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Round About a Pound a Week
From 1909 to 1913, undaunted by the proposition that a 'bi-weekly visit to Lambeth is like a plunge into Hades', the Fabian Women's Group recorded the daily budgets of thirty families there. In 1913 they published this unique record in Round About a Pound a Week. We learn about family life, births, marriages and deaths; of grinding work carried out on a diet of little more than bread, jam and margarine. We learn how they coped with damp, vermin and bedbugs; how they slept - four to a bed, in banana crates; how they washed, cooked, cleaned, scrimped for furniture and clothes, saved for all too frequent burials...This classic text is one of the most important and vivid historical portraits of the daily life of working people in the early part of the twentieth century.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1913
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About the author
Maud Pember Reeves
1 book1 followerMaud Pember Reeves (born Magdalene Stuart Robison) was a feminist, writer and member of the Fabian Society. She was born in Australia but spent most of her life in New Zealand and Britain.
Her father was a bank manager and the family moved to Christchurch, New Zealand in 1868. In 1885 she married the journalist and politician William Pember Reeves and became interested in socialism and the suffragette movements.
In 1896 the Pember Reeves' moved to London after William's appointment as Agent-General, the representative of New Zealand government within the British Empire. There, the couple became friends with a number of left-wing intellectuals, such as George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Maud joined the Fabian Society, a precursor to the Labour Party, which promoted social reform.
In 1913 Maud published a survey of poverty in Lambeth, a poor borough in South London, called 'Round About a Pound a Week', a work that was reprinted in 2008 by Persephone Books and remains relevant today. During the First World War she served on a government committee concerned with women's issues.
William and Maud had three children. Their son, Fabian Pember Reeves, was killed in the First World War, and one of their daughters, Amber Reeves, was a noted feminist writer.
Her father was a bank manager and the family moved to Christchurch, New Zealand in 1868. In 1885 she married the journalist and politician William Pember Reeves and became interested in socialism and the suffragette movements.
In 1896 the Pember Reeves' moved to London after William's appointment as Agent-General, the representative of New Zealand government within the British Empire. There, the couple became friends with a number of left-wing intellectuals, such as George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Maud joined the Fabian Society, a precursor to the Labour Party, which promoted social reform.
In 1913 Maud published a survey of poverty in Lambeth, a poor borough in South London, called 'Round About a Pound a Week', a work that was reprinted in 2008 by Persephone Books and remains relevant today. During the First World War she served on a government committee concerned with women's issues.
William and Maud had three children. Their son, Fabian Pember Reeves, was killed in the First World War, and one of their daughters, Amber Reeves, was a noted feminist writer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
August 13, 2012
I've read this book many times in my life, starting from when I was quite small, because it was written by my Great Great Grandmother, Maud Pember Reeves. Every time I've read it I've been full of pride for her clear-headed research into the living conditions of the respectable working poor in Edwardian Lambeth, but since I've been an adult each re-reading has been accompanied by despair that the points she made so cogently still need to be made today. People are all too eager to believe the worst of the poor, to believe that their dire living conditions are their own fault, and all they need to do to succeed is to try harder. This study showed exactly how the game was rigged against the London working class, for example how economies of scale allowed a middle class family to pay 1/8 of their income for their very nice house while the working class had to pay 1/3 of their income for one or two squalid, unhealthy rooms. The poor also had to pay proportionately more for fuel & food and the additional expense of burial insurance left the families with barely enough money to provide protein for the breadwinner and bread for the rest. Why burial insurance? The death rate was appallingly high, over 40% in families with 10 or more children, and the only alternative was the shame of a paupers' grave. With burial insurance at least the living family members wouldn't be pauperized.
The participants in this study were not the poorest of the poor, these were the relatively well off working class families who had an income of about a pound a week. The husbands had respectable jobs and the wives managed the households and raised the enormous families common in those days before birth control was available. The families chosen were in reasonably good health, and were also taking part in another study being run by the Fabian Women's Group on the effects of proper pre and postnatal nutrition, so all the participants were visited every week, and each week their household budget was recorded. We never get to know the participants' names, they are always referred to as Mrs P. or Mrs A., but we do get to know the participants themselves, as the writing is so fresh & immediate it rolls back the century between its own time and ours and lets us peep in on the homes of the past. We learn about the struggles and triumphs of these women, their daily routines, often recorded in their own words. The ingenuity & self-sacrifice needed to raise families in these circumstances was remarkable & I'm so glad Maud was there to record it.
The participants in this study were not the poorest of the poor, these were the relatively well off working class families who had an income of about a pound a week. The husbands had respectable jobs and the wives managed the households and raised the enormous families common in those days before birth control was available. The families chosen were in reasonably good health, and were also taking part in another study being run by the Fabian Women's Group on the effects of proper pre and postnatal nutrition, so all the participants were visited every week, and each week their household budget was recorded. We never get to know the participants' names, they are always referred to as Mrs P. or Mrs A., but we do get to know the participants themselves, as the writing is so fresh & immediate it rolls back the century between its own time and ours and lets us peep in on the homes of the past. We learn about the struggles and triumphs of these women, their daily routines, often recorded in their own words. The ingenuity & self-sacrifice needed to raise families in these circumstances was remarkable & I'm so glad Maud was there to record it.
December 13, 2012
What a fascinating book. The Fabian Society, a socialist group, did a study of poor but not destitute mothers in London in 1909-11. The idea was to give nursing mothers an allowance of milk for themselves only, for 3 months before and 9 months after they gave birth and to study what difference this made to the health of the new baby compared with their other children (they all had several). The mothers who were selected had husbands in steady work who gave their wives a housekeeping allowance of around £1 a week. The rationale was that women who had more money might be adequately nourished already, and women who had less would be too tempted to give their milk to the rest of the family.
In the process of the study, Maud Pember Reeves and other Fabian ladies visited regularly and noted the women's housing situation. They asked the women to keep accounts to show how their housekeeping money was spent and also to record the family's menu for a week. At the end of the study the Fabians first published a pamphlet calling for government support for poor working families, and this book grew out of that.
The budgets and menus are just riveting. The money might be difficult for non-British people and younger Brits because I don't think it is anywhere explained that 12 pennies made a shilling and 20 shillings made a pound. I can just about remember 'old money' myself. So the wives had an allowance of around one pound, i.e. 20 shillings of which about 7 would go on rent. Then there were other necessities like coal and/or gas, funeral insurance (vital), cleaning materials and clothing when they could afford it. Whatever was left was spent on food. It didn't buy much.
The women and children had bread and margarine for breakfast and supper, plus a cup of tea in which they might have a splash of tinned milk. Then they mostly had potatoes and a little bit of meat or fish for dinner (at lunchtime). The husband had to be fed more meat to give him enough energy to do his physical work, so he would have bacon, fish or an egg with his breakfast and/or tea. They had a bigger meal on Sundays and that was the only time most families had any green vegetable. Fruit was out of the question.
It's incredible how little room for manoeuvre these women had. Some of them were raising four or more children in two rooms. A four-roomed house would be shared either between two families or one family and a lodger. In most cases they slept four or more in a bed, including two children in the parents' bed.
The book is not just a list of accounts by any means. There's a lot of information about their living conditions and the individual personalities come across clearly through little anecdotes. Maud Pember Reeves exposes a lot of myths believed by the middle classes (e.g. that the poor spent their money on drink - these people certainly didn't - or that they could manage their money better if they were more careful). But what I loved about it was the way it brought these real people to life through the pennies and halfpennies that they spent. The book was published in 1913, and it's terrible to think that after all their struggle, many of the husbands and older boys were probably dead on the battlefields of Flanders a few years later.
In the introduction it says that £1 a week 100 years ago is worth about £70 today ($100 US) but you can't really compare because the relative prices of things are different. There's no way you could rent even one tiny room in London for £25 a week now! I wonder if it would be possible to feed a family of 6 or 8 people on £30-£40 if they had that same diet with very little meat, no fruit, almost no vegetables and really, almost a starvation diet. Maybe, but it's scary to think of having to do it, week after week, year after year.
Definitely one to re-read whenever I'm feeling impoverished, to remind me that I'm really not!
In the process of the study, Maud Pember Reeves and other Fabian ladies visited regularly and noted the women's housing situation. They asked the women to keep accounts to show how their housekeeping money was spent and also to record the family's menu for a week. At the end of the study the Fabians first published a pamphlet calling for government support for poor working families, and this book grew out of that.
The budgets and menus are just riveting. The money might be difficult for non-British people and younger Brits because I don't think it is anywhere explained that 12 pennies made a shilling and 20 shillings made a pound. I can just about remember 'old money' myself. So the wives had an allowance of around one pound, i.e. 20 shillings of which about 7 would go on rent. Then there were other necessities like coal and/or gas, funeral insurance (vital), cleaning materials and clothing when they could afford it. Whatever was left was spent on food. It didn't buy much.
The women and children had bread and margarine for breakfast and supper, plus a cup of tea in which they might have a splash of tinned milk. Then they mostly had potatoes and a little bit of meat or fish for dinner (at lunchtime). The husband had to be fed more meat to give him enough energy to do his physical work, so he would have bacon, fish or an egg with his breakfast and/or tea. They had a bigger meal on Sundays and that was the only time most families had any green vegetable. Fruit was out of the question.
It's incredible how little room for manoeuvre these women had. Some of them were raising four or more children in two rooms. A four-roomed house would be shared either between two families or one family and a lodger. In most cases they slept four or more in a bed, including two children in the parents' bed.
The book is not just a list of accounts by any means. There's a lot of information about their living conditions and the individual personalities come across clearly through little anecdotes. Maud Pember Reeves exposes a lot of myths believed by the middle classes (e.g. that the poor spent their money on drink - these people certainly didn't - or that they could manage their money better if they were more careful). But what I loved about it was the way it brought these real people to life through the pennies and halfpennies that they spent. The book was published in 1913, and it's terrible to think that after all their struggle, many of the husbands and older boys were probably dead on the battlefields of Flanders a few years later.
In the introduction it says that £1 a week 100 years ago is worth about £70 today ($100 US) but you can't really compare because the relative prices of things are different. There's no way you could rent even one tiny room in London for £25 a week now! I wonder if it would be possible to feed a family of 6 or 8 people on £30-£40 if they had that same diet with very little meat, no fruit, almost no vegetables and really, almost a starvation diet. Maybe, but it's scary to think of having to do it, week after week, year after year.
Definitely one to re-read whenever I'm feeling impoverished, to remind me that I'm really not!
December 6, 2023
An absorbing investigation (as the author called it) of a specific group of poor families who lived in London a few years before IWW. It was made meticulously, substantively, without influencing the respondents.
It was a precious book mainly for two reasons.
Firstly, as a recollection, a view of the life of those families. Done carefully and thoroughly.
Secondly, as an example of how to do such research, what errors to avoid, how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions, etc.
I don't agree with a few of Maud Pember Reeve's opinions (put at the end), but it didn't matter. She gave us a priceless time capsule in this book.
Some fragments could be boring because she gave us numbers (data). But it made the book more precious today.
It was a precious book mainly for two reasons.
Firstly, as a recollection, a view of the life of those families. Done carefully and thoroughly.
Secondly, as an example of how to do such research, what errors to avoid, how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions, etc.
I don't agree with a few of Maud Pember Reeve's opinions (put at the end), but it didn't matter. She gave us a priceless time capsule in this book.
Some fragments could be boring because she gave us numbers (data). But it made the book more precious today.
February 2, 2015
A classic book in many ways, primarily as emblematic of turn-of-the-century Fabian feminism, and at the same time one of the first serious studies of working class women.It is heartbreaking.
I read a large chunk of it in a most horrific yet insanely trendy and expensive hotel we had been put up in last minute as a result of an error in arrangements for a panel. The Mondrian. God. People there dripped money and it heaved with staff anxious to help them and extremely expensive art in terribly bad taste and the 'prow' of beaten copper pieces individually soldered had taken two and a half years to create and I sat there in the lobby waiting for my partner without the wherewithal to buy a drink reading about life in cellars and dead babies with tears literally dripping from my nose and the desire to smash all of it. Because we're heading back there. Back to 1913 -- this reads like Dickens but these conditions shamefully lasted well into the 20th Century. Where they should have been abolished forever.
So many babies died. The rest slowly starved, along with their parents. This book contains tables and tables of menus, hard choices, the relationships between housing and illness and death. I love Virago Press, bless them for republishing it with Sally Alexander to deliver the splendid introduction.
The Fabian Women's Group was actually founded in the home of Maud Pember Reeves in 1908, by Charlotte Wilson, anarchist and early member of the Fabian society. They followed in a long tradition of philanthropy, but brought together women from multiple radical (to reformist perhaps) traditions who still believed in the move from individual solutions to social ones.
Their goals were not small and have yet to be obtained: 'The two immediate aims ... were equality in citizenship and women's economic independence' (xiv).
I'm going to delve more into the Fabian Women's Group (bookmarked for example, is the understanding of class differences in the struggle for gender equality laid out by Mabel Atkinson in The Economic Foundation of the Women's Movement (Fabian Tract No. 175)), but I so much loved this wonderful reminiscence about the shifting sands of feminism and the generation gap between older Fabians and younger:
The scheme behind this study, the "Mother Allowance Scheme" which attempted to make a measurable impact in infant well-being and survival started within a year of the group's founding. I think Alexander nails what is important about both the nature of the study and the book that was produced, as this was 'unique in investigating the daily circumstances of women's lives, how they coped with continual damp, vermin, inadequate food... (x). I liked this as well:
The book is quite full of fantastic descriptions of the area. There are a number of longer quotes courtesy of forgottenbooks.com, I could never have typed them from my vintage hardcopy, but they are worth looking at in full:
The description of the study, and social experiment, is fairly astonishing in its matter-of-fact summation of widespread desperate poverty that hopefully we will never return to:
As if that weren't bad enough, they were in for another unexpected surprise when actually faced with the realities of people's lives:
And to me unsurprisingly, but to them, busy checking and rechecking the honesty of their subjects (because so much of this book is about middle-class prejudices, though I give them credit for overcoming them to an impressive extent in understanding at least the objective conditions faced by working families):
There are some great little sections of immense detail -- hinting at the riches held in the actual archives:
And even these judgmental and haughty women could be humbled -- and acknowledged it:
There is also some level of self-awareness here, of the intrusion such a study represents and the cost born by the working women involved:
Read the rest here.
I read a large chunk of it in a most horrific yet insanely trendy and expensive hotel we had been put up in last minute as a result of an error in arrangements for a panel. The Mondrian. God. People there dripped money and it heaved with staff anxious to help them and extremely expensive art in terribly bad taste and the 'prow' of beaten copper pieces individually soldered had taken two and a half years to create and I sat there in the lobby waiting for my partner without the wherewithal to buy a drink reading about life in cellars and dead babies with tears literally dripping from my nose and the desire to smash all of it. Because we're heading back there. Back to 1913 -- this reads like Dickens but these conditions shamefully lasted well into the 20th Century. Where they should have been abolished forever.
So many babies died. The rest slowly starved, along with their parents. This book contains tables and tables of menus, hard choices, the relationships between housing and illness and death. I love Virago Press, bless them for republishing it with Sally Alexander to deliver the splendid introduction.
The Fabian Women's Group was actually founded in the home of Maud Pember Reeves in 1908, by Charlotte Wilson, anarchist and early member of the Fabian society. They followed in a long tradition of philanthropy, but brought together women from multiple radical (to reformist perhaps) traditions who still believed in the move from individual solutions to social ones.
Their goals were not small and have yet to be obtained: 'The two immediate aims ... were equality in citizenship and women's economic independence' (xiv).
I'm going to delve more into the Fabian Women's Group (bookmarked for example, is the understanding of class differences in the struggle for gender equality laid out by Mabel Atkinson in The Economic Foundation of the Women's Movement (Fabian Tract No. 175)), but I so much loved this wonderful reminiscence about the shifting sands of feminism and the generation gap between older Fabians and younger:
There are also faint residues of Victorian standards of propriety about some of the older women. When I asked Amber Blanco White for a description of her mother's friends in the FWG, she replied that there "was never any time to meet any of them--they were just a lot of women talking about very serious things." Her mother thought it was important for girls to study their lessons most of the time: having been well educated herself, and her mother before her, she wanted her daughters to grow up in the same way....Femininity tended to be identified with frivolity--they kept a vigilant watch on this side of their character. In the 1909 annual report of the Group, women were urged to "cast aside feminine slackness and negligence with regard to their own affairs", and get on with the work of preparing for citizenship (xviii-xix).
The scheme behind this study, the "Mother Allowance Scheme" which attempted to make a measurable impact in infant well-being and survival started within a year of the group's founding. I think Alexander nails what is important about both the nature of the study and the book that was produced, as this was 'unique in investigating the daily circumstances of women's lives, how they coped with continual damp, vermin, inadequate food... (x). I liked this as well:
the conclusions were inescapable--the cause of infant mortality was not that mothers were ignorant or degenerate, but that they had too little money to provide for their own and their families' essential needs...(xi)
The book is quite full of fantastic descriptions of the area. There are a number of longer quotes courtesy of forgottenbooks.com, I could never have typed them from my vintage hardcopy, but they are worth looking at in full:
TAKE a tram from Victoria to Vauxhall Station. Get out under the railway arch which faces Vauxhall Bridge, and there you will find Ken nington Lane. The railway arch roofs in a din which reduces the roar of trains continually passing overhead to a vibrating, muffled rumble. From either end of the arch comes a close procession of trams, motor-buses, brewers' drays, coal-lorries, carts filled with unspeakable material for glue factory and tannery, motor-cars, coster barrows, and people. It is a stopping-place for tramcars and motor-buses; therefore little knots of agitated persons continually collect on both pathways, and dive between the vehicles and descending passengers in order to board the particular bus or tram they desire. At rhythmic intervals all traffic through the arch is suspended to allow a flood of trams, buses, drays, and vans, to surge and rattle and bang across the opening of the archway which faces the river.
At the opposite end there is no cross-current. The trams slide away to the right towards the Oval. In front is Kennington Lane, and to the left, at right angles, a narrow street connects with Vauxhall Walk, leading farther on into Lambeth Walk, both locally better known as The Walk. Such is the western gateway to the district stretching north to Lambeth Road, south to Lansdowne Road, and east to Walworth Road, where live the people whose lives form the subject of this book.
They are not the poorest people of the district. Far from it! They are, putting aside the tradesmen whose shops line the big thoroughfares such as Kennington Road or Kennington Park Road, some of the more enviable and settled inhabitants of this part of the world. The poorest people" the river-side casual, the workhouse in-and-out, the bar-room loafer " are anxiously ignored by these respectable persons whose work is permanent, as permanency goes in Lambeth, and whose wages range from i8s. to 305. a week. They generally are somebody's labourer, mate, or handyman. Painters' labourers, plumbers' labourers, builders' handymen, dustmen's mates, printers' labourers, potters' labourers, trouncers for carmen, are common amongst them. Or they may be fish-fryers, tailors' pressers, feather cleaners' assistants, railway-carriage washers, employees of dust contractors, carmen for Borough Council contractors, or packers of various descriptions (2-3).
The streets they live in are monotonously and drearily decent, lying back from the main arteries, and with little traffic other than a stray barrel organ, a coal-lorry selling by the hundredweight sack, or a taxi-cab going to or from its driver's dinner at home. At certain hours in the day " before morning school, at midday, and after four o'clock " these narrow streets become full of screaming, running, shouting children. Early in the morning men come from every door and pass out of sight. At different times during the evening the same men straggle home again. At all other hours the street is quiet and desperately dull. Less ultra-respectable neighbourhoods may have a certain picturesqueness, or give a sense of community of interest or of careless comradeship, with their untidy women chatting in the doorways and their unoccupied men lounging at the street corners; but in these superior streets a kind of dull aloofness seems to be the order of the day (3).
