Work
Key Texts
- P Joyce, ‘Work’ in FML Thompson (ed.), Cambridge Social History of Britain, vol 2.
- David Gilbert and Humphrey Southall, 'The Urban Labour Market', in Martin Daunton (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain
- Sally Alexander, ‘Women’s work in nineteenth-century London’ in Sally Alexander, Becoming a Woman
- A J McIvor, A History of Work in Britain 1880-1950
seminar questions
- What was the meaning of work in the nineteenth century?
- How did the ‘culture of the factory’ pervade Victorian cities?
- Were the employment opportunities for women in the last half of the nineteenth century a real advance for equal opportunities?
- Account for the prevalence of sweated labour in Victorian Britain.
- What were the causes and consequences of the high levels of unemployment and casual labour in Victorian cities?
- What role did trade unions have in the regulation of working practices in this period?
- Are the census and trade directories problematic as sources to understand working patterns in nineteenth-century cities?
Sources
- British History and the Census [Data for the Gorbals, Sandyford and Preston]
- Ancestry.co.uk [Data from all censuses 1841-1901; username/password available from SR]
- Ashford 1851
- Nineteenth-century trade directories
- Employment and Trade Unionism (Modern Records Centre resource)
further reading
D Alexander, Retailing in England during the Industrial Revolution
D Bythell, The Sweated Trades
F Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England
D Green, ‘Street trading in London: a case study of casual labour 1830-60’ in Johnson and Pooley (eds), The Structure of Nineteenth-Century Cities
S D Chapman, The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution
C Chinn, They worked all their lives: women of the urban poor
P Corfield, Power and the Professions
P Corfield and D Keene (eds), Work in Towns, 800-1850
A Howe, The Cotton Masters 1830-1860
G Stedman Jones, Outcast London
E Jordan, ‘Female unemployment, 1851-1911’, Social History, 13 (1988)
P Joyce, Work, Society and Politics
P Joyce, The Historical Meanings of work
A. C. Kay, ‘Small Business, Self-Employment and Women’s Work-Life Choices in Nineteenth Century London’, in D. Mitch, J. Brown, M. H. D. Van Leeuwen (eds), Origins of the Modern Career
J Lown, Women and Industrialisation, chaps 1-3
P Malcolmson, ‘Getting a living in the slums of Victorian Kensington’, London Journal, 1 (1975)
Nicola Phillips, Women in Business, 1700-1850
Erika Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London's West End
R Rodger, ‘Concentration and fragmentation: capital, labor, and the structure of mid-Victorian Scottish industry’, Journal of Urban History, 14 (1988)
R Samuel, ‘Workshop of the world: steam power and hand technology in mid-Victorian Britain’, History Workshop, 3 (1977)
G Shaw, ‘Changes in consumer demand and food supply in nineteenth-century British cities’, Journal of Historical Geography, 11 (1985)
L. Tiersten 'Redefining consumer culture', Radical History Review, 1993
J Treble, Urban Poverty in Britain 1830-1914
J T Ward, The Factory Movement 1830-1855
This painting may be viewed at Birmingham Art Gallery. For more information see their Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource.