BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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More typical, perhaps, is Nailsworth and Horsley Habitation in
Gloucestershire.
In January, 1888 it was listed as having twelve
Wardens, seven men and five women.
Overall men appeared to have
retained a slight numerical advantage, although women seem, on balance,
to gain ground as the years advanced.
In 1893, females accounted for
six out of thirteen Wardens; by 1897 they constituted nine out of
thirteen.
Two years later they had declined somewhat, but nevertheless
managed to constitute half of the ten Wardens serving the Habitation.18
Given the uneven quality of local
recordkeeping and the lack of
materials available, it is difficult to determine the representative
character of the above citations.
Certainly many Habitations were
served prominently, if not exclusively, by male Wardens.19
Because of the failure on the part of the Central Office and
the local
Habitations to maintain records regarding the numbers of male
and female Associates, it is difficult to ascertain their relative
percentages.
However, it would appear that, overall, men outnumbered
women in this category.
In the case of Nailsworth and Horsley
Habitation in Gloucestershire, for instance, there were 75 male and 62
female Associates as of the twelfth of August, 1887.
They measured,
respectively, 47.2 and 39 percent of the total membership. Male
18
Nailsworth and Horsley Habitation Minutes, 1887-1899, 13
January 1888; 25 April 1890; 15 May 1891; July, 1893; 18 November 1895;
21 April 1897; 1899 list of Wardens; Gloucestershire Record Office,
D2219 6/8.
19 Bayham Habitation, located in the counties of Sussex and
Kent, is a prime example. Containing over two thousand members in
1886, it was made up exclusively of male (fifty) Wardens. J-G^C
Executive Committee Minutes, 22 February 1885.