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The article presents information on the social policy of Great Britain before 1914. The prevalent assumption among historians is that in Britain before 1914 the approach to social policy was overwhelmingly empirical. This empiricism is seen to rest on a tradition of the disinterested study of the causes of poverty formed in the nineteenth century mainly by Charles Booth, or possibly to a lesser extent by the earlier work of Sir John Simon and other administrators of his generation. This article is intended as a contribution to a necessary revaluation of the climate of opinion in which the great social legislation of the 1905 Liberal government occurred. It is concerned with one aspect of Charles Booth's work, his ideas on unemployment which became briefly fashionable although they had little impact on policy. More generally, it is an attempt to describe and explain some of the neglected moral assumptions behind the discussion of policy. Booth and his followers were empirical in their careful study of all the available evidence, especially statistical, on the causes of poverty. But their investigations were influenced by certain prevalent ideas, particularly by a concern for the effects of policy on the character of those whom it relieved, and, among other things, this led them to make a strong distinction between unemployment among the skilled and the unskilled workers.

The article focuses on the interconnectedness of liberalism between Britain and the U.S. from 1870 to 1920, challenging the perception of separate developments in each country. It highlights the transatlantic influence on political ideologies and reform movements, emphasizing the collaboration and parallels between American Progressivism and British reformers during this period.

This article provides information regarding urban poverty in Great Britain from 1880-1920. In his survey of poverty in London, England published in 1889 and 1891 scholar Charles Booth had put forward a classification of the population according to the degree of want or comfort in which they were found. By contrast, in his survey of poverty among the working-class population of York, undertaken in 1899, scholar B.S. Rowntree took a great deal of trouble to obtain information on household income. He used this information to produce a classification of working-class households and also to calculate the number of households in primary poverty. However, Rowntree regarded primary poverty, characterized by family income insufficient for the maintenance of mere physical efficiency, as a mere sub-category within the larger category of poverty. The purpose for which that sub-category was invented or the detailed calculations and assumptions by means of which it was constructed cannot be discussed here. It was complemented by secondary poverty, characterized by family income that would have been sufficient for the maintenance of mere physical efficiency were it not that some of it was absorbed by other expenditure either useful or wasteful. But secondary poverty was simply a residual category, calculated by subtracting the numbers of those in primary poverty from the total of all households in poverty.

This article analyzes some sociological studies and measurement of poverty in Great Britain, conducted in June 1954. In the study authored by Charles Booth and B. Seebohm Rowntree, the families living in poverty was divided into two sections. First, families whose total earnings are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. Second, families whose total earnings would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by other expenditure, either useful or wasteful. The minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were calculated by estimating the nutritional needs of adults and children and by translating such needs into quantities of different foods and hence into money terms, and by adding on to these figures certain minimum sums for clothing, fuel and household sundries, according to the size of the family. The studies that followed adopted the same approach and although there were some minor alterations, the standards used for measuring poverty were broadly the same, adjusted according to change in prices, as that used by Rowntree in 1899.

