University of Sussex
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

The rural labour market in the early nineteenth century: women's and children's employment, family income, and the 1834 Poor Law Report

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 09:10 authored by Nicola Verdon
This article revisits a familiar source - the 1834 Poor Law Report - to provide a fresh overview of the regional map of female and child labour in the early nineteenth-century countryside. Patterns of employment in domestic industry and agricultural labour (particularly haymaking, weeding, and harvesting), as well as data on contributions of labourers to the annual family income, both confirm and contrast with the findings of previous studies which use alternative sources (farm account books and settlement examinations for instance). Orthodox accounts of rural employment and wage patterns should not be accepted uncritically. The research adopts an empirical approach to the qualitative evidence contained in the report, calling for a reassessment of the way historians use official nineteenth-century documents and offers a blueprint for future analysis of similar contemporary printed sources.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Economic History Review

ISSN

0013-0117

Publisher

Blackwell Publishing

Issue

2

Volume

55

Page range

299-323

Department affiliated with

  • History Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC