Leigh Shaw-Taylor
Common land was once very widespread, before being swept away by a process known as enclosure (discussed further below). In 1500, perhaps 50 percent of England and Wales was common land. There is a popular conception that this common land could be used by everyone, or at least by the whole village community. But as we will see, this is a highly misleading perspective.
Alice Reid
A previous blog charted trends in non-marital conceptions and births in England from 1550 to the present. It argued that although many couples engaged in sexual intercourse before marriage, in most cases when a woman fell pregnant she and her partner married swiftly, so that the majority of extra-marital conceptions were born within marriage. Not all pregnant women were able to marry however, giving rise to extra-marital births, or ‘illegitimate’ children.
Amy Erickson
In the spring of 2020, when the government asked anyone who could conduct their paid employment ‘remotely’ to do so for fear of a novel coronavirus, working from home – or WFH as it came to be known – was a novel concept. It seemed strange because since the 20th century we think of paid work as taking place outside the home – in a factory, an office, a shop, a hospital, a school or university. But in historical terms, working outside a home (not necessarily one’s own, but someone’s home) is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Leigh Shaw-Taylor
The service sector, also known as the tertiary sector, comprises all workers not making a physical product. This includes shopkeepers, wholesalers, publicans, hotel workers, people working in financial services, health and social care workers, professional services, and transport workers.
The UK economy today, like that of all rich countries, is dominated by the service or tertiary sector. According to the 2021 census, fully 76 percent of the labour force is now in the tertiary sector. But when did the service sector become dominant, and when did it begin to grow? Many people think the growth of the service sector is a recent phenomenon, starting perhaps in the 1950s and picking up speed as Britain de-industrialised from the 1970s. However, new long-run data on male occupations collected by the Occupational Structure of Britain c.1379-1911 project tell a different story.
Jeremy Boulton and Samantha Williams
Ask most people about workhouses, and they will probably associate them with Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1837-8); that is, with grim Union Workhouses erected under the New Poor Law (1834–) which supposedly produced segregated, oppressive, regimented institutions designed to deter all but the most desperate from applying for poor relief.
Leigh Shaw-Taylor
The secondary sector, as discussed in a previous blog, consists of anyone who makes a physical product. It includes manufacturing, construction, and utilities. Manufacturing includes village artisans like carpenters or blacksmiths, and weavers working at home, as well as any industrial workers employed in factories.
What proportion of the male labour force would you think worked in the secondary sector at the beginning of the 18th century? 10 percent? 20 percent? 30 percent? The Occupational Structure of Britain c.1379-1911 project has established that as early as 1701 the figure was already remarkably high, at 43 percent.
Alice Reid
For the last 11 years there have been fewer births on Boxing Day than on any other day of the year, with Christmas Day and New Year’s Day also having very low numbers. In contrast, there were more babies born on 28 September than any other day, and late September to early October has been the most popular time to be born over the last 30 years or so. The lack of births on festive season holidays is due to fewer inductions and planned caesareans over the Christmas bank holidays, while the late September peak has been attributed to Christmas and New Year conceptions.
Emma Diduch
In the autumn of 1896, the employees of the Strutt cotton spinning mills in Belper lined up wearing their Sunday best for a series of photographs marking the firm’s upcoming merger into the English Sewing Cotton Company. The images which survive in the Derbyshire Record Office offer a fascinating glimpse into the lives of ordinary working people – there are friends holding hands, children scowling into the camera, a row of three sisters in matching dresses – and they also spark questions about work in the Strutt Mills and the community surrounding the factory. Did these workers make good wages and have long careers in the mill? Were these children sent to work at a young age to help support their families? Would these young women soon leave the factory to get married?
Leigh Shaw-Taylor
What proportion of the male labour force do you think worked in agriculture at the beginning of the 18th century? Was it around 80 percent? Or 60 percent? Or 40 percent? The Occupational Structure of Britain c.1379-1911 project has shown that for England and Wales the correct figure is around 47 percent. This makes the English and Welsh economy much less agricultural (and much more industrial) than historians have previously believed.
Leigh Shaw-Taylor
It is widely assumed that before the Industrial Revolution most people worked in agriculture, and that the economy was underdeveloped or backward. But was this really so? The first of these assumptions will be taken up in next week’s blog, while today’s blog will focus primarily on the second.
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The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (CAMPOP)