Response: Beatrice Webb
Beatrice Webb was the third investigator in Charles Booth’s East End census project. She was his cousin by marriage, and is not typically associated with Life and Labour of the People in London because her interviews were never formally published in the volumes. Her involvement in the project is known by her unfinished autobiography, My Apprenticeship. Webb did not publish conclusive data during the East End census project like Booth and Clara Collet did, but the investigation provided her with experience in social reform and research.
The East End census project challenged Webb’s understanding of philanthropy and enabled her to approach the concept critically. Her diary entries at the time allude that it was this “stage in her life where she rejected Charity Organization Society-style philanthropy in favor of social investigation” (O’Day, “Before the Webbs: Beatrice Potter’s Early Investigations for Charles Booth’s Inquiry,” p. 218-219). The British Charity Organization Society (COS) was a network of charitable groups who did not support government intervention in social welfare. In advocating for limited control, the COS became very bureaucratic and difficult to navigate. A satirical illustration by English artist Henry Tonks mocks the irony of the organization (unknown, http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tonks-charity-organization-society-t11004). The COS charity model expected citizens to come to them, rather than welfare services being brought to citizens in need. When Webb joined Booth and Collet on their research project, she witnessed first-hand the urban areas of neglect and started to challenge the concept of third-party institutional philanthropy.
Webb later served on the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of the Distress. She authored the infamous “minority report,” which called for an abolition of the current welfare state in favor of one that “secure[d] a national minimum of civilised life … open to all alike, of both sexes and all classes, by which we meant sufficient nourishment and training when young, a living wage when able-bodied, treatment when sick, and modest but secure livelihood when disabled or aged” (Riggulsford, Health and Medical Public Relations, p. 176). This was an innovative idea at the time because the system would be intended to meet the needs of everybody irrespective of their ability to pay. The “minority report” (1909, https://archive.org/details/b28061068) reflects the aforementioned change in philanthropy philosophy because it advocates for government intervention in preventative social welfare.
Webb and her husband later became interested in the “Soviet economic experiment.” The two even traveled to the Soviet Union (1932, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Webb#/media/File:Beatrice_and_Sidney_Webb,_1932.jpg ) before publishing their book, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? An interesting trend I have noticed is that many of the Victorian social reformers ended up embracing socialist or communist thought near the end of their lives. They lived long enough to see the establishment of central-planning, but died before they could observe its pitfalls. Nevertheless, Webb made important contributions during her career as a social investigator.
This is off your topic but I must say I really like the way that the Victorians, and your own writing, just assume that these female social scientists were not particularly interesting just because they were women – their work is what’s important. Given the focus of modern historians on the Victorian era enforcing such a strict role for females, something I have long suspected is untrue in the intellectual circles of the day, it is refreshing.