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Cultural Causes of the Nineteenth-Century Fertility Decline: a Study of Three Yorkshire Towns

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Cultural Causes of the Nineteenth-Century Fertility Decline: a Study of Three Yorkshire Towns CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by OpenGrey Repository University of Huddersfield Repository Atkinson, Paul David Cultural Causes of the Nineteenth-Century Fertility Decline: A Study of Three Yorkshire Towns Original Citation Atkinson, Paul David (2010) Cultural Causes of the Nineteenth-Century Fertility Decline: A Study of Three Yorkshire Towns. Doctoral thesis, University of Leeds. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/10290/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. 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For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ Cultural Causes of the Nineteenth-Century Fertility Decline: A Study of Three Yorkshire Towns Paul Atkinson Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of History July 2010 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the researchers, archivists and librarians who have been generous with their time and advice during this study. Among them I include my fellow-students. It would be unfair to single some out for special mention, with the exception of my supervisors. Katrina Honeyman, despite serious illness in the last few months of the study, and John Chartres, have been dependable sources of insight, challenge and good-humoured support. My family, particularly Susan, David and Laura, also deserve my thanks for their support and encouragement. Abstract Statistical methods have provided insight into the post-1860 fertility decline, but the deeper explanations lie in the choices of individuals, shaped by the cultures of local communities. This thesis combines the use of statistical and qualitative information, each form of enquiry guiding the other. It gains analytical strength by comparing three differing towns, Bradford, Leeds and Middlesbrough. Relationships between culture, employment, and fertility are examined by studying differences in local cultures and local labour markets, including female and child employment. The main argument of the thesis is for the impact of rising expectations about how a working-class family should live, underestimated by existing accounts. Working-class parents pursued higher living standards, not to emulate the better-off but, for example, to give their children better lives than they had experienced. To make these goals achievable, they chose to have fewer children, allowing more resources and attention for each family member. Such an explanation places a new stress on the nature of rising working-class consumption. In all three towns, evidence is put forward for a strong growth in expectations about standards. This is demonstrated in relation to diet, housing, clothing, and leisure: the impacts of compulsory education and changing views of family life are also shown. The thesis shows that mothers and fathers came to see family limitation as a necessary part of pursuing these standards. Differences between the towns mainly reflect the varying frequency of female full-time work. Expectations of rising living standards placed the greatest pressures on working mothers, who had to pursue them by both wage labour and domestic labour. This made them the most susceptible to the appeal of family limitation. The study also shows, however, that fathers too had incentives to family limitation, which previous studies have underestimated. For sources, qualitative evidence comes from cheap local newspapers with a substantial working- class readership. These new sources make evidence available which has never previously been used in research into the fertility decline. This is also true of the Bradford and Middlesbrough oral history collections used here. Materials in the Burnett Archive of Working-Class Autobiographies at Brunel University are also utilised. Use is made, too, of advice literature directed at the working class of the three towns, and reports of social conditions by, for example, doctors and social reformers. These materials are combined with quantitative evidence from the registration of births, Census Reports, Parliamentary Papers, and the Census Enumerators’ Books. This thesis is significant because it is one of a surprisingly small number of studies which investigate the cultural causes of the fertility decline, a need identified by leading researchers. By placing attention, as it should, on the behaviour of the majority rather than better-researched elites, the thesis brings new sources such as cheap newspapers into the study of the fertility decline. Above all, its description of rising expectations about consumption and their impact sheds new light on the causes of the fertility decline, drawing attention to the adoption by working-class people of more demanding goals for the quality of family life, which they met with a shift to smaller families. Contents Abstract 3 List of abbreviations 6 1. Introduction 8 2. Thinking about fertility and culture 13 3. Bradford, Leeds and Middlesbrough: fertility and society 54 Appendix 1: Description of the analytical work on the 1881 CEBs 107 Appendix 2: Preparation of the Cost of Living Series 115 4. Consumption aspirations and their impact on fertility 118 5. Perceptions of education and their impact on fertility 179 6. Changing identities, personal relationships and fertility 203 7. Conclusions 228 Bibliography 273 List of abbreviations AHRC Arts and Humanities Research Council AWN Armley and Wortley News BA Bradford Archives BAWCA Burnett Archive of Working-Class Autobiographies BCL Bradford Central Library BDT Bradford Daily Telegraph BO Bradford Observer BHRU Bradford Heritage Recording Unit BL British Library CBR Crude Birth Rate CEB Census Enumerator’s Book CFU Conjugal Family Unit DG (Middlesbrough) Daily Gazette EG (Middlesbrough) Evening Gazette ESRC Economic and Social Research Council FM Fertility Monitor GIS Geographical Information System GRO General Register Office GRR Gross Reproduction Rate HMSO Her Majesty’s Stationery Office INED Institut National d’Études Démographiques IUSSP International Union for the Scientific Study of Population IZA Institut zur Zukunft der Arbeit LA Leeds Archives LBN Laisterdyke and Bowling News LCL Leeds Central Library LE Leeds Express LEE Leeds Evening Express LI Leeds Intelligencer LM Leeds Mercury LUL Leeds University Library LWE Leeds Weekly Express LWRE Leeds and West Riding Express MCL Middlesbrough Central Library MOH Medical Officer of Health MS manuscript MWN Middlesbrough Weekly News NEDG North Eastern Daily Gazette NEWG North Eastern Weekly Gazette NSPCC National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children NWG Northern Weekly Gazette OPCS Office of Population Censuses and Surveys RD Registration District RM (Middlesbrough) Recorded Memories SD (Registration) Sub-District SOAS School of Oriental and African Studies TA Teesside Archives TPFR Total Period Fertility Rate TS typescript WG (Middlesbrough/North Eastern) Weekly Gazette WYAS West Yorkshire Archive Service YEP Yorkshire Evening Post YP Yorkshire Post - 1 - Introduction Between 1860 and 1920, fertility and family size in England declined in a momentous way. While families reaching completion in the 1860s typically had about five children (of whom an average of 3.5 survived long enough to start their own families), completed families in 1910 averaged 2.5 children, nearly all of whom survived.[1] These changes reversed the historically high fertility rates of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and began a fall in birth rates which continued until the nineteen-thirties. They were a phenomenon with important social consequences. The proportion of the population under the age of fourteen fell from thirty-five per cent to twenty-five, so that there were fewer dependent children for each economically active adult, and more resources to go round.[2] This appears to have been one of the main reasons why children’s health and welfare improved so notably in this period: adults also benefited from the reduced pressure on resources.[3] Experiences of family life became more homogeneous as a much larger proportion of children grew up with only a small number of siblings, whereas in the 1870s, for example families with eleven or more children contained a quarter of all children born.[4] In place of this mid-Victorian diversity, by 1920 most young adults were reaching maturity with similar expectations of what family life would, and should, be like. Attention has been given to the reasons for this fertility decline
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