Practical and useful, manuals for the modest household

If you want to really understand a moment in time I think you can do no better than read their magazines. In this case it was the first edition of Woman’s Weekly which hit the newsstands on November 4th 1911 and reproduced last month. Then as now the magazine was designed to provide domestic advice from everything from how to make mistletoe lace to the problems of infant feeding.
Now such guides had existed since the beginning of the 19th century but I rather think Women’s Weekly was aimed at a new audience of modest means. It cost 1d and came out each week. It did not provide suggestions on how to deal with servants or how to stage a dinner party but instead catered for the woman who ran her own home and was expected to do everything, from making the family clothes to saving money. These women were those who had benefitted from educational reforms of the 1870s and were a new market to be exploited.
I guess many were aspiring to a better life and while Britain at the beginning of the 20th century was still a seriously unequal society the pages of Women’s Weekly offered a “practical and useful” way of improving their lives.
Picture: Souvenir edition of Woman’s Weekly 1911