THE SEARCH FOR WEALTH AND STABILITY THE SEARCH FOR WEALTH AND STABILITY Essays in Economic and Social History presented to M. W. Flinn Edited by T. C. SMOUT M © Ailsa Maxwell, J. R. Ward, Alan Milward, Michael Palairet, George Hammersley, R. J. Morris, S. B. Saul, Wray Vamplew, Michael Cullen, Roger Davidson, Rosalind Mitchison, T. C. Smout, Stephanie Blackden, Ian Levitt 1979 Softcover reprint of the hardcover ISt edition 1979 978-0-333-23358-0 First published 1979 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD LontiiJII and Basingstokl AssociiJttJ ctmfXJt1ies in De/Jri Dublin Hong Kong Johatrneshurg Lagos Melboume }{fnJ York Singapore and Tokyo Typeset by Santype International Ltd., Salisbury, Wilts The Search for Wealth and stability 1. Great Britain -Social conditions -Addresses, essays, lectures I. Smout, Thomas Christopher II. Flinn, Michael Walter lectures lectures ISBN 978-1-349-03627-1 ISBN 978-1-349-03625-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-03625-7 T1rir book is sold JUbject to the standanJ Cf1lllijtions of the Nn &ole Agretmmt. Contents ~~~~ ~ List ~ Figures VIll List ~ Contributors IX List ~Abbreviations xi Introduction Xlll Publications~ Pr~essor M. W. Flinn, BA, Dip Ed., MA, D. Litt. XVII PART I THE WIDER WORLD 21 21 A Planter and His Slaves in Eighteenth-century Jamaica ]. R. Ward 21 2 Strategies for Development in Agriculture: The Nine­ teenth-century European Experience Alan Milward 21 3 The 'New' Immigration' and the Newest: Slavic Mi­ grations from the Balkans to America and Industrial Europe since the Late Nineteenth Century Michael Palairet 43 PART II BRITAIN 67 4 Did It Fall or Was It Pushed? The Foleys and the End of the Charcoal Iron Industry in the Eighteenth Century George Hammersley 67 5 The Middle-Class and the Property Cycle during the Industrial Revolution R. ]. Morris 91 VI CONTENTS 6 Research and Development in British Industry from the End of the Nineteenth Century to the I 96os S. B. Saul I I4 7 Ungentlemanly Conduct: The Control of Soccer-crowd Behaviour in England, I888-I9I4 Wray Vamplew I 39 8 Charles Booth's Poverty Survey: Some New Approaches Michael Cullen I 55 9 Social Conflict and Social Administration: The Conci- liation Act in British Industrial Relations Roger Davidson I75 PART III SCOTLAND I99 ro The Creation of the Disablement Rule in the Scottish Poor Law Rosalind Mitchison I99 I I The Strange Intervention of Edward Twistleton: Paisley in Depression, I84I-3 T. C. Smout 2I8 I2 The Poor Law and Wealth: A Survey of Parochial Medical Aid in Glasgow, I845-I900 Stephanie Blackden 243 I3 The Scottish Poor Law and Unemployment, I890-I929 Ian Levitt 263 Index 283 List of Tables 21 Income and expenditure at some Dean ironworks 75 2 Payments for woodcutting, cording and charcoal-burn- ing for ironworks, I 62os to I 740s 82 3 The debts of the Jowitt firm to the executors of John Jowitt, I8I6-42 94 4 Robert Jowitt: income, consumption and saVIngs, I8o6-62 96 5 Robert Jowitt: acquisition of assets, I810-6o IOO 6 Robert J owi tt: sources of income I 806-62, annual aver- ages IOI 7 John Atkinson: rental and finance, I8I5-32 I05 8 John Jowitt junior: loans and mortgages, I796--I8I4 I07 9 Age structure of solicitors, merchants and house proprie- tors, Great Britain I85I 109 IO Total capital investment in Great Britain, gas and rail- ways, I826-46 I I2 I I Percentage distribution of industrial R & D, I962 I26 I 2 Indicators of post-war advanced-technology achieve- ments I28 I3 R & D in pharmaceuticals, I950-67 I3I I4 R & D compared with net output, I96I I32 I5 Football clubs punished for crowd Inisbehaviour, I895-I9I2 I5I I 6 Classification of London children by teachers in elemen- tary schools I 64 I 7 Accommodation conditions in London, I89I I67 I 8 The poverty index and associated indices in London, I89I I6g Vlll LIST OF TABLES '9 Correlation coefficients between the poverty index and associated indices 170 20 Correlation coefficients between various social indices in registration districts with a location index of 1 172 21 Correlation coefficients between various social indices in registration districts with location indices of 2 and 3 172 22 Breakdown of State and private arbitrators by occupa- tion J86 23 Source of charitable funds for Paisley relief, June 1841 to February 1843 227 24 Scales of poor relief in Scotland, 1920s 273 List of Figures 21 Robert Jowitt: consumption, household spending and prices, 1810-61 g8 2 Numbers dependent on the Paisley Relief Fund, July 1841 to February 1843 227 3 Relief scales at Paisley, November 1841 to February 18~ 2~ List of Contributors STEPHANIE BLACKDEN teaches history and economic history at George Heriot's School, Edinburgh. MICHAEL CULLEN is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Otago, New Zealand. ROGER DA vmsoN IS Lecturer m Economic History at Edinburgh University. G. HAMMERSLEY is Senior Lecturer in History at Edinburgh Univer­ sity. IAN LEVITT is Lecturer in Sociology, Plymouth