Economies Past

If you’re interested in English economic history you will—or should—know about ‘Economies Past’ at https://www.economiespast.org/ , a Cambridge University project to erect ‘the most detailed quantitative picture of long-run economic development ever assembled anywhere in the world’. ‘Economies Past’ uses over 160 million census, parish and probate records to track changes to the British labour force from the Elizabethan era to the eve of the First World War’.

Much of the hard work of finding, gathering, transcribing, assembling, and interpreting the primary data has been done, and the results—at least some large-scale conclusions—are being drawn, one of them that the English Industrial Revolution happened a century before the dates usually assigned to it.

from Economies Past website: The graph shows the long-run trends in male occupational structure.
“The most surprising, and most important, finding of the project is that the key period for the shift from the primary to the secondary sector was from 1600-1700, not 1750-1850 as 100 years of scholarship has assumed. In fact, the share of the male labour force in the secondary sector (excluding mining) was flat during the Industrial Revolution.
A second major finding is that the tertiary sector was the most dynamic sector of employment during the Industrial Revolution period.”

What’s in it for the family historian, whose main concerns, by definition, are local and particular rather than large scale and general?

Well, the family historian might begin to discover that the background against which events at his level of interest unfold has taken on a different colour. His great-great grandfather, an agricultural labourer, early caught up in some aspect of iron smelting, is better described as a metal-trades industrial labourer.

At this level, data-gathering and interpretation happens at the parish level. The large-scale Cambridge project provides local historians with the capacity to check their own data and, where there are discrepancies, to ask who got it wrong, and why.

Whitmore

‘Economies Past’ displays some of its massaged and interpreted data. Occupations have been classified to one of three sectors:

  • Primary sector: agriculture, forestry and fishing;
  • Secondary sector: mining, manufacturing and construction;
  • Tertiary sector: anyone in services.

The website has a map where you can look at the labour force participation over time for a given area.

Economies Past map: labour force participation map 1851 showing the parish of Whitmore and data for adult males

I was able to zoom in on the parish of Whitmore in Staffordshire where data came up that the labour force participation rate 1851 was 80-90% for men and for 20-30% for women. The figure for 13-14 year olds was 30-40% for both boys and girls. It was zero for boys and girls aged 10-12.

When I looked at the 1851 census data I found there were 128 men aged 15 and over enumerated in Whitmore parish in 1851. Of these 117 (91%) were employed or had occupations. (I did not include a retired businessman, a pauper, or a traveller in this number.)

There were 118 women over the age of 15. Of these 29 (25%) were employed or living in the household as a servant.

The study looked at boys and girls aged 13-14 and 10-12.

The study found 30-40% of children aged 13-14 were participating in the workforce with no difference in rate between boys and girls.

I found there were 18 children aged 13-14 recorded in the parish in 1851. Of these 8 (44%) were employed. For 2 children there was no occupation recorded but their relationship to the head of the house was servant so I have counted them as participating in the labour force but they may not have been picked up by the study.

The study found no children aged 10-12 in the parish of Whitmore were participating in the labour force.

I found there were 17 children aged 10-12 enumerated. Two were employed. One was a timber carrier and the other was a servant in the household of a farmer although no occupation was listed and again the study might not have picked him up as being employed.

The study found that 30-40% of adult men were employed in agriculture, 10-20% in the secondary sector, 30-40% in the tertiary sector including 15-20% in transport.

I found 64 (50%) of the 128 men were employed in agriculture but it was tricky to classify the 25 labourers. If I exclude them there were 39 men or 30% in the agricultural sector.

Although Whitmore is close to the coalfields no one is employed in mining. The Economies Past map has a useful overlay of exposed coalfields and one can see they are close to but not in the parish.

Exposed coalfields overlay Economies Past map. As there are no exposed coalfields in the parish it is not surprising no men living in the parish are employed in the mining sector.

By my calculation there were 17 men (13%) employed in the secondary sector as defined by the study. There 38 people employed in the tertiary sector and of these 15 were in transport. The proportions seem to match the study but I am not sure how they classified the labourers who I did not include in the tertiary sector though some may have been on the railway.

The study does not just focus on the 1851 census but has data over time. The earliest data for Whitmore is 1660 and the study found 50-60% of men were employed in agriculture, 40-50% in the secondary sector, none in the tertiary sector. The same proportions were reported in 1755. In 1817 the study found 70-80% of adult men were employed in agriculture, 20-30% in the secondary sector, under 5% in the tertiary sector. In 1901 50-60% were in agriculture, 10-20% in the secondary sector, 20-30% in the tertiary sector.

In 2011 the study asserts that Whitmore has only 5-10% of adult males employed in agriculture, 20-30% in the secondary sector, 60-70% in the tertiary sector. I understand that Whitmore is now home to many people who commute to the major towns nearby such as Newcastle under Lyme and Stoke on Trent. There have obviously been enormous changes in employment of people living in the parish over the last 100 years and it is likely that they travel to their employment whereas before 1900 people were employed close to where they lived.

Using the data from Economies Past website for the parish of Whitmore: The graph shows the long-run trends in male occupational structure.

The story of the parish of Whitmore is doubtless partly referable to great historical movements, of the sort uncovered and investigated by large-scale projects such as the Cambridge ‘Economies Past’. A full account of what actually happened, however, still depends on adequate explanation of the actions of individual people in their immediate circumstances—local history, in other words. Small-scale and large-scale explanations complement each other

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