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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN STUDIES IN
FAMILY AND INTIMATE LIFE

The Public
Life of Friendship
Work, Neighborhood
and Civil Society
Jennifer Wilkinson
Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family
and Intimate Life

Series Editors
Graham Allan
Keele University
Keele, UK

Lynn Jamieson
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, UK

David H. J. Morgan
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
‘The Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life series is
impressive and contemporary in its themes and approaches’—Professor
Deborah Chambers, Newcastle University, UK, and author of New
Social Ties.
The remit of the Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate
Life series is to publish major texts, monographs and edited collections
focusing broadly on the sociological exploration of intimate relation-
ships and family organization. The series covers a wide range of topics
such as partnership, marriage, parenting, domestic arrangements, kin-
ship, demographic change, intergenerational ties, life course transitions,
step-families, gay and lesbian relationships, lone-parent households, and
also non-familial intimate relationships such as friendships and includes
works by leading figures in the field, in the UK and internationally, and
aims to contribute to continue publishing influential and prize-winning
research.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14676
 Jennifer Wilkinson

The Public Life

of Friendship
Work, Neighborhood and Civil Society
Jennifer Wilkinson
University of Sydney
Sydney, Australia

Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life

ISBN 978-3-030-03160-2 ISBN 978-3-030-03161-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03161-9

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 Acknowledgements

The value I place on my own friendships has influenced my thinking in

this book and is an important consideration in my acknowledgements.
Some of my friendships are of such long-standing, that they were
formed during my teenage years and thus pre-date my academic inter-
est in friendship. From the youngest age, I sought out the friendships
of other children, already knowing that at school, a life without friends
was hard to sustain. I have a similar perception of the significance of
friendships at work. In many ways, this has fuelled my fascination
with friendship as a sociological topic, and my interest in unpacking
the intricacies of friendships in public settings and their broader social
significance.
Like most academic work, writing is a relational endeavour. Across
these different connections, there are a number of people I would like
to thank. I owe a great deal to many students who, over several years,
showed an interest in the relevance of friendship to their lives and
research which motivated me to make further inquiries. I am grateful
to my research respondents whose words appear in the book and inspire
some of its key ideas. Further thanks are also due to those who have
assisted with research contributing to this book. I would like to thank

v
vi   Acknowledgements

Ian Flaherty for his skilled interviewing of the respondents within our
personal communities study. I am also grateful to Phillip Mar for assist-
ing with an early study we conducted on Migrants and Volunteering.
Many individuals have helped with the book in different ways. My
sincere thanks go to two of my dearest friends, Toni Jones and Julia
Wright, who have always supported me in all my endeavours, and writ-
ing this book has been no exception. I am grateful to Margaret for her
superior enabling skills and encouragement. For the friendship I have
with Victoria Mence, I am also extremely grateful. Being friends has
made it possible to develop distinctive forms of working together, where
friendship aids and advances the achievement of defined goals. My sin-
cere thanks to Victoria for professional assistance with the early draft
and for research which contributed to a case study on neighbours in
Chapter 8. In academic work, the boundaries between colleagues and
friends are often blurred. In this context, I would also like to express
my sincere thanks to Virginia Watson for the many gestures of collegial
support and friendship she has shown me over time. I feel an enormous
debt of gratitude to Denise Thompson whose grammatical acumen,
intelligence and literacy have left such eloquent marks on the text.
My thanks, also to the series editors, Professors Graham Allan, Lynn
Jamieson and David Morgan, for their insightful comments on the
draft.
Most special thanks are due to Michael Bittman who has always
encouraged me in my scholarly endeavours. As the book took shape,
Michael listened patiently to my arguments as they developed, and I
benefited from his intelligent and useful comments.
To my daughters, Harriet and Charlotte, I am grateful for the spe-
cial relationship we have, which has evolved across many stages. To
Harriet, most intelligent and loved daughter, thank you for assisting so
capably with several aspects of the work contributing to this book, for
your confidence in me and for the labour of love that sustains my spirit.
To Charlotte, who spent many hours checking my references, who texts
constantly from across the globe, and believes I can do anything, where
would I be without such sweetness. This book is dedicated to you both.
 Contents

1 Introduction: The Public Life of Friendship 1

2 Eclipsing a Grand Dichotomy—Placing Friendship

in Public 23

3 Work Friends: ‘Real Life’ Relationships 47

4 Beyond the Private Sphere—Focussing on Women’s

Friendships 71

5 The Secret Lives of Friends 101

6 Friendship and Reserve in Neighbourhood Commerce 133

7 The Vanishing: Looking for Friendships in Traditional

Neighbouring 159

8 Simmel Moves to a Different Neighbourhood 181

vii
viii   Contents

9 Neighbours and Citizens 211

10 Conclusion 239

Author Index 255

Subject Index 261

 1
Introduction: The Public Life of Friendship

The claim that friendship has a larger and more public significance
beyond what it means for individuals is at the heart of this book. For
over three centuries, scholars have described friendship as a private
and individual relationship. Even the most recent attempts to define
friendship frame it within the individualizing processes of late moder-
nity, stressing its underlying links with individual choice, intimacy and
identity. In this context, friendship acquired the label as a flexible rela-
tionship most befitting the twenty-first century (Allan 2008). Because
we choose our friends, friendship can look like an easy-fit, designer-
label relationship which can be applied to suit our lifestyle and iden-
tikit. From this standpoint, much has been written about friendship’s
role in the transformation of intimacy and personal life (Jamieson 1998;
Smart 2014), and its part in setting benchmarks for elective forms of
solidarity, families of choice and personal community. This book
argues that the flexibility of friendship, which derives from its volun-
tary, non-institutional structure, has also equipped it for a public life
at work, in neighbourhoods and in activities we have come to define as
civil society.

© The Author(s) 2019 1

J. Wilkinson, The Public Life of Friendship, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family
and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03161-9_1
2    
J. Wilkinson

Friendship, of course, has many meanings, from the detached,

stranger-like relationships on Facebook, to one-on-one relationships
of personal contact and physical closeness. There are also gradations of
friendship, from the transient friendships of childhood to friendships
that last for life. While recognizing these distinctions, I am discussing
the kind of friendship that involves a face-to-face relationship between
two adults encompassing elements of privacy and intimacy. Friendship
has an intrinsic dyadic structure (Simmel [1906] 1950; Oliker 1989;
Blatterer 2014), based on a small group of two which means it can adapt
to most social scenarios. Friendship is open and based on choice which
means it can develop and be maintained into most situations, including
public ones, like work. Unlike other personal relationships, such as mar-
ried couples, which are institutionally anchored, friendship is under the
control of the two individuals involved and depends on their negotia-
tion (Jerrome 1992). Thus, it is not an external set of rules which main-
tains or constrains a friendship, but the wishes of friends to be together.
In pre-modern societies, there was little distinction between public
and private, yet friendships were an important part of public life and
community. In the modern era, when sociology developed, friendships
became personal relationships, treated as inimical to public life. In late
modern societies, friendships have again acquired status and signifi-
cance as public relationships, which are developed and also maintained
within public settings—at work, online, in neighbourhoods and within
civil society. Sociologists of friendship have long argued that friendships
are part of societies (Adams and Allan 1998). Friendships are shaped by
the social relations, networks and historical processes in which they are
embedded. These contextual factors are as important to the develop-
ment of friendship, and the forms friendships take, as are the individ-
ual circumstances of people’s lives and the personal characteristics which
attract us to those who become our friends.
One of the main arguments in the book is that friendships create
personal spaces within the public realm, especially at work, but also in
other public settings, which means that individuals experience parts of
their personal lives in public. The examination of friendship’s public life
within this book reveals a potential within friendship to improve the
quality of working life for individuals. At a structural level, it may also
 1 Introduction: The Public Life of Friendship    
3

