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Introduction: Household and Family in Past Time Further Explored Continuity and Change 18 (1), 2003, 9–21. f 2003 Cambridge University Press DOI: 10.1017/S0268416003004491 Printed in the United Kingdom Introduction: Household and family in past time further explored K. SCHU¨RER* The articles in this special issue of Continuity and Change arose from a workshop held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, between 9 and 11 September 1999, hosted by the Universitat de les Illes Balears. The workshop was called to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of another conference, that held in Cambridge at the Faculty of History and at Trinity College in September 1969. It was this conference in 1969 that resulted in the publi- cation of Household and family in past time: comparative studies in the size and structure of the domestic group over the last three centuries in England, France, Serbia, Japan and colonial North America, with further material from Western Europe, which itself has just celebrated its thirtieth anniver- sary.1 Household and family in past time (hereafter abbreviated to HFPT ), in part largely due to the ‘analytic introduction on the history of the family’ contributed by Peter Laslett, subsequently became a seminal work in the field. It not only mapped out the methodological groundwork for the quantitative study of the historical co-resident domestic group, but perhaps unwittingly helped define a research agenda into comparative familial and social structural history that was followed for many years by Laslett, his colleagues at the Cambridge Group for the History of Popu- lation and Social Structure, and researchers from around the world. It be- came in a sense a manifesto, and one with which Peter Laslett personally was inexorably linked. Thus, with the sad death of Peter on 8 November 2001, this special issue of Continuity and Change took on a new double pur- pose: not only to mark the path-breaking 1969 conference and the sub- sequent publication of HFPT, but also to pay tribute to the remarkable life and work of Peter Laslett. * Department of History, University of Essex. 9 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.14, on 28 Sep 2021 at 14:40:00, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0268416003004491 K. SCHU¨RER PETER LASLETT: AN APPRECIATION Thomas Peter Ruffell Laslett was born in Watford on 18 December 1915, the son of a Baptist minister. Following education at Watford Grammar School, he read history at St John’s College, Cambridge, obtaining a double first. Years later he recounted a story of how he came to be awarded his degree. Following his finals he was summoned by Trevelyan, then Head of the Cambridge History Faculty, to the Master’s Lodge of Trinity College. Trevelyan explained to the young Laslett that they were having difficulty in grading Peter’s examination papers due to the fact that his handwriting was indecipherable – a feature that remained with Peter all his life. Peter was therefore asked to read his exam scripts out aloud. Halfway through the first paper Trevelyan interrupted. ‘I’ve heard enough’, he announced; ‘First!’ and Peter was dismissed. The story is typical of the way in which Peter made light of his achievements. During the war Peter was recruited to the navy, serving initially on the dangerous protection of the Arctic route to Murmansk. Subsequently he was posted at Bletchley Park where he worked in naval intelligence on Japanese code-breaking projects. Following the war, Peter was employed at the BBC as a producer for the Third Programme, later to become Radio Three. It was during his time at the BBC that he developed his passionate belief and conviction that university-based research should be made available to the public in a clear and digestible form. He returned to Cambridge in 1948 to take up a fellowship at his old college, St John’s. This was followed by a University Lectureship in 1953, which also saw him move to Trinity College, the ‘high and mighty’ as Peter would himself refer to it, where he remained as a fellow up until the time of his death. An achievement of which Peter was particularly proud was his leading role, with his long-term friend and colleague, Michael Young, in the foundation of the Open University during the 1960s. Teaching degrees via radio and television broke the ‘monopolies of universities’, as Peter put it, and opened up higher education to those who for a variety of reasons were unable to partake in traditional university training. Likewise, during the 1980s Peter worked with both the late Lord Young and Eric Mid- winter to found the University of the Third Age, a voluntary self-financed organization in which those aged 50 and over teach others of the same generation. Both the Open University and University of the Third Age projects illustrate Peter’s passion for non-exclusive education. Peter was an energetic, enthusiastic teacher and a dedicated supervisor of research students. Above all he was an excellent communicator, in all forms and at all levels. Whether writing, addressing public audiences, teaching or just holding court as a conversationalist, Peter always conveyed original 10 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.14, on 28 Sep 2021 at 14:40:00, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0268416003004491 INTRODUCTION thought in a compelling yet provocative manner. He will be remembered as a formidable mentor by many. From 1966 until his so-called ‘retirement’ in 1983, Peter was Reader in Politics and the History of Social Structure at the University of Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1979, but for many it still remains a shocking omission that he was never appointed to a professorial chair by his alma mater. He was awarded a CBE in 1997. As was made clear at the memorial service held in Peter’s honour at Trinity College in March 2002, Peter was very much a ‘man for all seasons’. Addresses at that service reminded those present of Peter’s role as a patron of the arts, both as a frequent purchaser of works of art and as commissioner of the architecture and ‘design concept’ of the house and home in which he lived for many years with his family in Clarkson Road, Cambridge. Equally, it revealed his passion for horticulture, in particular his love of English flowers and his devotion to the garden in Clarkson Road. But he was also a man of contradiction. He showed a healthy dis- regard for authority and tradition, yet at the same time took great pride and pleasure in entertaining numerous visitors at Trinity College, acting as a wonderful personal guide to the various College buildings, especially its Chapel. A Baptist minister’s son sceptical of the Anglican Church, he adored church architecture, regarding the medieval churches of England as some of the country’s finest architectural gems. Many will know, especially readers of this journal, that the first stage of Peter’s academic career was not with historical social structure, as he came to call it, but rather with the history of seventeenth-century political philosophy and political thought, in particular critically examining the underlying source materials. He edited Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha in 1949 and John Locke’s Two treatises of government in 1960, having previously rediscovered the library of Locke.2 However, many may not know what led to the transformation in his research agenda. He was clearly already thinking that what matters more in understanding society was a knowl- edge of social structures as a whole rather than individual thinkers, when in 1959 he was on sabbatical in the United States. Peter’s particular ‘road to Damascus’ was the Library of Congress, Washington. He had noted a catalogue entry to the late-seventeenth-century Rector’s Book for Clayworth,3 a village in Nottinghamshire, some months earlier whilst at the Huntington Library in California, but did not have the opportunity to inspect the volume until he was in Washington. The book contains two census-type listings of the 400 or so inhabitants of the village, for 1676 and 1688, compiled by the parish priest, William Sampson. Sampson was no ordinary rector, having previously been President of Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was in charge of the college accounts, and in 1693 11 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.14, on 28 Sep 2021 at 14:40:00, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0268416003004491 K. SCHU¨RER was offered the Mastership of the College, which he declined, but quite why he should have decided to list each household in his parish and its occu- pants is unknown. The first list resulted from a collection being taken in the parish for the relief of fire victims in Northampton, but this would not have necessitated the listing of the inhabitants of the parish in itself. The reason for the second list is even more of a mystery. Whatever the reasons for their compilation, the impact of these two short listings on Laslett’s thinking and subsequent writing was phenomenal. As he scanned the pages he could see no evidence for the sorts of patriarchal families that he expected to be present in seventeenth-century England, based on his knowledge of Filmer and the general perceived wisdom at the time.4 In his own words it was an ‘intellectual shock’ that he could see no sign what- ever of the extended co-resident domestic group.
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