- Email: [email protected]
Domestic service in late Victorian and Edwardian England, 1871–1914
86
REVIEWS
historian to state of the seventeenth century decline of population that it “differed from its fourteenth century predecessor in the great variation of its timing and severity among the regions of Europe” when we know so little of these matters for the earlier period. De Vries states that the fall of population in the seventeenth century was partially the result of contraception when he probably means a rise in marriage age; furthermore, he fails to mention the worsening levels of “background” mortality which seem to have affected all of Europe as the arrival of new diseases from other continents made their impact independent of living standards. For England he overstresses the role of the Civil War in initiating a redistribution of agrarian resources when so much recent work shows what great change took place in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in the social concentration of village land. These all are minor blemishes and should not be allowed to devalue this very useful synopsis of the early modern economies of western and central Europe. Fitzwiliiam
R. M. SMITH
College, Cambridge
MARK EBURYand BRIAN PRESTON,Domestic Service in Late Victorian and Edwardian (Reading: University of Reading, Geographical Papers, 1976. Pp. i + 117. E1.30) BRIAN PRESTON, Occupations of Father and Son in Mid-Victorian England (Reading: University of Reading, Geographical Papers, 1977. Pp. i + 40. EO.70)
England, 1871-1914
DEREK CONSTABLE, Household
Structure
in Three English Market
Towns, 1851-1871
(Reading: University of Reading, Geographical Papers, 1977. Pp. iii+63. f0.70) The existence of departmental publications such as the Reading Geographical Papers may be most easily justified if they meet one of two criteria. First, the material may be too bulky (or otherwise unsuitable) for publication through normal channels but is nevertheless considered of sufficient importance to merit dissemination. Its appearance as a departmental publication thus suggests that it is unlikely to appear elsewhere. Second, the material may consist of research findings of an important and topical nature, requiring immediate circulation to a limited number of researchers for comment and criticism prior to a more carefully considered publication through other channels. These three Reading Geographical Papers, which report research into the social geography of selected urban and rural areas in nineteenth-century England, fall into the first category. Each contains a large quantity of detailed information in tabular form and they are clearly aimed at the specialist researcher who may require comparative material on Victorian social structure. Perhaps the most successful of the three papers is the monograph by Ebury and Preston who begin their study with a survey of the role of domestic service in the national economy of late-Victorian and Edwardian England. Basing discussion on an analysis of published census returns they consider problems of definition, and examine spatial and temporal variations in the volume and characteristics of domestic service. The central section consists of a detailed consideration of household characteristics and servantkeeping using census enumerators’ returns for twenty urban and rural areas. This chapter contains a wealth of carefully tabulated data which, although valuable as comparative material for others to use, are, unfortunately, not fully exploited here. This is partly because of the relatively high level of aggregation which is used throughout-for instance, variations between places are analysed but smaller-scale intra-urban variations in servantkeeping are not explored-but more especially because census analysis in the first two sections is not sufficiently closely linked to the useful final chapter which discusses servants’ living conditions and terms of service using a wide range of contemporary and later sources. Only in this chapter do we begin to obtain any real indication of the servants’ place in society; a more careful integration of census statistics with descriptive material would surelv have aided internretation and exdanation in the earlier sectinns.
REVIEWS
87
The second monograph tackles the difficult topic of occupational succession from father to son using information drawn from the census enumerators’ books for 1871. Following a description of occupational and household characteristics, Preston presents a table, covering eight areas, which shows occupations of 1,198 fathers and their 1,841 employed sons. Unfortunately, although many interesting questions are raised, the material is presented in a rather uncritical manner. Even with the information available from only one census the relationship between occupationa succession and the economic base and industrial diversity of each area might have been much more fully explored. Moreover, no attempt is made to relate occupational succession to other household characteristics such as the parents’ areas of origin. While the first two papers both make some attempt to analyse hitherto neglected topics-thus perhaps justifying the relatively uncritical presentation of data-the purpose behind the third monograph is much more difficult to discern. The text consists entirely of a description of the census enumerators’ schedules and of a scheme, largely unoriginal, for sampling, coding and analysing the census returns. This is followed by 69 tables presenting household characteristics for the towns of Horsham, Salisbury and Swindon in three census years. The tables appear to lack focus and are presented without critical comment, while the short text is often naive, the author being seemingly unaware of the now considerable volume of research into nineteenth-century social structure. This paper serves as an example of the worst kind of data-dependency in quantitative historical research, with masses of tables so readily available by courtesy of computer package programmes being published with little apparent thought to their meaning or historical relevance. Thus, for the dedicated researcher needing census data to compare with his own town, these monographs may be useful. Their contribution to our understanding of Victorian society-especially in the latter two cases-is, however, limited. On the evidence of these papers, more rigorous editorial control, and certainly more vigorous editing of the often heavy text, is perhaps called for in this departmental series. University of Lancaster
COLIN G. POOLEY
ROBERT FORSTER and OREST RANUM (Eds), Rural Society in France: Selections from the Annales Economies, Soci&t%, Civilisations (Baltimore and London : Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1977. Pp. xiii+ 180. ;E9-35) Diversity is the quintessential feature of the geography of France and the same may be said of the topics studied and the methodologies employed by the historians who have published in the journal Annales Economies, Soci&ks, Civilisations. Theirs is far from being a narrow or blinkered view of the past but sweeps across an enormity of periods, sources and themes, drawing inspiration from each of the other human sciences. Two other collections, on the Biology of Man in History and on Family and Society, have already introduced the quality of their scholarship to an English-reading audience. The eight papers printed in translation in Rural Society in France include not only “classics”, such as Lucien Febvre on man and productivity and Georges Lefebvre on the place of the Revolution of 1789 in the agrarian history of France, but also less well-known studies on power and ideology in the countryside (Morel), on interaction of local social and economic systems (Jolas and Zonabend) and on differences in male and female action space in the traditional village of southern France (Roubin). The first four papers are pitched at a broad scale of spatial generalization but nonetheless provide penetrating insights into such issues as the nature of local hstiory (Leuilliot) and the persistence of remnants of feudalism into the nineteenth century, almost regardless of the passing of the ancien rkgime (Soboul). By contrast, the last three papers focus on the precise details of people and places in Picardy, Burgundy and Provence during the last century. The link between these two sections is provided by a lengthy discussion of settlement desertion in France by Pesez and Le Roy Ladurie which includes both general statement
REVIEWS
historian to state of the seventeenth century decline of population that it “differed from its fourteenth century predecessor in the great variation of its timing and severity among the regions of Europe” when we know so little of these matters for the earlier period. De Vries states that the fall of population in the seventeenth century was partially the result of contraception when he probably means a rise in marriage age; furthermore, he fails to mention the worsening levels of “background” mortality which seem to have affected all of Europe as the arrival of new diseases from other continents made their impact independent of living standards. For England he overstresses the role of the Civil War in initiating a redistribution of agrarian resources when so much recent work shows what great change took place in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in the social concentration of village land. These all are minor blemishes and should not be allowed to devalue this very useful synopsis of the early modern economies of western and central Europe. Fitzwiliiam
R. M. SMITH
College, Cambridge
MARK EBURYand BRIAN PRESTON,Domestic Service in Late Victorian and Edwardian (Reading: University of Reading, Geographical Papers, 1976. Pp. i + 117. E1.30) BRIAN PRESTON, Occupations of Father and Son in Mid-Victorian England (Reading: University of Reading, Geographical Papers, 1977. Pp. i + 40. EO.70)
England, 1871-1914
DEREK CONSTABLE, Household
Structure
in Three English Market
Towns, 1851-1871
(Reading: University of Reading, Geographical Papers, 1977. Pp. iii+63. f0.70) The existence of departmental publications such as the Reading Geographical Papers may be most easily justified if they meet one of two criteria. First, the material may be too bulky (or otherwise unsuitable) for publication through normal channels but is nevertheless considered of sufficient importance to merit dissemination. Its appearance as a departmental publication thus suggests that it is unlikely to appear elsewhere. Second, the material may consist of research findings of an important and topical nature, requiring immediate circulation to a limited number of researchers for comment and criticism prior to a more carefully considered publication through other channels. These three Reading Geographical Papers, which report research into the social geography of selected urban and rural areas in nineteenth-century England, fall into the first category. Each contains a large quantity of detailed information in tabular form and they are clearly aimed at the specialist researcher who may require comparative material on Victorian social structure. Perhaps the most successful of the three papers is the monograph by Ebury and Preston who begin their study with a survey of the role of domestic service in the national economy of late-Victorian and Edwardian England. Basing discussion on an analysis of published census returns they consider problems of definition, and examine spatial and temporal variations in the volume and characteristics of domestic service. The central section consists of a detailed consideration of household characteristics and servantkeeping using census enumerators’ returns for twenty urban and rural areas. This chapter contains a wealth of carefully tabulated data which, although valuable as comparative material for others to use, are, unfortunately, not fully exploited here. This is partly because of the relatively high level of aggregation which is used throughout-for instance, variations between places are analysed but smaller-scale intra-urban variations in servantkeeping are not explored-but more especially because census analysis in the first two sections is not sufficiently closely linked to the useful final chapter which discusses servants’ living conditions and terms of service using a wide range of contemporary and later sources. Only in this chapter do we begin to obtain any real indication of the servants’ place in society; a more careful integration of census statistics with descriptive material would surelv have aided internretation and exdanation in the earlier sectinns.