be seen that ‘the public life of friendship’ contains the means to resolve
new social problems broadly experienced, related to women’s careers,
time scarcity, work and family and the balancing of both.
It is true that friendship can also have negative aspects. It can be a
difficult relationship with an obvious potential to disrupt one’s pub-
lic life. How, for example, can we deal with a friendship we no longer
want? Breaking up with a friend can be challenging, and this challenge
also arises from friendship’s open structure and voluntarism. Moreover,
because it involves self-identification, it can be detrimental to one’s
sense of self when it goes wrong. It can also involve ethical pressures to
remain true to one’s friend even when the friendship is making unac-
ceptable demands. Meeting up with friends from one’s past life can also
be confronting, especially if those once common interests no longer
have any meaning in one’s life (Smart et al. 2012). However, the neg-
ative aspects of friendship are not my concern here. Rather, my discus-
sion of friendship is intended to counter those historical accounts and
theoretical debates which have kept friendship firmly locked outside
public life. (This legacy is explored in Chapters 2 and 3 of the book.)
As I discuss it, friendship is a unique relationship that has the potential
to solve social and structural problems. It is a relationship which con-
tains the elements or conditions for building a shared life with others,
while respecting the integrity of individuals. As such, the book demon-
strates that friendship has the potential to address common concerns
in a world where individualism abounds, concerns which are related to
work as well as community, neighbourhood and the possibility of a civil
society. In bringing friendship’s public life into focus, the larger social
significance of friendship will also become clear.

The Modern Legacy of Public and Private

To the average Generation Y, or virtually anyone born after 1970, the dis-
tinction between public and private barely registers in the course of their
everyday lives. Yet within the social sciences, our lives are differentiated
into a public world of work, utility, commerce and politics, and a pri-
vate world of individuality, intimacy, family and friendship (Silver 1990).
4    
J. Wilkinson

This has been an enduring legacy of modernity which continues to

inform our thinking. It presents challenges when we categorize friend-
ship as a relationship we have at work and in the other parts of life
defined as public. Although the primary argument in this book is that
friendship has become an important part of our lives in public, such as
at work, part of this argument concerns the way this theoretical legacy
has explained and framed modern friendship in relation to private and
public life.
The argument in this book is consistent with some contemporary
understandings of ‘personal life’: “Personal life is … not private … it
is lived out in relation to one’s class position, ethnicity, gender and so
on” (Smart 2014). Carol Smart does not deny that living a personal life
involves making choices and exercising one’s agency but, she argues, we
always do this in relation to others and to the choices they make (Smart
2014: 28). Thus, while having a personal life does invoke an idea of
the self (which is consistent with late twentieth-century conceptualiza-
tions of personal life) (e.g. Zaretsky 1976), the parts of our lives that we
understand to be personal also involve reflections of our relations with
others. Similarly, Vanessa May (2011) argues that personal life is rela-
tional, and states that we do live out parts of our personal lives in public
(May 2011: 168). My argument about the significance of contemporary
work friendships, and the other cases of public friendship I examine,
expands on this claim by focussing on friendship itself. Friendship itself,
I argue, creates a space within public settings in which to experience our
personal lives. This happens not just because personal life is relational,
although this is certainly relevant, but also because of the nature of
friendship itself, which has properties not necessarily shared by all other
personal relationships. Moreover, what I try to show throughout my
argument is the significance of this claim in relation to the theoretical
legacy which positions friendship outside the public domain.
Friendship clearly derives much from its status as a personal rela-
tionship but, I argue, the classification of modern friendship solely as
a private relationship aligned with the private sphere, does pose some
challenges for analysing friendships in public as well as in private. Such
difficulties leap into view when faced with a central claim in the book,
which is that friendship has a voluntary structure, and that this enables
 1 Introduction: The Public Life of Friendship    
5

people to conduct a personal life in public in ways that other relation-

ships cannot. Once we look more closely at the defining properties of
friendship, particularly its open structure and its grounding in an indi-
vidual’s private intentions (Silver 1989; Friedman 1993), what may first
appear to be challenging also turns out to be the reason why friendship
is so easily accommodated in the public settings of people’s lives.
Other difficulties arise when trying to discuss friendships at work.
This problem originates in those theoretical accounts of modernity
which are part of the legacy of modern social science. Specifically, this
problem relates to how ‘work’ and ‘personal life’ have been defined
within classical sociological theories. (These issues are examined in
detail in Chapter 3 in the book.) Sociologists have defined work
against all that has come to be understood as private and personal, so
not surprisingly, work has come to be seen as public and impersonal.
As I explain in Chapters 2 and 4, the divisions between public and pri-
vate, and between work and home, were amplified by a gendered dis-
tinction between work and home (Rosaldo 1974; Pateman 1988). This
represented work as masculine, market-driven and useful on one side
of the divide, while on the other, intimacy was seen to be feminine and
without social importance or consequence.
As part of this background, it must also be noted that modern soci-
ologists took up the idea of a personal life as a conceptual device for
discussing how people in modern societies were dealing with the effects
of work-based alienation in modern societies, and with the need to
find meaning and subjectivity outside of work within people’s personal
relationships (Berger 1964; Zaretsky 1976). The vision of personal life
which emerged from these early analyses excluded friendship. Personal
life was one of family-centred intimacy and heterosexual coupledom,
divorced not only from work and society at large, but also from friend-
ship. The implication of these arguments was that, although individuals
had a personal life, this was something they enjoyed with their family,
not their friends, and something they did behind the walls of the home
(Allan and Crow 1989). More recent conceptions of intimacy and per-
sonal life have acknowledged the limitations of tying personal life firmly
to the family (Jamieson 1998). As Carol Smart (2014) explains, con-
temporary models of personal life need to acknowledge the plurality
6    
J. Wilkinson

of relationship types it encompasses, including different family forms,

relationships across households and cultures, same-sex intimacies and
friendship (Smart 2014: 6).
In several respects, friendship came to have a confusing status in the-
ory, as a personal relationship which was a part of the private sphere yet
differentiated from the family.
Historically, friendship was seen as a kin relationship within extended
households, although differentiated from the biological family ties
linked to a domestic household (Tadmor 2001). Within theories of
modernization and affective individualism (Stone 1977), however,
friendships were cast out of the home. And yet, despite being repre-
sented in theory as outside the domestic household in debates about
community, the family and the privacy of the household, friendships
were simultaneously seen to be destructive of community and threaten-
ing to familial privacy (Jamieson 1998; Bittman and Pixley 1997; Allan
and Crow 1989). These two narratives caught friendship in a tension
(Jamieson 1998) which pulled it in opposite directions across private
and public spheres. Thus, through its association with intimacy and
expressive individualism, depicted theoretically as a personal relation-
ship positioned within private life, friendship became disassociated from
community and the domain of public life.
What this has meant in institutional terms is that modern friend-
ship has come to be seen as a private relationship without institutional
foundations. For these reasons, modern friendship has acquired a chal-
lenging and dubious status in theory and in history: friendship appears
to be a personal relationship, and yet institutionally it is excluded from
the private sphere of home and family on the one hand, and cut off
from the public sphere, on the other. When evaluated against these
contrasting narratives, friendship, like the proverbial piggy in the mid-
dle, is caught between two separate accounts: one about the decline of
community and its disappearance from public life, and the other, about
the rise of affective individualism and intimacy centred on the family
(Jamieson 1998). Nonetheless, as I argue throughout, the institutional
openness and voluntarism of friendship can help to explain why, in con-
temporary social life, ‘real life’ friendship can slip so easily into public
life where its accomplishments are considerable.
 1 Introduction: The Public Life of Friendship    
7