The houses are outwardly decent--two stories of grimy brick. The roadway is narrow, but on the whole well kept, and on the pavement outside many doors there is to be noticed, in a greater or less condition of freshness, a semicircle of hearthstone, which has for its radius the length of the housewife's arm as she kneels on the step. In some streets little paved alleyways lead behind the front row of houses, and twist and turn among still smaller dwellings at the back " dwellings where the front door leads downwards into a room instead of upwards into a passage. Districts of this kind cover dreary acres--the same little two-story house, with or without an inconceivably drearier basement, with the same kind of baker's shop at the corner faced by the same kind of greengrocer's shop opposite. The ugly, constantly-recurring school buildings are a relief to the spirit oppressed by the awful monotony (4-5).
The description of the study, and social experiment, is fairly astonishing in its matter-of-fact summation of widespread desperate poverty that hopefully we will never return to:
A sum of money was placed at the disposal of this committee in order to enable them to study the effect on mother and child of sufficient nourishment before and after birth. Access was obtained to the list of out-patients of a well-known lying in hospital; names and addresses of expectant mothers were taken from the list, and a couple of visitors were instructed to undertake the weekly task of seeing each woman in her own home, supplying the nourishment, and noting the effects. From as long as three months before birth, if possible, till the child was a year old, the visits were to continue. The committee decided that the wives of men receiving over 26s. a week were likely to have already sufficient nourishment, while the wives of men out of work or receiving less than i8s. a week were likely to be living in a state of such misery that the temptation to let the rest of the family share in the mother's and baby's nourishment would be too great (8).
As if that weren't bad enough, they were in for another unexpected surprise when actually faced with the realities of people's lives:
It was at first proposed to rule out disease, but pulmonary and respiratory disease were found to be so common that to rule them out would be to refuse about half the cases. It was therefore decided to regard such a condition of health as normal, and to refuse only such cases of active or malignant disease in the parents as might, in the doctor's opinion, completely wreck the child's chance of a healthy life (9).
And to me unsurprisingly, but to them, busy checking and rechecking the honesty of their subjects (because so much of this book is about middle-class prejudices, though I give them credit for overcoming them to an impressive extent in understanding at least the objective conditions faced by working families):
the budgets have borne out each other in the most striking manner. There seems to be so little choice in the manner of keeping a family on 2os. a week (12).
There are some great little sections of immense detail -- hinting at the riches held in the actual archives:
Emma, aged eleven, began as follows: "Mr G's wages was 19 bob out of that e took thruppons for es diner witch is not mutch e bein sutch a arty man. The rent was six and Mrs G payed fower an six because Bobby's boots was off is feet and his knew ones was one an six witch makes six and that leaves 12 an 9 and out of that," etc. It took four pages of painstaking manuscript in a school exercise-book to complete one week (14).
And even these judgmental and haughty women could be humbled -- and acknowledged it:
The women who kept their accounts for themselves were found to be better arithmeticians than they were writers. Their addition had a disconcerting way of being correct, even when the visitor seemed to get a different total (14).
There is also some level of self-awareness here, of the intrusion such a study represents and the cost born by the working women involved:
At the beginning of each case the woman seemed to steel herself to sit patiently and bear it while the expected questions or teaching of something should follow (16).
Read the rest here.
February 10, 2017
This book, published in 1913, is truly outstanding, and by the original definition of the word "outstanding". Which means that such a thing (book or not) "stands out" among others of its kind. And in this book Maud Pember Reeves did something that truly stood out. Over the prior century many, many books and articles had been published in Britain about the household economies of "the poor," at first tut-tutting over the perceived inability of "the poor" to responsibly manage their cash outlays and then only bit-by-bit admitting that "the poor" were really fellow human beings with claims on middle and upper-class empathy. Maud Pember Reeves comes at the end of a long line of busybody, middle and upper-class authors of censorious tractates thrown at the heads of the poor like grenades. But Reeves does it right. Reeves has obviously read and learned. And for Reeves "the poor" are members of the same species to which she belongs, worthy of the same serious, understated attention and concern as real nieces or nephews. In the history of British minds and attitudes, this was a truly vast improvement.
Yet this book deserves more than praise. It set off in my own mind a series of linked thoughts that I believe should be noted. For any of you out there with more (not much more, but more) than an inkling about the "progress" of our species over the past three or four thousand years, Reeves' work prompts what used to be called "home thoughts" but now could be characterized as reflections on whatever moral progress the human race has made in its recorded history. And Reeves' book does this prompting by pointing up the contrast with its predecessors and focusing our attention once again on those predecessors, as well as on ourselves today.
It would appear that for the great balance of human history it was impossible for almost all people to expand the realm of their own and their families' humanity to include even the majority of the people around them. Paleo-anthropologists have theorized that we evolved to live in extended groups of from 150-225 people, and, if so, all others would not have been "people". It would be very interesting indeed to read a work devoted to investigating the sense of self and other in the ancient world, and the extent to which, if at all, the great religions in any way expanded this sense of humanity.
Until quite recent times, though, extensive, personal self-definitions of "humanity" were few and far between. And there has always been a continuing, rear-guard struggle against the inclusive formulae of documents such as the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration des Droits de l'Homme. The push for larger and larger definitions of humanity has accelerated, however, over the past century, and is responsible for significant changes in views of different races, genders, ethnicities, religions, sexual preferences, etc., etc. We owe a lot to many people like Maud Pember Reeves who have bravely lived up to their own high standards of inclusiveness. May there continue to be many such.
Yet this book deserves more than praise. It set off in my own mind a series of linked thoughts that I believe should be noted. For any of you out there with more (not much more, but more) than an inkling about the "progress" of our species over the past three or four thousand years, Reeves' work prompts what used to be called "home thoughts" but now could be characterized as reflections on whatever moral progress the human race has made in its recorded history. And Reeves' book does this prompting by pointing up the contrast with its predecessors and focusing our attention once again on those predecessors, as well as on ourselves today.
It would appear that for the great balance of human history it was impossible for almost all people to expand the realm of their own and their families' humanity to include even the majority of the people around them. Paleo-anthropologists have theorized that we evolved to live in extended groups of from 150-225 people, and, if so, all others would not have been "people". It would be very interesting indeed to read a work devoted to investigating the sense of self and other in the ancient world, and the extent to which, if at all, the great religions in any way expanded this sense of humanity.
