Many clubs in early 19th century Britain, such as London’s Athenaeum Club, provided intellectual stimulation to successful gentlemen. The issue that preoccupied many charitably minded individuals in Britain and Ireland during this period, though, was whether there could there be a similar establishment for those from the less educated, even labouring, class.

Their aims were not simply to let labouring people improve their minds – they wanted to encourage them into ‘healthy’ habits, including the avoidance of alcohol. This also coincided with the Chartist movement, and a growing recognition that the working man was chafing at the constraints put upon him by society. In the 1830s, for example, the Wexford Temperance Society’s Selksar Rooms were described as a ‘working men’s club’ by one temperance leader – a place to be used ‘for purposes which tend to their and their children’s benefit’. Working men should be encouraged to go to clubs designed by those higher up the social ladder to dissuade them from their usual pursuits down the pub, and encourage them to be teetotal and engage in suitably intellectual hobbies that would then filter down to their families.

During the 1840s, those in Britain looked eagerly at the European examples of clubs, for example, noting the Handwerkers-Verein, a concept in Germany, which, it was noted, ‘strongly resembles in its organisation and objects the Manchester Athenaeum’. There was therefore a recognition that such an organisation would be useful in Britain, harnessing the existing schemes to improve the minds of the working class into more organised ‘clubs’, with a building and facilities where these men could gather with like-minded souls and be ‘educated’ by local men with a higher social rank. Such schemes included the awards presented to men in Scotland for writing essays about the Sabbath (although the prize-winners, at least, largely comprised artisans and craftsmen rather than labourers).

Shortly after newspapers detailing the success of the German Handwerkers-Verein were published, news came that Aberdeen was planning its own ‘concert hall and reading-room for the working-classes’ – or, in a catchier name, ‘a sort of Working Men’s Club’. This would comprise a room that could be used for concerts and lectures, a library and a reading room, together with a coffee room. A building at 18 Union Row was seen as suitable, despite it not being seen as very central for working men. However, a committee was formed in November 1849 with the aim of providing more details of the project. Alongside this plan were those for working men’s institutes. As historian Laurence Marlow has noted, these were established by clergymen and parishioners in local areas to offer ‘harmless amusements such as chess’ and financial help organised by and for workers, such as penny savings banks. In 1849, for example, such institutes were opened in both Brighton and Cheltenham.

As these clubs were organised individually, they had differing facilities; at least one also had its own cricket team. This was in Droitwich, Worcestershire, which had a working men’s club by 1850, and whose members formed a cricket team that they nicknamed ‘the Rough and Readys’. The Reading Working Men’s Club in Berkshire was established a few years later, in 1855. It aimed to offer those from lower social backgrounds the opportunity to educate and develop themselves, by giving them the opportunity to listen to talks by ‘men occupying the highest positions in the country’, and providing them with things to read, from newspapers to biographies. Reading recognised that among its residents were working-class men who were intelligent and keen to learn – and thought they had a right to the same intellectual facilities as richer people from higher up the social ladder. These people should be given the opportunity to mix, to talk and to learn together.

Even with the working class, the Victorians had a habit of dividing them into ‘them’ and ‘us’. In Reading in the 1850s, the charities inspector had made this clear, saying:

‘The more they [respectable people] tried to put a wasteful, improvident, and idle man on a footing with the frugal and the good, the more they would complicate the great machine of social society.’

In other words, there was a desire to help the working class – but only the good members. Helping the profligate or the shirker would be a waste of money, and disrupt the social order. However, it was acceptable to help those labouring-class individuals who faced, through no fault of their own, misfortune or calamity, for such helped separated humans from ‘beasts of the field’.

As a result, at the Reading Working Man’s Club, classes aimed at improving men’s reading, writing, grammar and maths were scheduled, alongside drawing, French and elocution. Music lessons and singing were also on offer, which gave men the chance not only to learn something relaxing, but would also hopefully persuade them to join their local church choir. One supporter had noted that ‘the working classes ought to have rational amusements&helli; If music was cultivated here as on the continent, it would have a great effect in raising the moral character of the people.’

Members could also attend regular lectures. These were in an esoteric range of ‘improving’ subjects, from poetry to the history of the post office, from geology to bells and bell-ringing. One suspects that some of the members may have found Charles Stephens Junior’s exhibition of magic at the club in 1858 a bit more fun than some of the other lectures. Members were permitted to bring women to these events – and apparently, women were keen to come and learn.

The working men’s club could also serve a vital function in getting members work. In November 1855, the Reading club had described one of its functions as being a ‘house of call for artisans’, whereby members who were unemployed could find out about jobs going. Employers could put up notices at the club, free of charge, stating if they required workmen, and members could come and look at the notices, and apply for work. The club offered the opportunity for such men to come and talk to others in the same situation, to find out about work, and to get a change of scene; it gave them a sense of belonging in ‘their’ clubhouse.

Moving on
In 1862, the Working Men’s Club and Institute Union was formed, and this saw the move from individual institutions, founded by a differing assortment of individuals and organisations, to a more centralised and organised system of clubs, which proceeded to grow in number. In 1883, a meeting of the Working Men’s Club Association in Manchester listed 23 clubs in the vicinity of the city, including at Hulme, Reddish, Stalybridge and Rochdale. Even by this date, they were starting to be seen as places where working-class men could have a drink and a laugh, rather than being used just for moral and intellectual improvement, and the Bishop of Manchester – president of the Working Men’s Club Association – had asked those working at the clubs to ‘use their best efforts to maintain the character and high aims of their clubs, and to save them from the first symptoms of degeneracy’.

Today, the working men’s club is largely associated with the industrial towns and cities of the Midlands and North, and is sometimes perceived to be a relic of the 1970s – partly due to its association with comedians and singers taking part in the club circuit. Yet it has served local men, and women, for over 150 years, with opportunities to learn and to be entertained – and, perhaps most importantly, to make friends.