These attitudes had underpinned the surveillance of working-class females in Scotland who had been in receipt of parish relief and charity nicely prior to the introduction of separation allowances. For instance, prior to the war it had been the policy of Glasgow Parish Council to withdraw widows’ outdoor relief for “drunken and immoral behavior” and keeping “dirty houses.”20 All through the war, working-class wives were treated with suspicion and subject to a demonizing rhetoric about their behavior and if discovered wanting they too were often harshly treated. It was a extensively circulated opinion that some soldiers’ wives were squandering separation allowances on alcohol and frivolity when their husbands fought inside the war. From the onset of war, officials ofHughes and MeekGlasgow Parish Council were on the opinion that there had been an increase in alcohol consumption and child neglect among soldiers’ wives. Somewhat undermining his personal argument, James R. Motion, Glasgow’s Inspector for the Poor, insisted that also as the considerable attention being Ccording towards the Registrar Common for Scotland in his Annual Report offered to soldiers’ wives by Scottish Parish Councils, a big number of circumstances of drunkenness and youngster neglect and “filthy and wretched homes” had been uncovered by investigations performed by SNSPCC, the Soldiers and Sailors Household Association, as well as other charitable organizations which may possibly “not otherwise happen to be brought to light.”21 Nevertheless, as the SNSPCC’s officers pointed out that a number of the ladies beneath their gaze had consumed alcohol just before the war. The Society also believed that alcohol consumption was a short-term manifestation of girls getting significant sums of money in back payments because of the delays they had skilled in getting their separation allowances. Apparently just after this initial windfall, it did not take lengthy for most wives to “straighten themselves out.”22 The SNSPCC took a additional paternalistic view claiming that a great deal on the drunkenness amongst soldiers wives was due to “well-founded fears and anxiety over their husbands getting referred to as up” as well as due to the “readjustment on the family members life” in which women had to take on sole responsibility for the well-being of your family members unit.23 Nonetheless by 1915, the views of charity and parish officials on soldiers’ wives squandering separation allowances and neglecting their children via drunkenness had been pervading the pages on the Scottish media. The Scotsman reported on how Glasgow Parish Council had supplied proof for thirty-five profitable prosecutions against the wives of soldiers who had been charged under the Children’s Act mainly because they had neglected their youngsters. Identified as coming from “a really low class” and living “mostly in slums,” the girls have been also accused of becoming habitual journal.pone.0174724 drunks and immoral.24 Seemingly in one particular tenement close alone, 4 soldiers’ wives had been neglecting their youngsters and getting a “regular carousel every Monday once they got their allowances.”25 The root of the issue in line with Motion was “that in practically each and every case of drunkenness and child neglect,” the soldiers’ wives had a lot more revenue due to the fact they’ve larger households and thus “bigger separation allowances.” He went on, “bereft of their husbands business a lot of wives take up the company of undesirab.