Having established how these key sociological debates and histor-

ical accounts of modern institutions have positioned modern friend-
ship with respect to the private sphere, the remainder of Chapter 2 is
spent examining the theoretical accounts of the public domain and
friendship’s position in it. Consideration of various conceptualizations
of public, publicness and the public sphere is also given, revealing how
particular theorizations of ‘public’ exclude friendship. In this respect,
accounts of the public sphere represent public life as a social vacuum,
emptied of sociable activity and the friendships which people develop
in the course of being citizens. Both communitarian variants of politi-
cal theory (Sennett [1974] 2002; Rosenblum 2016), and the critical tra-
dition’s notion of a public sphere (Habermas [1964] 1974, 1989), are
contentious in this way. They are both potentially important avenues
of critical inquiry for examining friendship’s contribution to public life,
but they rest on contrasts which effectively eliminate friendship from
the picture.
Another challenge associated with the legacy of modern sociology
emerges in attempts to write about the friends we have at work, a prob-
lem I begin to investigate in Chapter 3. Keeping work separate from
one’s ‘real life’ friends was once a familiar theme in the social sciences.
Sociologist Peter Berger (1964), for example, argued that people do
not live where they work and that the things which mattered and made
our lives meaningful, things like personal friendships and our con-
cerns with identity, were a private part of our life separate from work.
Although Berger was speaking figuratively about the consequences
of workplace alienation and the privatization of home and family, his
powerful imagery about ‘real life’ being at home with the family drove
a wedge between work friends and a personal life. Whereas a friendship
was a personal relationship, a work relationship, in theory, depended on
one’s working role and the instrumental activities that filled a working
life. Classical sociological theorists have helped to compartmentalize
our thinking about personal life, constructing a wall of impersonal-
ity, role-driven action and instrumentality around work. As argued in
Chapter 3, their theoretical legacy implies that personal friendships
develop away from the settings of public life, but this does not neces-
sarily correspond to experience. People experience their friendships as
8    
J. Wilkinson

distinctly personal and subjective, yet the settings where friends meet
and develop their friendships are often also public ones. Although this
may seem unsurprising, theoretical presumptions about what counts
as public and private life are unable to account for our real-life experi-
ence of friendships. This is asking for an exploration of where and how
friendship fits within our public lives, and what it is able to achieve in
that context.

The Expansion of the Public Realm and Privacy

The significance of friendship in contemporary social life is also linked
to what appears to be a dramatic expansion of the public realm. Today
much of what we do is dependent on public processes of some sort,
which makes the idea of separate public and private spheres unrealis-
tic. Whereas knowing people personally was important to getting things
done in pre-modern societies, today both small-scale and large-scale
social organizations take place through public interaction and pro-
cesses. Even the most basic transactions in everyday life, such as pay-
ing a phone bill or using one’s phone to get directions, involve a public
exchange of personal information. This points us back to a claim orig-
inally made by Georg Simmel, that modernization expands the public
realm, a process involving the spread of the personal information and
knowledge we have of other people’s affairs.
The more public our lives become, the greater the need for pri-
vacy. Today many of us spend long hours at work and work places are
becoming more public in many ways. Open-plan offices, hot-desking
and centrally located working hubs increase our physical visibility, and
there is a constant sense of co-presence with others. Information and
communication technology (ICT) contributes to this, increasing trans-
parency through increased access to personal information and the like-
lihood of that information being shared (Blatterer 2014), along with
access to people by day and night. In combination, these trends add to
the volume of gratuitous public knowledge we have about each other’s
business. As Simmel argued, this creates a pressing need for intimacy
and privacy. As the institutional divisions between private and public
 1 Introduction: The Public Life of Friendship    
9

spheres continue to erode at the expense of the private, we need to ask

how this need can be met.
One of the main arguments I develop in this book is that work
friendships potentially help with privacy, by providing a type of refuge
at work. With a friend it is possible to retreat from the publicness of
work and reinstate one’s sense of autonomy in personal conversation.
As classical sociologists explain, intimacy is a means of individualization
where people can control how much or how little of themselves they
want to reveal. In situations where privacy is at a premium, friendships
provide a welcome respite by controlling access to personal informa-
tion in a situation where people are able to express themselves honestly
and in confidence to others. Personal conversation, often about work,
is a way of sharing secrets. I argue in Chapter 5 that ‘the secret lives
of friends’ is important to work life today. At a time when workplace
autonomy seems to be diminishing, friendship can help reinstate the
self and limit the negative effects of work-based publicity on our person.
The idea that intimate friendship can develop in public settings, and
especially at work, finds support in research across several areas. Research
on personal communities has questioned the relevance to friendships of
the traditional divisions between private and public spheres. Scholars of
the late twentieth century defined the idea of a ‘personal life’ as a sphere
of intimacy centred on the modern nuclear family within the private
realm (Berger 1964; Zaretsky 1976). In this context, personal life was
seen to offer an alternative source of subjectivity and personal fulfilment
which work could not provide. However, not only was this concept of
personal life represented as wholly private, and exclusively familial, but
its promises of fulfilment and intimacy were tied to heterosexual couples
and children within the private household, thereby theoretically exclud-
ing all other social groups from the benefits of a personal life. In con-
trast, personal communities draw more widely on a range of friendships
and personal relationships from various public settings. Research on per-
sonal communities showed (Wellman 1979; Fischer 1982; Spencer and
Pahl 2006) that it was neither place nor an institutional association with
a private sphere that determined community or support. Rather, com-
munity came from an individual’s personal networks and close attach-
ments, including friendship. Notably, when people talk about their
10    
J. Wilkinson

personal communities in interviews, it is the strength of the attachments

that matter. From this insider view, exactly where our friends are situ-
ated along a public–private divide is less relevant than how much we like
them. At the same time, it is significant that special friends come from
a range of settings, private settings in some cases, but also from public
ones including work, communities and neighbourhood. The emphasis
on friendship and choice within personal communities is shown to pro-
vide alternative models of intimacy and community for those who do
not identify with the heterosexual familial intimacy which framed late
twentieth-century conceptions of personal life.
The Internet and other forms of ICT have expanded the way we
think about intimacy in the public realm, and transformed the way peo-
ple initiate and maintain personal relationships. Facebook and other
social media have helped to eradicate the divisions between offline and
online relationships, leading some researchers to conclude that ‘personal
bonds may now originate and develop outside domestic and famil-
ial settings’ (Chambers 2013: 40), i.e. outside the former heartland of
institutional privacy. The tendency for people to conduct their personal
lives in the public domain finds support in this research. It is a central
claim I develop over several chapters in the book.
Deborah Chambers (2013) argues that ‘the mediated nature of today’s
personal relationships’ presses for a reconsideration of debates about inti-
macy and friendship (Chambers 2013: 40). Although I do not explore
online friendships in this book, the research on social media and social
ties (Boyd 2007; Chambers 2013) demonstrates more generally the suita-
bility of friendship for conducting aspects of one’s personal life in public.
As I argue in this book, the need to reconsider the significance of friend-
ship for ‘public life’ today arises from activities and relationships that
develop in various public settings, including workmates and colleagues,
neighbours and the people we meet when engaged in civic activities.
Research on work has focussed on the blurring of boundaries between
public and personal life, suggesting that the private sphere may even
be contracting (Pedersen and Lewis 2012: 465). There is now a grow-
ing body of research which explores the way ICT has transformed work
practices and increased the time we spend at work (Bittman et al. 2009;
Green 2004). Researchers show how ICT has intensified work, increasing
 1 Introduction: The Public Life of Friendship    
11

