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Marriage, residence, and occupational choices of senior and junior siblings in the english past
MARRIAGE, RESIDENCE, AND OCCUPATIONAL CHOICES OF SENIOR AND JUNIOR SIBLINGS IN THE ENGLISH PAST
RICHARD WALL
ABSTRACT: Even when parents had few resources to transfer to their children, the dynamics of the family life-cycle may serve to advance the occupational, residence and marriage careers of certain chiMren and hinder the careers of others. This hypothesis is tested by calculating for a number of small English communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the proportions of children, ranked according to their position in the birth order at the time of the census, who were resident in the parish of their parents. The data suggest that even when parents had few resources and their children made their own way in life, certain differences in residence and marriage patterns and in occupational histories were associated with specific birth ranks.
'I don't want him', said Rabbit. 'But it's always useful to know where a friend-and-relation is, whether you want him or whether you don't' (A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner ]London: Methuen, 1928], p. 37). In those societies in which parental property, particularly land, is transferred to just one of the sons, it is reasonable to expect that those siblings who are disadvantaged will have occupational, residence, and marriage careers which differ markedly from those of the heir. This may be so even if those children who are not to receive parental land are compensated in other ways, for example by cash transfers on their marriage or at other times. Indeed even when parents have little or nothing to transfer to any o f their Richard Wall is Associate Senior Researcher at the Cambridge Group for History and Population and Social Structure, 27 Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1QA, England. THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY An International Quarterly, Volume 1, Number 3, pages 259-271 Copyright © 1996 JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 1081-602X
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children, differences in life history according to rank of birth of the child may persist, first because parental influences may be used to favour a particular child, and secondly because the dynamics of the family's own life cycle imposes its own constraints on the life chances of children born at different points in the course of its development. First-born children, for example, would be presented with the earliest opportunity of making use of the parent's network of contacts to seek out employment. Such children might also be cajoled by their parents into taking whatever employment was available sooner than would be the case for their later-born siblings, because their families had to maximize earnings to support an increasing number of under-age children. Later-born children, by contrast, would be at least partially cushioned from economic hardship early in their lives because of the contributions their older siblings made to the family budget. There might, therefore, have been less need for them to seek early employment, conceivably permitting a few not merely to delay working but to seek out alternative and perhaps eventually more lucrative employment. On the other hand, later-born siblings, particularly if female, are also likely to have been more at risk than earlier-born siblings of having to limit their options in regard to residence, marriage, and employment to ensure they could be on hand to care for elderly, sick or widowed parents. English populations of the past provide a useful testing ground for a number of these hypotheses. Not only were large proportions of these populations, journeymen-craftsmen and laborers, generally without much in the way of resources which they could pass onto the next generation, but even those with resources such as farmers, master craftsmen, and the like, often had their children establish independent households during their own lifetime.l The specific data selected for the purposes of this article relate to the parishes of Cardington in Bedfordshire, Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire, Caunton in Nottinghamshire, and Colyton in Devonshire. For the first three of these parishes, local censuses survive from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which exceptionally list all the children surviving to parents still alive at the time of the census regardless of their age, marital status, or current residence. It is therefore a straightforward matter to calculate the proportions of married children, ranked according to their position in the birth order at the time of the census, who were resident in the parish of their parents. 2 In the case of the fourth parish, the much studied Colyton, information on the residence patterns of children has been derived from a laborious linking of entries in the parish registers with those relating to the same families in the five censuses of 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, and 1881. The results of this exercise, presented below in Tables 3 through 8, do not precisely replicate those of the earlier analysis in that they include never-married as well as married children providing that they lived at least until the age of fifteen. They also differ from the results presented for Cardington, Stoke Poges, and Caunton in that they document residence patterns not at a precise moment in time but over the course of the first eight decades of the nineteenth century. 3
THE COLYTON STUDY As an analysis along these lines has not previously been presented, it is worth setting out in some detail the rules which were adopted to determine which families should be considered resident in Colyton, thereby validating an examination of the migration records of
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their children. In this way it should be possible to replicate this study. The prime requirement was that at least one of the parents of the child had to be resident in the parish of Colyton in 1841 and either survive through to 1881 or have their death recorded in the burial register. The purpose of this restriction was to ensure that as few families as possible were included which at some point might have migrated from Colyton, taking all of their children with them. A further restriction, which introduces a slight upwards bias into the calculation of the proportions of children resident in the parish, was that at least one child had to be resident in Colyton in 1851, although not necessarily within the parental household. This condition was imposed because the families to be studied here form part of the large data set selected with another purpose in mind, that of following the changes to the household and family patterns of the residents of Colyton over the period 1851-1881. To some extent the introduction of a residence requirement in 1851 also limits the time frame of the study. Nevertheless, since many of these children had established independent households years and sometimes decades before 1851, it is appropriate to see this study as covering the residence patterns of siblings over the first eight decades of the nineteenth-century, rather than simply those of the period 1851-1881. Other rules were required to determine whether a child should be considered as a resident in Colyton as an adult. Difficulties arise in this connection because in the past the age at which children left the parental home varied widely even within the same community or family. In Colyton some children left at fifteen or even earlier, while others delayed their departure until their thirties. 4 A few children no doubt remained with their parents until the latters' deaths and continued the parental household thereafter. Others left only to return and perhaps leave again. In order to reduce the range of possibilities which threatened to force the construction of a series of extremely complicated tables rather devoid of numbers, it was eventually decided to count as resident any child who after the age of fifteen was present in any one of the Colyton censuses, providing they were either no longer resident in the parental household or were a live-in servant. The population was defined in this way in order to identify those children who had made a definitive break with the parental home yet still remained within the parental parish. In addition, children who were enumerated in the parental home in all censuses following their fifteenth birthday or who returned to the parental home at any time after the age of fifteen were also included in the count of those ever-residing as adults in Colyton, thereby adding to the count those whose presence in Colyton involved continued or renewed residence in the parental home. Also counted as resident were those children whose burial was recorded in the Colyton parish registers prior to 1881. Admittedly some of these children, the majority perhaps, might have intended to reside elsewhere had they lived long enough. They may even have been brought back from another parish for burial. Yet to have counted them all as non-resident or excluded them altogether would have introduced other biases. 5 Excluded from the count of residents, however, were those children who did eventually leave the parental home even if at a relatively advanced age. Although they were present in Colyton for a considerable part of their adulthood, to have included them among the residents would have meant that those children who delayed their departure from the parental home would be considered resident, while those who left at younger ages would be judged to be non-resident. All these definitions of the resident population are of course arbitrary, and alternative procedures could have been followed by focusing for example on the proportions who
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were 'ever absent' from Colyton as opposed to ever-resident, or by calculating the proportion resident and absent at particular ages or in particular census years. To have introduced such calculations here would have over-burdened the present article. What however must be emphasised, though, is that a study of residence patterns, however residence is defined, must inevitably miss many of the changes of residence when the primary sources of information on residence are censuses taken ten years apart.
