Criminal Law in the 18th and 19th Century
In recent writing on the criminal law in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, two broad themes have emerged, the first is an essentially liberal approach to historiography which sees the evolution of the law in this period as an inevitable progression towards an ever more rational, humane and enlightened outcome and away from the cruel and barbarous and irrational past. To this end, the changes in the legal system, the creation of new police, the reforms of prisons and sentencing and other social reforms were all trends in the direction towards a more humane and civilised society.[1] A related functionalist or consensus perspective views the law and legal process itself as a class neutral and benign institution serving everyone equally. In this view, all social classes were protected equally by the law and all classes made use of the law to seek redress from the actions of a small criminal minority from whom they all suffered.[2] It follows then, in this view, that the law enjoyed a broad legitimacy amongst all social classes. By contrast, an alternative view of the law, known as the revisionist school, put forward a broadly Marxist or class based critique of the legal process. In this view, far from being class neutral, the criminal law in this period served to legitimate the existing social order and was used as a tool to serve the class interests of the small landed elite who formed the ruling class. The most influential article putting forward the Marxist perspective is Douglas Hay’s ‘Property, Authority and the Criminal Law.’[3] This essay will consider the debate raised by Hay’s thesis as well as critics of his argument such as John Langbein [4] and attempt to investigate the validity of both Hay’s thesis and that of his critics. In addition, this essay will consider a third alternative, a more pluralistic approach that regards the legal system as neither the sole prerogative of ruling elites nor the class neutral system as envisaged by historians such as Langbein. This third alternative as put forward by writers such as Peter King [5] and Brewer and Styles[6] sees the law as a competing arena of different interests in which multiple participants had opportunities to influence the outcome at various points in the process. In order to consider the degree to which the courts were in fact open to those from the lower orders or were indeed tools of the landed elites, this essay will examine the social and economic background of those who brought prosecutions and consider the extent to which these participants were able to exercise discretion and autonomy in regard to the judicial process. Finally, this essay will consider the changing social character of the county magistracy in the nineteenth century in the face of a rising population and increased industrialisation and urbanisation and will examine a local example from the Black Country in order to consider whether the gradual inclusion of manufacturers and men of commerce into the magistracy led to more explicitly class interest based decisions on their part.
Douglas Hay’s essay, Property, Authority and the Criminal Law,[7] has been described as a ‘foundational text’[8] in terms of class based analysis of the eighteenth century legal process and has been widely received, debated and critiqued. Noting a paradox, namely that in an age of severe criminal sanctions such as execution or deportation for over 200 property crimes and at a time when Parliament continued to pass new capital statutes, sentences carrying the death penalty actually went down.[9] Hay argued that magistrates in this period had wide discretionary powers over prosecution and sentencing and that through the selective use of this discretion, they could choose whether to invoke the death penalty or whether to offer mercy to those found guilty. This discretionary power and the manner in which it was used was a powerful ideological weapon used to invoke both terror and gratitude in defendants. It meant that magistrates had the capacity to be merciful or severe and thus to demand deference from the accused. Hay argued that, in an age before a professional police force, the state had to rely on the ideology of law as its ‘chief ideological weapon’[10] which allowed it to exercise hegemonic legitimacy over the population at large. This combination of terror and mercy alongside the appearance of the impartiality and majesty of the law was the primary means by which the population was convinced of the inevitability and legitimacy of hereditary ruling class authority and convinced to obey it.
The most ferocious criticism of Hay’s thesis came from John H. Langbein’s article ‘Albion’s Fatal Flaws.’[11] Langbein dismisses Hay’s thesis as a ‘conspiracy theory’.[12] Indeed, at first glance Hay does appear to propose a conspiracy theory. Hay writes ‘The private manipulation of the law by the wealthy and powerful was in truth a ruling class conspiracy in the most exact meaning of the word. The king, judges, magistrates and gentry used private, extra-legal dealings among themselves to bend the statute and common law to their own purposes.’[13] One feature of conspiracy theories, argues Langbein, is what he calls ‘the legitimation trick.’[14] Evidence which contradicts the argument becomes incorporated into the conspiracy itself and thus rather than being an argument against the proposed thesis becomes evidence for it. Langbein claims Hay’s argument is full of such ‘legitimation tricks.’ Langbein cites the example given by Hay of Lord Ferrers who ‘Killed his steward, was captured by his tenantry, tried in the House of Lords, sentenced to death and executed at Tyborn, “like a common criminal”.’[15] Now, at first glance the execution of Lord Ferrers seems to contradict Hay’s thesis because Lord Ferrers was part of the social class that he claims manipulated the legal process in their interests. Surely his execution was an example of the lack of class bias by the judiciary and the legal process and an example of the neutrality of the law. Lord Ferrers was, after all, one of their own. Hay, faced with this obvious question, dismisses it as ‘part of the lore of politics that in England social class did not preserve a man even from the extreme sanction of death. This was not of course true but the impression made by the execution of a man of property or position was very deep’[16] In other words, to Hay the execution of such men actually strengthened the ideology of law because it could be used to demonstrate the idea that the law was a neutral institution applicable to all. To Langbein however, Hay wants it both ways. He asks, ‘What if the opposite were the case and the likes of Lord Ferrers had been allowed to kill as many social inferiors as he wanted?’