employees’ work outputs and pushing work tasks into private time and
‘third spaces’ (Green 2004). In combination with these work-extending
technologies, new management techniques have made employees’ work
practices more transparent to employers, increasing the potential for mon-
itoring the work we do (Bittman et al. 2009: 675–677).
Such changes in work practices have prompted widespread debate
about work-life imbalance (Hochschild 1989) and ‘the time divide’
(Jacobs and Gerson 2004) which, traditionally, has meant less time
spent with family within the private domestic sphere. In this context,
research in leisure studies (e.g. Lewis 2003) now suggests that it may
also be possible to think about personal life in another way. Susan Lewis
(2003), for example, says that work and life can no longer be defined
as discrete arenas. Arguing that there is spillage from work to personal
life and back again, she suggests that ‘work-life’ should be re-labelled as
‘work and personal life’ (Lewis 2003: 345). All this is telling, indicating
that there is an opening for rethinking the older boundaries between
work and personal life, and that friendship has an important part to
play in this process.
One new development which is helping to soften the bounda-
ries between work and personal life is flexible working arrangements
(Pedersen and Lewis 2012). Although this has not really encouraged
tighter integration of work and life at the family level, there is evidence
to suggest it has opened up opportunities to pursue a personal life with
a different emphasis. Researchers found that the flexibility of work
arrangements, designed to improve the work-life imbalance by allowing
more time for family, actually made it easier to develop and maintain
work friendships (Pedersen and Lewis 2012). Work friends were really
important to respondents, suggesting a potential for re-balancing work
and personal life coming directly from within the workplace itself.
One question arising from research on work friendships which develop
in public settings concerns their level of intimacy (Pedersen and Lewis
2012: 466), and whether they are the same as other personal friendships.
Pedersen and Lewis show that friendships can be integrated into pub-
lic activities such as workplaces, sports or voluntary work (Pedersen and
Lewis 2012: 472). Significantly, it is suggested that such friendships may
be context-dependent or situationally defined, and therefore suffer from a
12    
J. Wilkinson

reduction in intimacy levels (Pedersen and Lewis 2012: 466). However, it

is not necessarily the case that a work friendship will be less intimate. In
some respects, these arguments feed into a longer-standing debate about
the limitations which work, or other necessities, may impose on friend-
ships, potentially transforming them into false friendships (Vernon 2005).
In his early research on friendship, Graham Allan (1979) had also distin-
guished personal friendship from the more context-dependent friendships
of the working class, arguing that it was the activity or setting, like darts
and public sociability, rather than the person, which was decisive in less
intimate context-dependent friendships. More recently, Allan (2008) has
suggested that friendships formed at work, and possibly other public con-
texts, were not necessarily limited in intimacy. Friendship based on per-
sonal affection, a pattern he had previously associated with the middle
class, was becoming the prototype of friendship in late modern societies.
Intimate friendships, he argued, were becoming more flexible, and argua-
bly, more adaptable to different settings. Building on this, the argument
in this book is that work friendships can sometimes be very personal and
intimate, regardless of whether they are maintained at work or in other
parts of our personal lives. When viewed from a network perspective,
work friends are also shown to contribute to individuals’ close networks
and personal communities (Wellman 1979; Spencer and Pahl 2006).
Debates about flexible work suggest that friendship has an important
role to play in securing some terrain for a personal life within the work-
place itself. The sense of this claim emerges when framed by debates
about work-life imbalance. When it comes to family, spending longer
hours at work may still create a vacuum in some parts of people’s per-
sonal lives. But this research also shows that the boundaries between
work and personal life are not as solid as once described, and in this
context, friendship emerges as a relationship well suited to the task.

Women’s Friendship Time at Work

At the same time, the changing social context of work has encouraged
the development of intimate friendships at work. Changes in work prac-
tices and experience have generated broad concerns about the conditions
 1 Introduction: The Public Life of Friendship    
13

of working life and the time pressure associated with this. Such changes
have focussed attention on the importance of maintaining personal rela-
tionships, prompting widespread debate about the time divide (Jacobs
and Gerson 2004), as well as about family time and the need for time to
socialize. In this context, working women with children are seen to be
doubly disadvantaged, described as having to do ‘a double shift’.
Looking at these issues from the standpoint of women’s friendships
offers an important perspective. A central concern of this book is how
women’s work friendships may help manage problems, including time
pressure, their leisure deficit and particular experiences of work-life
balance. In debates about these issues to date, it seems that the sig-
nificance of friendship has been almost completely overlooked. This
is because time-use research has historically focussed on gender ine-
quality as it arises in relation to the family, long seen as the nucleus
of private life and an arena where unresolved gender inequalities may
be addressed. Consequently, although time-use research has helped to
position gender inequality firmly within an analysis of working women’s
time deficit, and the challenges women face juggling time for work and
families, the significance of women’s friendships at work in relation to
these issues has been neglected. Time-use has also traditionally focussed
on a distinction between work and leisure (Gershuny 2005), which, by
definition theoretically excludes the possibility of looking at how wom-
en’s time was spent socializing at work.
Arguably, therefore, there is a case for looking at this from the van-
tage point of friendship. Classical sociological theories of modern social
organization left friendship outside the public sphere. However, social
changes and research about the transformation of work, together with
the growing publicness of our working lives and the steady erosion of
free time for family, has made a space for thinking about the signifi-
cance of friendship in public settings like work. From a sociological per-
spective on friendship, an important question is how aspects of a social
structure or a setting may affect friendship or shape patterns of socia-
bility. Sociologists have long argued that friendship is to some extent
shaped by the social context, so that aspects of a social structure, such
as gendered hierarchies or perceptions of sexual differences, will affect
sociability patterns.
14    
J. Wilkinson

Women’s mass entry into paid work from the late twentieth century
has created a unique set of circumstances asking for more current anal-
ysis of the social significance of women’s work friendships. Although
there is already a sociological literature on women’s friendships, this was
not developed until the late twentieth century. This has meant that the
analysis of women’s friendships placed them principally within the pri-
vate, domestic sphere. It defined women’s friendships as intimate, not
necessarily of broader social consequence beyond the private sphere.
Although an extensive study of women’s work friendships is beyond the
scope of this book, the examples of professional women’s friendships in
Chapters 4 and 5 suggest that the public setting of work has become
more significant for examining the nature of women’s friendships and
their social significance. Although work time is not the same as free
time or leisure, it is the time working women have away from fami-
lies and children, and in this sense, it is free time for them. Similarly,
working together allows sociability and opportunities to develop deeper
friendships away from domestic activities. Specifically, the argument is
made in Chapter 5 that women’s shared time at work, or what I call
‘friendship time’, is an important consideration when assessing female
patterns of women’s friendships. Feminists have shown that women’s
work friendships ‘add value in a variety of ways to women’s working
lives’ (McCarthy 2004: 19). Work-based ‘friendship time’ does this
for women, providing time away from home for socializing, boosting
morale and developing the professional confidence and skills which
manage and build women’s careers.

