5 - Quaker Discipline in Practice

Summary

Early Friends aimed to minimize contact with church and state. As a substitute, they developed their own structures to supply those services that the parish usually provided. During the 1650s and 1660s, the Society began to set up the monthly meetings, whose purpose it was to administer the community. As such they were also known as ‘meetings for business’. In charge of organizing poor relief and conducting marriage ceremonies, the monthly meetings became the administrative unit most closely involved in individual Friends’ lives. Upon arrival in Pennsylvania, the Quaker colonists of Philadelphia immediately set up a monthly meeting there. This was followed in 1686 by a separate monthly meeting of women Friends. In London, women's monthly meetings were set up only in the second half of the eighteenth century, when each of the six men's meetings received a ‘twin’ meeting for women. Until then, it appears that at least some of the London monthly meetings were attended by both men and women, and had both male and female officers.

Extensive records of the monthly meetings in London and Philadelphia survive. They include monthly meetings’ accounts, records of disciplinary measures, records pertaining to apprentice placements organized by the meetings, marriage, birth and death certificates of members, and papers pertaining to poor relief. Importantly, the complete minutes of five out of the six London monthly meetings are extant. Missing are the minutes of Gracechurch Street meeting, which were lost in a fire. The London monthly meetings’ minutes commence in the later seventeenth century, and continue well into the nineteenth century. The minutes reflect the tasks the monthly meetings undertook, and what they considered their primary duties. As such, they are evidence of the relationship between the Society of Friends’ formal organs and its members.

The women's monthly meetings of both Philadelphia and London were in charge of administering poor relief and preparing marriage ceremonies. They investigated brides’ circumstances and issued certificates confirming ‘clearness for marriage’. These explained that neither bride nor groom were already engaged to somebody else. They also oversaw female community members’ behaviour. This involved investigating reports of ‘disorderly walking’.