scholarly journals Working-Class Housing in Birmingham During the Industrial Revolution

1986 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-94
Author(s):  
Eric Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Housing Conditions ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town

It is not too much to say that over the last twenty years the history of working-class housing in the nineteenth century has been transformed. Many older historians, of course, took it for granted that the quality of houses built to meet the needs of the fast-growing urban population was uniformly bad, a testimony to the avarice of builders and landlords alike. Beliefs of this kind owed much to Engels, and to the Hammonds writing earlier this century about the life of the town labourter. One of the first suggestions that these views were really an over-simplified description of housing conditions came from Professor Ashworth in the 1950's, who pointed out that it was quite wrong to suppose that all nineteenth-century towns developed on the same lines, a kind of Coketown endlessly repeated. While not denying that there was a great deal of poor-quality building, more recently historians have made it clear that newer town housing of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was not necessarily worse than housing built earlier on, or worse than rural housing built at the same time; that new building varied in construction and amenities in the same town, and from town to town; that the skilled working classes were likely to live in better-quality housing than the unskilled; and that the segregation of working-class housing from middle-class housing, and of the better-off working classes from the labouring classes, again varied from town to town.

scholarly journals Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action: Rethinking English Working-Class Formation

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret R. Somers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working People ◽  
History Of

The nineteenth-century English working class bears a most peculiar burden and embodies a most peculiar paradox. Like Auden’s academic warriors who spar with “smiles and Christian names,” historians, economists, and sociologists have pushed and prodded early nineteenth-century English working people into procrustean political positions to support or disconfirm Marx’s predictions of revolutionary class conflict erupting from the contradictions of capitalism. A Manichaean concern locks the debate into an impasse. Were early nineteenth-century workers revolutionary or reformist? Was there a class struggle in the industrial revolution? The questions remain unresolved. Yet, surely it is the history of English working peoples that has suffered from this burden of praising or burying Marxism through competing interpretations of their early stories?

Sleep in western culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Ekirch
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sleep Deprivation ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Sleep Onset ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Predominant Form ◽  
Artificial Illumination ◽  
Illness Anxiety

Although a universal necessity, sleep, as the past powerfully indicates, is not a biological constant. Before the Industrial Revolution, sleep in western households differed in a variety of respects from that of today. Arising chiefly from a dearth of artificial illumination, the predominant form of sleep was segmented, consisting of two intervals of roughly 3 hours apiece bridged by up to an hour or so of wakefulness. Notwithstanding steps taken by families to preserve the tranquillity of their slumber, the quality of pre-industrial sleep was poor, owing to illness, anxiety, and environmental vexations. Large portions of the labouring population almost certainly suffered from sleep deprivation. Despite the prevalence of sleep-onset insomnia, awakening in the middle of the night was thought normal. Not until the turn of the nineteenth century and sleep’s consolidation did physicians view segmented sleep as a disorder requiring medication.

The History of ‘the Reading Public’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Collini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Reading Matter ◽  
History Of ◽  
Victorian Periodicals

This chapter argues that accounts of ‘the reading public’ are always fundamentally historical, usually involving stories of ‘growth’ or ‘decline’. It examines Q. D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public, which builds a relentlessly pessimistic critique of the debased standards of the present out of a highly selective account of literature and its publics since the Elizabethan period. It goes on to exhibit the complicated analysis of the role of previous publics in F. R. Leavis’s revisionist literary history, including his ambivalent admiration for the great Victorian periodicals. And it shows how Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy carries an almost buried interpretation of social change from the nineteenth century onwards, constantly contrasting the vibrant and healthy forms of entertainment built up in old working-class communities with the slick, commercialized reading matter introduced by post-1945 prosperity.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Nick Mansfield
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
British Society ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Subsequent Growth ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
The Uk

In common with its companion volume - Soldiers as Workers – Class, employment, conflict and the nineteenth century military (2016), this study argues that class is the primary means of understanding the topic. Focusing on rank and file soldiers it concludes that they were not a separate caste. Instead, soldiering was often just a phase in civilian working lives. The nineteenth century was overshadowed by the mass mobilisation required for the generation-long French Wars and concurrent Industrial Revolution, with emerging working-class popular politics. The chapter reviews developing working class literacy and subsequent growth of rank and file memoirs, which are an important source for this study. The chapter stresses the importance of the new barrack system in the UK and the growth of British Empire, both of which had profound consequences for British society.

Emerson and the Virtues

1985 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 135-152
Author(s):  
Ellen Kappy Suckiel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Universe ◽  
American Thought

Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose life spanned most of the nineteenth century, is widely regarded as one of the greatest sages in the history of American thought. Among educated American citizenry, Emerson is probably the most commonly read indigenous philosopher—and for good reason. Emerson presents a vision of human beings and their place in the universe which gives meaning and stature to the human condition. His profound, even religious, optimism, gives structure and import to even the smallest and apparently least significant of human activities. The inspirational quality of Emerson's, prose, his willingness to travel far and wide to lecture, his ability to help people transcend the difficulties of the times, all led to his very great national as well as international significance.