Friendship in Public
In historical and theoretical accounts of friendship (discussed in
Chapter 2), and in classical sociological theories of modern organization
(Chapter 3), friendship is treated as a relationship which exists outside
the public domain, especially that of work. In accounts of pre-mod-
ern life (Chapter 2), friendship in the modern, individualized sense did
not exist; instead, friends performed useful social activities which today
would be seen as both public and private. Subsequently, the meaning
 1 Introduction: The Public Life of Friendship    
15

and status of friendship have tended to change depending on its position

across the public–private divide. Sociological accounts of modernity
have excluded friendship from at least one aspect of the public realm,
the impersonal and rational sphere of work, and confined it to the sta-
tus of a private relationship. Friendship may indeed be a private rela-
tionship in terms of its voluntarism (Jamieson 1998). But, I argue, in
late modern society it is important to examine where friendship fits into
public life, and what social effects this may have.
In the late twentieth century, accounts of women’s patterns of socia-
bility were described and evaluated in relation to a private domestic
sphere (Allan 1989; O’Connor 1992). This privacy was seen to encour-
age an intimate friendship pattern (Oliker 1998), yet it was also argued
that an exclusively private focus on friendship maintained an imbalance
of power between men and women (Chambers 2013; O’Connor 1992;
Kaufman 1978). It may therefore be argued that when women’s friend-
ships are centred on work, there is a possibility that these friendships
may improve in status in relation to men. Chapter 4 focusses on the
situation of women and their friendships, especially in the public sphere
of work, in the context of the public–private divide.
The friendships we develop in public settings have a unique rele-
vance to other contemporary social problems, including those related to
privacy. Work in late modern societies is acquiring a new ‘publicness’
in ways that are not merely reducible to the market or to impersonal
bureaucracy. Changes in work practices—the spread of new ICT, organ-
izational efficiencies, ongoing scrutiny of work processes, open-plan
offices and ‘hot desking’—have increased people’s awareness of their vis-
ibility and accessibility at work. In this context of increased ‘publicness’,
work friendships promise to provide the sociability, intimacy and the
privacy sometimes lacking in the modern work environment. Chapter 5
focusses on the part that intimate work friendships play in providing
workers, especially working women, with a special kind of privacy and a
‘refuge from the glare of public life’ at work.
A key theme pursued throughout this book is that friendship has
a public life. In late modernity, the context for examining patterns of
friendship and their significance has changed. Social transformations
at work, changing gender relations and growing public recognition of
16    
J. Wilkinson

sexual differences have increased friendship’s visibility and importance

at work. Neighbouring offers another context for exploring friendship’s
changing status in public settings, and its significance within personal
communities. Whereas friendship was once viewed as inimical to neigh-
bour relations, a threat to privacy—and even potentially destructive of
community—in the twenty-first century, there is often little difference
between neighbours and friendships, and within personal communi-
ties, friends and neighbours are often fused together. As friendship has
become more central to the way we see personal relationships from the
late twentieth century (Allan 2008) conceptions of neighbours and
community have also changed. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 of the book exam-
ine the changing status of friendship in neighbouring and community.
Friendship has had a changing and sometimes difficult relationship
with community and neighbourhood. Indeed, until friendship became
a topic of sociological interest in the late twentieth century (Allan
1979), the significance of friendship in relation to community in British
research was largely ignored. The discovery by American urban sociol-
ogists that friendships and personal attachments were primary sources
of personal community (e.g. Wellman 1979; Fischer 1982), rather
than the neighbourhood or location, positioned friendship centrally in
debates about changing experiences of community and the significance
of personal community.
In traditional models of neighbouring (Chapter 7), the yardstick for
evaluating community was found in strong collective ties such as class,
shared values, and what has since come to be known as ‘communities
of fate’ (Beck-Gernsheim 1999). Neighbouring was tied to the fortunes
of working-class communities, and within some orthodox interpreta-
tions of community, friendship did not receive sympathetic treatment.
Personal friendship was either invisible or dwarfed by collective rep-
resentations of community, and arguably in some contexts, may even
have been perceived as a threat to community (Lockwood 1966). With
some notable exceptions (Allan 1979), when friendship was mentioned,
it was tied to ideas of male mateship (e.g. Oxley 1974), and this ignored
the value of the friendships women developed in neighbourhood set-
tings. But historically, female networks have built important bridges
between private and public activities. Other authors have recognized
 1 Introduction: The Public Life of Friendship    
17

this, giving accounts of neighbouring that ‘write women’s activities’

back into neighbouring and community arguments. In these accounts
women’s friendship in neighbourhood networks is viewed sympatheti-
cally, as a personal element in the interweaving of neighbourhood and
community ties (Bell and Ribbens 1994; Wallman 1984; Ryan 1979;
Hansen 1997).
Within community debates, theories of neighbouring were influ-
enced by arguments for and against privatization. In these debates, a
concern with the stability of home and family was reflected in accounts
that screened out the possibility of admitting friends into one’s per-
sonal life. The purpose of Chapters 6 and 7 is to bring friendship into
focus by discussing its status in neighbouring in relation to debates
about privacy and community. What this discussion shows is that when
neighbouring is pulled across the twin peaks of public and private life,
friendship can disappear into the gulf.
Recent research on neighbours, discussed in Chapter 8, suggests
that the older, more static models of neighbouring are starting to
change. Not only are networkers making all neighbours their friends
(Widdicombe 2016), but in chosen communities, neighbourhoods are
constructed by choice and friendship-driven migration. Some scholars
describe these trends as expressions of individualization, concerned that
these new neighbouring trends will destroy community by exposing it
to the vicissitudes of choice. However, from another perspective on per-
sonal communities, these same personal attachments and friendships
emerge as the framework for community in a different guise, rather
than as the source of its extinction.
From here, we need to ask whether the friendships we form in any of
these public settings can help us realize more common goals and aspira-
tions. The issue of whether the resources of a personal community may
be used for collective purposes is a complex one. Put a different way, we
could also ask whether personal friendship may help to create the condi-
tions of a shared life, and even a public one. As examined in Chapter 9,
communitarian advocates tend to answer this question in the neg-
ative, arguing that collective goals are not well served by individualis-
tic or personal aspirations, and that the integrity of both private and
public spheres needs protecting. But I argue that harnessing personal
18    
J. Wilkinson

motivations to public ends need not represent the disaster to civil life
that some scholars (such as Richard Sennett and Nancy Rosenblum)
would have us believe. Adherence to the division between private and
public only confuses the role of friendship in public life today.
In Chapter 9 I discuss examples of how personal friendships and pub-
lic forms of civic engagement can overlap. A significant point of compar-
ison between friendship and volunteering, for example, is that both are
anchored in voluntarism. People don’t have to volunteer, they choose it,
just as friends choose to spend time together. At the same time, this is
not just a matter of personal preference. Those friendships examined in
Chapter 9, especially those among migrants, demonstrate the potential
within personal friendships for resolving problems of common concern
and contributing to structural social change. Thus, in the same way that
intimate work friendships can help resolve general issues facing work-
ing women as well as improve individual women’s work experience, the
friendships of migrants also resolve problems of general concern. The
friendships migrants forge in the public setting of civil society are vol-
untary and intimate with a potential for affirming self-identity. They are
also part of a personal and professional network helping to integrate them
into society and achieve social recognition.