Until quite recent times, though, extensive, personal self-definitions of "humanity" were few and far between. And there has always been a continuing, rear-guard struggle against the inclusive formulae of documents such as the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration des Droits de l'Homme. The push for larger and larger definitions of humanity has accelerated, however, over the past century, and is responsible for significant changes in views of different races, genders, ethnicities, religions, sexual preferences, etc., etc. We owe a lot to many people like Maud Pember Reeves who have bravely lived up to their own high standards of inclusiveness. May there continue to be many such.
November 20, 2015
Book describes the lives of working class families living on - you guessed it from the title - a pound a week between 1909 and 1913.
This book hits back at people who say the poor should manage their money back and feed their kids better. The classic example is porridge - there was a big campaign by well meaning middle classes to try and get more people to eat porridge. What they failed to note was that although oats were affordable to the families in this book, milk and the gas to heat the porridge was not. (Jamie Oliver take note).
The families in the study are not destitute but are the working class. The book is written by a Fabian woman and many of the issues she brings up, like a living wage, are still relevant today. So is the stigmatisation of those in poverty.
There are some parts of this that are really interesting. I live in Lambeth and am familiar with the streets that form the basis of this study. However, there are a lot of lists and tables which I skimmed over.
This book hits back at people who say the poor should manage their money back and feed their kids better. The classic example is porridge - there was a big campaign by well meaning middle classes to try and get more people to eat porridge. What they failed to note was that although oats were affordable to the families in this book, milk and the gas to heat the porridge was not. (Jamie Oliver take note).
The families in the study are not destitute but are the working class. The book is written by a Fabian woman and many of the issues she brings up, like a living wage, are still relevant today. So is the stigmatisation of those in poverty.
There are some parts of this that are really interesting. I live in Lambeth and am familiar with the streets that form the basis of this study. However, there are a lot of lists and tables which I skimmed over.
September 29, 2013
This simple little book should be compulsory reading for anyone feeling sorry for themselves because they are short of money - Less than 100 years ago respectable people with a reasonable steady job living in Lambeth area would have to be able to keep a family - maybe with 6- 8 children on round about a pound a week. But the most shocking part of it was that over 5% of each week's money had to go on Burial Insurance - because if even the tiniest child had to be buried in a paupers grave the breadwinner had to be declared bankrupt and would be unlikely to ever find work again.
The group of Fabian women who did this research described their visits to Lambeth as a"plunge into Hades" but their findings at least created some understanding of the poor people - and a realisation that these people were not wastrels - they were wonderful money managers!
The group of Fabian women who did this research described their visits to Lambeth as a"plunge into Hades" but their findings at least created some understanding of the poor people - and a realisation that these people were not wastrels - they were wonderful money managers!
February 28, 2011
Written in 1913 as the result of what we would now call an intensive round of social work and -observation among working-class families in Lambeth, London, "Round About a Pound a Week" offers a shocking insight in the daily lives of the not-even-very-poor in early twentieth-century England. We are shown the remarkable ingenuity of women in stretching the 20 weekly shillings coming in, the nonsensical advice of well meaning middle-class 'visitors' - advising the women to buy fresh milk, not realizing that a four pence a quart, fresh milk is an unaffordable luxury - and the ever-present spectre of child mortality: with well over one in four children dying of malnutrition or disease, more often than not caused by cramped unhygienic housing. All this, in a relatively dispassionate register makes for confrontational reading, leading to the sense that there is more to our past than meets the eye.
May 28, 2021
Sure this is the first of many Persephone Books as they have kindly relocated to Bath.
Effectively an epidemiological report following many families surviving with little money in Lambeth.
Talks of budgeting, infant mortality, family dynamics, work, living conditions. I loved going back to the early 1900s and Maud Reeves writes so well to create perfect imagery of the families. Clever study design using not the poorest hard working families but still very hard up hard-working families who are still very much struggling. Plenty still rings true today in terms of class divides. In 1912 lower class paid 1/3 wages on (very poor accommodation), as move up classes smaller proportion (1/8 in middle-upper class) of wages goes on much better accommodation - this disproportionality still happens. Fascinating and sad.
Effectively an epidemiological report following many families surviving with little money in Lambeth.
Talks of budgeting, infant mortality, family dynamics, work, living conditions. I loved going back to the early 1900s and Maud Reeves writes so well to create perfect imagery of the families. Clever study design using not the poorest hard working families but still very hard up hard-working families who are still very much struggling. Plenty still rings true today in terms of class divides. In 1912 lower class paid 1/3 wages on (very poor accommodation), as move up classes smaller proportion (1/8 in middle-upper class) of wages goes on much better accommodation - this disproportionality still happens. Fascinating and sad.
February 7, 2009
Brilliant, contemporary social history. A Fabian Society project to chronicle the lives of working class families surviving, barely, on wages of one pound a week. These were not the poorest of families, having a breadwinner with a respectable and reliable job. Yet these were below subsistence wages. The unspoken question is - how do the poorer families survive?
Alongside The Classic Slum as an illuminating study from first hand of the lives of poor people in the early 20th century,
Alongside The Classic Slum as an illuminating study from first hand of the lives of poor people in the early 20th century,
January 11, 2020
A surprisingly great read! A poverty survey first published around 1912 that still seems hugely relevant today. The argument for a living wage. The need to center policy on the well-being of children. And so much more. I loved this thought-provoking book.
July 9, 2020
An excellent read, all the more shocking for the fact that it is as relevant today as in 1911.
February 9, 2025
3.5. This is essentially the British version of How the Other Half Lives. The Fabian Society visited a group of families in the early 1900s, and reported on how they managed households on £1 or less. What they ate, how many rooms they had, how their children were doing, all described here. It's an interesting historical document as it gives a snapshot of the time period and how the poor were doing, the going cost of items, etc. But what is distressing is that, over 100 years since, the attitudes against the poor are pretty much the same.
March 2, 2020
I have some history with this fantastic book. I first bought it 26 years ago after it was reissued by Virago and reviewed in the Observer by the wonderful writer Penelope Fitzgerald. I kept the review inside the book. Coming for a working class, South London family I knew I would find the content interesting. I skimmed through it and then it languished in my book collection until two weeks ago when I came upon it by chance. This reintroduction delighted me because it collided with my current research into my family history. My family were routed in Lambeth and adjoining areas during the period of Maude Pember Reeve's study, and living in similar circumstances to the families in Round About a Pound a Week. That I rediscovered this book by accident at a time when I was actively searching for background information about the working poor in Lambeth was very exciting for me. I have been given a detailed look into the world of my great-grand parents. This book took me beyond the bare facts of the 1901 and 1911 Census and showed me how my family survived.
