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		Contents	[ Close all Abstracts ]		Current issue
		Editorial By: Alan Crosby [ Read Abstract ] This issue of The Local Historian has three articles which deal with different aspects of poverty and self-help in the nineteenth century. It is a theme which has been an ever-greater dimension to the work of local historians during the past fifty years, as the experiences of the people as a whole, rather than those of the elite to the exclusion of most others, have become central to the subject. Two of the articles reflect current research on the local application of one of the ideals closest to the heart of so many Victorian politicians, social theorists, moralists and opinion-formers—self-help and thrift. In her paper on the savings banks of mid-nineteenth century Lancashire, Zoë Lawson considers some of the key questions which any local historian can ask about such institutions in their own localities: who were the savers; how much could they save; what patterns of saving emerge; and what can we tell of the purpose of saving. The rich potential for the detailed analysis of individual bank accounts is clear, but no less significant is the possibility of using this specific evidence to make more general judgments about the patterns and purpose of savings in groups of the working class and lower middle class. The paper highlights the impact of the widespread financial and commercial crises of the period, showing how savers frequently had to withdraw everything in order to survive—but at least they had a cushion of sorts. The need to plan for contingencies, and to seek some sort of protection against poverty in the future, is also a theme of the article by Bob Humphreys which looks at friendly societies in rural, but rapidly urbanising, Surrey. This neatly cross-references with Zoë Lawson’s study, because she makes the point that although savings banks are traditionally associated with industrial and urban northern counties, they were in fact more numerous in rural southern England, while Humphreys demonstrates that their alter ego, the friendly society, was similarly typical of counties such as Surrey. Here, though, the greater financial power and more effective organisation of northern-based mass movement such as the odd Fellows gradually eclipsed and absorbed the community-based local schemes. This interlocking of themes seemed to me to be a particularly useful aspect of including the two papers in the same issue, and it provides much scope for further research. An important object of further study would be to contrast and compare the principles which were expounded by the advocates of self-help as a solution to poverty, and the realities of self-help on the ground. Did friendly societies and savings banks really provide an answer, or were they largely reliant upon, and of benefit to, groups who probably would have got by and avoided poverty in any case? Did these pathways really provide solutions or were they, though unquestionably ‘Good Things’, simply giving a wider range of opportunities to those who were not the truly and seriously poor. One component of the underclass of Victorian society is considered by Jacquie Fillmore in her study of the women vagrants who were received at Bedford workhouse during the 1880s. Investigation of union workhouses has been another major theme in local history research for several decades, but attention has tended to focus on the more permanent residents, the physical form of the workhouses themselves, and the regimes which were implemented by boards of guardians under the strict and unwavering attention and direction of central government after 1834. There has been less involvement with the role of the workhouse as a very temporary refuge for the homeless and transient population. It would be good to see more studies which investigate this aspect, perhaps including ones which consider the vagrancy question in major industrial areas such as South Wales, Tyneside or the West Midlands. An easy presumption would be that Bedfordshire, a largely rural county, must have had different patterns from those which existed in industrial districts, but was that actually the case? An interesting study could consider whether the economic crises, such as those referred to by Lawson, produced a significant increase in homelessness and vagrancy, and the question of ‘looking for work’, so frequently referred to in anecdotal evidence and autobiography, might be looked at more systematically. How people found work, how far they travelled to find it, and how they knew or suspected that employment was available, is a little-known aspect of nineteenth century local history. I have long been intrigued by the relationship between information and migration. How did people in Cornwall know that there were opportunities for work in mining in particular locations in the north? What prompted the vagrant women of Bedfordshire to follow particular routes or to aim for certain places rather than others? How, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, did those who dwelled in remote dales of the north and the west know where to go? Zoë Lawson refers in her article to Benjamin Shaw, whose autobiography and journal I edited and published some years ago. Living in just such a remote and seemingly isolated Pennine dale, his family learned in the early 1790s about employment opportunities in the textile mills because a former neighbour, already working in a mill, was sent by the management back to his homeland in order to recruit labour from among his erstwhile neighbours. Was this a commonplace phenomenon, or was it an isolated instance? Questions such as these lie behind the factual and statistical evidence, and we need to ask these questions in order to understand the human stories and the lives of the individuals who contribute to the statistics. Is it feasible to analyse the vagrants’ records for all the Poor Law Unions covering an entire region, and to cross-reference or correlate the information on individuals in order to track down, if possible, the movements and experiences of people of the underclass across a wide area. We can sometimes find such information for a single person, perhaps via an autobiography, but it would be fascinating to see, almost in three dimensions and plotted on a map, the wanderings of many dozens as they criss-crossed counties and regions, their paths interweaving and separating and coming together again, meeting old acquaintances, fellow-travellers on the road, or going into unknown territory. History is always about people. Without people there is no history. We, as local historians, should never forget that every statistic, every percentage, every entry in a bureaucratic record, every shilling and every penny in a poor law account, is ultimately about flesh and blood. History reduced