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Another random document with
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 CHAPTER II
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AIRSHIP

Before free balloons were successfully motor driven and steered,

stern necessity had pressed them into the service of war. During the
siege of Paris, in 1870, when the Parisians were cut off from all
means of escape, there were only a few balloons in Paris; but the
successful escape of some aëronauts in them was considered
encouraging enough to establish an aërial highway involving a more
wholesale manufacture of balloons than had been accomplished
before. The disused railway stations were converted into balloon
factories and training schools for aëronauts. In four months sixty-six
balloons left Paris, fifty-four being adapted to the administration of
post and telegraph; 160 persons were carried over the Prussian
lines; three million letters reached their destination; 360 pigeons
were taken up, of which only fifty-seven came back, but these
brought 100,000 messages, by means of microphotographical
despatches. In these a film 38 by 50 mm. contained 2,500
messages. The pigeons usually carried eighteen films, with 40,000
messages.
At this time the French Government attempted to produce a
navigable balloon, and employed Dupuy de Lôme on the task of
designing and building it. This was to be driven by hand power, the
screw being driven by eight labourers. The balloon was actually
made and tested. Considering the h.p. was 0.8, it is needless to say
it was not successful.
It was during the siege of Paris that Krupp constructed the first
special gun for attacking balloons, a relict which has been preserved
at Berlin.
 If such was the utility of balloons that merely drifted at the mercy
of the aërial currents they encountered, it was not to be wondered at
that, soon after the Franco-Prussian War, new attempts were made
to make them navigable. Though the term airship might reasonably
be applied to all the forms of navigable aircraft still in this country, it
has been applied in a less wide sense to those machines that are
lighter than air. In these pages the term will be used in this
connection.
The effort to navigate balloons almost dates back to the
invention of the balloon itself. It was, indeed, early realised that the
spherical shape of the ordinary balloons that drift with the winds
would be unsuitable for a craft that would have to travel against the
wind. In 1784 Meusnier designed an elongated airship, in which the
brothers Robert actually ascended. It is noticeable that in this early
design of Meusnier was the now well-known ballonet, or inner
balloon, which forms an essential feature of modern non-rigid and
semi-rigid airships for preserving the rigidity of the outer envelope
and facilitating ascent or descent.
If we except the effort of Dupuy de Lôme, the next remarkable
attempt at airship construction was in 1852, when the Parisian
Giffard made his steam-driven elongated balloon, with which he
made two experiments. These merely proved that successful
navigation against a wind would require much larger motive power
than his Lilliputian steam-engine of 3 h.p. Giffard, however, was the
pioneer of the airship driven by other than hand power. The following
are the dimensions, etc., of what will ever be an historic balloon:—

Length 44 metres
Diameter 12.00 metres
Cubic capacity 2,500 cubic metres
Horse power 3.0
Estimated speed per hour 6.71 miles

The experiments of Krebs and Renard in 1885 were noteworthy.

They were the first in which direct return journeys were made to the
place whence the balloon started.
 These experiments showed the importance of the military factor
in the development of aërial navigation. Krebs and Renard were the
officers in charge of the French Military Aëronautical Department at
Meudon, and they applied national funds to the construction of an
airship. It was the development of the electrical industry and the
production of electric motors at that time which stimulated the
experiments. The brothers Tissandier had, in 1883, propelled an
elongated balloon against a wind of some three metres a second by
means of an electric bichromate battery which supplied the power to
an electric motor. It was thought that those experiments had been
sufficiently successful for further trial of the powers of electricity.
Renard made profound and exhaustive researches into the
science of the navigable balloon. To him we are, indeed, indebted for
the elucidation of the underlying principles that have made military
airships possible.
The navigable balloon “La France” was dissymmetrical, being
made very much in the shape of a fish or bird. Its master diameter
was near the front, and the diameters diminished gradually to a point
at the back.
The following were the dimensions of the envelope:—

Length 50.40 metres

Diameter 8.40 metres
Length in diameters 6.00 metres

The airship was remarkably steady on account of the minute

precautions taken to counteract the instability produced by a
somewhat excessive length. Any device which modifies pitching at
the same time lessens the loss of speed resulting from the
resistance of the air when the ship is moving at an angle. A direct
means of reducing pitching is the dissymmetrical form given to the
envelope by placing the master diameter near the front. The
resistance of the air falls on the front surface, which in this
dissymmetric form of envelope is much shortened, while the
compensating surface at the back is augmented. Many experts are
of opinion that in this form of envelope Krebs and Renard came
nearer perfection than any other navigable balloon constructor.
Like the brothers Tissandier, they used an electric battery and
motor to drive their screw, their motive power being 9 h.p.
It was claimed that out of seven journeys, the airship returned
five times to the place whence it started. As an example of these
journeys, on September 22nd, 1885, a journey was made from
Meudon to Paris and back again. On this day the wind was blowing
at a velocity of about 3.50 metres a second—what we should call a
calm. Few, perhaps, who saw the small naval airship, the “Beta,”
manœuvring over London this autumn realised that a navigable
balloon, not so very much unlike it in form, was speeding its way
over Paris as long ago as 1885. The advent of the first at all practical
military airship was forgotten because the experiments,
comparatively successful as they were, suddenly ceased. They
came to an end because it was found that though electricity as a
motive power could afford an airship demonstration, it was unfitted
for serious and prolonged use.
One industry has often to wait for another—the world had to wait
for the missing link in aërial navigation. That was the light petroleum
motor. With its coming came the era of airships and aëroplanes.
 CHAPTER III
TYPES OF MODERN AIRSHIPS

With the new century came the modern military airship—to stay, at
any rate, until the heavier-than-air principle of aërial navigation has
so developed as to absorb those features of utility the airship has
and the aëroplane has not.
During the fourteen years which have seen the construction of
practical airships, three distinct types have been evolved—(i.) rigid,
(ii.) non-rigid, (iii.) semi-rigid. In considering the airships of Great
Britain, France, and Germany, I propose to class them together as to
types rather than under nationalities.
Each type has its own peculiar advantages. The choice of type
must depend upon the circumstances under which it is proposed to
be employed.
 Top: SNAPSHOT OF ZEPPELIN IN MID-AIR.
Centre: MILITARY LEBAUDY AIRSHIP, showing fixed
vertical and horizontal fins at the rear of gas-bag,
vertical rudder, and car suspended from rigid steel
floor underneath gas-bag.
 Bottom: CAR OF A LEBAUDY AIRSHIP, showing one
of the propellers.

I. Rigid Type.
(i.) Zeppelin (German).—There are not many examples of the
rigid type. The most important is undoubtedly the Zeppelin. This form
of airship before the present war had elicited the interest of the
aëronautical world for the long-distance records it had established.
Indeed, no little sympathy had been extended to Count Zeppelin for
his perseverance in the face of the gravest difficulties. Now the
Zeppelin has accumulated notoriety instead of fame as having been
the means of carrying on a form of warfare repugnant to the British
nation, and condemned by the Hague Convention. Imagine some
seventeen huge bicycle wheels made of aluminium, with their
aluminium spokes complete, and these gigantic wheels to be united
by longitudinal pieces of aluminium, and in this way seventeen
sections to be formed, each of which contains a separate balloon,
and it is easy to grasp the construction of the Zeppelin airship. It
consists of a number of drum-shaped gas-bags, all in a row, held
together by a framework of aluminium. They form a number of safety
compartments. The bursting of one does not materially matter—the
great airship should still remain in the air. The dimensions of
individual Zeppelins have varied to some extent. The largest that has
been built (“Sachsen,” 1913) had a cubic capacity of 21,000 cubic
metres (742,000 cubic feet), and a length of 150 metres (492 feet).
The aluminium framework containing the balloons has an outer
covering of cloth. On each side of the frame of the airship are placed
two pairs of propellers. In the original airship of 1900 these were
four-bladed, and made of aluminium. They were small, being only 44
inches in diameter, but they revolved at a very high speed. In the
later airships the screws have been considerably modified in detail,
size, and shape. For instance, in the Zeppelin which descended
accidentally at Lunéville, in France, it was found that the back pair of
the propellers on each side were four-bladed, the front pair two-
bladed. The screws are driven by motors placed in the two
aluminium cars beneath the airship. These cars are connected by a
covered gangway, which also serves as a track for a movable
balance weight, by means of which a considerable change of
balance can be effected. The motive power in the first Zeppelin was
only two Daimler motors of 16 horse power each. With this low
power little success was attained, but gradually the motive power
has been increased. We find that in the naval Zeppelin, L 3, 1914.
The motive power is three Maybach motors, giving total h.p. 650,
whereas in the types building the total h.p. is 800.
The stability of these aërial monsters is attained by the use of
large projecting fins. Horizontal steering is effected by a large central
rudder and pairs of double vertical planes riveted between the fixed
horizontal stability planes. For vertical steering there are sixteen
planes provided in sets of four on each side of the front and rear
ends of the balloons. These can be independently inclined upwards
or downwards. When the forward ones are inclined upwards and the
after planes downwards, the reaction of the air on the planes as the
airship is driven forwards causes the front part to rise and the rear
part to sink, and the airship is propelled in an inclined direction to a
higher level. The favourite housing place for the Zeppelin airships
has in the past been on Lake Constance, near Friedrichshafen, so
that they could be taken out under protection from the direction of
the wind. It is also much safer for large airships to make their
descent over the surface of water. It has been estimated that the
most powerful Zeppelins have a speed of some fifty miles an hour.
When on April 3rd, 1913, Z 16, in the course of a journey from
Friedrichshafen, was forced to descend on French soil at Lunéville,
excellent opportunity was afforded the French of a close inspection
of its details.
The following were the exact dimensions, etc.:—
 Length 140 metres
Diameter 15 metres
Cubic capacity 20,000 metres
Motive power three Maybach 510 h.p.
motors, 170 h.p. each
Speed 22 metres per sec.
Height attainable 2,200 metres
Useful carrying power 7,000 kilos.