In its heyday in the 1970s, Britain's council housing sector provided homes to 40 per cent of the British population before falling victim to privatization, which changed homes for Britain's workers into commodities subject to property speculation. The fraction of the original council housing stock that has been preserved serves the needs of the society's most vulnerable. However, the concept of council housing as social housing is a later one; originally, council estates were designed for aspirational workers and were intended as mixed communities, with working and middle-class residents living side by side. Taking a historical perspective, the article maps the development of the concept of council housing in Britain from the original idea, inspired by garden cities such as Letchworth or Welwyn Garden City, to the gradual changes to both the design of council estates and their intended purpose that transformed the once socially desirable housing type into a symbol of social failure and deprivation. The recent tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire is used as a case in point to illustrate this process of change. In addition to historical research, the paper draws on recent sociological reports and newspaper articles dealing with the issue of Britain's council housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Evidence-based policy relies on measurement to trigger actions and to manage and evaluate programmes. Yet measurement requires classification: the making of categories of understanding that approximate or represent collective phenomena. In 1931, two decades after implementing the first compulsory unemployment benefits in 1911, the British Government began to carry out a census of out-of-work individuals. Why such an inversion, at odds with the exercise of rational-legal authority, and unlike to its French or German counterparts? To solve this puzzle, we document the making of 'the unemployed' as a category of scientific analysis and of public policy in nineteenth-century Great Britain. Our circumscribed contribution to the history of economic thought and methodology informs today's controversies on the future of work, the weakening of wage labour through the rise in the number of part-time contracts and self-employed workers, as well as the rivalry between the welfare state and private charities with regard to providing impoverished people with some kind of relief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 100th anniversary of the Liverpool Tidal Institute (LTI) was celebrated during 2019. One aspect of tidal science for which the LTI acquired a worldwide reputation was the development and use of tide prediction machines (TPMs). The TPM was invented in the late 19th century, but most of them were made in the first half of the 20th century, up until the time that the advent of digital computers consigned them to museums. This paper describes the basic principles of a TPM, reviews how many were constructed around the world and discusses the method devised by Arthur Doodson at the LTI for the determination of harmonic tidal constants from tide gauge data. These constants were required in order to set up the TPMs for predicting the heights and times of the tides. Although only 3 of the 30-odd TPMs constructed were employed in operational tidal prediction at the LTI, Doodson was responsible for the design and oversight of the manufacture of several others. The paper demonstrates how the UK, and the LTI and Doodson in particular, played a central role in this area of tidal science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with British press coverage of a social group traditionally referred to in conservative discourse as the undeserving poor. The perception of the poor as either deserving or not deserving of state assistance on a moral basis is put into the context of the present public financial crisis, in which a justification for welfare cuts is being sought. It is shown that conservative-minded British papers (The Times, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail) uphold the Coalition government's hardened attitude towards benefits claimants, while progressiveminded papers (The Guardian, The Independent) refute the existence of the undeserving poor, looking instead for structural explanations of poverty-related phenomena. The main frames used to depict the undeserving poor are identified as fecklessness, anti-social behaviour and a something-for-nothing culture. The article draws on the work of frame theorist Shanto Iyengar and linguist George Lakoff, as well as on various social research reports on poverty in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of the article is the social and political thought of Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, one of the pioneers of British sociology and one of the main ideologists of the doctrine of New Liberalism. This essay’s aim consists in presenting both Hobhouse’s academic profile and his most important theoretical claims. It will depict the sources of his philosophical and sociological inspiration as well as his antipathies (particularly, his attitude towards Herbert Spencer). Hobhouse’s theoretical worldview will be portrayed as a systemic entity. The sources of all his social and political theses will be shown to spring from the content of his first, strictly philosophical work, The Theory of Knowledge. Hobhouse’s teleology, evolutionism and organicism originate directly form here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the policing of that most important site for leisure and pleasure among the Victorian working-classes -- the pub. It begins with an examination of how changes in policing arrangements from the late-eighteenth century into Victoria's reign both reflected growing societal anxiety over the conduct of drinking places and led to increased action against them. It provides analyses of the overall incidence of prosecution of publicans in the period up to the important licensing legislation of 1869 and 1872. It examines that legislation and its effects and then turns its attention to the offences of permitting drunkenness and serving a drunken person as particularly indicative of the broader question of the conduct of public houses and of customers' behaviour within them, setting out trends in their prosecution. It then analyses what underlay the trends revealed, taking in the key variables of the law, the practicalities of its enforcement by the police, the attitudes of the magistracy and the actual conduct of individual publicans and drinkers, within the context of economic, social and cultural changes. By the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is argued, pubs were more orderly places, but the achievement of that end was the product of a much more complex set of variables than simply policing arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty is often thought of as an inevitable social condition, and the blame for any shortcomings in governmental welfare policies is frequently placed upon the failings of individuals, markets, and demography. By exploring the influence of neoliberal politics on archaeologies of slum-life this article makes the case that less emphasis should be placed upon the perceived failings of individuals and more effort should be placed on recovering the complex social networks which sustained community-life within Hungate and other so-called urban slums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the excitement generated in Britain since 2007 by the York Archaeological Trust's excavations of the city's Hungate neighborhood, which Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree characterized as a 'slum' in his pioneering poverty survey of 1901, derives from the unexpected volume and variety of material evidence uncovered about life in a poor community within a modern industrial city. Such material evidence and its often uncertain relationships to other historical data can enhance analysis by complicating understanding of the past, rather than echoing conventional wisdom. Findings from Hungate can thus contribute to nuanced understandings of urban social disadvantage not only at the neighborhood level in this one particular British city, but at the larger scales of analysis that encompass the growth of cities and interacting urban regions in Britain and around the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These understandings have contemporary relevance for a world in which over half of humanity now lives in urban areas, as misconceptions about 'slums' continue to undermine efforts to reduce urban inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This volume on the archaeology of urban poverty arises from a three-day symposium hosted by York Archaeological Trust and the University of York in July 2009 to establish the wider intellectual framework for the investigation of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeology of the Hungate neighborhood of York. In this opening article, the trajectory of medieval and post-medieval archaeology in Britain is contrasted with historical archaeology in the United States and Australia, and the influence of the pre-modern history of the Hungate neighborhood on its development since 1800 is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the turn of the twentieth century a distinct ‘social domain’ – along with its constituent parts, problems and internal dynamics – was turned into a political entity, and a concern for state bureaucracies existed across the industrializing world. Specific motivations for this trend may have varied from location to location, but included arguments for higher industrial productivity and less political discontent, often intertwined with a humanitarian impulse in calls for better housing, expanded public health or improved working conditions. As has been well documented, the politicization of the social domain in early twentieth-century Britain owes much to the consolidation of British sociology as a distinct discipline. Yet while the link between the rise of social politics and sociology has been established with regard to Britain, little has been said about the occurrence of this coupling elsewhere in the twentieth-century British Empire. This article aims to rectify that omission by showing the interplay between newly raised social concerns of the colonial administration in the Bombay Presidency, Western British India, and the establishing of sociological research within the borders of the Presidency around the time of the First World War. The article will explore how the colonial administration in Bombay planned to meet new demands for sociological knowledge in colonial state policy, how sociology was subsequently introduced into the Presidency as a research subject, and how new sociological methods were applied in actual colonial government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article, focusing on Seebohm Rowntree's poverty surveys, considers the importance and durability of the concept of secondary poverty. It argues that secondary poverty was a central component of Rowntree's first survey of York, carried out in 1899, and in his lectures and writing in the Edwardian period. Moreover, secondary poverty remained an important feature of Rowntree's analysis during the interwar years and after the Second World War, and was adopted by other researchers in various ways. Although secondary poverty was not seriously examined in the published version of Rowntree's 1936 York survey, there is evidence that it was originally intended to feature, and it is clear that impressionistic evidence of poverty was gathered by Rowntree's investigators, as had been the case in 1899. Moreover, although it was completely expunged from the third survey of York, carried out by Rowntree and Lavers in 1950, a separate inquiry into secondary poverty was carried out in the early 1950s, with a number of prominent supporters. Subsequently, dissatisfaction with income-based definitions and measurements of poverty allowed the concept of secondary poverty to continue to exercise an influence on the study of poverty in the postwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the provincial statistical societies of the 1830s was in Liverpool, its formation stimulated by the British Association's meeting in Liverpool in 1837. Like the statistical society in nearby Manchester, its members were drawn largely from industry and commerce, with Liberals and Unitarians much in evidence. The Liverpool society achieved little and survived only briefly, its failure partly reflecting the difficulties that were faced by an amateur organization. It had a large membership with diverse interests, with many members occupied with local politics. We compare it with the Manchester Statistical Society, which had a closed, younger and more cohesive membership, with significant family and business links, helping that society to adapt and survive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the period 1871-1938, the average British worker was better off than the average German worker, but there were significant differences between major sectors. For the aggregate economy, the real wage gap was about the same as the labor productivity gap, but again there were important sectoral differences. Compared to their productivity, German industrial workers were poorly paid, whereas German agricultural and service sector employees were overpaid. This affected the competitiveness of the two countries in these sectors. There were also important differences in comparative real wages by skill level, affecting the extent of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the design of the working-class home in Britain between 1917 and 1923 by focusing on Dormanstown, a model ‘industrial village’ built in the north-east of England by the steel manufacturer, Dorman, Long and Co. Ltd. The article considers how, as the State's involvement in the provision of housing in Britain gathered pace, the working-class home was at the intersection of narratives of tradition and modernity that shaped not only the design of the home but also the lives of its inhabitants. The industrial village of Dormanstown was designed by the nationally renowned partnership of Stanley Adshead (1868–1946), Stanley Ramsey (1882–1968) and Patrick Abercrombie (1879–1957). Ostensibly using traditional design elements: Beaux Arts planning for the town's layout and neo-Georgian design for the housing, Dormanstown was also unusually modern owing to the open-plan forms and new technologies deployed in the materials and construction of the Dorlonco houses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article charts the successes and failures of urban regeneration policies in the UK. Aspects of both continuity and change in the direction and implementation of urban policy are explored. It is argued that while New Labour's approach since 1997 has been distinctive and, in some respects, innovative, especially in relation to community engagement, it has continued to adopt a flawed conceptualisation of the urban problem which has led to a limited policy response. That legacy is likely to have a continuing influence on policy. Looking ahead, new challenges need to be faced, notably economic recession and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative approach to the decision- and policymaking that has been practiced in most developed countries for more than a quarter of a century. Such policies followed, to a greater or lesser degree, the policies adopted in the UK and the USA since the period of the Thatcher and Reagan administrations, respectively. These policies proclaimed the supremacy of the market and downplayed government intervention in the marketplace. Design/methodology/approach - This paper draws upon earlier research by the authors as well as upon published works of other researchers. Findings - Self-interest governed the way policies are formed and through a process of extreme capitalism financial leaders took ever-increasing risks for which executives received lucrative incentive salaries. The recent crash suggests a failure in such policies and this paper proposes an alternative way of operating - the way of altruism. Selfishness and egoism are argued as endemic in economic rationalism and extreme capitalism, replacing selflessness that engenders policies more aligned to altruism. Research limitations/implications - The research is limited by the ability to examine all the research literature in the field at greater depth. However, the examination that has been possibly indicated that self-interest and greed, endemic in extreme capitalism and economic rationalism, have made significant contributions to the recent subprime and global financial crises. Practical implications - This paper provides government and corporate policymakers with an understanding of an alternative value - selflessness as aligned to altruism - than the values of selfishness and greed that are endemic in economic rationalism and extreme capitalism guiding policies that led to the global financial crisis. Originality/value - The paper fulfils an identified need and supports policymakers seeking to achieve just outcomes for all stakeholders across the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trade Boards Act of 1909 was introduced in Britain to counteract sweating. Associated with long hours, insanitary work conditions and inadequate pay — with the accent falling on low wages — sweating probably afflicted some 30 per cent of Edwardian Britain's labour force. Trade boards supporters as diverse as Winston Churchill and R. H. Tawney heralded the legislation as marking a significant break in economic and social thought. Opponents declared that the enactment of the legislation would be ruinous for Britain. The future Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and his wife denounced trade boards as pallid reformism and campaigned for the licensing of home workshops. On the other hand, proponents of a subsistence minimum wage, such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, were disappointed that the legislation did not go further. Initially, it encompassed less than a quarter of a million workers. The rates set were not based on the cost of living but on what the individual trade could bear. On their own, trade boards were insufficient to eradicate Britain's long and historical tradition of being a low-paying economy. Trade boards (and their successors, wages councils) were trapped in their collective laissez-faire origins. However, despite its sanctioning of a statutory national minimum wage in 1998, the British state is still far from being interventionist in the labour market. If Britain is to break with the past, she must also implement a comprehensive framework of minimum rights. Otherwise, the principle of collective laissez-faire will still remain triumphant over the Webbs' alternative conception of a comprehensive labour code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to understand the impact of the national minimum wage (NMW) on pay, employment and other variables, the Low Pay Commission studies pay setting, coverage of the NMW, competitive versus monopsonistic labour markets, non-compliance, offsets and the interaction between the NMW and the social security system. But similar issues were analysed a century ago by Fabian and other writers. In particular, the 18-page 1906 Tract by W. S. Sanders — the first ever call for a national minimum wage — anticipated all the present debates. That tract is examined here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses class relations in early 20th century Great Britain through an examination of the relationships between domestic servants and their employers. It describes the transition from live-in maids in Victorian-era Britain to the hiring of part-time service workers and cleaners, the gender aspects relative to female service maids, and the scholarship of domestic servant historians Carolyn Steedman and Alison Light. Other subjects under discussion include the deference/defiance paradigm for understanding class relations, the socio-economic aspects of Britain before World War II, and the testimonies of servants from their diaries and journals.

