The Death of Christian Britain

— The Statistics of ‘Christian Progress’ 1800–1950 —
+0.6163, and levels of women churchgoers attending in the evening +0.7183.
These results indicate that churchgoing by children was significantly
weighted towards the mornings in high-status boroughs and towards the
evening in low-status boroughs, and that the proportion of women
attending in the evening was the most influential factor (producing an R 2
of 0.52). Taken together, these results demonstrate that children’s attendance
at church in high-status boroughs was more likely to be in the
morning – when, as we saw earlier – women in those boroughs tended to
attend, whilst in low-status boroughs they tended to go in the evening
when women did.
Overall, the London data for 1902–3 show that women were critical
to the churchgoing habits of the population as a whole. Where women went
to church more, men and children tended to go more. Where women were
more numerous in the population, overall churchgoing was higher. Where
a borough was more strongly working class in character, women tended to
go in the evening and to attract children with them. In those boroughs that
contained a strong representation of high-status households, women’s morning
attendance was higher than elsewhere and, again, they attracted children
with them. In short, women were the pivotal factor in determining the
churchgoing habits of the people as a whole.
This throws considerable importance upon the way in which women
organised their Sundays. One factor that many contemporary commentators
and later social historians highlighted was the role of domestic
servants. The numbers of domestic servants as a proportion of households
in London in 1902–3 varied between a high of 80 per cent of the number
of families in Kensington and only 5.7 per cent in Shoreditch. As we saw
earlier, the level of domestic servants per household produced a significant
correlation with churchgoing levels of +0.5373 (and an adjusted R 2 of
0.26), but this was not the strongest single variable. However, further
investigation shows that the influence of female servants was critical to
distinguishing church attendance patterns for morning and evening services.
Table 7.5 shows that in Metropolitan London in 1902–3, the proportion
of servants per household determined 44 per cent of the variations between
the boroughs in the total church attendance at morning worship, but a
statistically insignificant amount (3 per cent) in the evening. In the morning,
it is clear that variations in domestic servants between boroughs was
vital in varying the levels of male, female and child attendance. This impact
was almost equally noticeable upon women and men in the morning,
but in the evening it had a slight impact upon men but absolutely none
upon women.
The implications of this are far-reaching. It indicates that the single
largest occupational group amongst women – domestic servants – was
critical to determining variations in morning churchgoing between communities.
It shows that churchgoing was closely related to the nature of the
159