On the top of the ship was a platform, on which a mitrailleuse

could be mounted.
It was only a few weeks before the present war that the new
Zeppelin, L Z 24, attained a new world’s record of altitude and
duration of flight. The height attained was 3,125 metres. The voyage
without a break lasted thirty-four hours fifty-nine minutes. On May
22nd, 1914, it left Friedrichshafen at 7.16 a.m. Bâle was reached at
10 a.m. At 6 p.m. it passed Frankfort, at 9 Metz, at 10.30 Bingen, at
2 a.m. Brême. At 4 a.m. it arrived above Heligoland, from whence it
made for Potsdam, where it was hailed 9.20 a.m. At 5.15 p.m. it
landed at Johannisthal.
That journey certainly showed the long-range powers of the
latest Zeppelins. If, as will be seen, it is comparatively easy for a few
well-directed aëroplanes to wreck them in mid-air, still they have
ceased to be military or naval playthings.
(ii.) Schutte-Lanz (German).—The Schutte-Lanz rigid airship is
an attempt to secure the advantages of the rigid type without the
fragilities of the Zeppelin. The framework, which contains the
separate gas compartments, is made of fir wood. The gas-bags are
claimed to be very strong. These are filled, excepting two, which
remain empty when there is only sea-level pressure; when, however,
the gas expands, it flows into the latter. These become full when an
altitude of some 2,000 metres is reached. A centrifugal pump is
employed for distributing the gas.
The volume of this airship is 26,000 cubic metres (918,000 cubic
feet). It will be seen, therefore, that this mammoth airship in size
surpasses even the largest Zeppelins.

II. Semi-rigid.
(i.) Lebaudy (French).—This airship is a crossbreed between the
rigid and non-rigid systems. By this method of construction a
considerable amount of support can be imparted to the gas-bag,
though it does not dispense with the services of the ballonet, as does
the entirely rigid type. To the genius of M. Julliot, Messrs. Lebaudy
Brothers’ engineer, we are indebted for the introduction of this
excellent type. It no doubt forms an exceedingly serviceable military
airship. In the Lebaudy original airship the underside of the balloon
consisted of a flat, rigid, oval floor made of steel tubes; to these the
stability planes were attached, and the car with its engine and
propellers was suspended. This secured a more even distribution of
weight over the balloon. The gas-bag was dissymmetrical in form.
Though not exactly resembling that excellent pattern, “La France,” it
partook of the important quality of having the master diameter near
the front. The car was a steel frame, covered with canvas, and in the
form of a boat. The screw propellers were placed on either side of
the car.
In 1909, as the British Government at that time possessed only
very small airships, the nation raised a sum of money by subscription
to present the Government with one of efficient size. The military
authorities compiled a list of somewhat severe tests which, in their
opinion, they thought an airship should be able to perform before
acceptance. At the request of the Advisory Committee, of which Lord
Roberts was chairman, the writer went to France in an honorary
capacity to select the type of airship to be adopted. There was at that
time only one firm of airship makers in France who were willing to
undertake the formidable task of making an airship that would come
up to the requirements of the British Government—the brothers
Lebaudy, whose engineer and airship designer was M. Julliot.
 The semi-rigid airship which M. Julliot designed and executed
was without doubt a chef d’œuvre of its kind. The rigid tests it had to
undergo necessitated a modification of some of the details that were
conspicuous in the airships the constructor had previously built.
In this airship the girder-built underframe was not directly
attached to the balloon, but suspended a little way beneath it.
The gas envelope had a cubic capacity of 353,165.8 cubic feet;
the length was 337¾ feet. There were two Panhard-Levasseur
motors of 135 h.p. each.
On October 26th, 1910, this airship made an historic and record
flight over the Channel from Moisson to Aldershot in five hours
twenty-eight minutes, at a speed of some thirty-eight miles an hour,
sometimes against a wind of twenty-five miles an hour.
Unfortunately, owing to a miscalculation by those responsible, the
shed which had to receive the new airship on its arrival was made
too small to house it safely. While the airship was being brought into
the shed its envelope was torn and placed hors de combat.
Since this airship was made the Lebaudy brothers have ventured
to still further increase the size of their semi-rigid airships.
(ii.) Gross (German).—This airship may be described as being
more or less a German reproduction of the Lebaudy type. It forms
part of the German airfleet. A considerable number have been made
of various sizes (for dimensions, etc., see table, German Airships,
Chapter IV., page 38).

III. Non-rigid.
This type is dependent for its maintenance of form on the
pressure of the gas inside the envelope. It is all-important that the
envelope of a navigable balloon should not lose its shape—that it
should be kept distended with sufficient tautness, so that it may be
driven through the air with considerable velocity. On this account the
non-rigid type depends entirely on the ballonet system, which
consists of having one or more small balloons inside the outer
envelope, into which air can be pumped by means of a mechanically
driven fan or ventilator to compensate for the loss of gas from any
cause. The ballonets occupy about a quarter of the whole volume of
the envelope. Such a type is exceedingly well suited for the smaller-
sized airships, destined rather for field use than long-range offensive
service. Such airships are quickly inflated and deflated. They are
also easily transported. Even the Lebaudy or Gross semi-rigid types,
though not so clumsy or difficult of transport as the Zeppelins,
require more wagon service than the absolutely non-rigid.

PARSIFAL AIRSHIP LEAVING ITS HANGAR.

