‘Votes for women’ in post-War Britain did not pay the bills
One
problem
of the aftermath of Great War was how to accommodate the vast ‘army’
of war widows in a rudimentary system of social security; still
framed within the concepts of middle class Victorian values.
That
war widows were to be held in high esteem was beyond question –
they had lost their husbands fighting in a noble cause. Many were
left with a number of dependent children and were in need of support
– unable to work. The single widows however posed a particular
problem as the end of the war approached. With the imposition of the
‘Pre-war measures Act’ – designed by agreement with the male
dominated trades unions to force women out of the employment they had
enjoyed temporarily whilst men were at the front – it became clear
that single widows with a state pension posed a number of threats to
the economy.
It
had been hoped that the many pre-war domestic servants (dismissed as
a luxury) would be re-employed and take up some of the surplus. But
the war had changed attitudes irrevocably. The drudgery, long hours
and pitiful rewards of domestic service did not attract women who had
enjoyed high earnings and consequent freedoms of the booming wartime
economy.
The
solution was the imposition of a mean-minded
system of monitoring to obtain evidence that single widows had
forfeited the right to support by behaviour deemed unbecoming of
their ‘honoured’ position.
Special
committees of the fledgling Ministry of Pensions were established to
review the cases of women who came to their attention. Faced by
confiscation of their meagre allowances, for ‘immoral or delinquent
behaviour’ the situation of these single widows was not
comfortable.
Here
was a vast group of younger women with years of life ahead of them.
Fortunately for the government and a society still dominated by
patriarchal middle class values the difficulties of general
unemployment meant that many of these young widows found few
opportunities open to them – given the restriction of so many
occupations to men returning from their ‘heroic’ service at the
front.
So,
many women, faced with falling foul of the puritanical surveillance
of the ‘Boards of Guardians’ opted for re-marriage, often into
loveless relationships but acceptance as ‘normal’ members of a
society built around a ‘woman’s place in a domestic setting’.
Mary
Jane Stagg (formerly Philips) was perhaps one of those who forfeited
her widow’s pension on re-marriage (with a gratuity of a lump sum
payment) for her re-integration into the norms of a pre-war Edwardian
society. Research by the project shows that in June 1919, she was
still seeking information about her husband – officially reported
killed at Messines Ridge in 1917 but his death not yet confirmed by
any witness. With two young children of school age she opted to
forego her £1.45 per week widow’s allowance and re-married.
The
grant of a vote in the Electoral Reform Act of 1918 was probably of
little comfort to her in a society which was busy reasserting male
domination of the workplace and relegating women to the home.
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