RESIDENCE PATTERNS OF SIBLINGS IN CARDINGTON, STOKE POGES, AND CAUNTON It would also be incorrect to assume that the pace at which children left the parental home would be essentially the same in one village as in another, even though most of the inhabitants could be expected to conform to the norm of establishing independent households on marriage. This is clear from a perusal of Table 1, which indicates that whereas almost half of married sons lived in Stoke Poges and Caunton as did their parents, in Cardington only just over a quarter of married sons remained within the parental parish. These differences may reflect the reduced employment opportunities for males in Cardington although there are a number of confounding variables, 6 the most obvious of which are parish size, proximity to major routes, and the fact that the Caunton census covers the entire population, while the other two censuses included only laborers and craftsmen, which must also help to determine the proportions of children considered as resident in the parental parish. Comparison of the residence patterns of married daughters with those of married sons shows that in all three parishes married daughters were less likely than were married sons to reside in the same parish as their parents. However, the same sort of differences as were discovered for married sons are evident in the case of married daughters. In Cardington just a fifth of married daughters lived in Cardington like their parents, whereas in Stoke Poges and Caunton the proportion was closer to a third. In Table 2, attention switches to whether there are any differences which can be detected in the propensity of married children to reside in the same parish as their parents according to the child's rank in birth order. The ranking has been defined as the child's rank in the
TABLE 1 Percentage of Married Children Living in the Same Parish as Their Parents: England, Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Community
Total
Resident
Resident as % of Total
38 26 45
10 12 22
26 46 48
40 38 47
9 13 14
22 34 30
Sons Cardington, Beds. 1982 Stoke Poges, Bucks. 1831 Caunton, Notts. 1846
Daughters Cardington, Beds. 1782 Stoke Poges, Bucks. 1831 Caunton, Notts. 1846
Source: Calculated from photocopies of local censuses (listings) in the library of the Cambridge Group.
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TABLE 2 Percentage of Married Children of Various Ranks of Birth Living in the S a m e Parish as Their Parents: England, Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
Birth Rank ~ Sons Only First Last Other
Cardington 1782 Resident Total (%)
Stoke Poges 1831 Resident Total (%)
Caunton 1846 Resident Total (%)
6 17 6 10
50 18 17 30
0 12 3 10
-42 33 42
5 18 8 14
60 50 12 43
8 20 4 8
25 30 25 0
1 19 2 16
1O0 47 0 19
7 19 9 12
57 32 33 8
Daughters Only First Last Other Note:
1Rank in birth order of children surviving to the time of the
census.
birth order of siblings of the same sex still alive at the time of the census. Unfortunately, interpretation of the results is far from easy, in part because of the small number of cases in some of the categories but also because the census catches families before all children, particularly later-born children, had married. It is for this reason that there are so few last-born children compared with first-born listed in Table 2. The file of data on Colyton which is analysed later does not suffer from this defect, as the information on residence patterns is derived from a series of censuses rather than one, allowing ample time for even the last-born children from families already with children over the age of fifteen in 1851 to establish themselves. The residence patterns of siblings in the three villages of Cardington, Stoke Poges, and Caunton as displayed in Table 2 have therefore to be treated with considerable reserve. The data as they stand, however, suggest that first-born sons were more likely after marriage to reside in the parish of their parents than were last born sons. The differences, however, in the residence patterns of first born sons and their brothers, other than the last-born, were by no means marked, and in Cardington were actually reversed, with married brothers of other birth ranks being more likely to reside in the parental parish than either the first or last-born. There are signs, too, that where there was only one son in a family he was particularly likely after marriage to settle in the parental parish. The residence patterns of married daughters are somewhat different. In two of the parishes sole daughters were more likely than daughters from families who had more than one daughter to reside after marriage in the parental parish, but there were few such families. Particularly low rates of residence in the parental parish are reported for daughters of middle-birth rank, but there is little difference between the proportions of first-born and last-born daughters who chose to reside in the same parish of their parents, except in the parish of Stoke Poges where there were only two last-born daughters whose residence patterns could be studied. To a certain extent, however, the problem of small numbers affects all the results presented for these three villages. None of the differences (or similarities) that have been reported should be considered as firmly established, and a judicious
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conclusion would simply be that there is no evidence of any striking variations in propensity to reside in the parental parish on the part of either married sons or married daughters of different birth ranks.
RESIDENCE, MARRIAGE, AND OCCUPATIONAL HISTORIES OF SIBLINGS FROM COLYTON Analysis of the residence patterns of siblings from Colyton is fortunately less constrained by the problem of small numbers. Table 3 indicates that exactly half of all sons and all daughters born in Colyton spent at least part of their adult life in Colyton either by setting up a household independent from that of their parents or, much more rarely, by maintaining a continued presence in the parental household or returning to it after an absence. The rules followed to define when a child should be considered as resident in Colyton are set out in more detail above. There are only slight differences, however, in the propensity to reside in the parental parish by either sons or daughters of different birth ranks. First-born sons were slightly more likely than other sons to ever-reside in the parental parish as were sole and last-born daughters, but the range of variation is always within six percentage points. This analysis is extended in Table 4, which introduces another variable, that of the occupation of the father. Admittedly the occupational groups are rather broad. It would have been particularly valuable, for example, to have been able to distinguish master-craftsmen from those of their employees, the journeymen, and when the entire population of Colyton has been surveyed it might be possible to make this distinction, at least for a reasonable number of the families. Even the broad definition of occupational groups, however, suffices to illustrate certain differences in the residence patterns of children which would appear to arise from their contrasting social backgrounds. Sons of farmers, and the sons and daughters whose fathers held 'other' occupations, were noticeably more likely to reside in the parental parish when adult than were the offspring of tradesmen, craftsmen, and laborers. This is an interesting result as the other occupational group, in particular, is known to have contained an above average number of wealthy fathers whose contact patterns could be expected to extend well beyond Colyton, in turn facilitating their children in establishing themselves elsewhere. In practice, however, this would appear not to have happened.
TABLE 3 Sons and Daughters Ever-Residing as Adults in the Parish of Their Parents by Rank of Birth in Same Sex Sibling Set at Age 15: Colyton, Devon, in the Nineteenth Century Sons Birth Rank
Total
Resident (%)
Total
Only First Last Other Total
23 84 84 97 288
48 54 50 48 50
31 75 76 96 278
Daughters Resident (%) 55 45 53 49 50
Sources: Censuses of Colyton 1841-1881, and parish registers. I am grateful to Jean Robin of the Cambridge Group for having extracted the data. The results presented here are provisional and are derived from a sample of families consisting of those whose surnames begin with the letters A-L.
