''Round About a Pound a Week'' was an influential 1913 survey of poverty and infant mortality in London, by feminist and socialist

Maud Pember Reeves Maud Pember Reeves (24 December 1865 – 13 September 1953) (born Magdalene Stuart Robison) was a suffragist, socialist, feminist, writer and member of the Fabian Society. She spent most of her life in New Zealand and Britain. Early life Re ...

, co-authored by anarchist activist Charlotte Wilson. The project was conceived and carried out under the auspices of the

Fabian Society The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. T ...

's Women's Group, which she co-founded in 1908. The report was originally published as a political pamphlet or tract, arguing for specific reforms, but is still in print and considered relevant today.nzine review
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'' The Guardian, Guardian'' review of 2008 reissue

Overview

A Royal Commission was gathering evidence on the Poor Laws; Beatrice Webb was a commissioner, and contributed to

the Minority Report "The Minority Report" is a 1956 science fiction novella by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in ''Fantastic Universe''. In a future society, three mutants foresee all crime before it occurs. Plugged into a great machine, these " p ...

, but she could see that most of the commission had a different vision to implement. Webb was also a member of the Fabian Society, a precursor to the Labour Party, as was Pember Reeves. They wanted to understand and alleviate poverty, so they focussed their attention on a few dozen families in Lambeth, a poor borough in South London and still one of the poorest parts of Britain, and recorded their attempt at

social reform A reform movement or reformism is a type of social movement that aims to bring a social or also a political system closer to the community's ideal. A reform movement is distinguished from more radical social movements such as revolutionary move ...

over the four years just before the

Great War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, i.e. 1909–1913. The families they selected were ''not'' the poorest; they were the "respectable poor" of the working class, with the menfolk in relatively stable employment, earning "about a pound a week"; nonetheless, one in five of the children died at birth, and another one in ten before they reached adulthood. The project targeted pregnant women, and offered them money for extra food from a few months before the birth until several months afterwards. The families kept detailed budgets of their income and expenditure. The book contains details of the division of food within the family, with the breadwinner being given a much greater share of the food than the rest of the family. This was because the other family members were completely dependent on the breadwinner. Nonetheless, this was rarely a sufficient amount. The conditions in the book have been described as "appalling",Rose, Sonya O, 1993, "Limited Livelihoods. Gender and Class in nineteenth-Century England". University of California Press. p.79 demonstrating the daily struggle these women faced to feed their families without being "forced to pawn their own boots". It has also been noted that Reeves avoided the "sense of moral superiority" common in outside observers of these people, seeing them as "independent, resourceful, hard-working, respectable, but poor".Perkin, Joan, 1989. "Women and Marriage in nineteenth-Century England". Routledge, London. p 131 The Fabian pamphlet argued for government reforms, including

child benefit Child benefit or children's allowance is a social security payment which is distributed to the parents or guardians of children, teenagers and in some cases, young adult (psychology), young adults. A number of countries operate different versions o ...

school dinner A school meal or school lunch (also known as hot lunch, a school dinner, or school breakfast) is a meal provided to students and sometimes teachers at a school, typically in the middle or beginning of the school day. Countries around the world ...

s, and free health clinics. It also noted the role of poor housing conditions in child mortality, and how prenatal nutrition could help.

Selected editions

* Reeves, M.S., ''Round About a Pound a Week''. Introduction by Sally Alexsander. London:

Virago Press Virago is a British publisher of women's writing and books on feminist topics. Started and run by women in the 1970s and bolstered by the success of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM), Virago has been credited as one of several British femini ...

. * Reeves, M.S., ''Round About a Pound a Week''. New York: Garland Pub., 1980. * Reeves, M.S., ''Round About a Pound a Week''. Preface by Polly Toynbee. London:

Persephone Books ''Persephone Books'' is an independent publisher based in Bath, England. Founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, Persephone Books reprints works largely by women writers of the late 19th and 20th century, though a few books by men are included. Th ...

References

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Overview

Selected editions

See also

References

Further reading