Despite rapid increases in manual workers' wages, poverty rates among the elderly remained high in late Victorian England, although they varied significantly across Poor Law Unions. This paper begins by examining the ability of workers to provide for their old age. A data set is constructed, consisting of all English Poor Law Unions in 1891–2, and regression equations are estimated in order to explain variations across unions in pauperism rates. This is followed by the testing of several conjectures made by contemporaries, and repeated by historians, regarding the deterrent effect of workhouse relief, the effects of wages and of the industrial character of Poor Law Unions on pauperism rates, and regional differences in workers' reliance on the poor law. The paper then examines the implications of these results for the debate over national old age pensions in the decades before the adoption of the Old Age Pension Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last 5 years, the UK government has increased support for and resources to community development projects and strategies. These interventions have been deployed to assist the state address key issues of social exclusion notably at neighbourhood level. The thrust for tackling social exclusion and therefore the growth in community development can be linked to New Labour's adherence to a neo-liberal agenda. The two articles and the working paper considered here reflect this expansion of activity and articulate some of the central issues and challenges facing community development. The central problem for community development appears to be that whilst it has secured a more prominent place within contemporary social policies, it is in danger of losing its ability effectively to address the expressed needs of local commnunitties. Hence the development we are witnessing can be considered to be a case of conditional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the ethics of hunger and the techno-politics of the school meal in Great Britain. The school meal has been conceived as a form of what the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration called social education as much as a form of welfare. If society was to provide hungry children with school meals, those meals had to teach them about the nature of that society and socially responsible forms of behavior it now demanded. It was suggested that the school meal should have a civilizing effect upon the children. Enshrining moral and spiritual as well as mental and physical values, it would train children in habits of self-control and thoughtfulness for one another. As civility was a habit that required liturgical practice, school meals were to provide practical lessons in unselfishness, cleanliness and self-help, encouraging the acquisition of gentle manners, courtesy, and respect in ways that fostered social harmony and happiness. The material environment in which meals were served was also thought critical to the production of civil and sociable subjects. This was partly about creating a sanitary and congenial space for school meals, but it was also about providing the physical tools of civility--tables, chairs, plates, cups, knives, forks, and spoons, even tablecloths and flowers--which were often absent from the poorest homes, where food went from hand to mouth.

Examines the changing roles played by poor relief, private charity, trade unions, and public employment in the lives of the urban unemployed during cyclical downturns from 1834 to 1911 in Great Britain. Occurrence of a major change in public policy toward the unemployed; Significance of adopting the compulsory unemployment insurance; Basis of the parliament's decision to set up a national system of unemployment insurance.

Background A number of different socio-economic classifications have been used in relation to health in the United Kingdom. The aim of this study was to compare the predictive power of different socio-economic classifications in relation to a range of health measures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores how the British Institute of Industrial Art (BIIA), the first governmental organization to deal specifically with modem industrial design, endeavoured to project the nation via design. The Institute held exhibitions at Knightsbridge, the Victoria and Albert Museum, in provincial cities and abroad. Its collaborations with the General Post Office and the Ministry of Transport gave birth to several products of modern design. It published a number of research reports on the varied aspects of industrial art. These achievements were later utilized at the Council for Art and Industry. The BIIA's history by no means indicates that it had a critical impact on the debate of modern taste, but it does demonstrate how the power structure within the debates shifted. It also marked a significant prelude to the state patronage, or institutionalization, of modern design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the proposals for the reform of the welfare state in Great Britain. Characteristics of the welfare system; Proposals to modernize the welfare state; Provisions of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act of 1999 and the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000; Child support reforms; Pension reforms and minimum income guarantee; Child support reform.