From the back of my copy: "From 1909 to 1913, undaunted by the proposition that a 'bi-weekly visit to Lambeth s like a plunge into Hades', the Fabian Women's Group recorded the daily budgets of thirty families there....We learn about family life, births, marriages and deaths; of grinding work carried out on a diet of little more than bread, jam and margarine...how they washed, cooked, cleaned, scrimped for furniture and clothes, saved for all too frequent burials..." Mrs R (as she was known by the families she visited) writes in a straight forward manner but always with respect and tenderness. There is no moralising or judgement in her descriptions or recounting of conversations. This may be the most outstanding aspect of this work. In the early 1900s the educated middle class were apt to look upon the working poor as projects for betterment because they were incompetent at life. Many believed that the high rate of infant death was owing to negligent mothering and that the poor needed to be coerced into either adjusting their expectations of having children or changing their whole outlook on parenting and nutrition. Mrs R debunks all of these prejudices and trumpets the hard work and loving care displayed by the families in the study. She and her colleagues have nothing but respect for these women. It is so refreshing to read such an open-minded account written during a time when the working poor were constantly reviled or dismissed.
The families in the study were chosen from a list of those registered at a local hospital and expecting a child. Mothers were given 5/- a week for the three months prior to birth and the first 12 months of the new baby's life to supplement the purchase of food. The babies were also weighed regularly and the family visited by a doctor who was a colleague of Mrs. R in the Fabian Women's Group. In return, mothers kept accounts of their weekly expenditures which allowed the group to study the struggles of shelter, food and clothing on a very restricted budget. Venturing into the "Hades" of Lambeth on a regular basis meant that the group were able to see for themselves the conditions in which these families struggled. The report debunks all the myths of poor mothering and drunken wastrel parenting and reveals a society of caring, hard working, exhausted women who give everything to their families and die young for their troubles. A Lambeth mother's working day would often start at 4.30 am, when she got up to prepare her husband's breakfast and not end until 10.30 when everyone was in bed. My own great-grandmother, raising a family of four during this period, died at 45. She buried two husbands and one child and during the interlude between her second and third husbands (by whom she had a further two children) had to resort to the Workhouse. Working class women could not survive without a male income however paltry.
Maude Pember Reeves and the Fabian Women's Group made a case for the State as joint guardian of England's children. As stated by Penny Alexander in her introduction "The solution in the eyes of the Fabian Women was the "State Endowment of Motherhood"". In other words, if women were unable to earn a living wage, and were dependent on men for their family's sustenance, the State should give the women a wage to guarantee the health of their children and protect them from the vagaries and insecurities of working class men's wages. This was the Welfare State vision. Anyone who challenges or criticises our obligation to protect those who need assistance should read Mrs. R.
Gawd, how I wish I could meet Maud Pember Reeves.
From the back of my copy: "From 1909 to 1913, undaunted by the proposition that a 'bi-weekly visit to Lambeth s like a plunge into Hades', the Fabian Women's Group recorded the daily budgets of thirty families there....We learn about family life, births, marriages and deaths; of grinding work carried out on a diet of little more than bread, jam and margarine...how they washed, cooked, cleaned, scrimped for furniture and clothes, saved for all too frequent burials..." Mrs R (as she was known by the families she visited) writes in a straight forward manner but always with respect and tenderness. There is no moralising or judgement in her descriptions or recounting of conversations. This may be the most outstanding aspect of this work. In the early 1900s the educated middle class were apt to look upon the working poor as projects for betterment because they were incompetent at life. Many believed that the high rate of infant death was owing to negligent mothering and that the poor needed to be coerced into either adjusting their expectations of having children or changing their whole outlook on parenting and nutrition. Mrs R debunks all of these prejudices and trumpets the hard work and loving care displayed by the families in the study. She and her colleagues have nothing but respect for these women. It is so refreshing to read such an open-minded account written during a time when the working poor were constantly reviled or dismissed.
The families in the study were chosen from a list of those registered at a local hospital and expecting a child. Mothers were given 5/- a week for the three months prior to birth and the first 12 months of the new baby's life to supplement the purchase of food. The babies were also weighed regularly and the family visited by a doctor who was a colleague of Mrs. R in the Fabian Women's Group. In return, mothers kept accounts of their weekly expenditures which allowed the group to study the struggles of shelter, food and clothing on a very restricted budget. Venturing into the "Hades" of Lambeth on a regular basis meant that the group were able to see for themselves the conditions in which these families struggled. The report debunks all the myths of poor mothering and drunken wastrel parenting and reveals a society of caring, hard working, exhausted women who give everything to their families and die young for their troubles. A Lambeth mother's working day would often start at 4.30 am, when she got up to prepare her husband's breakfast and not end until 10.30 when everyone was in bed. My own great-grandmother, raising a family of four during this period, died at 45. She buried two husbands and one child and during the interlude between her second and third husbands (by whom she had a further two children) had to resort to the Workhouse. Working class women could not survive without a male income however paltry.
Maude Pember Reeves and the Fabian Women's Group made a case for the State as joint guardian of England's children. As stated by Penny Alexander in her introduction "The solution in the eyes of the Fabian Women was the "State Endowment of Motherhood"". In other words, if women were unable to earn a living wage, and were dependent on men for their family's sustenance, the State should give the women a wage to guarantee the health of their children and protect them from the vagaries and insecurities of working class men's wages. This was the Welfare State vision. Anyone who challenges or criticises our obligation to protect those who need assistance should read Mrs. R.
Gawd, how I wish I could meet Maud Pember Reeves.
October 15, 2020
Often harrowing, this book should be read by anyone as a corrective to the romanticised world of period drama. The area identified for their study by a group of Fabian women is around Kennington and Lambeth, even then, not the cheapest areas of London. Maud Pember Reeves examines their reasons for remaining in an area of high rents, in accommodation so cramped, a woman who'd just given birth would have to share a bed with her husband and the previous baby.
'The question is often asked, why the people live where they do ? Why do they not live in a district where rents are cheaper, and spend more on tram fares ? ...Balancing house prices and transport costs is a familiar issue still... Also, ' Strange as it may seem, to those whose bi-weekly visit to Lambeth is like a plunge into Hades, the strongest argument for remaining in the area would be defined now as social support, the economic and social benefits of kinship and community support for anybody facing income loss or illness.
One resourceful mother of seven solved the problem of overcrowding and high rents be getting a Duchy of Cornwall tenancy. . When work was slack, Mrs. C. simply did not pay the rent at all. As she said: “The Prince er Wales, ’e don’t want our little bits of sticks, and ’e won’t sell us up if we keeps the place a credit to ’im.”
