Friendly Societies were a significant working class movement in Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, alongside Trades Unions and the Co-operative movement. Around 30,000 mutual friendly societies existed in that period, ranging from small local groups to nationally organised branch societies. The Ancient Order of Foresters (AOF) was one of the largest branch friendly societies with many hundreds of local branches across the home nations and internationally.
In Victorian times most working men and their families were one or two pay-packets away from destitution or the workhouse and many feared a pauper’s grave. They looked for ways to protect themselves from the costs of ill-health, death and job-seeking. Many small groups of men got together to set up mutual societies which took regular small payments from members as an insurance in order to pay out set benefits in times of need to the members and their families.
The AOF initially catered for the slightly better-paid working man. There was also a social side to membership and a benevolent one, the 'surplus' funds from investing members' money were often used for charitable purposes. These could be small payments at local level or combined nationally for particular projects - such as the Foresters being the first organisation to buy a complete lifeboat for the RNLI, or donating to relief funds for national or international disasters.
Founded in 1834 as a breakaway from an earlier society (the Royal Foresters which was founded in the late 1780's), the society grew rapidly in the North of England then expanded across the whole of the UK and abroad. Local groups were opened in the US by 1840 and the society spread across the British Empire to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the West Indies and to Europe. Membership was around 65,000 in 1845, approached a million in 1911 with the introduction of National Insurance, which many friendly societies managed on behalf of the government, and grew to one and a half million between the wars.
Members joined local groups or 'courts' which met once or twice a month, Each was managed and run by its own members within an agreed set of rules. Each was identified by the sequential number of its dispensation, (permission to form a court given by the order), and by a name chosen by its founder members. There was no central register of members, until very recently, and each court kept their own records, passing only basic details to district level.
THE FORESTERS TODAY
Following the creation of the welfare state in 1948 this type of mutual assurance was less necessary and membership began to decline. By developing new and relevant financial products the Society has survived to this day. And in its wake, it has left a huge legacy of documents and artefacts tracing the history of this mutual movement.
OUR ARCHIVE
Some 4,000 documents, regalia, (ranging from huge marching banners to tiny lapel badges), and publications, (such as our long-running magazine ‘Miscellany’ and the annual Directories of the order, giving details of all of the active courts), have been collected by the Foresters Heritage Trust museum in Tunstall. We also hold some records and items from other friendly societies. Consequently, our archive holds a great deal that will be of interest to both the social and the family historian.