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TABLE 4
Sons and Daughters Ever-Residing as Adults in the Parish of Their Parents by Rank of Birth in Same Sex Sibling Set at Age 15 and Occupational Group of Father: Colyton, Devon, in the Nineteenth Century
Birth Rank
Tradesmen and Craftsmen Sons Daughters Total Total Resident (%) Resident (%)
Only Firm Last Other Total
8 31 31 38 108
50 39 45 45 44
Only First Last Other Total
1 10 11 12 34
100 60 45 67 59
10 26 27 43 106
Laborers Sons Daughters Total Total Resident (%) Resident (%)
40 46 56 56 52
5 32 31 40 108
50 43 29 25 35
9 11 11 7 38
Farmers
40 56 48 43 48
12 28 28 32 100
67 36 50 41 45
Other Occupations 4 7 7 8 26
44 82 73 71 68
5 14 14 13 46
60 64 64 62 63
Sources: See Table 3.
The focus of attention in the context of the present article, however, is on the degree of variation in the propensity to live as an adult in the parental parish following from the child's rank of birth. It was pointed out above that analysis of the population as a whole indicated a slight tendency for first-born sons and last-born and sole daughters to reside as adults in the parental parish. By looking at the various occupational groups it became clear that this pattern was particularly associated with children whose fathers were laborers. By contrast the first-born sons of tradesmen and craftsmen were less, rather than more, likely than last-born sons to reside in the parental parish and there were only as many last-born daughters of tradesmen and craftsmen resident in Colyton as daughters of 'middle-rank'. As for offspring of fathers from the other two occupational groups, there are possibly too few of these in the sample as it is constituted at present for any definitive residence patterns to emerge. Certainly there is no indication that last-born daughters were more prone than other daughters to remain or return to the parental parish as was the practice of the daughters of laborers. There is just a hint, on the other hand, that a greater proportion of first-born than of last-born sons of farmers and of fathers from the 'other occupation' group may have settled in the parish of their parents. The next table (Table 5) is concerned with variations by rank of birth in the proportions of children who are known to have married. The proportions are low, implying that a majority of sons and an important minority of daughters had married outside of Colyton. It is also important to realise that not all of the inhabitants whose marriages were recorded in the Colyton parish registers later resided in Colyton. The population covered in Table 5 is therefore somewhat different from that considered resident and analysed in Tables 3 and 4, and there is no reason why the propensity to reside in Colyton and the propensity to register marriages in Colyton should follow a common pattern according to the child's rank in the
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TABLE 5 Sons and Daughters Ever K n o w n to H a v e Married by R a n k of Birth in S a m e Sex Sibling Set at Age 15 and Occupational Group of Father: Colyton, D e v o n In the Nineteenth Century
Birth Rank Only First Last Other Total
Tradesmen and Craftsmen Sons Daughters Married Married To~l (%) To~l (%) 8 31 31 38 108
38 42 35 37 44
10 26 27 43 106
20 42 67 44 47
Laborers Sons Daughters Married Married To~l (%) To~l (%) 5 32 31 40 108
Farmers Only First Last Other Total
1 10 11 12 34
100 30 18 33 29
60 25 39 30 32
12 28 28 32 100
42 36 43 56 45
Other Occupations 4 7 7 8 26
50 43 33 25 38
9 11 11 7 38
22 45 36 57 39
5 14 14 13 46
60 64 50 23 48
All Occupational Groups Birth Rank
Sons Total
Married (%)
23 84 84 97 288
39 35 35 35 35
Only First Last Other Total
Daughters Total Married (%) 31 75 76 96 278
39 44 53 44 46
Sources." See Table 3.
birth order. Taking all occupational groups together there is in fact almost no variation in the frequency with which sons of different birth ranks registered their marriages in Colyton. As many first-born as last-born and middle-ranking sons had their marriages recorded in the Colyton registers, and even sole sons had only slightly higher rates of marriage registration. In the case of daughters, there is somewhat more variation in that sole daughters had somewhat lower and the last-born somewhat higher rates of marriage registration than had daughters of other birth ranks. Yet these are patterns that diverge considerably according to the occupational group of the father. For example, it is the last-born daughters of tradesmen and craftsmen who were particularly likely to marry in Colyton. This is true whether the comparison is with other daughters of craftsmen and tradesmen or with the last-born children of fathers with other occupations. Thus amongst the daughters of laborers it is noticeably those of middle birth-rank who married in Colyton, while of the daughters of farmers and of fathers in the 'other occupation' group, on the basis of a small number of observations, it would appear that it was more often the first-born who would marry locally. For sons, it is less easy to identify any clear pattern of marriage registration,
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although for three out of four occupational groups, first-born sons were more likely to marry in Colyton than were last-born sons. Laborers, whose last-born sons were the most likely of their sons to marry in the parish, provide the exception. At this point it would be premature to try and account for the divergences in marriage registration practice by occupation, birth-rank, and gender of the child, as some of these differences are so slight as possibly to be the product of random variation. The explanation is in any case likely to be complex, because where the inhabitants of the time chose to marry is likely to have reflected individual preferences as much or more than factors which can now be quantified such as the social standing of the parent or the child's rank of birth. One factor, however, is worthy of emphasis, and that is that although daughters were more likely than the sons to marry in the home parish, and this holds across all occupational groups, the difference is perhaps not all that great given that it is often supposed that there was a strong tradition in favour of marriages being celebrated in the parish of the bride. For the minority of the population who married in Colyton, it is possible to measure whether there is any variation in the distribution of ages at first marriage of sons and daughters according to the birth rank. Information on this point is set out for the whole population in Table 6. The number of marriages does not at present permit informative analysis of the influence of the father' s occupation. For sons there are signs that first-born sons might on average marry at an earlier age than last-born sons, who would in turn marry at an earlier age than would middle-rank sons. When comparing first-born and last-born sons, such a difference is visible at the ages by which 20 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent, and 60 percent of the sons had married, and comparing last-born and middle-rank sons, a difference is evident at the ages by which one percent, ten percent and more than half the sons had married. However, there is also a small minority of first-born sons who married particularly late and sole sons (on the basis of a very small number of cases) also seem to have married relatively late. TABLE 6 Distribution of A g e s at First Marriage of S o n s and Daughters b y R a n k of Birth in S a m e Sex Sibling Set at Age 15: Colyton, Devon, in the Nineteenth Century
Married (%)
Only
Age by Which a Given Percentage Had Married Sons Daughters First Last Other Only First Last
Other
1
20
18
18
20
19
17
16
16
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 N
20 20 22 24 24 27 30 35 46 46 9
19 20 21 21 22 22 26 29 32 64 29
19 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 33 29
21 22 22 23 24 25 28 28 31 40 34
19 20 20 21 23 27 28 50 54 56 12
18 19 21 22 23 23 24 27 34 48 33
19 20 21 22 23 24 26 28 30 43 40
18 21 21 22 23 24 27 28 36 54 42
Sources: See Table 3.