Fight Club, 1880: Boxing, Class, and Literary Culture in John Boyle O'Reilly's Boston

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 706-736
Author(s):  
JAMES EMMETT RYAN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Newspaper Editor ◽  
American Citizenship ◽  
Fight Club ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Because late nineteenth-century American sport was connected to both immigrant assimilation and cultural prestige, this essay first describes Boston amateur athletics during the later nineteenth century. Ireland-born poet/lecturer/newspaper editor John Boyle O'Reilly (1844–90) provides an important example of social and intellectual class mobility from the perspective of an immigrant writer. We observe through O'Reilly's sporting experiences and literary career how the development of upper-class amateur athletics in Boston and the popularity of boxing among its Irish working classes gave him exceptional influence among both groups. His history of boxing, Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport (1888), is examined in detail as a key statement on pugilism, masculinity, and American citizenship fame. This view of Boston's intellectual and physical cultures, observed from the standpoint of O'Reilly, a talented writer and a sort of literary counterpart of famed pugilist John L. Sullivan (his friend, occasional sparring partner, and fellow celebrity among the Irish American community), sheds light on newly available pathways to social mobility made possible by simultaneous engagement with literary and athletic cultures.

scholarly journals Slaves and Slavery in Kingston, 1770–1815

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (S28) ◽  
pp. 39-65
Author(s):  
Trevor Burnard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
British America ◽  
History Of ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
The Town

AbstractHistorians have mostly ignored Kingston and its enslaved population, despite it being the fourth largest town in the British Atlantic before the American Revolution and the town with the largest enslaved population in British America before emancipation. The result of such historiographical neglect is a lacuna in scholarship. In this article, I examine one period of the history of slavery in Kingston, from when the slave trade in Jamaica was at its height, from the early 1770s through to the early nineteenth century, and then after the slave trade was abolished but when slavery in the town became especially important. One question I especially want to explore is how Kingston maintained its prosperity even after its major trade – the Atlantic slave trade – was stopped by legislative fiat in 1807.

scholarly journals Improving the quality of information on Scottish anglerfish fisheries: making use of fishers' data

2008 ◽  
Vol 65 (7) ◽  
pp. 1334-1345 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Dobby ◽  
L. Allan ◽  
M. Harding ◽  
C. H. Laurenson ◽  
H. A. McLay
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Trends ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Quality Of Information ◽  
Commercial Catch ◽  
Size Category ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Technical ◽  
Catch Rates ◽  
Management Advice

Abstract Dobby, H., Allan, L., Harding, M., Laurenson, C. H., and McLay, H. A. 2008. Improving the quality of information on Scottish anglerfish fisheries: making use of fishers’ data. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 1334–1345. In recent years, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) Working Group on the Assessment of Northern Shelf Demersal Stocks has been unable to provide an analytical assessment for anglerfish. One of the reasons for this has been the poor quality of the commercial catch-and-effort data, with ICES and the European Commission’s Scientific, Technical, and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) stressing the need for reliable information on which to base estimates of stock status. In response, and following consultation with the fishing industry, an anglerfish tallybook project was implemented in Scotland as part of a long-term approach to providing better data. Tallybooks are completed on a haul-by-haul basis. Skippers record catches of anglerfish (by size category) and other species where possible, together with information on haul location, duration, and depth. Individual vessel catch rates are calculated and used to provide insights into temporal trends in the stock and the spatial distribution of the fishery. The history of the fishery and management advice are summarized, and an overview of the tallybook project is provided. Catch rates are analysed using a generalized additive modelling approach which incorporates seasonal, annual, spatial, and vessel-dependent effects. The results show increased catch rates between 2006 and 2007.

scholarly journals From Class Solidarity to Revolution: The Radicalization of Arsenal Workers in the Late Ottoman Empire

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akın Sefer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractThis article introduces a bottom-up perspective to the history of the Revolution of 1908 in the Ottoman Empire by focusing on the experiences of workers in the Imperial Naval Arsenal (Tersâne-i Âmire) in Istanbul. Drawing mainly on primary documents, the article explores, from a class-formation perspective, the struggles and relations of Arsenal workers from the second half of the nineteenth century until the revolution. The Arsenal workers’ involvement in the revolution was rooted in their class solidarity, which was revealed in a number of ways throughout this period. The workers’ immediate embrace of the revolution was spurred by their radicalization against the state; such radicalization stemmed from the state's failure to solve the workers’ persistent economic problems, and its attempts to discharge them and replace them with military labor. The case of the Arsenal workers thus points to the role of working-class discontent in the history of the revolution, a dimension that has thus far been only minimally addressed in Ottoman historiography.

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