[17] Imagine he and those of his class enjoyed total impunity from prosecution. Such a scenario would fit Hay’s thesis just the same. In such a case, Hay could point to it as an example of the naked class bias of the legal process. Therefore, the thesis, like all conspiracy theories, is ‘untestable and self-proving’[18] Any and all evidence can be made to fit the theory or becomes part of the conspiracy itself. Therefore, Langbein argues, Hay’s argument is a thesis that can be satisfied by any evidence that is presented and is thus ‘not a theory about history.’[19] In a reply to Langbein however, Peter Linebaugh claims Langbein ‘wholly misinterprets Hay’s analysis.’[20] Pointing out that Hay, though writing about the ‘private manipulation of law by the rich and powerful,’[21] nevertheless distinguishes between such ‘behind the scenes manipulations’[22] of individuals who sought to use the law to their advantage and the operation of the legal process itself, something he argues that Langbein failed to acknowledge. The discretionary nature of the legal process, operating in a society with huge inequalities of wealth, facilitated the manipulation of the law by the elites who controlled the process but it wasn’t simply their tool, rather they operated within its parameters and rules. Brewer and Styles make the point that by accepting the ideology of the ‘rule of law,’ ruling elites were themselves constrained by their own obligations to obey it. ‘Because authority derived its legitimacy from the rule of law, “the law” was used as the standard by which to judge the just exercise of authority.’[23] Even if he had wanted to, the Judge in the Ferrers case would have had little option but to convict and sentence the accused on the evidence before him. Hay himself puts it thus. ‘The law thereby became something more than the creature of the ruling class- It became a power with its own claims, higher than those of prosecutor, lawyers and even the great scarlet robed assize judge himself.’ [24]
Peter King, while accepting that propertied elites occasionally used the law to serve their class interests and reinforce their authority, argues that Hay’s thesis shouldn’t be seen as an all-encompassing statement of eighteenth century law but instead as only a partial picture. King argues that, although elites may well have used the courts to selectively serve their own class interests, this was not the main function of the criminal justice system or an inevitable result of the judicial process but only one possible result. Rather, he argues that the judicial process itself was structured in such a way that the possibility to influence the outcome of a court case was open to a much wider group of participants than just the magistrates. ‘The Prosecutor, the witnesses, the accused’s neighbours, the parish officials, the magistrates as committing officers or as summary court, the grand jury, the petty jury, the trial judges or quarter sessions bench, the department of the secretary of state and the king’ [25] could all exercise discretionary power to influence the outcome of the legal process at many points in the judicial process. To King then, echoing a phrase by Brewer and Styles, the law should be seen as a ‘multi use right’[26] available to all even if such opportunities for influence were not fairly distributed. ‘It was therefore possible for individuals and groups of widely differing social and economic status to modify or choose not to modify the severity of the law in line with their needs, beliefs and ideas of justice’[27] The majority of prosecutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were brought by the victims themselves. Britain had no state prosecutor and it was not until after the advent of the new police in 1829 and the formation of compulsory county police forces in 1856 that the police took on an increasingly prosecutorial role.[28] If he wanted redress, a victim of crime had to prosecute the offender himself. As prosecutor, the victim was a key decision maker in the outcome of a trial. Throughout the process, opportunities to influence the outcome of the prosecution were available to him or her. He could decide not to seek redress at all. He could advertise aggressively and offer rewards for the recovery of his goods or apprehension of the offender. Once the offender was found, the victim could seek informal redress individually or seek rough justice within his own community. He could demand the offender leave the neighbourhood or he could decide to take the perpetrator before a magistrate. Once in front of the magistrate he could seek a compromise or he could insist on a trial. He could indicate his preference for the offender to be drafted into the armed forces. He could inflate or deflate the value of goods stolen in order to limit or increase the sentence or he could even throw the trial by failing to attend or by failing to present evidence. After the offender was found guilty he could indicate his preference for a lenient sentence or push for a harsh one. He could even put his name to a petition for pardon or reduced sentence.[29]
Clearly then, if prosecutors could play a discretionary role in deciding the court process, the question of the social status of prosecutors becomes important, because if it can be shown that a significant proportion of prosecutors came from the lower classes, despite the financial obstacles to such prosecutions, then that has important implications for a thesis that claims the law courts serve the interests of a ruling class. What then was the social status of prosecutors? King, in an analysis of the Essex Quarter Sessions from 1760 to 1800, gives a fairly comprehensive answer.[30] He found that over a third of prosecutors bringing felony cases to the Essex Quarter Sessions were farmers, a third were tradesmen or artisans and between a fifth and sixth were labourers.[31] When compared against the population of Essex as a whole, King found that farmers emerged as by far the most active prosecutors. Only one eighth of the Essex population were farmers but 35 per cent of felony prosecutions were launched by them. The number of tradesman and artisan prosecutors were in proportion to their number in the population and labourers were less representative of the population than the other groups.[32] King concludes that farmers, tradesmen and artisans tended to dominate Quarter Sessions prosecutions but points out that is not really surprising given that these groups were the most vulnerable to the theft of commercial goods or the pilfering of employees or servants.[33] Given that this was not the case for labourers as they possessed fewer goods to be stolen, he notes that the number of prosecutions brought by labourers is actually ‘quite remarkable.’[34] More than a fifth of prosecutions in the quarter sessions were led by prosecutors from a labouring background. This is problematic for Hay’s thesis because, although he does accept that a proportion of prosecutors were from labouring and other poor backgrounds, he minimises their role and claims such cases were ‘paid for by employers, landlords or local associations for the prosecution of felons [….] The consequence was that more poor men were able to use the law than the system of legal fees would have otherwise allowed.’[35] There were indeed such prosecution associations in which people would join together and make regular payments to finance potential future legal action. However, as King points out,[36] none of them financed prosecutions for non-members and the poor would be unlikely to afford the regular fees required for membership of such associations. Prosecuting a case was expensive, especially if a case went to the Quarter Sessions. Court cases could take days to be called, trials themselves could go on for days and the prosecutor was expected to be available for the entire trial. Not only did that mean time off work and the expense of staying in the town where the court met waiting for the trial to start but it meant paying for witnesses’ expenses too. However, King points out that the Essex courts paid the expenses of about a quarter of prosecutors in 1760 and about half in 1780, with labourers being the main beneficiaries. In the 1760s two thirds of labouring prosecutors received some sort of expenses.[37] Expenses were not paid for assault cases however and King notes that labourers were even more numerous in prosecuting such cases.[38] This may be indicative of their vulnerability to that type of crime but it also indicates a willingness and preparedness to seek redress through the courts despite the expense of prosecution. King writes ‘Within certain constraints, the law in relation to property crime was a resource available to and used by almost every layer in eighteenth-century society. All social groups could not use it with equal freedom, but it is dangerous to concentrate solely on its role as an instrument of the larger property owners.’ Thus, king concludes that far from only serving the interests of a propertied elite, eighteenth century courts were frequently used by all classes including the labouring poor.
It is uncontroversial that the social make up of county magistracy, Parliament and the leadership of armed forces throughout the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century were dominated by the landed classes, the aristocracy and landed gentry.[39] It is worth emphasising however the extent of their power. Zangerl,[40] states ‘Most local historians have argued that the landed classes virtually monopolised the administration of county affairs before 1888 when county government was institutionally restructured by the County Councils Act. The Instrument of their control was the county magistracy acting in Quarter and Petty Sessions.’[41] Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the county magistracy grew in power, gradually assuming more and more administrative and financial functions and responsibilities. Apart from its role administering criminal proceedings, it was also responsible for licencing alehouses, ordering the construction of roads, bridges, prisons, charitable institutions and asylums and had power to read the riot act and to enlist constables and call on the military to restore order.[42] The £100 landed income qualification, the unsalaried nature of the magistracy position and the practice of recommendation and co-option all worked to ensure a monopoly on the bench for the landed classes but they also operated a very conscious policy of exclusion to retain their hold on the magistracy. They were explicitly opposed to appointing manufacturers or men of commerce to the bench. Earl Talbot writing to John Russell, then Home Secretary, explained why he refused to appoint two men recommended by Russell to the bench. ‘The rule has been in this country, not to place Gentlemen in the commission of the Peace who are in trade, or they might be called upon to adjudicate in cases where they have an interest.’[43] So a representative of the landed classes was refusing to appoint manufacturers or men of commerce because they couldn’t be trusted to be impartial arbiters in cases involving their own class interests. Talbot continued, if the ban on manufacturers and men of commerce were lifted ‘There will be a new class of magistrates spring up, residing in a District in which the trade they follow is almost the exclusive trade of that neighbourhood and they will have to settle disputes in the very trade and manufacture in which they themselves are engaged. I fear it will be difficult to persuade the people that however respectable they may be, they have not had one eye to their own interest in forming these decisions’[44]. However, despite these reservations, changing social and material conditions were such that manufacturers and men of commerce began to dominate the Black Country magistracy. Before 1836, 60 per cent of Black Country magistrates were from the landed aristocracy or gentry and manufacturers, coal and iron masters made up less than 4 per cent. By 1849 manufacturers and men of commerce made up over 60 per cent with coal and iron masters alone making up 50 per cent.[45] To understand the reasons for this dramatic shift in the social and economic status of the local magistracy in the Black Country we must first understand the industrial and social structure of the region at the midpoint of the Nineteenth Century.
The Black Country was a region dominated by the mining and production of iron and coal and the manufacturing industries which grew up around them. Most manufacturing took the form of hundreds of small workshops each employing up to 30 or 40 people and producing nails, locks and keys, brass products, chains, springs, tools, utensils and ironmongery goods.[46] Coal mining too took the form of small enterprises with about 440 collieries all employing small workforces. Even the larger coal pits employed as few as sixty workers.[47] Iron was the principle industry with about 100 ironworks owned by about seventy-five companies and each employing about 250 workers.[48] Iron production consumed most of the local coal that was raised, so the demand for coal was dependent on the demand for iron.[49] The largest companies, each employing up to 1000 workers, were integrated concerns, each owning their own coal mines, ironworks, blast furnaces and puddling furnaces all in the same company.[50] These large concerns dominated the economic life of the region with many small manufacturers completely dependent upon them. They also set common prices for coal and iron and decided wages and layoffs for miners and ironmakers. The state of both wages and employment then was decided by the masters of these large integrated concerns based on the state of the iron trade. This gave these employers enormous economic and social power in the region. The appointment of these men to the bench added administrative and political power to their already substantial economic power. It was out of necessity that the Lord’s Lieutenants appointed coal and iron masters to positions on the bench. Simply put, there just weren’t enough candidates from the landed classes in the region to fill the positions. The Black Country was heavily industrialised, and the gentry and large landowners were rural people, happiest living on the margins of South Staffordshire. As the region further industrialised, landowners retreated further out into rural areas. Talbot complained, ‘The truth is there are no magistrates who can be said to reside in our most populous and important districts, those of the potteries, and Wolverhampton or Bilston.’ [51] Thus it was then that the first iron master was appointed to the bench in 1836 with iron and coal masters, alongside merchants, bankers and other manufacturers, rapidly becoming a majority of magistrates between 1836 and 1849 and iron and coal masters alone becoming a majority after 1849.[52] This created a situation where the region’s largest employers were now magistrates exercising direct legal authority over their own employees. Lord Russell himself noted this danger, stating, ‘There is no doubt considerable jealousy is entertained of magistrates who exercise the office of Justice of the Peace in all disputes between masters and workmen, while they are themselves masters and employers of large numbers of workmen’ [53] In particular, two practices highlight the iniquitous situation of local masters using their positions on the magistracy to serve their own class interest; the use of the law to prosecute as larceny the taking of workplace materials by employees and their role as magistrates in the maintenance of public order in an era of increased industrial conflict.
Phillips points out that up to 80 per cent of offenses committed to trial in the Black Country every year were for larceny and that over a quarter of these were made up of petty thefts of coal, metal, tools from collieries and iron works by employees.[54] Three quarters of prosecutions in Quarter Sessions were brought by large coal and iron masters[55] The very same people who after 1840 made up a majority of county magistrates. Phillips argues that this probably didn’t affect the verdicts as Quarter Sessions trials used a jury system but it may have affected the rate at which such offenders were prosecuted at Quarter Sessions. ‘When a case of this sort came before them for preliminary examination it is possible that they were readier than non-iron master magistrates might have been to commit the accused to trial for an industrial theft of even a trivial amount (which many of the cases which came to Quarter Sessions in the 1840s involved).’ [56] As he demonstrates, the prosecutions for industrial theft heard at the Quarter Sessions increased dramatically in the years after 1835, the years which coincided with the masters becoming a majority on the bench. In 1835 for example, 34 people were prosecuted for industrial theft at Quarter Sessions. In 1850 however the number of prosecutions rose to 171. That number was to rise year on year over the next decade.[57] Phillips concludes ‘Part of the increase must be due to the coal and iron master’s growing presence on the Bench; as masters, they were becoming keener to prosecute such offenders when found and as magistrates they were readier to commit such offenders to trial.’[58]
Throughout the Mid Nineteenth Century, Industrial relations in the region were a tinderbox. In 1838, and more seriously in 1842, the master’s decision to cut the wages of miners, iron workers and nail makers by 20 per cent created severe economic hardship and led to strikes, riots and military intervention.[59] In 1842 the newspaper John Bull reported, “In consequence of a reduction of wages, necessitated, as it appears, by circumstances, there was a general rising of the nail makers of Dudley and its neighbourhood on Monday last when several of the master manufacturers were ill-treated by the assembled mob, and the yeomanry and military were called in.”[60] The decision to call on troops to suppress the disturbances was made by magistrates. The very same masters who, as employers, precipitated the strikes and disorder by cutting wages, were empowered, as magistrates, to call on troops to repress the disorder which their own actions had caused. Thus, the two hats that masters/magistrates wore allowed them to exercise their ‘duty’ to maintain public order in a manner which coincided directly with their own private economic and class interests.
At first glance, the explicit class bias of the new industrial class of magistrates as demonstrated in the Black Country serves to support the claim of the landed classes that only they themselves, landed hereditary gentlemen, born and raised to provide such public service, could guarantee the impartial application of justice and their warnings that the employment of manufacturers and men of commerce would lead to the partisan, biased use of the benches authority. They did, after all, repeatedly warn of the consequences of allowing industrialists and manufacturers into the bench. However, such a conclusion would be misleading and simplistic. What occurred in the Black country was an early example of the gradual transfer of power from the landed elite to the new industrial commercial class. In Rude’s words ‘the replacement of one class system of justice by another; an aristocratic system geared to the land by one created in the image of a commercial and manufacturing middle class.’[61] Over the next few decades, similar changes gradually occurred in the social makeup of the magistracies of other industrial areas of the country such as Lancashire and Yorkshire.[62] Fundamentally however the structure of the magistracy was at fault. Unpaid, untrained men of property were given authority to dispense justice over men and women whose labour they bought. People whose often desperate economic conditions increasingly forced them into direct conflict with their own private economic interests. That the law was used as an instrument to serve those private economic interests was inevitable. If, as we have argued, the landed classes were concerned with maintaining the fiction of the neutrality of the law and as a result were constrained by that same ideology, the new industrial classes do appear to have been more concerned with achieving victory in the class conflict against their own employees than maintaining any image of fairness or neutrality.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
John Bull, Monday May 2, 1842, p 211, 19th Century UK Periodicals.
John Bull, Saturday April 30, 1842, p 213, 19th Century UK Periodicals.
Secondary Sources
Journal Articles
Godfrey, Barry ‘Law Discipline and Theft: The Impact of the Factory on Workplace Appropriation in Mid Late Nineteenth Century Yorkshire’, The British Journal of Criminology, 39.1 (1999), 56-71.
King, Peter, ‘Decision Makers and Decision Making in the English Criminal Law’, The Historical Journal, 27.1 (1984), 25-58.
Langbein, H. John, ‘Albion’s Fatal Flaws’, The Past and Present Society, 98 (1983), 96-120.
Linebaugh Peter, ‘Marxist Social History and Conservative Legal History: A Reply to Professor Langbein’, New York University Law Review (1985), 212-243.
Philips, David ‘The Black Country Magistracy 1835-60: A Changing Elite and the Exercise of Power’, Midland History. 33 (1976), 161-190.
Williams, Chris. A., ‘Ideologies, Structures and Contingencies. Writing the History of British Criminal Justice Since 1975’, Readings for Block 4, A825 MA History Part 1 (Milton Keynes: The Open University 2009), 5-32.
Woods, D.C. ‘The Operation of the Master and Servants Act in the Black Country 1858-1875’, Midland History. 7.1 (1982), 93-115.
Zangerl, H.E. Carl. ‘The social Composition of the County Magistracy in England and Wales 1831-1887, Journal of British Studies, 11.1 (1971), 113-125.
Books
Barrett, Andrew and Christopher Harrison, eds, Crime and Punishment in England: A Sourcebook (London: UCL Press 1991)
Brewer, John, John Styles, An Ungovernable People: The English and their law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (London: Hutchinson, 1980)
Emsley, Clive, Crime and Society in England 1750-1900, 2nd edn (Essex: Longman, 1996)
Emsley, Clive, Crime, Police and Penal Policy: European Experiences 1750-1940 (Oxford: OUP, 2007)
Godfrey, Barry, Paul Lawrence, Crime and Justice Since 1750 (New York: Routledge, 2015)
Hammond, John, Barbara Hammond, The Village Labourer 1760-1832 (London: Longman, 1995)
Hay, Douglas, Peter Linebaugh, E.P. Thompson, Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England (London: Penguin, 1975)
Hay, Douglas, Nicholas Rogers, Eighteenth Century English Society (Oxford: OUP. 1997)
Hay, Douglas, Francis Snyder, Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750-1850 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989)
Linebaugh, Peter, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
Moir, Esther, British Institutions, The Justice of the Peace (Middlesex: Penguin, 1969)
Taylor, David, Crime Policing and Punishment in England, 1750-1914 (London: Macmillan, 1998)
Thompson F.M.L, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1971)
[1] Barry Godfrey and Paul Lawrence, Crime and Justice Since 1750, 2nd edn (London: Routledge. 2015), pp. 19-20.
[2] Douglas Hay and Francis Snyder, Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750-1850 (New York: OUP. 1989) p. 389.
[3] Douglas Hay, ‘Property, Authority and the Criminal Law’, in Albion’s Fatal Tree, eds Douglas Hay, E.P.Thompson, Peter Linebaugh (London: Penguin Books.1979) pp. 17-63
[4] John Langbein, ‘Albion’s Fatal Flaws’, in Past and Present, 98 (1983), 96-120.
[5] Peter King, ‘Decision Makers and Decision Making in the English Criminal Law’, in The Historical Journal, 27.1 (1984), 25-58.
[6] John Brewer and John Styles, An Ungovernable People: The English and their law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (London: Hutchinson Group, 1980), p. 20.
[7] Hay, ‘Property, Authority’, pp. 17-63.
[8] Peter King, ‘Decision Makers and Decision Making in the English Criminal Law’, in The Historical Journal, 27.1 (1984), 1.
[9] Hay, ‘Property, Authority’, p. 22.
[10] Hay, ‘Property, Authority’, p. 37.
[11] Langbein, pp. 96-120.
[12] Langbein, p. 97.
[13] Hay, ‘Property, Authority’, p. 52.
[14] Langbein, p. 114.
[15] Hay, ‘Property, Authority, p. 34.
[16] Hay, ‘Property, Authority, p. 33.
[17] Langbein, p. 114.
[18] Langbein, p. 115.
[19] Langbein, p. 114.
[20] Peter Linebaugh, ‘Marxist Social History and Conservative Legal History: A Reply to Professor Langbein’ in New York University Law Review (1985), 216.
[21] Hay, ‘Property, Authority’, p. 52.
[22] Linebaugh, p. 216.
[23] Brewer and Styles, p. 14.
[24] Hay, ‘Property, Authority’, p. 33.
[25] King, ‘Decision Makers’, p. 26.
[26] Brewer and Styles, p. 20.
[27] King, ‘Decision Makers,’ p. 26.
[28] Hay and Snyder, p. 38.
[29] King, ‘Decision Makers,’ p. 27.
[30] King, ‘Decision Makers’, p. 28.
[31] King, ‘Decision Makers’, p. 28.
[32] King, ‘Decision Makers’, p. 31.
[33] King, ‘Decision Makers’, p. 32.
[34] King, ‘Decision Makers’, p. 32.
[35] ‘Hay, ‘Property, Authority’, p. 37.
[36] King, ‘Decision Makers’, p. 32.
[37] King ‘Decision Makers’, p. 33.
[38] King ‘Decision Makers’, p. 28.
[39] Douglas Hay and Nicholas Rogers, Eighteenth Century English Society (Oxford: OUP. 1997)
[40] Carl.H.E. Zangerl, ‘The social Composition of the County Magistracy in England and Wales 1831-1887, in Journal of British Studies, 11.1 (1971), 113-125.
[41] Zangerl, p. 113.
[42] Zangerl, p. 114.
[43] David Philips, ‘The Black Country Magistracy 1835-60: A Changing Elite and the Exercise of Power’, Midland History. 33 (1976), 161-190.
[44] Philips, p. 164.
[45] Philips, p. 166.
[46] D.C. Woods, ‘The Operation of the Master and Servants Act in the Black Country 1858-1875’, Midland History. 7.1 (1982), 93-115.
[47] Woods, p. 96.
[48] Woods, p. 96.
[50] Woods, p. 97.
[51] Philips, p. 170.
[52] Philips, p. 166.
[54] Phillips, p. 175.
[55] Phillips, p 175
[56] Phillips, p. 175.
[57] Phillips, p. 176.
[58] Phillips, p. 177.
[59] John Bull, Saturday April 30, 1842, p. 213.
[60] John Bull, Monday May 2, 1842, p. 211.
[61] George Rude, cited in David Taylor, Crime, Policing and Punishment in England (London: Macmillan, 1988) p. 123.
[62] Barry Godfrey, ‘Law Discipline and Theft’: The Impact of the Factory on Workplace Appropriation in Mid Late Nineteenth Century Yorkshire’, The British Journal of Criminology, 39.1 (1999) 56-71.
Regionalism in the Industrial Revolution
The period between 1750 to 1850, the period of sustained industrialisation that we know as the Industrial revolution, is often treated as a single, unitary, uninterrupted and above all nation-wide phenomenon. However, closer study of this period reveals that industrialisation was not the continuous, nation-wide process that is assumed and that, in reality, industrialisation was concentrated into specific industrial sectors located in specific parts or regions of the country. Indeed, Berg argues that industrialisation accentuated the differences between regions by making their industrial sectors more specialised.[1] As Hudson points out, this regional specialisation was one of the truly remarkable features of the Industrial revolution. ‘There was something unique about the industrial regions of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were dominated by particular sectors (principally by various combinations of textiles, coal, engineering and shipbuilding) in a way never experienced before. Nor was this to be experienced subsequently’[2] Or, as Stobbart put it, ‘The space economy of eighteenth century England was thus marked by growing uniformity of character within regions and increasing fragmentation between them.’[3] Such regional specialisms were apparent even in the early 18th century and, as this essay will demonstrate, such uniformity within and differentiation between regions was deepened by the processes of industrialisation itself. The aim of this essay is to examine the development of the industrial regions throughout the period of the Industrial revolution, to consider the reasons why such industrial concentrations emerged in the various regions of Britain and to consider the inter-and intra-regional forces that both focused growth into those regions and facilitated the increased differentiation between their regional industrial specialisations. To this end, this essay will consider the importance of access to natural resources, coal, iron ores and water, and the importance of water transport, particularly canal networks, in creating and strengthening specialised integrated economies in the various regions of the country. This essay will also consider regional consciousness and the manner in which social and political organisations increasingly reflected regional as opposed to national concerns and interests. Finally, this essay will consider the changing pattern of wage differentiation across the regions and demonstrate how such wage variations fit in with a ‘growth pole’ interpretation of regional industrial growth in which market forces are seen to reinforce and strengthen initial advances in regional industrialisation at the expense of peripheral areas of the country. However first it is important to define what we mean by the terms ‘region’ or ‘industrial region.’
We may be tempted for ease of analysis to associate industrial regions with political boundaries such as counties, hence we can talk about the Lancashire textile trade or the Staffordshire potteries. However, economic change is no respecter of political boundaries and attempts to impose industrial structures into political boundaries can be misleading and simplistic. Using the example of the Lancashire cotton industry, Hudson points out that the ‘Lancashire cotton industry’ included areas of North East Cheshire and North West Derbyshire.[4] King also has noted that the spatial extent of industrial regions does not fit easily with political boundaries.[5] The ‘Staffordshire potteries’ for example consisted of only 6 towns, Burslem, Fenton, Longton, Hanley, Stoke and Turnstall and left much of Staffordshire in both terms of area and population, completely unconnected to the pottery industry.[6] Likewise, the South Yorkshire metalware industry was concentrated in just thirty one townships in and around Sheffield. Thus, King argues, when we talk of ‘industrial revolution’ we are really talking about ‘intense change in a few quite small areas.’[7] It is worth noting that Hudson specifically avoids attempting to define the term ‘region’, insisting that any attempt at definition runs the danger of viewing the region as ‘a static or pre-given category’.[8] Instead she insists that ‘Unlike nation states and other political units, regions emerge in the course of analysis and become finite in different ways depending on where and when we place the emphasis of our study. Regions are always historically relative and contingent although their spatial, economic and cultural integrity can endure for long periods.’[9] Instead she simply defines industrial regions as ‘provincial concentrations of manufacturing activity.’[10] A definition which avoids the trap of seeing the region as a static category while retaining the sense of flexibility, adaptation, dynamism and even failure or decline, which characterised regional industry throughout the industrial revolution.
Stobart Points out that by the early 18th century ‘regional specialisations were well established’ and that certain places in Britain became associated with certain trades or industries so strongly that they were ‘inseparable in economic terms and in the popular mind’.[11] Lancashire became associated with the textile industry, Yorkshire with the woollen industry, iron working with the Midlands and Sheffield, framework knitting with Leicestershire, Earthenware manufacture with Staffordshire and so on. This raises the obvious question of why such industrial concentrations occurred in Britain in the eighteenth century and why they occurred in the locations that they did. Pollard argues that amongst the most important reasons was the location and accessibility of natural resources.[12] One of the features that characterised the Industrial revolution was the move away from an economy based on organic resources, timber, crop and animal power for example, towards inorganic resources, coal. iron and other minerals and the industries and machinery that coal power enabled. Wrigley, argues that this substitution of inorganic for organic raw materials was an essential condition for sustained economic growth.[13] He points out that in previous centuries emergent industries were confronted with a dilemma when using organic raw materials in that any expansion in industry would eventually be met with a corresponding decline of raw materials such as timber which would in turn mean a lack of resources in the near future.