Children's work has become, over the last century, proscribed by law and custom. Both in domestic and external settings, labour is held to damage the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of children. Adults who collude in or tolerate children's labour are subject to judicial penalties and moral condemnation. The social history of childhood proposes an upwards temporal incline from barbarity to humanity. Children's exclusion from the labour market is a key factor in this trajectory. Work by children, including care for siblings and parents, has become part of the same moral universe as child abuse. It is proposed here that this proposition may be applied too indiscriminately and, furthermore, that condemnation of children's labour is associated with wider social needs and has not arisen solely as a result of philanthropy. The past, it is suggested, has been disproportionately demonized, partly in order to promote certain political goals. While this does not imply that child labour, external or domestic, is unproblematic, it is argued that the same historic mechanisms which have resulted in the distortion of children's labour experience have the capacity to bias our understanding of contemporary work undertaken by children.

Analyzes the social policy of Great Britain during the Second World War based on a report on the evacuation of schoolchildren entitled `Our towns: a close up,' by the Women's Group on Public Welfare. Inefficacy of child welfare; Consideration of bedwetting as inherent in certain social classes; Behavioral interpretations of poverty.

Recent work has demonstrated that there are important continuities in theories of social pathology, ranging from the ‘residuum’ of the 1890s to the ‘underclass’ of the 1990s. Yet, while concepts about the ‘underclass’ have been marked by important continuities over time, there have also been important changes. This article looks at the ‘problem family’ of the 1950s and uses evolving attitudes as a means of exploring the social history of social work in Britain between roughly 1940 and 1970. In particular, it attempts to look at the issue through the eyes of four different interest groups whose members and ideas overlapped but which can none the less be considered as having separate identities. These comprise the Eugenics Society and other individuals interested in eugenics, new voluntary organizations such as Pacifist Service Units, medical personnel including Medical Officers of Health, and a broad coalition of academics and practitioners in the emerging social work profession. The article concludes that the issue of the ‘problem family’ provides revealing insights into the ways in which the attitude of the emerging social work profession diverged from, but none the less had close links with, the approach of other professional interest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of a preliminary investigation of the long-run trends in employment and retirement of older men in the British labor force between 1881 and 1981. Between 1881 and 1981 the structure of the British labour force was transformed by two fundamental changes in behaviour; the increasing participation in the labour force of married women and declining participation of older men. The economic impact of this development is potentially large--if males over 65 in England and Wales in 1981 had shown the same participation rates as this age group did in 1881, the male population who were economically active would have been greater by 1.9 million, or almost 14 per cent. The almost continuous long-run decline in participation rates on which a number of commentators have attempted to place an interpretation has been shown to a large extent to be a result of structural change in the economy. This finding casts new light on the historical interpretation of aged pauperism and pensions policy since the late Victorian period. Poor law pensions for the aged poor and the payment of state old age pensions from 1909 can be seen as a response to continued industrialization and structural change.

The article presents a list of publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland. Some of them are "The Religious Census of Sussex 1851," edited by J.A. Vickers; "The Robert Hall Diaries, 1947-53," edited by A. Cairncross; "The Catholic Question in Ireland and England, 1798-1882: The Papers of Denys Scully," by B. MacDermot; "The Correspondence of Robert Dodsley, 1733-64," by J.E. Tierney; "Returns of Papists, 1767," by E.S. Worrall; "The Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy," by M. Bailey; "A History of Laxton: England's Last Open-Field Village," by J.V. Beckett; "Transhumance Economy, Setting and Settlement in Highland," by A. Bil; "The Empty Fields: The Agricultural Strike of 1914," by R. Brazier; "Towards an Agricultural Geography of Medieval England," by B.M.S Campbell; "The Cost of Capital and Medieval Agriculture Technique," by G. Clark; "British Agricultural Policy, 1912-36: A Study in Conservative Politics," A.F. Cooper; "Harvests of Charge: The Royal Agricultural Society of England, 1838-1988," by N.P.W. Goddard.

The article lists books on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland. Some of the books are: "The Diary of a Victorian Squire," by D. Birchall; "Literature and the Social Order in Eighteenth-Century England," by S. Copley; "Lasting Impressions," by M.A. Dundrow; "The Chronicles of a Wayfarer," by T. Green; "Letters of Edward Jenner and Other Documents Concerning the Early History of Vaccination," edited by G. Miller; "News From the English Countryside, 1851-1950," edited by C. Morsley; "Footplate Days on the Southern," edited by H. Norman; "European Women: A Documentary History," edited by E. Riemer and J. Fout; "Charlton Parish Registers: 1809-29," by J.G. Smith; "Braunstone Probate Inventories: 1532-1831," edited by J. Wilshere; "Kirby Muxloe Probate Inventories: 1547-1783," edited by J. Wilshere; "Capital Grants for Farmers: A Brief History," by S.P. Bingham; "Strict Settlement: A Guide for Historians," by B. English and J. Saville; "The Bridgewater Heritage: The Story of Bridgewater Estates," by C. Garyling and "The Peasant Land Market in Medieval England," by P.D.A. Harvey.