Polytechnic. AILSA MAXWELL was formerly Research Associate in the Department of Economic History at Edinburgh University. ALAN MILWARD is Professor of European Studies at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. ROSALIND MITCHISON is Reader in Economic History at Edinburgh University. R. J· MORRIS is Lecturer in Economic History at Edinburgh Univer­ sity. MICHAEL PALAIRET is Lecturer in Economic History at Edinburgh University. X LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS s. B. SAUL is Vice-chancellor of the University of York. T. c. SMOUT is Professor of Economic History at Edinburgh Univer­ sity. WRAY VAMPLEW is Senior Lecturer in Economic History at the Flinders University of South Australia. J. R. WARD is Lecturer in Economic History at Edinburgh University. List of Abbreviations (for Notes to Chapters) AICP Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor APS Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland BAJ Business Archives Jowitt (Brotherston Library Leeds) BL British Library East. Easter EHR Economic History Review FA Football Association minute books FL Football League minute books Glos. RO Gloucestershire Record Office HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission Hil. Hilary Here. RO Herefordshire Record Office ]RSS Journal of Royal Statistical Society JSSL journal of the Statistical Society of London Mich. Michaelmas MRC Medical Research Council Mon. RO Monmouthshire Record Office NLS National Library of Scotland OECD Organisation for European Co-operation and Develop­ ment PP Parliamentary Papers PRO Public Record Office R&D Research and Development SRO Scottish Record Office Trin. Trinity Introduction T. C. SMOUT Michael Flinn arrived as a lecturer at Edinburgh University in the autumn of 1959, from holding a teaching position at Isleworth Grammar School, Middlesex: he was appointed by Professor A. J. Youngson, who had himself recently become the first holder of a chair of economic history in the university. Mr Flinn (as he then was) came, however, with an established reputation as a scholar of the iron industry whose revision article in the Economic History Review for 1958 (24)* was in many respects the starting point for our modern understanding of the industry in the eighteenth century. Three years later he published his monograph on the north-eastern iron-masters the Crowley family; this remains a remarkable illustration of what can be done in business history in the absence of a central set of business records. With the publication in 1961 of an introductory school textbook which continues to be widely used (1}, he had already accepted the challenge of reaching a wide audience. Perhaps, however, it was expounding to a large Scottish first-year class the historical mechanisms of economic growth and social change which brought him to develop on a broad front the two other main research interests which he has pursued throughout his academic career: population and public health on the one hand, and the Industrial Revolution on the other. His interest in population and public health led successively to the classic edition of Chadwick's 1842 • The figures in parenthesis refer to items in Ailsa Maxwell's bibliography of Professor Flinn's works (see following this Introduction). XlV THE SEARCH FOR WEALTH AND STABILITY Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population (I o) - the Introduction is unsurpassed as a model of how to place a great Parliamentary Paper in context; to the Economic History Society pamphlet British Population Growth, I7oo-185o (6); to two important articles on famine and plague for the Journal of European Economic History (4I and 48); and, finally, to the planning and execution, with the help of Social Sciences Research Council funds and the labour of five colleagues, of a pioneer study of Scottish historical demography, culminating after seven years in the publication of Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s ( 7), described as 'the greatest single contribution to Scottish social history in this decade'. His approach to the question of population was different from that in the schools of Cambridge and Paris, in so far as it laid less emphasis on pure methodology than on solidly relating change to the economic history of the societies under study. In the case of Chadwick, he was a firm believer in the influence of personality in history: as he was wont to say to tutorial classes studying the McDonagh thesis, 'But somebody had to make it all happen.' His second major interest, in the dynamics of the Industrial Revolution, issued in The Origins of the Industrial Revolution (4), a paperback widely used in universities throughout Britain. This interest itself diverged in various particular directions. In I 967 he contributed a remarkable paper to an Edinburgh social-science seminar on the psychological roots of the Industrial Revolution (37), which has perhaps not had the follow-up it deserved.