Talk:Friendly society

Discuss links here
Editors regularly clean out undiscussed links from this article. Please discuss here if you want a link not to be cleaned out regularly. (You can help!) -- VS talk 04:36, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

VS talk has removed an external link to a website which I publish. I believe the link is relevant to this article. I acknowledge as an editor of this article, this is potentially a conflict of interest.

The link:
 * Craft, Trade or Mystery. CHAPTER 4 - When is a Friendly Society Not a Friendly Society? - Accessed April 30, 2005

is an original source used for the development of this article. I believe this link is still relevant to the article. Under Conflict of interest guideline I should not add external links to articles I have published (even though they may be authoritative texts) except after raising them for discussion on the talk page. Please discuss and decide on the relevancy of the link. --Takver 16:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Start Class, Mid-Importance to Cooperatives
This article has some good details on friendly societies, especially about their origins and roots. Some matters that could really add to it include ..
 * How they link with the informal mutual insurance societies such as those still found all over the developing parts of Africa and Asia. Were they really an early example of microinsurance, as this article suggests?
 * More citations and internal links to related wiki articles,
 * A fuller description of the current scale of friendly societies (no. of members, geographic distribution).
 * More information on their role in a typical modern state with universal health care, or at least a highly developed system like that in the US.Brett epic (talk) 16:41, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Possible source of citations
There is a collection of essays entitled "The Voluntary City" that includes a couple on friendly societies. I recall that the author collected some detailed figures on membership and outlays, though I do not have a copy on me to add to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.65.196.71 (talk) 23:02, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Merging and explanation...
I see there's a proposal to join Friendly society with Fraternal benefit society and there is also another article Benefit society. I have no idea which if any of these is a general description of the New Orleans Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs that are associated with second line parades. (The term is also used for Krewes, but is that something different again? I'm thinking there's a distinction between the original organization and the event it stages?)  Can somebody sort this out who really understands these things? Wnt (talk) 20:41, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Origins
Just a heads up to anyone who might add a section on history/origins of Friendly Societies.

Dugald Stewart said in his Lectures on Political Economy (c. 1801) that

''I allude to the institutions commonly known by the name of Benefit Clubs, or Friendly Societies. The general object of these institutions is, to secure to the industrious from the surplus, or a part of the surplus, of their earnings, an equivalent resource during their incapacity to labour. This idea, although I have not the least doubt that, in this country, it was the genuine offspring of English good sense and sagacity, was not altogether unthought of by the ancients. Causaubon produces ample evidence to shew, that there were, among the Athenians, and also in the other states of Greece, associations where each member deposited every month, in the common chest, a certain sum, for aiding such of their associates as met with any misfortune. Gronovius, too, seems to prove that the same plan was followed in Rome. The truth is, that the general idea of such establishments, however happy in itself, and important in its consequences, is not of so difficult a nature but that it may be expected to present itself to mankind in every civilized society, where they happen to be pressed by the same evils. From a Memoir by M. Dupont de Nemours, it appears that various establishments of this kind had sprung up spontaneously in differents parts of France among the lower orders.''

So at least back then they were considered to be long-standing form of mutual aid, granted that there was a proliferation of such societies in the period.

--Sansculotte93 (talk) 14:07, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Friendly society. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130824210011/http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/files/mutuals/prospects_mutuals_fin_en.pdf to http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/files/mutuals/prospects_mutuals_fin_en.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090902211106/http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/conference2004/assets/reader.doc to http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/conference2004/assets/reader.doc
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050717192055/http://www.apra.gov.au/friendly/FriendlyList.cfm to http://www.apra.gov.au/friendly/FriendlyList.cfm

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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:20, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Two links added
Hello, I added the links to www.FriendlySocieties.org and www.LibertarianSocieties.org please delete it if you think they aren't worth to mention but I think they fit very well. And please foregive me my mistakes, I'm very new here. -- MichalLeaf
 * Thanks for your contribution. I visited both links but I think it is too early to add them. They are new organisations with (as far as I can tell) no members. -- Wire723 (talk) 17:51, 20 May 2019 (UTC)