The last three decades of the nineteenth century were marked in British social history by a vigorous and far-reaching debate about the causes and incidence of poverty amongst the elderly. By the early 1890s this controversy had produced a sharp cleavage of opinion between those commentators who held that old-age pauperism was largely a product of character defects and those who attributed it to certain social and economic ills which the individual, acting alone, could never hope to remedy. Social thinkers who subscribed to this latter view – the loosely labelled collectivist school of thought – were not content, however, merely with the work of analysis; they were equally anxious to find a panacea for one of the main social problems of the day. In the end the solution they most widely canvassed was the introduction of an old age pensions scheme in which the state would have a vital rle to play. But perhaps of more significance for the development of social services in Great Britain, three of the leading advocates of state intervention endeavoured, in their own distinctive styles, to translate this general declaration of intent into detailed programmes of action.