 PARSIFAL AIRSHIP,
showing one of the fixed horizontal planes, steering rudder, and car.
The British Government have evolved several non-rigid airships
of moderate dimensions which have been exceedingly useful as
ballons d’instruction. For obvious reasons it is not desirable that
particulars concerning them should be published at the present
crisis.
(i.) Parsifal (German).—Very numerous examples of non-rigid
airships could be cited, but it will suffice now to mention two, the
German Parsifal and the French Clement-Bayard. The Parsifal is the
only type that the German nation has allowed to be supplied to
foreign countries. For instance, our Navy possesses one. It has also
been supplied to Austria, Italy, Russia, and Japan. On account of its
portability it is perhaps the most generally useful type of airship that
has been designed, if we exclude long-range service. It has been
exceptionally free from accidents on account of its subtleness. The
originator of the Parsifal seems to have thoroughly grasped the
sound idea that to attain success in navigating a subtle medium like
air the machine should be correspondingly subtle—as, indeed, are
the animal exponents of flight.
In the Parsifal the exclusion of the element of rigidity has been
carefully studied. All that is rigid about it is the car and motor, and
this can be conveyed in one cart.
The size of the Parsifals has been advisedly limited. The majority
of them are not more than a third of the cubic capacity of the
Zeppelins. A distinctive feature is the distance of the car from the
gas-bag. This in the first types constructed was nine metres, though
in more modern forms the figure is less. Owing to the distance of the
car from the main body the attaching cords are distributed with equal
tension over the whole length of the envelope. In the Parsifal airships
there are two ballonets, one at the front and one at the back of the
gas-bag. They are not only used for keeping the envelope rigidly
expanded, but also to facilitate rising and falling, air being admitted
into the one and expelled from the other, as the case may be.
Another distinctive feature is the four-bladed propellers. These have
fabric surfaces, and are weighted with lead. When at rest the blades
are limp, but in revolving, owing to centrifugal force, they become
endowed with the necessary rigidity. The dimensions of the Parsifals
vary considerably, the smallest made had a capacity of 3,200 cubic
metres (1908), the largest more recent ones have a capacity of
11,000 cubic metres. A very useful size is the P L 8 (1913), station
Cologne, of which the dimensions are:—

Length 77 metres
Diameter 15.50 metres
Volume 8,250 cubic metres
Total lift 5½ tons
Motors 300 h.p. (Daimler 150 h.p. each)
Speed 41 miles per hour

(ii.) Clement-Bayard.—It is a question whether it is advisable to

extend the non-rigid system to the amount that has been latterly
done in the case of such a construction as the Clement-Bayard. This
type of French airship is familiar to many in this country, as it was the
first airship to cross the Channel from France to England.
The cubic capacity of this airship was 6,300 cubic metres. A
feature was the comparatively large size of the ballonet used. To
realise how the Clement-Bayards have grown since this type of
airship came to this country, see table, French Military Airships, page
34.
Astra-Torres Type.—The Astra-Torres airships may be said to
form a rather special subdivision of the non-rigid class, for, though
there is no rigid metal in its construction, an unbendableness of keel
is assured by panels of cloth so placed horizontally as to be kept
rigid by the pressure of the air in a ballonet. Thus the virtue of rigidity
is attained without the extra weight generally appertaining thereto,
and a greater speed with economy of weight and size. The British
naval authorities possess one of these airships. For dimensions,
etc., of the latest Astra-Torres airships, see table, French Military
Airships, page 34.
It will have been seen from the above short descriptions of
distinctive types of airships Germany is the only nation which makes
a very marked feature of retaining the rigid form. It is true France has
evolved one form of rigid, the Spiess, in which the framework is
made of wood, but she undoubtedly has a preference for the semi-
rigid and non-rigid types. The rigid type has not found much favour in
Great Britain.
Reckoning from the year 1911, France appears to have nineteen
military dirigibles, and she may have one or two older ones in repair.
Some of these are building; and as in France there are many
eminent aëronautical factories, there are always also a number of
private airships built, or in building, of various sizes and various
types. These firms have enormous private airship hangars, and
every convenience for making, filling, and storing. The number of
military hangars in France is seven, at the following towns: Epinal,
Maubeuge, Belfort, Rheims, Toul, and Verdun, where there are two.
In the spring of 1913 the Italian military dirigible fleet consisted of
two units of Series M—M1 and M2—dirigibles of 12,000 cubic
metres, and three units building of Series M—M3, M4, and M5.
These dirigibles of the M series were found in practice to be the
most successful; they attained a speed of 70 kilometres per hour,
and a height of 2,000 metres; they are all semi-rigid. The Italian
Government is ambitious of rivalling in its aëronautical fleet that of
Germany, and decided in that year, 1913, on a new series—Series
G. These were to be of 24,000 cubic metres, and to travel at a speed
of 100 kilometres the hour.

Airships.
 Capacity Cub. Speed
Name. Maker. Type. H.P.
Metres. m.p.h.
1911 Adjutant Reau Astra Non- 8,950 220 32
rigid
Lieut. Chaure Astra Non- 8,850 220 32
rigid
Le Temps Zodiac 9 Non- 2,300 50 29
rigid
Capt. Ferber Zodiac 10 Non- 6,000 180 33
rigid
Capt. Lebaudy Semi- 7,500 160 28
Marécahl rigid
1912 Adjutant C. Bayard Non- — — —
Vincennot rigid
Dupuy de C. Bayard Non- — — —
Lôme rigid
Selle de Lebaudy Semi- 8,000 160 28
Beauchamp rigid
Éclaireur Astra Non- 9,100 — 28
Conté rigid
1913 E. Montgolfier C. Bayard Non- 6,500 150 36
rigid
Comot Zodiac Non- 9,500 360 37
Coutelle rigid
Fleurus Military Non- 6,500 160 40
Factory rigid
Spies Zodiac Rigid 16,400 400 43½
1914 [A]Clement- C. Bayard Non- 23,000 1,000 47
Bayard VIII. rigid
[A]
Clement- C. Bayard Non- 23,000 1,000 47
Bayard IX. rigid
 Astra-Torres Astra Non- 23,000 800 43
XV. rigid
Astra-Torres Astra Non- 23,000 800 43
XVI. rigid
Zodiac XII. Zodiac — 23,000 1,000 50
Zodiac XIII. Zodiac — 23,000 1,000 50

[A]
These two carry each one gun.

At the present moment Italy is building some very large airships,

some even bigger than the Zeppelin, and she practises ascents
diligently with those she has. One of the new airships building for the
Italian navy is a Parsifal of 18,000 cubic metres.
Great attention is paid in Russia to aëronautics. The Russians
have no national types of dirigibles or aëroplanes yet developed; but
they manufacture in their own country.
They have thirteen dirigibles (one is rumoured to be destroyed),
semi-rigid and non-rigid, amongst them a Lebaudy made in 1910,
Parsifals of 1911 and 1913, an Astra of 1913. The Parsifal of 1913
has a speed of 43–68 m.p.h. (km.).
Formerly Austria-Hungary led the way in aëronautics amongst
the nations of the Triple Alliance. Germany particularly looked to her
for flying machines, and the first Etrichs were hers; but military
aëronautics in Austria-Hungary are now at a low ebb.
The decline is ascribed to monopoly and centralisation. At the
present moment Austria has one dirigible, in a feeble condition, and
about ten aëroplanes of foreign make. Two German houses, the
Albatross and D.F.W., have quite lately opened branches in Austria.
The dual monarchy began well; in 1909 she had a small Parsifal,
in 1910 a Lebaudy, in 1911 the Körting. These three perished in
accidents. Her own system, the Boemches, presented to her by a
national subscription, failed in speed; but though she has no
dirigibles to inhabit them she has three good hangars!
Belgium has three airships, all non-rigid—two Godards and one
Astra. Although not of very late construction, all three have
innovations and interesting features. The Astra is private property.

[Topical Press.
ZEPPELIN AIRSHIP AT COLOGNE,
showing at the rear large vertical rudder, and two pairs of vertical rudders for
horizontal steering, the horizontal planes at the sides for vertical steering, two of
the four propellers at side of airship, car beneath airship.
 CHAPTER IV
THE GERMAN AIRSHIP FLEET

Many reports have been current concerning the exact dimensions of

the airship fleet that Germany can put into action. It has been said that
she has been extremely active since the beginning of the present war
in adding fresh units to the forces she had available when the war
broke out. It has also been rumoured that she is making a new type of
Zeppelin—one much smaller, and which will have greater speed than
the larger type.

German Airships in the Spring of 1913.