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Turning now to the daughters, there is also very little evidence of variation in marriage age by rank of birth. Whatever their birth rank, half of all the daughters were married by the age of 23. A minority of sole daughters may have married relatively late but there were extremely few of these in the present sample. The final pair of tables (Tables 7 and 8) investigate the extent of variation in the occupational histories of siblings according to their rank of birth and the occupational group of the father. Once again there has had to be a considerable degree of simplification in order to present a relatively straightforward-looking table. Changes in occupation, for example, either by a parent or a child over the course of their life have had to be ignored and the occupation selected which seemed to have been held for the longest period of time. It has to be admitted, though, that on occasion the selection process was somewhat arbitrary. It also needs to be made clear that although information is provided in all three major occupational groups (tradesmen and craftsmen, laborers, and farmers), comparisons across all groups are not particularly meaningful in this context, because what is being measured is the frequency with which a son followed his father's or son-in-law his father-in-law's specific occupation rather than the tendency to remain within the father's or father-in-law's social class or occupational group. Some occupational titles (and 'laborer' is a prime example) are far less specific than others (for example 'carpenter') and, other factors being equal, will register higher succession rates by sons and sons-in-law. TABLE 7 Percentage of Sons with Same Occupation as their Fathers by Rank of Birth of Son in Same Sex Sibling Group and by Occupation of Father: Colyton, Devon, in the Nineteenth Century
Birth Rank
Total
Only First Last Other Total
8 31 31 38 108
Only First Last Other Total
5 32 31 40 108
Only First Last Other Total
1 10 11 12 34
Occupation Known
Occupation Shared % of Total % of Known
Tradesmen and Craftsmen 2 12 16 17 47
25 23 26 26 25
100 58 50 59 57
20 34 26 30 30
50 79 66 86 76
100 0 9 25 18
100 0 33 50 54
Laborers 2 14 12 14 42
Farmers
Sources: See Table 3.
1 1 3 6 11
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TABLE 8 Percentage of Sons-in-law with Same Occupation as their Father-in-law by Rank of Birth of Son's Wife in Same Sex Sibling Group and by Occupation of Father: Colyton, Devon, in the Nineteenth Century
Birth Rank (Wife)
Total
Occupation Known
Occupation Shared % of Total % of Known
Only
10
3
10
33
First Last Other Total
26 27 43 106
10 15 9 37
0 4 0 2
0 7 0 5
Only First Last Other Total
12 28 28 32 1O0
42 25 25 19 25
83 70 78 50 68
Only First Last Other Total
4 7 7 8 26
25 0 14 0 8
10 0 50 0 29
Tradesmen and Craftsmen
Laborers 6 10 9 12 37
Farmers 1 3 2 1 7
Sources: See Table 3.
Tables 7 and 8 provide for each occupational group and birth rank, two distinct calculations. The first shows the proportion of sons or sons-in-law who are known to have shared their father's or father-in-law's occupation while residing in the parental parish. The second shows how many shared an occupation as a proportion of the total number of sons or sons-in-law whose occupation could be determined. The second measure perhaps gives a better idea of occupational succession: in other words, how frequently a son might follow his father or a son-in-law his father-in-law in a particular occupation. However, the first calculation is also of interest as an indicator of the probability with which sons or sons-in-law would be actually involved in the same occupation in the same parish as their father or father-in-law, although not necessarily at the same time. In the case of tradesmen and craftsmen, for example, this concerned no more than a quarter of their sons who survived at least until the age of fifteen, and less than a third even of the sons of laborers who, as noted above, had a much stronger probability o f appearing with the same occupation as their fathers than had the sons of tradesmen and craftsmen. It is also clear that differences in the propensity to share occupations associated with the child's rank of birth have to be considered modest and, when existing, probably the result of random variation (and certainly so in the case of the sons of farmers). The one difference perhaps worthy of further attention is whether the last-born sons of laborers were indeed less likely to follow their father's occupation, as both ways of calculating occupational succession would seem to imply. Somewhat fewer last-born sons of trades-
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men and craftsmen than their other sons would also appear to have taken up their father's occupation in the same parish. Yet the principal finding derived from the data presented in Tables 7 and 8 does not involve the variation in the sharing of occupations according to the child's rank of birth, but the fact that so few sons-in-law shared their father-in-law's occupations. So rare indeed was it for a son-in-law of the craftsmen or tradesmen to have the same occupation as his father-in-law that it looks almost like a strategy designed to minimize conflict.
CONCLUSION This article began by offering some suggestions as to why there might be important differences in residence, occupational, and marriage histories of children born at different points in the f a m i l y ' s life cycle, even if parents had few resources to leave to their children. Examination of the data of a number of small communities in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has found only slight evidence of such differences. Nevertheless, some differences there certainly were that would be worthy of further investigation. For example, it is difficult to see what the economic factors could be which would encourage more first-born sons and the last-born daughters than other sons and daughters to settle as adults in the parental parish. If the daughters of laborers had stayed on to care for aging parents, then the fact that the last-born daughters of parents who were tradesmen and craftsmen were no more prone to reside in Colyton when adult than were their middle-ranked daughters might imply that the burden of care was distributed differently according to the occupation or social standing of the parent. The residence patterns of the first-born sons of laborers are also not easy to interpret, since the size of the local labor market should have provided more than the first-born with an opportunity for work. Other (cultural) factors may therefore have been in operation encouraging some sons to stay and others to leave. Even when parents had few resources and their children made their own way in life, there were signs, therefore, that certain differences in residence and marriage patterns and in occupational histories were associated with specific ranks of birth.
NOTES 1. Wall 1983, pp. 23-24, 30-31; Laslett 1983, pp. 554-556. 2. For other analyses of these censuses see Schofield (1970) and Wall (1991). 3. By far the greater proportion of the name-linkage was undertaken by Jean Robin of the Cambridge Group. Without her efforts the present article could not have been written. 4. Wall 1978; 1986. 5. Death in early childhood also disturbs the ranking in birth order of other siblings. In this article children have been ranked according to their places in the birth order among those of their siblings who survived until the age of fifteeen. This again involves a considerable simplification of reality. The cut off point of fifteen was chosen as from this age it becomes conceivable that a child might have been launched on a particular career path. However, later changes of direction are possible, some no doubt inititated by the untimely death of other siblings. 6. Wall 1978, p. 194.
