View
71
Download
0
Category
Tags:
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
The poor in crisis: price shocks, mortality surges, economic depression, bankruptcies – and warfare: London “crises” and a parish workhouse, 1725-1824 . Jeremy Boulton ( jeremy.boulton@ncl.ac.uk ) , - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Citation preview
The poor in crisis: price shocks, mortality surges, economic depression, bankruptcies – and warfare: London “crises” and
a parish workhouse, 1725-1824
Jeremy Boulton (jeremy.boulton@ncl.ac.uk) , 'Coping with Crisis Conference: Re-evaluating
the role of crises in economic and social history', Durham University, 26th July 2013.
‘Crisis’?A vitally important or decisive stage in the progress of anything; a turning-point; also, a state of affairs in which a decisive change for better or worse is imminent; now applied esp. to times of difficulty, insecurity, and suspense in politics or commerce
Historians tend to define a crisis more loosely as an unusually stressful or disrupted state of affairs.
Many types of historical crisis don’t involve any imminent turning point (such as crisis mortality) and don’t necessarily serve as a decisive stage in progress or development...
Historians love crises
They can’t get enough of them
1773 hits on a title word ‘crisis’ in the Bibliography of British and Irish History (and another 189 for ‘crises’)
Historical ‘crises’ can be political, financial, ones of identity, agrarian, demographic, professional, sexual, philosophical, religious, military, femininity, humanitarian, parliamentary, dynastic, subsistence, feudalism, constitutional, mercantile, economic, industrial…
Short term crisis shocks are the subject of this paper
To what extent do the workhouse admission registers reflect the various crises that best eighteenth-century London?
Might they provide historians with another way to measure the incidence of crises in the past?
Horwood’s map 1799: detail of workhouse siteRocque’s Map, 1746
Number of workhouse inmates over time
17251729
17331737
17411745
17491753
17571761
17651769
17731777
17811785
17891793
17971801
18051809
18131817
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
Average number of inmates in workhouse
Average number of inmates in workhouse
Front of Workhouse Hemmings Row 1871
Front of Workhouse, Dukes Court 1871
The poor in crisis...The idea here is to use the detailed admission register for the workhouse to attempt to measure the responsiveness to ‘crisis’ in Georgian London
Treating the register as a time series which records the personal crises that afflicted 86,489 individuals and caused them to be admitted to the workhouse between 1725 and 1824
The workhouse was, throughout our period, a mixed general workhouse -admitted a cross section of men, women and children
Workhouses were multi-functional: medical services, shelter, food and drink but also disciplinary, deterrent, restrictive and moralistic
It must be remembered that we are here talking only about ‘indoor relief’ – thousands of payments were made each year – in most years – to the ‘outdoor poor’ and the balance between the two forms of relief was not constant
Why were individuals admitted?How? Individuals were admitted by individual churchwardens and overseers, by JPs and local vestrymen, by the Board of Guardians or were brought to the House by other parish officers
When? Admissions were rare on Sundays, but otherwise spread evenly across the week
Why? Only 18% of admissions have some reason or comment against their admission
%Pregnancy or born in workhouse 5,678 36.3%Settlement related 5,848 37.3%Admitted by parish officers 997 6.4%Foundling or abandoned 348 2.2%Medical condition 1,069 6.8%Inmate personal details 1,639 10.5%Admitted for diet or lodging 79 0.5%Total 15,658 100.0%
Reasons for admission to the workhouse suggest a host of different variables
17251728
17311734
17371740
17431746
17491752
17551758
17611764
17671770
17731776
17791782
17851788
17911794
17971800
18031806
18091812
18151818
18210
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
1800
WH admissionsFive year moving av-erage
Annual admissions into St Martin’s Workhouse 1725-1823 (i.e. The flow, as opposed to the stock)
17251729
17331737
17411745
17491753
17571761
17651769
17731777
17811785
17891793
17971801
18051809
18131817
18210
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
1800
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
WH admissionsBricklayer's labourer RW index
No close correlation between long term movements of ‘real wages’ of London building labourers and the annual totals of admissions...
