Lecture 11
MIDDLING SORT TO MIDDLE CLASS
1. Definitions of Middling Classes
Income ranges
- servant - a few pounds a year plus board
- journeyman, small tradesman - ,8-,35 a year
- 50 a year necessary to maintain basics of middling class
- lifestyle
- 40 a year level at which liability to pay the poor rate
- London - c. 2-3% in 1798 in the upper income bracket (av. ,200 a year)
- 16-21% in the middling bracket - ,80-139 a year
- remaining 75% a diverse body of small shopkeepers, smaller independent artisans, wage labourers and the unemployed
Numbers
- The urban population of England grew from 850,000 in 1700 (17% of pop) to 2.38 mil. in 1801 (27.5% of pop.)
- [Definition of urban - towns over 5,000]
- 2/3 of growth occurred outside London- were c. 170,000 urban middling people in 1700 and c. 475,000 in 1801 - leaves out all those in villages and smaller county towns
- Compare to numbers in gentry - were c. 1,000 families in upper gentry, 2,000 in lesser gentry - & c. 10,000 in group calling themselves gentlemen
2. Divisions
- Appetite for social status
- Gentlemen and merchants
- Regional divisions
- Polite society and the rest
3. Consumer Goods for the Middle Classes
- Taxes: poor rates, house and window taxes and especially stamp and excise duties; new carriage and coach taxes, plate tax, servant taxes.
4. Professions
- Apothecaries and lawyers
- Mobility
- Genteel poverty
5. Business
6. Credit and Debt
- Wholesale credit - 6 months - a year
- Retail credit - 3, 4, 6 months
- Debt - Courts of Conscience
- Bankruptcy laws - 1706 - could only be declared if debtor owed more than ,100 to a single creditor 1-2% of population declared bankrupt annually
7. Religion
- Dissent
- Societies for the Reformation of Manners
- Evangelicalism
8. Commercial Education
- In 1500 c. 1% of women and 10% of men could read and write - by 1800 c. 40% of women and 60% of men were able to do so. The men who read were mainly from the gentry, the professionals, government officials, retail traders and skilled tradesmen.
- Among women - domestic servants had rates much lower than 40% - but women in the needle trades c. 70% - shopkeepers, midwives and
- Schooltreachers were 80-100% literate
- Accounting and book keeping
- The Dissenting Academies