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occupations « Top of the Campops: 60 things you didn't know about family, marriage, work, and death since the middle ages

Top of the Campops: 60 things you didn't know about family, marriage, work, and death since the middle ages

Posts Tagged ‘occupations’

Working from home in the past

Thursday, January 23rd, 2025

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.

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The growth of the service sector

Thursday, January 16th, 2025

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. 

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When did England and Wales industrialise?

Thursday, January 2nd, 2025

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. 

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Who are these people? Reconstructing life courses using record linking.

Thursday, December 19th, 2024

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? 

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How important was agriculture before and during the Industrial Revolution?

Thursday, December 12th, 2024

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.  

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Was the economy backward before the Industrial Revolution?

Thursday, December 5th, 2024

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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You’re not from these parts, are you?

Thursday, September 26th, 2024

Kevin Schürer

John Leech, ‘Bits from the mining districts‘ (1868).

The John Leech cartoon above, published in 1868 and entitled Bits from the mining districts, bears the following caption: 

First polite native – ‘Who’s ‘im, Bill?’ 

Second polite native – ‘A stranger!’ 

First polite native – ‘ ‘Eave ‘arfa brick at ‘im’.

Whilst obviously sarcastic, the underlying context is clear. Outsiders – those not from these parts – are treated with caution, if not distrust and open hostility. Yet mining communities, often being mono-cultural in terms of employment, were known for being tight-knit, closed, maybe inward looking, and the stranger of this cartoon was not only ‘not from these parts’, but also clearly socially distant judging from the way he is dressedYet, how wide-ranging were such notions of xenophobia – literally fear of strangers – in the past?  

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