to statistics is empty, and all three of these articles, in their different way, should encourage us to look at even the most bureaucratic records—the pages of bank books, the entries in a register—in that light. The female vagrant pauper By: Jacqueline Fillmore [ Read Abstract ] This paper analyses the evidence from the Bedford Union Workhouse in the 1880s which illuminates the experiences of female vagrants, considering the extent of vagrancy among women; statistical comparisons with male vagrants; the patterns of vagrancy during the typical week and over the year; and the regime which they encountered in the workhouse. The author investigates the origins and destinations of the women, showing the distances they travelled and suggesting some possible explanations for their moves. She also looks at them in terms of age, family circumstances and their occupations before they were admitted to the workhouse. Her argument is that changes evident over time resulted, in particular, from the Vagrants Act of 1882, which tightened regulations and acted as a deterrent, and it is suggested that further research would be helpful in highlighting the experiences of this minority group within the large 'underclass' of late Victorian England. The article demonstrates the use of workhouse records (and in particular the registers of the admission of 'casuals') and provides in the notes and references section a useful bibliography of general published works on the subject. The Sedgeford Village Survey: digging for local history in the back garden By: Gabriel Moshenska [ Read Abstract ] An analysis of a project undertaken by the long-running and community-based Sedgeford Village Survey in north-west Norfolk, describing the work involved, and findings resulting from, an exercise to dig trial pits in back gardens. The author, one of the directors of the Survey and a practising archaeologist, discusses the planning and preparation; the local community involvement and media interest; the methodology and the principles and rationale behind the project; and the treatment of finds. He links this with the wider interest in the concept of 'big digs', which have been encouraged and publicised by national television programmes, and emphasises the importance of proper archaeological procedures but also the value and significance of community involvement and the participation of non-professionals in such exercises. The Sedgeford Survey is an on-going project, and the conclusion is that this sort of work has a major benefit in drawing attention to the fact that local history is everywhere around us. Save the pennies! Savings banks and the working class in mid-nineteenth century Lancashire By: Zoe Lawson [ Read Abstract ] Zoë Lawson, Look after the pennies! Savings banks and the working class in mid nineteenth-century Lancashire, pp.168-184 This major article explains the findings of a research project which used the very detailed and extensive records of savings bank in four Lancashire towns – Blackburn, Preston, Colne and Kirkham – during the mid-nineteenth century. The author gives a valuable overview of the background to savings in the context of Victorian philosophies of self-help, and then investigates the detailed evidence. She considers the following key themes: the number and density of banks in all English counties (with important comparative tables); the occupations of savers (seeking to answer questions about their role in working class domestic economy); the amounts saved; the characteristics of the groups most likely to open and maintain savings accounts; the apparent reasons for their choice of banks as a means of saving; the impact of changes in economic circumstances; the extent to which banks were used and., conversely, the evidence for their relative unpopularity when a range of options was available to the potential saver; and the great need for further comparative research which considers the same theme in the context of rural and agricultural counties and districts. There is useful information on sources and published works, and the article sets out a framework which other local historians might employ in their own research. The development of friendly societies in nineteenth-century Surrey By: Robert Humphreys [ Read Abstract ] Robert Humphreys, The development of friendly societies in nineteenth-century Surrey, pp.185-200 This paper discusses the origins, development and role of friendly societies in Surrey during the nineteenth century, at a time when this overwhelmingly agricultural county was experiencing very rapid change and extensive urbanisation and incipient suburbanisation. Bob Humphreys begins with a general account of the friendly societies of the late eighteenth century and the legislative framework within which the operated. He then considers the rapid growth in the number of societies in late eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, looking at geographical distribution and the possible reasons for the attractiveness of this form of ‘self help’. The article highlights the considerable amount of contemporary evidence, and the reports of, among others, Sir Frederick Eden and William Cobbett, and then shows how the societies were of a range of different types and had quite varied characteristics. This was not a homogeneous movement. The affiliated friendly societies, and the rapid and highly effective expansion of the large national movements at the expense of local ‘grassroots’ organisations and considered in detail, with separate sections dealing with societies for women, societies in the later nineteenth century, and societies which admitted men and women on equal terms. Guidance on the available material in print, and on possible archive sources, is provided. Maps and the local historian: three handbooks By: Alan Crosby [ Read Abstract ] Alan Crosby, Maps and the local historian: three handbooks, pp.201-205 In this review article Alan Crosby assesses the value of three recently published works on maps. These are Roger Davey’s East Sussex Parliamentary Deposited Plans ((Sussex Record Society vol.87, 2004; Richard Oliver’s Ordnance Survey Maps: A concise guide for historians (Charles Close Society for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps 2005; and Jacinta Prunty’s Maps and Map-Making in Local History (Four Courts Press 2004). The review is very enthusiastic about all three works, and the reviewer assesses the ways in which each has a special value and user-friendliness to local historians. In particular, it emphasises the practical approach that each of the authors has adopted, and recommends the first-named book as a potential model for authors, and the books by Oliver and Prunty as exemplary in their treatment, giving a well-designed, accessible and definitive account of the subject.
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