Friendly societies for beginners

What is a friendly society?

Friendly societies are mutual aid organisations designed to help people protect themselves against hardship. The idea of friendly societies goes back at least as far as the seventeenth century. They were seen as a solution to the problems people and their families knew they would face should they fall ill or die leaving their children or spouse with limited resources. The friendly societies movement grew as new towns and industries developed in the nineteenth century and people found it difficult to rely on village communities. State provision for the poor included the threat of the workhouse.

Workers regarded friendly societies as a means of reducing their chances of ending their days there. At first, many societies were locally based groups. Each month members contributed a small sum, provided payouts to those who needed them and saved or invested the rest. In the twentieth century, state welfare provision in the UK improved. It was partly run through the friendly societies between 1911 and 1948. Since then, through mergers and closures, more than 18,000 friendly societies have been reduced to fewer than 300. They remain mutual, non-profit, distributing organisations, with no shareholders to pay, owned and managed by their members. 

What do friendly societies do now?

Friendly societies continue to encourage savings and provide financial products, notably pensions, healthcare, insurance and banking, within an ethos of mutuality and friendliness. These products enable people to make their own decisions and to take responsibility for their own lives and those of their families. They also include tax-efficient savings plans designed to provide a head start for a child or grandchild. Many products take advantage of tax concessions available only to friendly societies and, of course, the profits go to friendly society members, not to shareholders. The Friendly Societies Act 1992 enabled friendly societies to incorporate, take on new powers and provide a larger variety of financial services through subsidiaries.

Article: Family historians about friendly societies. It first appeared in Family History Monthly, May 2004.

Article: Mutually Beneficial - Using the records of friendly societies. Ancestors, June 2004.

Article: Friendly societies in Norfolk. It first appeared in Norfolk Roots, an Archant Norfolk publication, issue 2, Autumn 2004.

Book: Simon Cordery, British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914, Palgrave Macmillan, October 2003.

Book: Daniel Weinbren, The Oddfellows: 200 Years of Making Friends and Helping People, Carnegie 2010.

Book: Victoria Solt Dennis, Discovering Friendly and Fraternal Societies: Their Badges and Regalia, Shire Publications, 2005.