REVIEWS
87
The second monograph tackles the difficult topic of occupational succession from father to son using information drawn from the census enumerators’ books for 1871. Following a description of occupational and household characteristics, Preston presents a table, covering eight areas, which shows occupations of 1,198 fathers and their 1,841 employed sons. Unfortunately, although many interesting questions are raised, the material is presented in a rather uncritical manner. Even with the information available from only one census the relationship between occupationa succession and the economic base and industrial diversity of each area might have been much more fully explored. Moreover, no attempt is made to relate occupational succession to other household characteristics such as the parents’ areas of origin. While the first two papers both make some attempt to analyse hitherto neglected topics-thus perhaps justifying the relatively uncritical presentation of data-the purpose behind the third monograph is much more difficult to discern. The text consists entirely of a description of the census enumerators’ schedules and of a scheme, largely unoriginal, for sampling, coding and analysing the census returns. This is followed by 69 tables presenting household characteristics for the towns of Horsham, Salisbury and Swindon in three census years. The tables appear to lack focus and are presented without critical comment, while the short text is often naive, the author being seemingly unaware of the now considerable volume of research into nineteenth-century social structure. This paper serves as an example of the worst kind of data-dependency in quantitative historical research, with masses of tables so readily available by courtesy of computer package programmes being published with little apparent thought to their meaning or historical relevance. Thus, for the dedicated researcher needing census data to compare with his own town, these monographs may be useful. Their contribution to our understanding of Victorian society-especially in the latter two cases-is, however, limited. On the evidence of these papers, more rigorous editorial control, and certainly more vigorous editing of the often heavy text, is perhaps called for in this departmental series. University of Lancaster
COLIN G. POOLEY
ROBERT FORSTER and OREST RANUM (Eds), Rural Society in France: Selections from the Annales Economies, Soci&t%, Civilisations (Baltimore and London : Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1977. Pp. xiii+ 180. ;E9-35) Diversity is the quintessential feature of the geography of France and the same may be said of the topics studied and the methodologies employed by the historians who have published in the journal Annales Economies, Soci&ks, Civilisations. Theirs is far from being a narrow or blinkered view of the past but sweeps across an enormity of periods, sources and themes, drawing inspiration from each of the other human sciences. Two other collections, on the Biology of Man in History and on Family and Society, have already introduced the quality of their scholarship to an English-reading audience. The eight papers printed in translation in Rural Society in France include not only “classics”, such as Lucien Febvre on man and productivity and Georges Lefebvre on the place of the Revolution of 1789 in the agrarian history of France, but also less well-known studies on power and ideology in the countryside (Morel), on interaction of local social and economic systems (Jolas and Zonabend) and on differences in male and female action space in the traditional village of southern France (Roubin). The first four papers are pitched at a broad scale of spatial generalization but nonetheless provide penetrating insights into such issues as the nature of local hstiory (Leuilliot) and the persistence of remnants of feudalism into the nineteenth century, almost regardless of the passing of the ancien rkgime (Soboul). By contrast, the last three papers focus on the precise details of people and places in Picardy, Burgundy and Provence during the last century. The link between these two sections is provided by a lengthy discussion of settlement desertion in France by Pesez and Le Roy Ladurie which includes both general statement