Reading any work of economic and social history, wages and prices need to be placed in context. When this book was published, in 1913, ' Round About A Pound A Week' was the average wage for a working man in London. Measuring Worth indicates a 2020 income equivalent of about £388 -
- The people whose lives form the subject of this 1913 book aren't the poorest in London, but their budgets for food and housing contrast dramatically with the last book I reviewed - Cassell's 1912 Household Guide, written for the aspirational and secure middle classes. The Cassell's Guide advises that no woman need spend more than 4s on a pair of gloves. At the same time, one single mother in Lambeth with three children had only 2s 2d to spend on food for herself and the children.
'The question is often asked, why the people live where they do ? Why do they not live in a district where rents are cheaper, and spend more on tram fares ? ...Balancing house prices and transport costs is a familiar issue still... Also, ' Strange as it may seem, to those whose bi-weekly visit to Lambeth is like a plunge into Hades, the strongest argument for remaining in the area would be defined now as social support, the economic and social benefits of kinship and community support for anybody facing income loss or illness.
One resourceful mother of seven solved the problem of overcrowding and high rents be getting a Duchy of Cornwall tenancy. . When work was slack, Mrs. C. simply did not pay the rent at all. As she said: “The Prince er Wales, ’e don’t want our little bits of sticks, and ’e won’t sell us up if we keeps the place a credit to ’im.”
Reading any work of economic and social history, wages and prices need to be placed in context. When this book was published, in 1913, ' Round About A Pound A Week' was the average wage for a working man in London. Measuring Worth indicates a 2020 income equivalent of about £388 -
- The people whose lives form the subject of this 1913 book aren't the poorest in London, but their budgets for food and housing contrast dramatically with the last book I reviewed - Cassell's 1912 Household Guide, written for the aspirational and secure middle classes. The Cassell's Guide advises that no woman need spend more than 4s on a pair of gloves. At the same time, one single mother in Lambeth with three children had only 2s 2d to spend on food for herself and the children.
January 24, 2017
This book discusses the findings of a study on poor families in the years before WWI. Participants who were expecting babies were given a little extra nourishment for the mother and baby. Part of the point of the study was to see the extent to which this assistance improved the health of the baby compared to the babies of families in similar circumstances without this assistance. Most of the point ended up being simply examining the lives of these families by visiting them once a week and asking the women to keep weekly budget records. The families were chosen on the basis of possessing an income just outside the limit where the extra nourishment for mother and baby might not, by necessity, be shared among the rest of the family. More than that, this meant that the families are ideal for the points Pember Reeves wants to make about poverty. These are the steady, respectable poor who use every penny as well as they know how to use it, and still live a life of grinding stress and malnourishment. They are the poor who are supposed not to exist because if they were so steady and respectable then surely they wouldn't be quite so poor. Pember Reeves explains their lives and the implications in a very clear, sensible way. She goes into some of the ways in which these families don't do what the self-righteous middle classes would have them do, and the ways in which advice is often irrelevant to their circumstances. She also goes into some of the ways in which the families would do better to ignore the promptings of respectability, feeling that women who abandon the hopeless battle for cleanliness against overcrowding and insufficient materials have more energy for more important things. Many readers would probably prefer not to get too bogged down in the budgets but this is still a fascinating read. It has the interest of human lives of another era, the same but different, and it is good to see political argument made, on the whole, so sensible and inarguable, flowing on so naturally from the practical details.
September 21, 2022
Interesting Study of Poverty
In depth study of maternal and infant health and family dynamics from 100 years ago. The husbands were all working full time, in steady, permanent jobs, AND still, they and their families starved. Most interesting was the sum allowance per child in the orphanages was 4d/per day… but a family of 6, and, often 8, was making do on 8d/ each family every week!
It was found there was little drinking, and very little smoking… these items are extraneous when you are starving… but one man discovered, when his wife took ill the true lack of food. He had to borrow double to purchase margarine, because he thought his wife was always as generous. The man, an ex-soldier, had lost a full stone since marriage and children! But, he was not away his wife and children starved, to keep him fed well enough to work, and even still, he was underweight!
It was noted that living arrangements played a HUGE factor in infant and child welfare and mortality. Sufficient light and air, and less crowding greatly increased survival, even at the cost of less food. Too often, we think, well, there are four kids, two boys, two girls, so there must be three bedrooms, one for Dad and Mom, one for the boys, and another for the girls. That isn’t possible, because first, housing is more expensive by the week, but also, furniture, bedding and clothing. Keep in mind, the husbands all worked full time at good wages, right around what we think of as minimum wage now.
It is amazing to me that with all the food available today, and without a fraction of the infant mortality, our children are so poorly nourished today. Junk food is cheap and abundant today. It is killing us. Our government tries to control our housing, and our food, but, we don’t have hard working husbands, stay at home moms and five, seven, even nine children now. We have one or two children, with now parents, but child care workers, and donuts and candy, but no vegetables. These poor workers had it hard, but they had it better.
In depth study of maternal and infant health and family dynamics from 100 years ago. The husbands were all working full time, in steady, permanent jobs, AND still, they and their families starved. Most interesting was the sum allowance per child in the orphanages was 4d/per day… but a family of 6, and, often 8, was making do on 8d/ each family every week!
It was found there was little drinking, and very little smoking… these items are extraneous when you are starving… but one man discovered, when his wife took ill the true lack of food. He had to borrow double to purchase margarine, because he thought his wife was always as generous. The man, an ex-soldier, had lost a full stone since marriage and children! But, he was not away his wife and children starved, to keep him fed well enough to work, and even still, he was underweight!
It was noted that living arrangements played a HUGE factor in infant and child welfare and mortality. Sufficient light and air, and less crowding greatly increased survival, even at the cost of less food. Too often, we think, well, there are four kids, two boys, two girls, so there must be three bedrooms, one for Dad and Mom, one for the boys, and another for the girls. That isn’t possible, because first, housing is more expensive by the week, but also, furniture, bedding and clothing. Keep in mind, the husbands all worked full time at good wages, right around what we think of as minimum wage now.
It is amazing to me that with all the food available today, and without a fraction of the infant mortality, our children are so poorly nourished today. Junk food is cheap and abundant today. It is killing us. Our government tries to control our housing, and our food, but, we don’t have hard working husbands, stay at home moms and five, seven, even nine children now. We have one or two children, with now parents, but child care workers, and donuts and candy, but no vegetables. These poor workers had it hard, but they had it better.
June 3, 2013
A fascinating, memorable, remarkably readable and rather important book.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Fabians had the astonishing idea that they might actually do some research instead of just finger wagging at the financially struggling for their poor management. During home nurse visits after childbirth, they nosed into people's living arrangements and finances and - perhaps more critically - into why people made the financial choices they did - from whether to risk moving in search of better work to getting the most out of the soap budget.
