Working-Class Diets in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4354124
AutoresDerek J Oddy (Queen Elizabeth’s Academy, autor correspondente)
Ano1970
Volume23
Fascículo2
Páginas314-322
Data de publicação1970-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Economic History Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1468-0289.1970.tb01029.x
OpenAlexW2124658812
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas28
Referências citadas4

T IHE investigation of family budgets provides an interesting insight into the lives of working-class families in the late nineteenth century. While much of the material is well known, reference to it has generally been confined to estimates of the extent of poverty. However, surveys containing individual family budgets are particularly important as evidence of the amounts of food actually consumed by the working classes. Between i887 and I 9oi there were six such inquiries which are considered here. None of them was large in scale since they resulted, with one exception, from the private efforts of individual investigators who seldom found it possible to examine more than 25 families at a time. But taking these inquiries together as a group there are details of I 79 family budgets for the last years of the century, of which I 5 I were found to be suitable for analysis in dietary terms.2 These numbers are, of course, too small for any detailed statistical treatment, and it would be dangerous to generalize about workingclass life as a whole on the basis of this evidence. Nevertheless, evidence from family budgets provides some indication of the diet of varying sectors of the population.3 Roughly 24 per cent of the budgets analysed are from the Midlands and industrial north of England, including examples from Manchester (5), Sheffield (4), West Riding textile towns (4), Tyneside (9), and Northumberland mining districts (5). London supplied 28 budgets, or ig per cent of the total. A further i6 per cent are from non-industrial provincial towns in England, in which Rowntree's survey of York is the predominating influence. Scottish towns also provide i 6 per cent of the total and the remainder are a somewhat scattered group of rural labourers' families. With these qualifications in mind, it should be remembered that accounts of the improvement in the standard of living in the late nineteenth century have frequently been accompanied by references to rising consumption of food. Mr H. L. Beales, in his examination of the Depression, pointed out that twice as much tea was being consumed, and even the working classes were eating imported meat, oranges, and dairy produce in quantities unprecedented.4 Rising food consumption was also assumed by Prof. Rostow to support his claim that real wages rose by an annual average increase of i * 85 per cent in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.5 These views contrasted strangely with Sir Jack Drum1 This work, originally financed by research grants from industry, has been supported by the Social Science Research Council. I am grateful to Prof. T. C. Barker and Prof. John Yudkin, who both read early drafts of this article, for their encouragement and advice. 2 The remaining 27 budgets were not sufficiently detailed for quantitative analysis to be carried out. 3 Not all available material has been included. The United States Commissioner of Labor's Reports for i890 and i89i include summaries of I,024 budgets collected in Britain. However, these present special difficulties in interpretation, and have too little detail to justify analysis in nutritional terms. There are also a few budgets scattered through the sectional reports on Agricultural Labour by the Royal Commission on Labour, i893-4.-Parl. Papers, i893-4 (C. 6894), xxxV. 4 H. L. Beales, 'The Great Depression in Industry and Trade', Economic History Review, v (I934), 65-75. 5 W. W. Rostow, British Economy of the Nineteenth Century (I948), pp. 90-I

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