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REFERENCES Laslett, P. 1983. "Family and Household as Work Group and Kin Group: Areas of Traditional Europe Compared." Pp. 513-563 in Family Forms in Historic Europe, edited by R. Wall, J. Robin, and P. Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schofield, R. 1970. "Age-specific Mobility in an Eighteenth-Century Rural English Parish." Annales de D~mographie Historique Pp. 261-74. Wall, R. 1978. "The Age at Leaving Home." Journal of Family History 3: 181-202. . 1983. "Introduction." Pp. 1-63 in Family Forms in Historic Europe, edited by R. Wall, J. Robin, and P. Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1986. "Work, Welfare and the Family: An Illustration of the Adaptive Family." Pp. 261-294 The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure, edited by L. Bonfield, R. M. Smith and K. Wrightson. Oxford: Blackwell. 1991. "Relationships Between the Generations in British Families Past and Present." Pp. 63-85 in Families and Households: Division and Change, edited by C. March and S. Arber. London: Macmillan.
RICHARD WALL
ABSTRACT: Even when parents had few resources to transfer to their children, the dynamics of the family life-cycle may serve to advance the occupational, residence and marriage careers of certain chiMren and hinder the careers of others. This hypothesis is tested by calculating for a number of small English communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the proportions of children, ranked according to their position in the birth order at the time of the census, who were resident in the parish of their parents. The data suggest that even when parents had few resources and their children made their own way in life, certain differences in residence and marriage patterns and in occupational histories were associated with specific birth ranks.
'I don't want him', said Rabbit. 'But it's always useful to know where a friend-and-relation is, whether you want him or whether you don't' (A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner ]London: Methuen, 1928], p. 37). In those societies in which parental property, particularly land, is transferred to just one of the sons, it is reasonable to expect that those siblings who are disadvantaged will have occupational, residence, and marriage careers which differ markedly from those of the heir. This may be so even if those children who are not to receive parental land are compensated in other ways, for example by cash transfers on their marriage or at other times. Indeed even when parents have little or nothing to transfer to any o f their Richard Wall is Associate Senior Researcher at the Cambridge Group for History and Population and Social Structure, 27 Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1QA, England. THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY An International Quarterly, Volume 1, Number 3, pages 259-271 Copyright © 1996 JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 1081-602X
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children, differences in life history according to rank of birth of the child may persist, first because parental influences may be used to favour a particular child, and secondly because the dynamics of the family's own life cycle imposes its own constraints on the life chances of children born at different points in the course of its development. First-born children, for example, would be presented with the earliest opportunity of making use of the parent's network of contacts to seek out employment. Such children might also be cajoled by their parents into taking whatever employment was available sooner than would be the case for their later-born siblings, because their families had to maximize earnings to support an increasing number of under-age children. Later-born children, by contrast, would be at least partially cushioned from economic hardship early in their lives because of the contributions their older siblings made to the family budget. There might, therefore, have been less need for them to seek early employment, conceivably permitting a few not merely to delay working but to seek out alternative and perhaps eventually more lucrative employment. On the other hand, later-born siblings, particularly if female, are also likely to have been more at risk than earlier-born siblings of having to limit their options in regard to residence, marriage, and employment to ensure they could be on hand to care for elderly, sick or widowed parents. English populations of the past provide a useful testing ground for a number of these hypotheses. Not only were large proportions of these populations, journeymen-craftsmen and laborers, generally without much in the way of resources which they could pass onto the next generation, but even those with resources such as farmers, master craftsmen, and the like, often had their children establish independent households during their own lifetime.l The specific data selected for the purposes of this article relate to the parishes of Cardington in Bedfordshire, Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire, Caunton in Nottinghamshire, and Colyton in Devonshire. For the first three of these parishes, local censuses survive from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which exceptionally list all the children surviving to parents still alive at the time of the census regardless of their age, marital status, or current residence. It is therefore a straightforward matter to calculate the proportions of married children, ranked according to their position in the birth order at the time of the census, who were resident in the parish of their parents. 2 In the case of the fourth parish, the much studied Colyton, information on the residence patterns of children has been derived from a laborious linking of entries in the parish registers with those relating to the same families in the five censuses of 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, and 1881. The results of this exercise, presented below in Tables 3 through 8, do not precisely replicate those of the earlier analysis in that they include never-married as well as married children providing that they lived at least until the age of fifteen. They also differ from the results presented for Cardington, Stoke Poges, and Caunton in that they document residence patterns not at a precise moment in time but over the course of the first eight decades of the nineteenth century. 3
THE COLYTON STUDY As an analysis along these lines has not previously been presented, it is worth setting out in some detail the rules which were adopted to determine which families should be considered resident in Colyton, thereby validating an examination of the migration records of
Marriage, Residence, and Occupational Choices
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their children. In this way it should be possible to replicate this study. The prime requirement was that at least one of the parents of the child had to be resident in the parish of Colyton in 1841 and either survive through to 1881 or have their death recorded in the burial register. The purpose of this restriction was to ensure that as few families as possible were included which at some point might have migrated from Colyton, taking all of their children with them. A further restriction, which introduces a slight upwards bias into the calculation of the proportions of children resident in the parish, was that at least one child had to be resident in Colyton in 1851, although not necessarily within the parental household. This condition was imposed because the families to be studied here form part of the large data set selected with another purpose in mind, that of following the changes to the household and family patterns of the residents of Colyton over the period 1851-1881. To some extent the introduction of a residence requirement in 1851 also limits the time frame of the study. Nevertheless, since many of these children had established independent households years and sometimes decades before 1851, it is appropriate to see this study as covering the residence patterns of siblings over the first eight decades of the nineteenth-century, rather than simply those of the period 1851-1881. Other rules were required to determine whether a child should be considered as a resident in Colyton as an adult. Difficulties arise in this connection because in the past the age at which children left the parental home varied widely even within the same community or family. In Colyton some children left at fifteen or even earlier, while others delayed their departure until their thirties. 4 A few children no doubt remained with their parents until the latters' deaths and continued the parental household thereafter. Others left only to return and perhaps leave again. In order to reduce the range of possibilities which threatened to force the construction of a series of extremely complicated tables rather devoid of numbers, it was eventually decided to count as resident any child who after the age of fifteen was present in any one of the Colyton censuses, providing they were either no longer resident in the parental household or were a live-in servant. The population was defined in this way in order to identify those children who had made a definitive break with the parental home yet still remained within the parental parish. In addition, children who were enumerated in the parental home in all censuses following their fifteenth birthday or who returned to the parental home at any time after the age of fifteen were also included in the count of those ever-residing as adults in Colyton, thereby adding to the count those whose presence in Colyton involved continued or renewed residence in the parental home. Also counted as resident were those children whose burial was recorded in the Colyton parish registers prior to 1881. Admittedly some of these children, the majority perhaps, might have intended to reside elsewhere had they lived long enough. They may even have been brought back from another parish for burial. Yet to have counted them all as non-resident or excluded them altogether would have introduced other biases. 5 Excluded from the count of residents, however, were those children who did eventually leave the parental home even if at a relatively advanced age. Although they were present in Colyton for a considerable part of their adulthood, to have included them among the residents would have meant that those children who delayed their departure from the parental home would be considered resident, while those who left at younger ages would be judged to be non-resident. All these definitions of the resident population are of course arbitrary, and alternative procedures could have been followed by focusing for example on the proportions who
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were 'ever absent' from Colyton as opposed to ever-resident, or by calculating the proportion resident and absent at particular ages or in particular census years. To have introduced such calculations here would have over-burdened the present article. What however must be emphasised, though, is that a study of residence patterns, however residence is defined, must inevitably miss many of the changes of residence when the primary sources of information on residence are censuses taken ten years apart.
RESIDENCE PATTERNS OF SIBLINGS IN CARDINGTON, STOKE POGES, AND CAUNTON It would also be incorrect to assume that the pace at which children left the parental home would be essentially the same in one village as in another, even though most of the inhabitants could be expected to conform to the norm of establishing independent households on marriage. This is clear from a perusal of Table 1, which indicates that whereas almost half of married sons lived in Stoke Poges and Caunton as did their parents, in Cardington only just over a quarter of married sons remained within the parental parish. These differences may reflect the reduced employment opportunities for males in Cardington although there are a number of confounding variables, 6 the most obvious of which are parish size, proximity to major routes, and the fact that the Caunton census covers the entire population, while the other two censuses included only laborers and craftsmen, which must also help to determine the proportions of children considered as resident in the parental parish. Comparison of the residence patterns of married daughters with those of married sons shows that in all three parishes married daughters were less likely than were married sons to reside in the same parish as their parents. However, the same sort of differences as were discovered for married sons are evident in the case of married daughters. In Cardington just a fifth of married daughters lived in Cardington like their parents, whereas in Stoke Poges and Caunton the proportion was closer to a third. In Table 2, attention switches to whether there are any differences which can be detected in the propensity of married children to reside in the same parish as their parents according to the child's rank in birth order. The ranking has been defined as the child's rank in the
TABLE 1 Percentage of Married Children Living in the Same Parish as Their Parents: England, Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Community
Total
Resident
Resident as % of Total
38 26 45
10 12 22
26 46 48
40 38 47
9 13 14
22 34 30
Sons Cardington, Beds. 1982 Stoke Poges, Bucks. 1831 Caunton, Notts. 1846
Daughters Cardington, Beds. 1782 Stoke Poges, Bucks. 1831 Caunton, Notts. 1846
Source: Calculated from photocopies of local censuses (listings) in the library of the Cambridge Group.
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TABLE 2 Percentage of Married Children of Various Ranks of Birth Living in the S a m e Parish as Their Parents: England, Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
Birth Rank ~ Sons Only First Last Other
Cardington 1782 Resident Total (%)
Stoke Poges 1831 Resident Total (%)
Caunton 1846 Resident Total (%)
6 17 6 10
50 18 17 30
0 12 3 10
-42 33 42
5 18 8 14
60 50 12 43
8 20 4 8
25 30 25 0
1 19 2 16
1O0 47 0 19
7 19 9 12
57 32 33 8
Daughters Only First Last Other Note:
1Rank in birth order of children surviving to the time of the
census.
birth order of siblings of the same sex still alive at the time of the census. Unfortunately, interpretation of the results is far from easy, in part because of the small number of cases in some of the categories but also because the census catches families before all children, particularly later-born children, had married. It is for this reason that there are so few last-born children compared with first-born listed in Table 2. The file of data on Colyton which is analysed later does not suffer from this defect, as the information on residence patterns is derived from a series of censuses rather than one, allowing ample time for even the last-born children from families already with children over the age of fifteen in 1851 to establish themselves. The residence patterns of siblings in the three villages of Cardington, Stoke Poges, and Caunton as displayed in Table 2 have therefore to be treated with considerable reserve. The data as they stand, however, suggest that first-born sons were more likely after marriage to reside in the parish of their parents than were last born sons. The differences, however, in the residence patterns of first born sons and their brothers, other than the last-born, were by no means marked, and in Cardington were actually reversed, with married brothers of other birth ranks being more likely to reside in the parental parish than either the first or last-born. There are signs, too, that where there was only one son in a family he was particularly likely after marriage to settle in the parental parish. The residence patterns of married daughters are somewhat different. In two of the parishes sole daughters were more likely than daughters from families who had more than one daughter to reside after marriage in the parental parish, but there were few such families. Particularly low rates of residence in the parental parish are reported for daughters of middle-birth rank, but there is little difference between the proportions of first-born and last-born daughters who chose to reside in the same parish of their parents, except in the parish of Stoke Poges where there were only two last-born daughters whose residence patterns could be studied. To a certain extent, however, the problem of small numbers affects all the results presented for these three villages. None of the differences (or similarities) that have been reported should be considered as firmly established, and a judicious
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conclusion would simply be that there is no evidence of any striking variations in propensity to reside in the parental parish on the part of either married sons or married daughters of different birth ranks.
RESIDENCE, MARRIAGE, AND OCCUPATIONAL HISTORIES OF SIBLINGS FROM COLYTON Analysis of the residence patterns of siblings from Colyton is fortunately less constrained by the problem of small numbers. Table 3 indicates that exactly half of all sons and all daughters born in Colyton spent at least part of their adult life in Colyton either by setting up a household independent from that of their parents or, much more rarely, by maintaining a continued presence in the parental household or returning to it after an absence. The rules followed to define when a child should be considered as resident in Colyton are set out in more detail above. There are only slight differences, however, in the propensity to reside in the parental parish by either sons or daughters of different birth ranks. First-born sons were slightly more likely than other sons to ever-reside in the parental parish as were sole and last-born daughters, but the range of variation is always within six percentage points. This analysis is extended in Table 4, which introduces another variable, that of the occupation of the father. Admittedly the occupational groups are rather broad. It would have been particularly valuable, for example, to have been able to distinguish master-craftsmen from those of their employees, the journeymen, and when the entire population of Colyton has been surveyed it might be possible to make this distinction, at least for a reasonable number of the families. Even the broad definition of occupational groups, however, suffices to illustrate certain differences in the residence patterns of children which would appear to arise from their contrasting social backgrounds. Sons of farmers, and the sons and daughters whose fathers held 'other' occupations, were noticeably more likely to reside in the parental parish when adult than were the offspring of tradesmen, craftsmen, and laborers. This is an interesting result as the other occupational group, in particular, is known to have contained an above average number of wealthy fathers whose contact patterns could be expected to extend well beyond Colyton, in turn facilitating their children in establishing themselves elsewhere. In practice, however, this would appear not to have happened.
