ABSTRACT
Friendly societies faced two problems. One was the risk of being bankrupted by heavy calls on their funds. The second problem, which proved fatal in the end, was the powerful opposition of the organised medical profession, in the form of the Australian branch of the British Medical Association. These doctors objected to the practice of the lodges of employing or contracting with individual medical practitioners to treat their members for a capitation fee. Contracts were sometimes awarded after competitive tender. Building societies began in the nineteenth century, beginning in the late 1850s, first in their terminating or limited life form and then as permanent building societies. A permanent building society had two types of members, those who were borrowers and those who were depositors. Depositors might of course later become borrowers. Cooperatives trace their origins to Robert Owen’s utopian New Lanark experiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
