Bolton Women’s Suffrage Society, Executive Committee Minute Books – 1908 – March 1918, Bolton
History Centre, FW2
Cowman, Krista (2004) ‘Mrs Brown is a Man and a Brother!’ Women in Merseyside’s Political
Organisations, 1890 – 1920, Liverpool University Press.
Fortune, Robert (2014) Emmeline Pankhurst in Ten Short Chapters, Ten Short Chapters 2
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during the First World War’, Medical History 39: 133-158.
Hoke, Donald (?) The Woman and the Typewriter: A Case Study in Technological Innovation and
Social Change, Milwaukee Public Museum
http://www.thebhc.org/publications/BEHprint/v008/p0076-p0088.pdf
Howarth, Janet, (2004 – 2014) Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/printable/33096
Keating, Jenny (2008) A Child for Keeps: the History of Adoption in England, 1918-45 Basingstoke,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008,
Levine, P (1994) ‘Walking the Streets in a way no decent woman should’ Women Police in World War
One. Journal of Modern History, no 66, March, pp 34 – 78.
Lewis, Jane (1991) Women and Social Action in Victorian and Edwardian England, Aldershot, Edward
Elgar
Macadam, Elizabeth (1945) The Social Servant in the Making, George Allen and Unwin.
The National Council of Public Morals (1917) The Cinema - Its Present Position and Future
Possibilities: A report to the Cinema Commission of Enquiry, Williams & Norgate.
Nicholson, Juliet, (2009) The Great Silence – 1918 – 1920, Living in the Shadow of the Great War.
John Murray
Overy, Richard (2009) The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars, Penguin
Taylor, Alan (1965) English History 1914 – 1945, Vol XV Oxford History of England, OUP
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War Britain, International History Review, xix, 1: Feb pp 32 - 51
White, Jerry (2013) Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War, Vintage
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