Their study included mostly families in more or less regular work, making near a pound a week - a group that turns out to include not just the equivalent of modern minimum wage jobs but a policeman and people in the skilled trades. Compared to Mayhew, RAaPaW is more recent and more rigorous, but also more narrowly focused on a slightly higher end of the wage spectrum.
As you might expect, Round About a Pound a Week is helpful in understanding both period history and literature. What may be less obvious is its relevance to modern discussions of social and economic policy (or the extent of the parallels to findings of modern case studies like Portfolios of the Poor).
At the turn of the 20th century, the Fabians had the astonishing idea that they might actually do some research instead of just finger wagging at the financially struggling for their poor management. During home nurse visits after childbirth, they nosed into people's living arrangements and finances and - perhaps more critically - into why people made the financial choices they did - from whether to risk moving in search of better work to getting the most out of the soap budget.
Their study included mostly families in more or less regular work, making near a pound a week - a group that turns out to include not just the equivalent of modern minimum wage jobs but a policeman and people in the skilled trades. Compared to Mayhew, RAaPaW is more recent and more rigorous, but also more narrowly focused on a slightly higher end of the wage spectrum.
As you might expect, Round About a Pound a Week is helpful in understanding both period history and literature. What may be less obvious is its relevance to modern discussions of social and economic policy (or the extent of the parallels to findings of modern case studies like Portfolios of the Poor).
October 15, 2009
This book was great! It was laid out really simply, was easy to understand. I'm really impressed at how readable it was -- this type of prose is not really what you expect from 1911, but if it wasn't for the references to shillings, and the horrendous living conditions, you'd think it was much more recent. It was also a bit like reading 'Few eggs, no oranges' in that while it documented some absolutely amazingly awful conditions, you had a lot of respect for the people coping with them. This book was written to make the point that at the time it was written, a man working full time on the accepted minimum wage (many men earned less) could not feed and keep a family in healthy conditions -- it just wasn't possible. I suspect we might need a modern Maud Pember Reeves to shock people out of our comfortable assumptions -- the prologue points out that at no point since the period Reeves chronicles have living standards at the bottom of the scale in the UK been as bad as they are now. I really don't like to think how NZ measures up.
November 28, 2014
A compelling account of research done by the Fabian Society in Edwardian London, the narratives of respectable working poor families in Lambeth -it is clear to see despite often the parents best efforts their children are underfed, under housed and I sufficiently clothed; the children suffer more than the adults, and that's saying something when looking at the life of the mother, who often stays in doors because she goes without shoes. The distress of the chapter about burial insurance - child bereavement is high. Comparing childrens diet with those in the workhouse - the workhouse is better, children receive fresh milk. The laws that hinder rather than help, to be remembered that parliament is full of privileged men, and the vote is men of a certain class upwards. No wonder when we reach WWI so any are unfit. It is a compelling read and I wish I could discuss this with both my East End Grandmothers,
June 29, 2022
It's a sobering thought that the issues raised by Pember Reeves in this early twentieth-century survey of the working poor in South London remain unresolved. When well-heeled politicians attempt to prove that it is possible to subsist on less than the minimum wage, they exclude from consideration the cost of replacing worn-out footwear, outworn clothes, steeply rising utility bills and transport costs. The sole significant difference is that we are now more likely to be exercised by the cost of living than the cost of dying. This sympathetic detailed survey offers a robust defence of the much maligned subjects from the charge of fecklessness or mismanagement of their meagre income. My only misgivings concern the phonetic rendering of the participants' use of nonstandard English, indicating the cultural separation of the middle-class investigators from their working-class informants.
March 16, 2013
It was very interesting to read about the terrible living conditions for the working poor in the early 1900s. The working poor today are not so very different today, I think, with one great exception, at least in most first-world countries excluding America - there is no constant threat of bankruptcy for medical reasons, because healthcare is provided by all, for all.
I would be very interested to know what an equivalent wage to the £1 a week would be in today's money. And not just a direct conversion, because the prices of goods and services are different now too, and there aren't things like cost of healthcare to be considered.
I would be very interested to know what an equivalent wage to the £1 a week would be in today's money. And not just a direct conversion, because the prices of goods and services are different now too, and there aren't things like cost of healthcare to be considered.
January 12, 2010
v thought provoking. They survived or at least existed on only just a little more than my little part time job brings in. with families twice sometimes 3 times the size of mine. makes me appreciate what we have a little more, not just money but time and space as well. The book comes to the conclusion that to improve the well-being of children some kind of allawance paid by the state is required, a quick google search, and we can see that they started to pay Family Allowance, now child benefit, in around 1945 just 30 years after the study was carried out!
September 2, 2016
Shortly before the First World War, the Fabian Women's Group investigated the conditions of working-class families in Lambeth, and found them sleeping four to a bed, with a baby in a banana crate and mice on the clothes line. By analysing the tiny budgets of railway-carriage washers and feather-cleaners' assistants, its report refuted the idea that the poor were habitually improvident, and made a powerful case for the minimum wage. Children of the decimal age may be daunted by some of the tables, but the accompanying case studies are fascinating, touching and occasionally even funny.
March 29, 2019
Everyone should read this telling document of social history. At the beginning of the last century vast swathes of the population worked in towns and cities earning ‘around about a pound a week’. The author details in blunt terms how it is impossible to raise a healthy family on this amount. And she is not shy with her criticism of all the do-gooders who think they could better and who brand these families as feckless spendthrifts. The birth of socialism and the recognition of the importance of women are important themes here too. Eye-opening.
April 3, 2019
Fascinating report from 1913 detailing the outgoings of a group of families living on an old pound (or less) a week over a series of months and years. The rigour, coupled with a clear empathy and calls for action, are the more poignant when one considers that the same misconceptions and prejudices highlighted by the author are still touted about those living in poverty/reliant on welfare today.
May 10, 2020
A telling account of the life of the working class poor in Lambeth in the early part of the 20th Century. Based upon the studies of families in regular employment the book demonstrates just how difficult it was to: pay the rent and feed and cloth a family on around a pound a week. The result was that many had less food than that recommended for children in the workhouse.
March 7, 2018
Fascinating social history, with little judgement of its subjects. Descriptive rather than prescriptive, with a lot of individual detail. As it is quite old, all figures were given in £.s.d. which I do not understand but this only slightly affected my enjoyment of the book.
Read
August 28, 2010Can be compared to Nickled and Dimed
but set in England a century earlier.
Fascinating and persuasive.
but set in England a century earlier.
Fascinating and persuasive.
October 17, 2013
A very good book for all the social historians and those doing family trees. how the housewives of the early 1900's managed on a pound a week.
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