TABLE 3 Sons and Daughters Ever-Residing as Adults in the Parish of Their Parents by Rank of Birth in Same Sex Sibling Set at Age 15: Colyton, Devon, in the Nineteenth Century Sons Birth Rank
Total
Resident (%)
Total
Only First Last Other Total
23 84 84 97 288
48 54 50 48 50
31 75 76 96 278
Daughters Resident (%) 55 45 53 49 50
Sources: Censuses of Colyton 1841-1881, and parish registers. I am grateful to Jean Robin of the Cambridge Group for having extracted the data. The results presented here are provisional and are derived from a sample of families consisting of those whose surnames begin with the letters A-L.
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TABLE 4
Sons and Daughters Ever-Residing as Adults in the Parish of Their Parents by Rank of Birth in Same Sex Sibling Set at Age 15 and Occupational Group of Father: Colyton, Devon, in the Nineteenth Century
Birth Rank
Tradesmen and Craftsmen Sons Daughters Total Total Resident (%) Resident (%)
Only Firm Last Other Total
8 31 31 38 108
50 39 45 45 44
Only First Last Other Total
1 10 11 12 34
100 60 45 67 59
10 26 27 43 106
Laborers Sons Daughters Total Total Resident (%) Resident (%)
40 46 56 56 52
5 32 31 40 108
50 43 29 25 35
9 11 11 7 38
Farmers
40 56 48 43 48
12 28 28 32 100
67 36 50 41 45
Other Occupations 4 7 7 8 26
44 82 73 71 68
5 14 14 13 46
60 64 64 62 63
Sources: See Table 3.
The focus of attention in the context of the present article, however, is on the degree of variation in the propensity to live as an adult in the parental parish following from the child's rank of birth. It was pointed out above that analysis of the population as a whole indicated a slight tendency for first-born sons and last-born and sole daughters to reside as adults in the parental parish. By looking at the various occupational groups it became clear that this pattern was particularly associated with children whose fathers were laborers. By contrast the first-born sons of tradesmen and craftsmen were less, rather than more, likely than last-born sons to reside in the parental parish and there were only as many last-born daughters of tradesmen and craftsmen resident in Colyton as daughters of 'middle-rank'. As for offspring of fathers from the other two occupational groups, there are possibly too few of these in the sample as it is constituted at present for any definitive residence patterns to emerge. Certainly there is no indication that last-born daughters were more prone than other daughters to remain or return to the parental parish as was the practice of the daughters of laborers. There is just a hint, on the other hand, that a greater proportion of first-born than of last-born sons of farmers and of fathers from the 'other occupation' group may have settled in the parish of their parents. The next table (Table 5) is concerned with variations by rank of birth in the proportions of children who are known to have married. The proportions are low, implying that a majority of sons and an important minority of daughters had married outside of Colyton. It is also important to realise that not all of the inhabitants whose marriages were recorded in the Colyton parish registers later resided in Colyton. The population covered in Table 5 is therefore somewhat different from that considered resident and analysed in Tables 3 and 4, and there is no reason why the propensity to reside in Colyton and the propensity to register marriages in Colyton should follow a common pattern according to the child's rank in the
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TABLE 5 Sons and Daughters Ever K n o w n to H a v e Married by R a n k of Birth in S a m e Sex Sibling Set at Age 15 and Occupational Group of Father: Colyton, D e v o n In the Nineteenth Century
Birth Rank Only First Last Other Total
Tradesmen and Craftsmen Sons Daughters Married Married To~l (%) To~l (%) 8 31 31 38 108
38 42 35 37 44
10 26 27 43 106
20 42 67 44 47
Laborers Sons Daughters Married Married To~l (%) To~l (%) 5 32 31 40 108
Farmers Only First Last Other Total
1 10 11 12 34
100 30 18 33 29
60 25 39 30 32
12 28 28 32 100
42 36 43 56 45
Other Occupations 4 7 7 8 26
50 43 33 25 38
9 11 11 7 38
22 45 36 57 39
5 14 14 13 46
60 64 50 23 48
All Occupational Groups Birth Rank
Sons Total
Married (%)
23 84 84 97 288
39 35 35 35 35
Only First Last Other Total
Daughters Total Married (%) 31 75 76 96 278
39 44 53 44 46
Sources." See Table 3.
birth order. Taking all occupational groups together there is in fact almost no variation in the frequency with which sons of different birth ranks registered their marriages in Colyton. As many first-born as last-born and middle-ranking sons had their marriages recorded in the Colyton registers, and even sole sons had only slightly higher rates of marriage registration. In the case of daughters, there is somewhat more variation in that sole daughters had somewhat lower and the last-born somewhat higher rates of marriage registration than had daughters of other birth ranks. Yet these are patterns that diverge considerably according to the occupational group of the father. For example, it is the last-born daughters of tradesmen and craftsmen who were particularly likely to marry in Colyton. This is true whether the comparison is with other daughters of craftsmen and tradesmen or with the last-born children of fathers with other occupations. Thus amongst the daughters of laborers it is noticeably those of middle birth-rank who married in Colyton, while of the daughters of farmers and of fathers in the 'other occupation' group, on the basis of a small number of observations, it would appear that it was more often the first-born who would marry locally. For sons, it is less easy to identify any clear pattern of marriage registration,
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although for three out of four occupational groups, first-born sons were more likely to marry in Colyton than were last-born sons. Laborers, whose last-born sons were the most likely of their sons to marry in the parish, provide the exception. At this point it would be premature to try and account for the divergences in marriage registration practice by occupation, birth-rank, and gender of the child, as some of these differences are so slight as possibly to be the product of random variation. The explanation is in any case likely to be complex, because where the inhabitants of the time chose to marry is likely to have reflected individual preferences as much or more than factors which can now be quantified such as the social standing of the parent or the child's rank of birth. One factor, however, is worthy of emphasis, and that is that although daughters were more likely than the sons to marry in the home parish, and this holds across all occupational groups, the difference is perhaps not all that great given that it is often supposed that there was a strong tradition in favour of marriages being celebrated in the parish of the bride. For the minority of the population who married in Colyton, it is possible to measure whether there is any variation in the distribution of ages at first marriage of sons and daughters according to the birth rank. Information on this point is set out for the whole population in Table 6. The number of marriages does not at present permit informative analysis of the influence of the father' s occupation. For sons there are signs that first-born sons might on average marry at an earlier age than last-born sons, who would in turn marry at an earlier age than would middle-rank sons. When comparing first-born and last-born sons, such a difference is visible at the ages by which 20 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent, and 60 percent of the sons had married, and comparing last-born and middle-rank sons, a difference is evident at the ages by which one percent, ten percent and more than half the sons had married. However, there is also a small minority of first-born sons who married particularly late and sole sons (on the basis of a very small number of cases) also seem to have married relatively late. TABLE 6 Distribution of A g e s at First Marriage of S o n s and Daughters b y R a n k of Birth in S a m e Sex Sibling Set at Age 15: Colyton, Devon, in the Nineteenth Century
Married (%)
Only
Age by Which a Given Percentage Had Married Sons Daughters First Last Other Only First Last
Other
1
20
18
18
20
19
17
16
16
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 N
20 20 22 24 24 27 30 35 46 46 9
19 20 21 21 22 22 26 29 32 64 29
19 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 33 29
21 22 22 23 24 25 28 28 31 40 34
19 20 20 21 23 27 28 50 54 56 12
18 19 21 22 23 23 24 27 34 48 33
19 20 21 22 23 24 26 28 30 43 40
18 21 21 22 23 24 27 28 36 54 42
Sources: See Table 3.
