Round About a Pound a Week

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Round About a Pound a Week was a 1913 a survey of poverty and infant mortality in London, by feminist and socialist Maud Pember Reeves. The project was conceived and carried out under the auspices of the Fabian Society's Women's Group, which she co-founded in 1908. The report was originally published as a political pamphlet, arguing for specific reforms, but is still in print and relevant today.^[1]

The Fabian Society, a precursor to the Labour Party, set out to try to alleviate the poverty of a few dozen families in Lambeth, a poor borough in South London, and to record this attempt at social reform. The project stretched over the four years just before the Great War, i.e. 1909 - 1913. The families they selected were not the poorest; they were the "respectable poor" of the working class, with the menfolk in relatively stable employment, earning "about a pound a week"; nonetheless, one in five of the children died at birth, and another one in ten before they reached adulthood. The project targeted pregnant women, and offered them money for extra food from a few months before the birth until several months afterwards. The families kept detailed budgets of their income and expenditure.