ABSTRACT
See Vol. 3, pp. 412-14. In the 1890s the most dominant were the Lancashire and Cheshire Skip and Basket Makers (1854) with 10 branches and a membership of about 400 and the British Amalgamated (1865) with 16 branches which included the former Irish Society (1854) which joined it in 1902. The Lancashire and Cheshire is an interesting example of the formation of a union from a number of friendly societies. The Lancashire and Cheshire and the British Amalgamated were followed by the London Journeymen with some 200 members, the Yorkshire Society (1864) with about 100 and the Scottish Basket Makers with about 30. From October 1897 five of these societies worked together in a Basket Skip and Hamper Makers Federation which seems to have continued until 1946 when the same five unions amalgamated into a National Union which remained in existence until 1973. The Federation was not, it seems, joined by the Fancy Cane Wicker and Bamboo workers (1891) which was dissolved ten years later, while an outline history of an unregistered Amalgamated Society of Cane Wicker and Perambulator Operatives remains to be discovered.