This article discusses the theory and method in recent British sociology. Sociology is an academic discipline that combines a commitment to the empirical investigation of social reality with the aim of comprehending the nature of society theoretically and framing general statements about social structure and process. This twin aims have been pursued in parallel more or less since the subject first came into existence in the late nineteenth century. Yet there has been an enduring tension between them. Over a generation ago, T. H. Marshall, in his LSE inaugural lecture of 1946, called for an effort to overcome the gap which separated the general or theoretical sociologist who becomes a slave to his concepts and on the other the passionately empirical sociologist who may become a slave to his methods. Instead he advocated the pursuit of what he called stepping stones to the middle distance. Others at various times have restated this view. Robert Merton is one of the best known, in two essays dissecting the two-way relationship between sociology theory and empirical research. Edward Shils has suggested that no sociological theorist, however abstract their interests, can carry on their work without feeling that empirical researchers are looking over their shoulder and that ultimately they have to answer them.

Examines the technological and organizational developments in the British silk industry. How the introduction of the factory system during the industrial revolution altered the structure and organization of industries; Disagreement of scholars on the major reasons for the adoption of factory system.

Presents a study on the industrial growth of Great Britain during the 18th century. Nature of Great Britain's industrial transition; Indices of Great Britain's industrial production.

This article looks at the Manchester and Salford Equitable Co-operative Society in the period from the late nineteenth century through to 1914. Products, packaging, advertising and store design are considered in order to examine whether, and in what ways, co-operative ideologies were reflected in the experience of shopping at this particular co-operative society. it is suggested that in practice the co-op's design policy was increasingly influenced by commercial pressures from a competitive market-place, despite debates within the movement as to how its ideology should relate to issues such as advertising and store design. However, the conclusion is that this does not mean that more complex ideas and ideologies were absent from customers' experience of shopping at the co-op. In fact such ideas functioned alongside other considerations in the everyday purchasing decisions of the co-operative shopper in Manchester. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henry George, the American social reformer and Single Tax advocate, had a decisive impact on native British socialism considered apart from the Marxist and revolutionary types imported from the continent. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were hostile critics but the typically English Fabian Society was influenced by George's seminal ideas. The Fabians were especially attracted to two notions: the conception that George gave to the thought of his time, that poverty was an evil preventable by political intervention-by State action; and that the disparity in incomes could be explained by the theory of unearned increment In turn Sydney Olivier, George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, Annie Besant, H. G Wells and E. R Pease came under the influence of George. Soon to affect the Fabians, however, was the development of the economist, P. H Wicksteed, beyond George to Jevons and Marginalism. Key figures in the Parliamentary and independent Labour parties almost achieved land value taxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the relationship between Great Britain and the United States since 1900. Major differences; Commitment to defend positions on the European mainland; Issue of isolation; Oceanic world strategy; Permanent alliances; Wartime alliance between US and Great Britain; Changes in local politics and society; Expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Discusses the housewifery in married working-class women in England during the period 1860-1914. Trends among women redefining themselves primarily as housewives; Census statistics of the movement of married women in and out of the paid labor force; Portrayal of working-class women; Conduct of life of housewives; Treatment of housewives by their husbands and the society.

Examines the mechanics of trade associational activity in late 19th to early 20th century England, focusing on the representative provincial center of Leicester. Structural changes within the wider business community; The business elite and the retailing community; Terms of membership; Principal and domestic shopkeepers; The shopkeeping sub-culture; Influence on supply and price competition.

Examines the factors contributing to the mass expansion of toy soldier production in Great Britain in the years before 1914. Cultural influences contributing to the prewar build of militarism; Emergence of new British manufacturers using new technology; Toy soldier boom's reinforcement of militaristic tendencies; Great Britain's ability to sustain its armed forces on a voluntary basis.