ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a number of different aspects of the relationship between friendly societies, sickness experience and the origins of the 'welfare state' in Britain in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It focuses on the way in which the perceived increase in sickness rates may have affected attitudes to the introduction of old-age pensions and national health insurance. The friendly societies played a central role in the process because of their own responsibility for the provision of both sickness insurance and pension benefits. Although the Royal Commission on Friendly Societies briefly considered the possibility of offering deferred annuities to people who had reached a particular age, it is usually argued that the first person to develop a formal proposal for the introduction of a statutory old age pension scheme was Canon W.L. Blackley. Statutory health insurance also formed an integral part of Canon Blackley's proposal for national insurance.
