Round About a Pound a Week

Round About a Pound a Week was an influential 1913 survey of poverty and infant mortality in London, by feminist and socialist Maud Pember Reeves, co-authored by anarchist activist Charlotte Wilson. 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 or tract, arguing for specific reforms, but is still in print and considered relevant today.

A Royal Commission was gathering evidence on the Poor Laws; Beatrice Webb was a commissioner, and contributed to the Minority Report, but she could see that most of the commission had a different vision to implement. Webb was also a member of the Fabian Society, a precursor to the Labour Party, as was Pember Reeves. They wanted to understand and alleviate poverty, so they focussed their attention on a few dozen families in Lambeth, a poor borough in South London and still one of the poorest parts of Britain, and recorded their attempt at social reform 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.

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