Agricultural History Review, Volume 60 Part 2 (2012), p. 317

Fifty-five years ago, in an article in The Amateur Historian, Eric Hobsbawm, aware that friendly societies constituted the largest and most representative working-class organization in Victorian Britain, called on local historians to rectify their neglect by professionals. Few local historians have answered the call but, in this volume, Shaun Morley, in publishing a detailed annotated list of 755 Oxfordshire friendly societies, has more than risen to the challenge.

Using a wide range of sources, Morley provides the basic facts for each town or village club: the date established or first recorded; the date dissolved or last known to exist; the club headquarters, usually a public house; the anniversary or feast day; minimum and maximum age at entry; membership figures for certain years; and a list of primary sources.

The primary sources identified are almost solely the manuscript or printed rule books amongst the Quarter Sessions records at the Oxfordshire History Centre or those submitted to the Registrar of Friendly Societies now in the National Archives. Unfortunately very few collections of records of individual societies appear to have survived in the county, and only a couple of these include membership and minute books. Membership books are an invaluable resource, particularly for rural history, with information on occupations and fluctuations in membership figures reflecting economic and social change and, where annual address lists are given, they provide a unique source for mobility. In his most useful, if too short, introduction Morley draws on the membership list of Stonesfield Friendly Society in 1881, which records over 45 per cent of the members as agricultural workers and 29 per cent as craftsmen, representing a high proportion of the villagers in these occupations. Similar figures are likely to have been the norm in village societies across the county.

The organizations recorded in this volume range from short-lived ‘slate clubs’ established at public houses and other societies that divided their funds periodically between members, through well-supported independent village clubs and branches of affiliated orders, such as the Oddfellows or Foresters, to the less successful county societies promoted by the county elite. Some of the organizations, including the Banbury Hail Storm Assurance Association and the Subscription Fire Engine Society, are out of place in a calendar that should be confined to societies that provided sickness and funeral benefits in return for regular subscriptions.

The volume has a number of useful appendices including a glossary, many extracts – largely from newspapers – of court cases, dishonesty and other disputes relating to friendly societies, and a list of 266 musical bands that were the essential ingredient of the club feast day. The development of the brass band movement, as much a feature of the village as the industrial town, owed much to the great expansion of friendly societies from the late 1830s.

There are a few minor errors, such as the wrong membership figures for the entry on p. 82, and the presentation would have been clearer if the place names had been in a larger and bolder font. However this is an important contribution to the study of friendly societies and it is to be hoped that it will lead to a fuller analysis of Oxfordshire societies and the publication of similar lists for other counties.