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Abstract
Drawing on Sarangi and Slembrouck's work on the language of State-sanctioned bureaucracy, this paper will explore one of the ways in which this developed in Britain in the early twentieth century. Looking in particular at the war widows' pension scheme as implemented under the Royal Warrant of 1916, this paper will explore how the first (financially) non-contributory pension, and the first specifically directed towards women in Britain, developed a system of State-sanctioned surveillance and parsimony that continues to this day. The data used draw upon a number of individual case studies, showing how the State saw part of its role as the obligation to subject women to scrutiny and judgement, making infidelity and misbehaviour grounds for the denial of their widows' pension. As this article will explore, a wide variety of agents positioned themselves as, in some way, responsible for the moral surveillance of widows and even the most gossipy reports appear to have been treated with some degree of seriousness. This article will illustrate how a “new” type of bureaucratic relationship developed between State and citizens in the early twentieth century that remains in place a century later.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the National Archive for their kind permission to reproduce documents from PIN26 files. The author would also like to thank Sarah Gamble, Michael Higgins, Claire Nally, Terry Threadgold and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and encouragement in the development of this article. Any omissions and confusions that remain are entirely of the author's own contrivance.
Notes
1. PIN26 contains 22,756 individual case files, representing 2% of the total held in the “London” region of the Ministry of Pensions (regions were based on the three areas that the SSFA had used, and the “London” region actually includes the large industrial cities of the Midlands and the North). On archiving, War Pensions staff selected every 15th file from a total of 1,137,800 for the region. The sample is therefore regarded as being random, arranged in alphabetical order by the surname of the man under whose service the pension is claimed. Each file comprises data from a range of files that typically include the serviceman's enlistment documents, his service record, medical records, his wife's initial claim for widow's pension and subsequent correspondence in relation to this claim.
2. The Public Health acts starting in 1875 had set up local boards of to monitor public health, but these generally lacked the powers and resources to put right the environmental problems lurking in every major town and city in the country.
3. Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, Vol. LXVII (1914–1915), p. 30.
4. Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, Vol. LXVII (1914–1915), p. 31.
5. Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, Vol. LXVII (1914–1915), p. 31.
6. Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, Vol. LXVII (1914–1915), p. 31.
7. Another surprising insight into the realities of working-class life saw there being no distinction made between women who were married and those who were “unmarried wives”. This recognises the common practice of working-class couples cohabiting and often not marrying until the first child was expected. The serviceman's enlistment papers would detail his dependents, no questions apparently being raised at that point in relation to marriage certificates. From my sample of data, it does seem that the vast majority of widows were actually married to the deceased serviceman and so I have not found any evidence of this particular feature of the Royal Warrant being acted upon, although approximately 40% of the widows gave details indicating that they would have been pregnant at the time of their marriage.
8. This is also related to the “seven-year rule”, which stated that such a death had to be within seven years of end of service. The First World War saw the emergence of new illnesses that had long-term effects, such as those experienced as a result of gassing or shell-shock. The unexpected and unpredicted longevity of such illnesses meant that the finite nature of the provision proved unworkable by 1921 and the Royal Warrant was amended to remove this particular stipulation.
9. This was the central registry for births, deaths and marriages in Britain until the mid-1990s, when it was moved out of central London.
10. Grice's (Citation1989) conversational maxims reveal the pragmatic logic of language in use and apply to all humanly made things and practices. These maxims help us explain why we assume that people are normally going to provide an appropriate amount of information; that they are telling the truth, being relevant, and being as unambiguous as they can.
11. Text in italics here is handwritten on the original form.
12. Such was the social stigma that, up until the late 1930s, many local authorities ran “lying-in” hospitals for unmarried mothers that were geographically separate from those provided for married women.
13. Volunteers to Kitchener's Army were not required to provide their birth certificates as proof of age when enlisting. Indeed, the enlistment form itself simply requires “Apparent age” in years and months.
14. This is an example of the Ministry of Pensions persisting in their version of a claimant's spelling of a name that apparently differs from that which she herself uses. In Harriett's case, this extended to her signature being altered by the Ministry bureaucrats to remove the second “t”.
15. The Army Council administered separation allowances and widows’ pensions until the Ministry of Pensions came into effect in 1916.
16. PIN26 17241.
17. PIN26 17241, letter from Glasgow Local Committee Secretary to Special Grants Committee, 20 September 1920.
18. See Davin (Citation1997) and Skeggs (Citation1997).
19. PIN26 17241, SGC to W Branch, 30 November 1920.
20. PIN26 17200.
21. PIN26 17296, letter from Army Council to Leicester Chief Constable, May 1916.
22. PIN26 17296, letter from Leicester War Relief Committee to Ministry of Pensions, May 1916.
23. PIN26 17296, letter from Mrs E. Beadsworth to Ministry of Pensions, 10 June 1916.
24. PIN26 17293, letter date-stamped 22 January 1920.
25. PIN26 17293, letter date-stamped 22 January 1920.