Nb. Falling RW after 1760 are associated with a rise in WH admissions (facilitated by the 1770-2 rebuilding) but then with a fall in admissions until the early 19th century - i.e. increasing hardship in the late eighteenth century was associated with fewer, not more, WH admissions...
We are interested in short term crises... Crises are (most commonly) expressed as annual fluctuations
The trick here is obviously to identify relatively sharp fluctuations – usually expressed as large deviations from an average figure
This is the approach taken by most London historians...
A summary table of the various types of annual ‘crisis’ helps to sort out possible annual fluctuations
Arguably some of the ‘crises’ (particularly the mortality crises) would have been scoffed at by people living in earlier periods...
Many had no immediate impact on WH admissions
Identifying the responsiveness of annual WH admissions to the multiplicity of metropolitan ‘crises’ is complex
Different streams - or perhaps ‘pipelines’ - of human misery could easily be submerged beneath others
As an exercise, for example, consider the impact of military recruitment
London was an important recruiting ground for both the army and the navy... And the period was one of frequent large scale warfare
Warfare tightened the London labour market and clearly impacted on WH admissions of males of military age
17251728
17311734
17371740
17431746
17491752
17551758
17611764
17671770
17731776
17791782
17851788
17911794
17971800
18031806
18091812
0
100,000
200,000
300,000
400,000
500,000
600,000
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Navy borne
Army Establishment
Five year average of Males 16-29
Dips during war and modest peaks during demobilisation...
17251728
17311734
17371740
17431746
17491752
17551758
17611764
17671770
17731776
17791782
17851788
17911794
17971800
18031806
18091812
0
100,000
200,000
300,000
400,000
500,000
600,000
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Navy borne
Army Establishment
Five year moving average of SR admissions 16-29
The impact is clearer still when one looks at the changing SR of WH admissions – the heavy female advantage increases during the four periods of warfare
Hardship and the chance of personal crises were – of course – seasonal. This truism is also reflected in WH admission registers...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 120
50
100
150
200
250
300
Admissions per day by month, 1740-1823
Admissions per day by month, 1740-1823
However, the fine grained nature of the WH admissions data allow us to investigate whether we can detect significant monthly ‘crises’
172517291734173817411745174917531756176017641768177117751779178317861790179417981801180518091813181618200
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
Workhouse admissions per monthFive month moving average
172517281733173617391743174617491752175617591762176517691772177517781782178517881791179517981801180418081811181418171821-60%
-40%
-20%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Monthly admissions - percentage deviation from five month moving av-erage
Clearly a lot of stochastic noise
Technique does allow us to identify some monthly peaks in admission
Temperature extremes...
JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC0.00
2.00
4.00
6.00
8.00
10.00
12.00
14.00
16.00
18.00Chart Title
CET average monthly temperatures 1725-1825
Table 1 Months of unusually large variation from five monthly moving average of admissionsAdmission peaks of 40% or more Admission troughs of 40% or moreNovember 1725 January, 1795* July, 1727January, 1740* May, 1805 April, 1805June, 1745 November, 1805 June, 1822April, 1759 October, 1821October, 1760October, 1766January, 1767*May, 1769January, 1776*January, 1793*Unusually low average monthly temperature in CET data. Nb. Not all relatively cold months produced surges in the admissions data. Of 14 sharp monthly admission peaks, four were corresponded exactly with unusually cold January months.The November 1725 peak is an artifact of the opening of the workhouse, the reasons for the other monthly peaks are not as yet clear.
Conclusions:
To say that the pattern of personal misfortune superimposed on annual and monthly crises produces a complex mix is an understatement
Some variables had little tangible effect – local rainfall had little impact (there seems no obvious link between monthly admissions and monthly rainfall data)
Some variables are difficult to reconstruct – surges of local regulative activity or changes in local admissions policy
Finer-grained analysis might well throw up more associations
Cold winters, high prices, local mortality and warfare have relatively clear impacts on workhouse admission totals
That said, it was rare for all types of ‘crisis’ to coincide in any one year
Some crises had little immediate measurable impact on workhouse admissions – some might have had a lagged effect (e.g. bankruptcies) on sub sections of the population)
Warfare could reduce the number of people/alter the gender balance of those admitted into the workhouse
Recommended