FABIAN TRACT No. 93· 


The Fabian Municipal Program (Second Series), No. 4· 

WOMEN AS COUNCILLORS. 


MARCH, I 900. 

As the law stands at present, women can sit on Parish Councils, on 
Urban and Rural District Councils, on Boards of Guardians, and on 
School Boards. They cannot sit on County Councils or BoroughCouncils ; and in spite of the decision of the House of Commons 
that they should sit on the new Metropolitan Borough Councils 
which replace the Vestries under the London Government Act, 
1899, they were expressly excluded by the House of Lords, on the 
motion of Lord Dunraven, on 26th June, 1899. As they had sat 
on the Vestries since 1894, this was a withdrawal of an established 
right, and consequently a deliberate step backwards in political development. 


The debate in the House of Lords did not touch the practicalside of the question. The supporters of the women spoke generously 
against Lord Dunraven and his followers, who were facetious 
and rather coarse in the vein usual on such occasions. Neither side 
seemed to understand that the Councils have to do work which cannot 
be done by men, and that until women sat on the London 
Vestries it was practically left undone at an untold cost in human 
suffering and public decency. 

What Women are Wanted For. 
One o e most important du~ies of the new London Councils 
will be inspection of workshops under the Public Health 
Act. In hese workshops many women are employed; and 
the Counci{s will have to inspect the sanitary accommodation provided 
for tht:m, and to question them, receive their complaints,
and so forth. It is contrary to English conceptions of decency that 
a man should make such inspections, or that women should be 
questioned by him or make complaints to him in such matters. 
When the Vestries were thrown open to women, this was at last 
recognized, and women inspectors were appointed. It is impossible 
to describe the state of things which was then discovered. 

Women Inspectors not Sufficient. 
But it is not enough to appoint a woman as sanitary inspector.
If there are no women representatives on the Council, her positionis extremely difficult and unpleasant. She cannot initiate any action 
on the part of the Council; and the tone in which questions concerning 
women are still discussed, by Peers and Vestrymen alike (a 
tone which is at once silenced by the presence of a woman representative) 
makes it practically impossible for her to approach male 
members of the Council on the subject of her duties. 


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<!s~"W•G -<.. t Street Sanitation. 
q:, \.Y: alt11 t 1e public sanitary accommodation in the streets of London~ C The needs of women

<;;!. l:ie/in the hands of the new Councils. 
/ l1 1 \were completely ignored by the London Vestries when the Fabian 

-Society published its "Facts for Londoners" in the eighties; and it is 
still difficult to obtain adequate accommodation for them. But since 
women have been represented directly on the Vestries, matters have 
improved; and underground lavatories, which have become common 
of late years, are now provided for women as well as men, though 
not yet as a matter of course, and seldom without some oppositionfrom within the Vestries. Unfortunately, the existing arr:mgements 
are quite insufficient. The lavatories for men offer two kinds of 
sanitary accommodation. For one no charge is made: for the other 
a penny is charged. In the women's lavatories there is no free 
accommodation : only one kind is provided at a charge of a penny.
The grievance to the women of London (four out of five of them 
poor women) is intolerable: to men, who do not suffer from it, the 
thought of its existence never occurs. The plans for the newest 
underground lavatory in London (Leicester Square, 1900) * shew an 
attempt to remedy this grievance; but it still exists everywhere else. 
And when women are banished from the Councils, the Councillors 
will have no access to the women's lavatories, which will be all the 
worse conducted on that account. 

Here, then, we have two departments of municipal work, of 
exceptional importance to the public health of our cities, the comfort 
of the citizens, and the cleanliness and decency of its less frequented 
places, in which the co-operation of women is absolutelynecessary for efficiency, and its absence an abominable scandal. 

Chivalry of the Peerage. 
It may be true that the work of a Rating Committee or a Finance 
Committee can be done as well by men as by women. It may seem 
true that a Public Works or Parliamentary Committee can get on 
as well without women as with them. But there is not even the 
semblance of truth in such an assumption concerning Health Committees. 
When Lord Dunraven said to the House of Lords, "I 
never yet have understood that women take a particular delight in 
drains, or are interested in paving, or derive much joy out of ascertaining 
the cubic contents of buildings," he confessed to a lack of 
common sense and humanity for which, as an officer and a nobleman, 
he should atone by introducing a Bill as soon as possible to 
undo the mischief his thoughtlessness did last June. Had the Peers 
known what they were talking about, it is inconceivable that theywould have tolerated the speeches they laughed at on that occasion. 

Prudery of the Press. 
It is hardly necessary to add that the greatest obstacles to 
reform in such matters are raised by the prudery of the Press, 
which will give the fullest publicity to such foolish quips as "How 
can a woman be an alderman ? " or to coarse jests made by 

• 1 t is being erected by the Strand District BoarJ, which will be merged in the 
Borough of vVestminst(;f in November next. 

3 

statesmen about divided skirts, but indignantly refuses to sully its 
columns with anything so shocking as a reference to an underground 
lavatory. All parties and all papers are alike in this: last 
June both the Times and the Daz!y Chronzde refused to insert 
a word to recall the House of Lords to the realities of the question. 

Women on County Councils. 

There are innumerable points at which Local Government, in 
almost all its branches, touches the personal interests of women, as 
well as the affairs which are admitted to be their proper business. 
Duties exactly similar to those of the educational and charitable 
bodies, on which they now sit unchallenged, are discharged by 
County Councils and Borough Councils. But enough stress is beinglaid on these in other quarters. -:rhe Fabian Society purposely 
devotes this leaflet to that side of the case which is at once the 
most unanswerable and the most liable to suppression, even at the 
hands of women themselves. There is, however, one matter too 
pressing to pass without a reminder, and that is 

The Housing Question. 

Everybody who has built a house knows how completely men 
overlook points of domestic accommodation which strike a woman 
at once. Men live in houses : they do not work in them. Women 
do work in them ; and a house built without consulting them is 
seldom as comfortable as it might be made. A washing copper of the 
wrong height, or in the wrong corner, or without a sufficient breadth 
of masonry round it to prevent flooding of the floor through splashing,
makes no difference to a man, except in so far as it may spoil his wife's 
temper on washing day. To his wife it may mean a pain in the 
back and a cold from wet feet every week. The political opponentsof women are fond of insisting that their duties are with the home. 
That is an additional argument for giving them seats on the new 
Borough Councils which will have to build the homes of London's 
crowded-out masses. 

Immediate Action. 

The first step to be taken is the immediate formation in every 
parish in London of a committee of women to carry on unofficially 
the work they did officially on the Vestries. By (a) collecting 
information as to the sanitary conditions under which women work 
in their district; (b) reporting all breaches of the law to the 
Medical Officer of Health for the District or the Home Office ; 

(c) persistently demanding the appointment of a woman inspector, 
or keeping in touch with her if one is already appointed ; (d) examining 
the plans of new public lavatories and insisting on their 
containing adequate free accommodation ; and (e) using their infi 
uence at local elections in favor of their helpers on the Councils 
and against their opponents, they might not only achieve much 
direct sanitary work, but finally force the Councillors themselves to 
petition for the inclusion of women in order that they may share 
the responsibility as well as the work of the Council. 
It goes without saying that a Bill to repeal the Dunraven Exclusion 
Clause should be energetically and pen;istently pressed for. 


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