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"A Prophet Before Her Time:" Beatrice Potter Webb, Part I

© Joseph Sramek

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Part I: Beatrice Webb's Life Up to 1905-1909 Poor Law Commission

Few political thinkers have influenced British society and politics in the 20th Century as much as Beatrice Potter Webb. She was a prodigious scholar, publishing 11 books by herself, and about 20 more with her husband, Sidney. She was instrumental in the founding and development of the London School of Economics and Political Science, one of the pre-eminent institutions of higher learning in Britain, (1) and was also a prominent Fabian. But perhaps her greatest influence was on Poor Law reform and the subsequent creation of the British Welfare State. Between 1905 and 1909, she served on the Royal Commission for Poor Law Reform and Relieving of Distress. She was the impetus (2) behind its Minority Report (1909) which, more than any other document, influenced much of the social reform in the 20th Century, and formed much of the basis for the reforms of the 1945-1951 Attlee Government. (3) On July 5th, 1947, four years after Webb died, the Labour Government repealed the Poor Laws which had remained in operation since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. (4) A new system of social benefits, including universal health insurance and pensions for the elderly, were implemented in their place. Beatrice Webb's lifetime work was finally vindicated. In the same year, Clement Attlee, then Prime Minister, said of the Webbs: "Millions are living fuller and freer lives today because of the work of Sidney and Beatrice Webb." (5)

This work began in late Victorian England. Beatrice Webb was born on January 22, 1858, the eighth daughter of Richard Potter, a prosperous merchant and railway executive, and Laurencina Potter, an accomplished intellectual and linguist. (6) As a member of the upper middle-class, it was only natural that Beatrice did social work, as it "was...in the eighteen-eighties,....the conventional spare-time occupation for an unmarried daughter of the leisured classes..." (7) In 1876, her elder sister Kate became a rent collector in the East End [the poor areas of London], and a few years later, Beatrice joined her sister. In 1882, she joined the Charity Organisation Society [C.O.S.], an organization committed to rationalizing the numerous charities then in existence to help the poor, and also to arresting what the group's founders believed was the demoralizing flood of charity handouts to the poor. (8)

Through her experiences in the East End, she gradually began to challenge many of her pre-conceived notions. She began to wonder whether these notions--prevailing mid-Victorian notions--of the morality of the poor were correct. To find out, she began to study the lives and work of her tenants. (9) She compiled information on their life histories, history of employment, salaries, and their families. She used this information to publish, in February 1886, "A Lady's View on the Unemployed at the East." (10) At the same time, she despaired of her rent-collecting and charity work, finding "that whatever the answer [to poverty] might be, it was not to be found in urging the poor to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps." (11) She began to find ethical problems with capitalism, and eventually felt "ethical revulsion" toward it. (12) As a result, she left the C.O.S. in 1886. (13)

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