The Flight from the Land? Rural Migration in South-East Shropshire in the Late Nineteenth Century

Rural History ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
GWYNETH NAIR ◽  
DAVID POYNER
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Adult Male ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rural Migrants ◽  
Rural Market ◽  
Rural Environments ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Agricultural Labourers

Using the 1881 census, we have tracked 1172 individuals who left their birthplaces in the villages of Billingsley, Chelmarsh, Highley and Kinlet in south-east Shropshire. This has allowed us to investigate the destinations and motivations for rural migrants in the second half of the nineteenth century. Half the migrants (fifty-two per cent) remained in rural environments; a further eighteen per cent moved to rural market towns. Thus only thirty per cent of the sample moved to truly urban destinations. Furthermore fifty per cent of the adult male migrants remained as agricultural labourers or in closely related occupations; even in the urban cohort twenty-one per cent followed agricultural-related occupations. Using the Armstrong classification of social status, it was not possible to measure any significant increase in status following rural to urban movement. Thus most rural migrants in this sample did not move to urban locations; instead rural to rural movement, making use of traditional skills, was apparently perceived as the most beneficial strategy.

How the Portuguese Became White

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christen T. Sasaki
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
Settler Society ◽  
The Relationship

The push for inclusion into the United States forced leaders of the Hawaiian “Republic,” and the American populace to face questions regarding the relationship between race, nation, and citizenship. This chapter questions why men such as Sanford Dole and Lorrin Thurston, two leaders of the provisional government of Hawai`i (1893-1894) and Hawaiian Republic (1894-1898), used all means necessary in order to change the racial classification of Portuguese labor in the islands to “white,” during the last years of the nineteenth century. By analyzing their attempt to create a white settler society in Hawai`i through their redefinition and recruitment of Portuguese labor, this chapter examines how evolving politics of race and class shape, and were shaped by, processes of late nineteenth century U.S. colonialism in the Pacific.

The classification of occupations in the 1881 census of England and Wales

1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 17-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Woollard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article discusses the importance of classifying occupations both to the original collectors of the occupational data contained within the late-nineteenth century censuses and to present-day historians with particular reference to the 1881 censuses of England and Wales. It describes the method by which occupational data was collected and prepared for classifiation in 1881. It shows that the classifications of occupations in the 1881 were remarkably similar to a present-day recoding exercise and concludes that the rules laid down by the Census Office in 1881 for the tabulation of occupations were acted on as well as possible by the contemporary clerks. The final section demonstrates these results and explains why differences might have occurred.

scholarly journals Tea with the Divorcees: Five’o Clock Figures

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion GLAUMAUD-CARBONNIER ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Social Status ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Divorce Law ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Nineteenth Century French Literature

Promulgated in July 1884, the divorce law introduces a new character in late nineteenth century French literature: the figure of the divorcee. This woman, who is very little portrayed in novels, however intrigues the press because of her unprecedented social status. In the short stories published in newspapers, the divorced woman often appears at tea time, a gallant Parisian hour that serves as a setting for gossip. The aim of this paper is therefore to enlighten, by using a sociopoetic approach, these figures of the crépuscule.

scholarly journals “We Might be Trusted”: Female Poor Law Guardians and the Development of the New Poor Law: The Case of Bolton, England, 1880–1906

2004 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven King
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
High Social Status

This article uses the only surviving working diary of an English female Poor Law guardian in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to explore two interrelated bodies of historiography. First, it engages with an historiography of the New Poor Law which has by and large seen the late nineteenth century as a period of atrophication. Second, it engages with a literature on female Poor Law guardians which has on balance questioned their achievements and seen such women as subject to all sorts of conflict and discrimination. The article argues that both perspectives may be questioned where we focus on local Poor Law policies and local women. Using the example of Bolton, in England, it is argued that the boards of Poor Law unions were riven by fracture lines more important than gender. Within this context, women of relatively high social status were able to manipulate the Poor Law agenda to make substantial changes to the policy and fabric of the late Victorian Poor Law. Rather than conflict, we often see a warm appreciation of the pioneering work of female Poor Law guardians.

scholarly journals Labour Commodification and Skilled Selves in Late Nineteenth-Century Australia

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Maddison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Adult Male ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Industrial Change ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Human Type ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article uses the concept of labour commodification to critique common historiographical portraits of skilled workers in transition to industrial capitalism. The meanings with which skilled workers in late nineteenth-century Australia understood their own labour went far beyond a repertoire of technical abilities. They viewed skill as a socio-biological disposition specific to a human type (adult, male, Anglo-Saxon), and this view intimately connected artisans' work and selfhood. Capitalist industrial change threatened to disrupt those connections. The notoriously exclusive union policies skilled workers invented can thus be seen as designed not simply to position their members more advantageously on the labour market, but to protect artisanal selves and identities from the corrosive effects of labour commodification.

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