Note 38 — Chapter I

Articles of Agreement made and confirmed by a Society of Taylors, begun March 25, 1760 (London, 1812). In 1790 Francis Place joined the Breeches Makers’ Benefit Society “for the support of the members when sick and their burial when dead”—its real object being to support the members “in a strike for wages” (Life of Francis Place, by Professor Graham Wallas, new edition, 1918). Local friendly societies giving sick pay and providing for funeral expenses had sprung up all over England during the eighteenth century. Towards its close their number seems to have rapidly increased until, in some parts at any rate, every village ale-house became a centre for one or more of these humble and spontaneous organisations. The rules of upwards of a hundred of these societies, dating between 1750 and 1820, and all centred round Newcastle-on-Tyne, are preserved in the British Museum. At Nottingham, in 1794, fifty-six of these clubs joined in the annual procession (Nottingham Journal, June 14, 1794). So long as they were composed indiscriminately of men of all trades, it is probable that no distinctively Trade Union action could arise from their meetings. But in some cases, for various reasons, such as high contributions, migratory habits, or the danger of the calling, the sick and burial club was confined to men of a particular trade. This kind of friendly society frequently became a Trade Union. Some societies of this type can trace their existence for nearly a century and a half. The Glasgow coopers, for instance, have had a local trade friendly society, confined to journeymen coopers, ever since 1752. The London Sailmakers Burial Society dates from 1740. The Newcastle shoemakers established a similar society as early as 1719 (Observations upon the Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the laws respecting Friendly Societies, by the Rev. J. T. Becher, Prebendary of Southwell, 1826). On the occurrence of any dispute with the employers their funds, as this contemporary observer in another pamphlet deplores, “have also too frequently been converted into engines of abuse by paying weekly sums to artisans out of work, and have thereby encouraged combinations among workmen not less injurious to the misguided members than to the Public Weal” (Observations on the Rise and Progress of Friendly Societies, 1824, p. 55). Similar friendly societies among workmen of particular trades appear to have existed in the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where they perhaps bridged the gap between the mediæval fraternities and the modern Trade Unions (see review in the English Historical Review, October 1918, of P. J. Blok’s Geschiedenes einer Hollandischen Stad).