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Turning now to the daughters, there is also very little evidence of variation in marriage age by rank of birth. Whatever their birth rank, half of all the daughters were married by the age of 23. A minority of sole daughters may have married relatively late but there were extremely few of these in the present sample. The final pair of tables (Tables 7 and 8) investigate the extent of variation in the occupational histories of siblings according to their rank of birth and the occupational group of the father. Once again there has had to be a considerable degree of simplification in order to present a relatively straightforward-looking table. Changes in occupation, for example, either by a parent or a child over the course of their life have had to be ignored and the occupation selected which seemed to have been held for the longest period of time. It has to be admitted, though, that on occasion the selection process was somewhat arbitrary. It also needs to be made clear that although information is provided in all three major occupational groups (tradesmen and craftsmen, laborers, and farmers), comparisons across all groups are not particularly meaningful in this context, because what is being measured is the frequency with which a son followed his father's or son-in-law his father-in-law's specific occupation rather than the tendency to remain within the father's or father-in-law's social class or occupational group. Some occupational titles (and 'laborer' is a prime example) are far less specific than others (for example 'carpenter') and, other factors being equal, will register higher succession rates by sons and sons-in-law. TABLE 7 Percentage of Sons with Same Occupation as their Fathers by Rank of Birth of Son in Same Sex Sibling Group and by Occupation of Father: Colyton, Devon, in the Nineteenth Century
Birth Rank
Total
Only First Last Other Total
8 31 31 38 108
Only First Last Other Total
5 32 31 40 108
Only First Last Other Total
1 10 11 12 34
Occupation Known
Occupation Shared % of Total % of Known
Tradesmen and Craftsmen 2 12 16 17 47
25 23 26 26 25
100 58 50 59 57
20 34 26 30 30
50 79 66 86 76
100 0 9 25 18
100 0 33 50 54
Laborers 2 14 12 14 42
Farmers
Sources: See Table 3.
1 1 3 6 11
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TABLE 8 Percentage of Sons-in-law with Same Occupation as their Father-in-law by Rank of Birth of Son's Wife in Same Sex Sibling Group and by Occupation of Father: Colyton, Devon, in the Nineteenth Century
Birth Rank (Wife)
Total
Occupation Known
Occupation Shared % of Total % of Known
Only
10
3
10
33
First Last Other Total
26 27 43 106
10 15 9 37
0 4 0 2
0 7 0 5
Only First Last Other Total
12 28 28 32 1O0
42 25 25 19 25
83 70 78 50 68
Only First Last Other Total
4 7 7 8 26
25 0 14 0 8
10 0 50 0 29
Tradesmen and Craftsmen
Laborers 6 10 9 12 37
Farmers 1 3 2 1 7
Sources: See Table 3.
Tables 7 and 8 provide for each occupational group and birth rank, two distinct calculations. The first shows the proportion of sons or sons-in-law who are known to have shared their father's or father-in-law's occupation while residing in the parental parish. The second shows how many shared an occupation as a proportion of the total number of sons or sons-in-law whose occupation could be determined. The second measure perhaps gives a better idea of occupational succession: in other words, how frequently a son might follow his father or a son-in-law his father-in-law in a particular occupation. However, the first calculation is also of interest as an indicator of the probability with which sons or sons-in-law would be actually involved in the same occupation in the same parish as their father or father-in-law, although not necessarily at the same time. In the case of tradesmen and craftsmen, for example, this concerned no more than a quarter of their sons who survived at least until the age of fifteen, and less than a third even of the sons of laborers who, as noted above, had a much stronger probability o f appearing with the same occupation as their fathers than had the sons of tradesmen and craftsmen. It is also clear that differences in the propensity to share occupations associated with the child's rank of birth have to be considered modest and, when existing, probably the result of random variation (and certainly so in the case of the sons of farmers). The one difference perhaps worthy of further attention is whether the last-born sons of laborers were indeed less likely to follow their father's occupation, as both ways of calculating occupational succession would seem to imply. Somewhat fewer last-born sons of trades-
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men and craftsmen than their other sons would also appear to have taken up their father's occupation in the same parish. Yet the principal finding derived from the data presented in Tables 7 and 8 does not involve the variation in the sharing of occupations according to the child's rank of birth, but the fact that so few sons-in-law shared their father-in-law's occupations. So rare indeed was it for a son-in-law of the craftsmen or tradesmen to have the same occupation as his father-in-law that it looks almost like a strategy designed to minimize conflict.
CONCLUSION This article began by offering some suggestions as to why there might be important differences in residence, occupational, and marriage histories of children born at different points in the f a m i l y ' s life cycle, even if parents had few resources to leave to their children. Examination of the data of a number of small communities in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has found only slight evidence of such differences. Nevertheless, some differences there certainly were that would be worthy of further investigation. For example, it is difficult to see what the economic factors could be which would encourage more first-born sons and the last-born daughters than other sons and daughters to settle as adults in the parental parish. If the daughters of laborers had stayed on to care for aging parents, then the fact that the last-born daughters of parents who were tradesmen and craftsmen were no more prone to reside in Colyton when adult than were their middle-ranked daughters might imply that the burden of care was distributed differently according to the occupation or social standing of the parent. The residence patterns of the first-born sons of laborers are also not easy to interpret, since the size of the local labor market should have provided more than the first-born with an opportunity for work. Other (cultural) factors may therefore have been in operation encouraging some sons to stay and others to leave. Even when parents had few resources and their children made their own way in life, there were signs, therefore, that certain differences in residence and marriage patterns and in occupational histories were associated with specific ranks of birth.
NOTES 1. Wall 1983, pp. 23-24, 30-31; Laslett 1983, pp. 554-556. 2. For other analyses of these censuses see Schofield (1970) and Wall (1991). 3. By far the greater proportion of the name-linkage was undertaken by Jean Robin of the Cambridge Group. Without her efforts the present article could not have been written. 4. Wall 1978; 1986. 5. Death in early childhood also disturbs the ranking in birth order of other siblings. In this article children have been ranked according to their places in the birth order among those of their siblings who survived until the age of fifteeen. This again involves a considerable simplification of reality. The cut off point of fifteen was chosen as from this age it becomes conceivable that a child might have been launched on a particular career path. However, later changes of direction are possible, some no doubt inititated by the untimely death of other siblings. 6. Wall 1978, p. 194.
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