Why was Women’s Pioneer Housing needed?

Unless some special effort was made on a co-operative basis to provide suitable housing at reasonable rents, the professional woman would be hampered in her career for want of a proper home and would see her standard of life and comfort reduced to vanishing point.

Women’s Pioneer Housing Prospectus 1924

The modern working woman

World War I (1914 – 1918) sparked massive social and economic upheavals for all sectors of society. While men faced the horrors of the trenches, women took on new challenges at the home front. Although increasing numbers of women began working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the war effort required them to join the workforce in unprecedented numbers. They were needed to work in munitions factories and as nurses, or to cover jobs left by the millions of men who were away fighting.

When the war ended, efforts were made to force women out of the jobs they had flourished in to make way for returning soldiers. However, the death of over 700,000 men (and many more seriously injured), meant that, in 1918, there were 1.5 million more women than men in the population – these women became known as ‘surplus women’ due to the fact they had no prospect of marriage and would therefore have to support themselves financially. The 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act also opened up new professional careers to women, such as accountancy and the law; this meant there were even greater numbers of single women workers moving to cities like London in search of work and accommodation.

The female workforce expanded at a time when the first wave of feminism had grown into a concerted fight for women’s rights to live as independent, equal citizens. During the war, dissatisfaction with the fact that women got paid less than men for the same work grew. As a result, the first concerted demand for equal pay took place during WWI, organised by prominent women in the suffrage, Labour and trade union movements, such as Mary Macarthur and Charlotte Desparde.

Homes for Women!

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The word “home” generally conveys the idea of a husband as being attached, but because a woman supports herself and stands more or less alone, is this any reason that she must spend her days in a hostel or a bed-sitting room, and never arrive at the dignity of a home?

Etheldred Browning, ‘Women and Homes’, The Vote 11th Mar 1921

Although the world of work started to open up in the 1910s and 1920s, women continued to face discrimination in the housing market. Many landlords refused to let properties to single women, forcing them to live in boarding houses or hostels; these options came with restrictions, such as curfews, and a lack of privacy. David Lloyd George‘s post-war government concentrated their efforts on providing fit ‘homes for heroes’; the difficulties faced by single women were not a priority for them. Clearly, the ‘housing problem’ was also a feminist problem.

The issue attracted the attention of Etheldred Browning, an Anglo-Irish suffragist who had moved to London sometime after the war ended. She began writing about ‘the Housing Problem’ in suffrage publications, drawing attention to the injustices women faced in the housing sector. Perhaps as a result of these essays, she was recruited to join the Women’s Section of the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association (GCTPA). Etheldred addressed the GCTPA women’s conference that ran alongside the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition on 7 February 1920.

How did it begin?

Even before the war there were not sufficient flats suited to the self-dependent woman to meet the demand, and now owing to the number of women entering the professions and having, therefore, to live on their own this demand is greater than ever. Again every year the number of women who have retired from work increases, and these have to be housed. Moreover, women whose incomes were once ample, but are now scanty, need small, comfortable flats. All such women will find their needs catered for by Women’s Pioneer Housing, Limited.

WPH prospectus, 1935

Inspired to take action, Etheldred called on the wide network of friends, colleagues, and associates she had developed during her time with the suffrage movement and her work at the GCPTA. On the evening of August 30^th 1920, she chaired a meeting in Kensington with Annabel Dott, Florence Carre, and Miriam Homersham. Additionally, Sydney Bushell, Agnes Miall, Helen Archdale and Mabel Bruce signalled a keen interest in Etheldred’s proposed venture but were unable to attend that meeting. The group decide to forge ahead with their plans for a housing association aimed at providing homes for single professional women.

On 4^th October 1920, they registered Women’s Pioneer Housing as a public utility company, with a mission ‘to cater for the housing requirements of professional and other women of moderate means who require individual homes at moderate rents’.

A Committee of Management (COM) was set up to make key decisions, with Etheldred acting as Secretary. Miriam Homersham, the organisation’s solicitor, passed two resolutions: to raise subscriptions of £2 to cover expenses and to draft and publish a prospectus. All of the initial members of the COM were expected to subscribe £2 to cover expenses in 1920. As other members joined, they too contributed to WPH’s funds (Edith Charlesworth joined at the third meeting of the organisation and invested a generous £17).

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The study found that one in five children of key workers in England, Scotland and Wales were living below the official breadline – rising to almost one in three in the worst-affected region, the north-east.

As soon as its work started, WPH was met by huge demand. The organisation’s 1925 Annual Review marked a year of continued and prosperous activity but declared:

more houses are needed – if a house could be purchased every week there would be applicants enough to fill it – and that means that more capital is needed.

The raising of capital proved to be a huge challenge – one that provoked division and the bad feeling amongst COM members. Rich and influential sociaty figures were courted to make investments, but relatively little money was raised this way. 

A financial crisis in 1921 brought the issue to a head. Amid in-fighting, WPH was threatened with insolvency. It was saved only due to the intervention of Ray Strachey, who moved WPH away from the justifiable accusations of amateurism into a more professional era of prosperity.

The growing strength of the business also meant that, by the 1930s, WPH could look to serving women from lower incomes – where previously their residents were mainly middle-class, working in the professions or of independent means. in 1935, WPH purchased three purpose-built blocks of flats - Brook House, Nightingale House, and Browning House. WPH were able to offer these flats at a cheaper, weekly rate, which meant they were affordable to women in low-paid occupations, such as waitressing, retail, and laundry work.

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100 Years of Women’s Pioneer Housing

One of the fundamental rights is to have a place where you can close the door, be safe and secure, and have control of your life. So many women at that time, and still now, don’t have that comfort

 Denise Fowler Inside Housing, 2018

The lives of Women’s Pioneer Housing’s earliest tenants were, in many ways, surprisingly similar to ours. The interwar years (1919 – 1939) were chaotic, troubled times filled with financial and political instability, and marred by the rise of fascism. They had even lived through a global pandemic - the deadly Spanish Flu (1918 – 1920).

Thanks to the struggle and sacrifices of generations of feminists, women today have more legal rights than WPH’s founders and early tenants did a century ago. Yet a lot of the same problems remain, such as the gender pay gap, which continues to put women at a disadvantage. Finding safe, affordable accommodation is also still a challenge for many women. Other aspects of women’s identities combine – or ‘intersect’ – to make these inequalities worse, including age, race, sexuality, socioeconomic background, and disability. WPH’s work is as vital now as it was a hundred years ago.

The stories of our founders and early residents offer hope and inspiration. No matter their backgrounds or achievements – rich and poor, professional and lower-paid workers – all the women who found homes through WPH had their lives changed for the better, and were able to forge their own paths in a comfortable and secure environment.

Ours was the very best landing. My neighbour Joyce had a wind-up record player and every Sunday morning she’d play Harlem. The minute we heard it we rushed out in our petticoats to dance around the landing.

Gwen Winterson, tenant at Brook House, 1936 to 2001