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‘With a Fiery Fervour’: The Role of Working-class Women in Municipal Welfare, Croydon, 1900-39.
| During the first decades of the twentieth century municipal welfare structures were in flux. The impact of poverty on national well-being was increasingly recognised, but measures to solve these problems were contested. Whilst legislation put pressure on local councils to resolve these issues locally, municipalities sought to mitigate their responsibilities by drawing on a mix of philanthropic and civic provision. In this arena voluntary self-help associations flourished. The role of middle-class women in the development and implementation of local welfare systems has been acknowledged within the historiography, but the role of working-class women is less well recognised. However the opportunity for civil society organisations to help meet welfare needs allowed, it is argued, scope for working-class women to achieve an influence that had hitherto been denied them. During the interwar years these public spaces narrowed; there was a gradual shift away from the voluntary and local, to more centralized and professionally managed forms of support. Ultimately these changes had a detrimental effect on working-class women’s capacity to retain their voice in civic policy formation and implementation.
These processes are illuminated through an exploration of Croydon between 1900 and 1939. Despite the predominantly middle-class nature of the affluent Borough there were areas of considerable poverty. Consequently the pressing need for social services did begin to make inroads into the civic consciousness, and increasingly schemes for the amelioration of deprivation were promoted by bodies such as the Poor Law Guardians, the Croydon Guild of Help, the Croydon Council for Social Service and the Croydon Mothers and Infants Welfare Association. Working-class women made a significant contribution to these bodies. Through their involvement in networks of faith, suffrage and philanthropy these activists transcended barriers of party and class and proved adept at promoting collective approaches that were instrumental in bringing about changes in the social conditions for working-class families within the Borough.
This paper will trace these approaches through an exploration of the network of working-class women who were prominent figures in Croydon civil society between 1900 and 1939. It will assess the impact of their policies, and the pressure this activism had on shaping the welfare agenda in the Borough. More specifically it will consider how this female political culture, and the way these women represented themselves, evolved over the period, and the impact this had on the range and scope of their public participation.
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