[14] Any attempt to remedy this by, for example, devoting more land for timber growth would, in a small country with little unused land, mean a loss of land for agriculture. In short, more land devoted to the production of timber meant less land available for growing food. [15] This in turn would mean a rise in the price of both raw materials and food because of competition for land. Furthermore, industrial growth not only created dilemmas such as this but exacerbated them because it encouraged population growth which in turn increased the demand for food and land on which to grow it. The supply of coal seemed to solve this dilemma by offering a seemingly inexhaustible supply of relatively inexpensive mineral based fuel for both domestic use and for industry. Of course, coal is not inexhaustible. In fact, ironically, in the very long term it is permanently exhaustible when pits are exhausted in a way that organic raw materials are not. A forest can give a sustained yield; an exhausted coal seam cannot. Nevertheless, in the short term, coal resolved the dilemma of raw material supply. In 1700 British coal pits were producing three million tons per annum, 80 per cent of the total coal mined in Europe and the equivalent of half a ton per head of the population. By 1855 output had risen to seventy-five million tons per annum.[16] Pollard argues that the accessibility of coal has a ‘technical, geographical, historical dimension’.[17] Coal, before it can be utilised for industry or fuel must be raised. However, raising coal below a certain depth confronted the mining industry with technical problems, the tendency for mines to flood below a certain depth for example was a problem that beset the growing mine industry which sought a technical solution. The application of technology towards the solution of that problem came in 1715 in the form of the Newcomen Fire Engine, a revolutionary breakthrough which for the first time successfully used coal to produce mechanical energy and motion as opposed to thermal energy and was the first machine to replace human, animal or water power. The Newcomen Fire Engine was used to pump water from mines, allowing pits to be dug deeper than ever before. The Newcomen Engine, however required enormous amounts of coal to operate. Hence the problem of access to a resource and its technical solution were intimately tied together. Without the engine the deeper coal veins could not be accessed but without accessible coal the Newcomen could not operate. Therefore, its technology could only be utilised in regions where coal already existed as an accessible resource. Pollard puts it thus ‘It may well be that the development of the Newcomen engine which allowed the exploitation of the deeper British coal pits in the mid-eighteenth century was a lucky accident that need not have happened, but for the industrialisation of Britain to have proceeded at the time, coal had to be there in the first place. Resources were a necessary, though not sufficient, condition.’[18] The availability of coal underpinned other industries such as glass making, pottery, salt and soda ash production, brickmaking, ceramic making and the smelting and shaping of iron and other metals. Many of these industries developed on the coal fields themselves, cementing themselves as regional industries. Other industries such as Cornish copper mines were located next to their own natural resources but required coal to feed their own industries and their fuel demands facilitated developments in transportation creating networks across regions between fuel providers and industries.
Iron production, a key component of the Industrial economy, also located industry in the coalfields. Rapidly industrialising areas such as the Black Country and the valleys of South Wales initially comprised of small domestic metal working communities centred around the coalfields or iron works. Dafoe writing in 1724 described Dudley in South Staffordshire ‘Every farm has one forge or more; so that the farmers carry on two very different businesses, working at their forges as Smiths when they are not employed in the fields as Farmers. […] We cannot travel far in any direction out of the sound of the hammer.’[19] The successful attempt to replace charcoal with coal in the form of coke fired blast furnaces by Abraham Darby in 1708 was the decisive and revolutionary technical achievement that freed the iron industry from dependence on organic raw materials and cemented its reliance on mineral fuels. Coke blast furnace technology gradually transformed and hugely expanded the industry. In 1720, 20,500 tons of pig iron and 14,900 tons of bar iron were produced in England and Wales by charcoal furnaces. Only 400 tons of cast iron was produced by coke furnaces. However by 1788 the ratio had been reversed with 76,000 tons of cast and bar iron produced by coke furnaces and only 2,500 tons of cast iron produced by charcoal. By 1806 there were only eleven blast furnaces running on charcoal while 162 blast furnaces used coke.[20] In South Wales a hundred coke fuel furnaces were built between 1796 and 1806 and by this time 90 per cent of British pig iron was being smelted in the five coalfields of South Wales, Shropshire, South Staffordshire, South Yorkshire and Scotland.[21]
The next raw material which located industry in specific regions was water. Prior to the steam engine, and for many decades after it in some industries, water was the primary source of power. Waterwheels drove yarn spinning mills, fulling stocks, tilt hammers, furnace bellows, ore crushers and grinding wheels. In the North of England, the textile industry benefited from the fast-flowing rivers around the Pennines which provided power for its mills and water for textile processes. Most importantly of all, water was used for transport. England is a small country with a long coastline and deeply penetrating rivers. Nowhere in Britain is more than seventy miles from the coast and very few places are more than thirty miles from navigable water, making it ideal for water transport.[22] By 1750 commercial vessels could use about 620 miles of naturally navigable rivers in addition to about 680 miles that had been improved by engineering.[23] The ports of London, Bristol, Newcastle, Hull, Liverpool and Glasgow were the gateways to the colonies and international trade and linked local production to international markets and to other parts of the country via the coastal sea trade. Their port sides became the location for industries processing imported colonial products such as tobacco and sugar. Liverpool provided South Lancashire with imported raw cotton and also served as a location for exporting finished cotton products and rivers such as the Mersey connected the hinterland to the seaport. In the last two decades of the Eighteenth Century, the repeal of the protectionist Calico Acts [24] triggered a wave of investment in mill produced cotton which, alongside revolutionary technical inventions such as Arkwright’s water frame and the introduction of the factory system, saw the Lancashire textile industry grow enormously. Exports of cotton yarn and cloth grew by over 10 per cent annually between 1783 -1792 and by over 17 per cent annually in the years 1792-1802, providing almost three quarters of the total growth of exports in the years 1795-1805 while imports of raw cotton grew from three million pounds per year up to 1770 to thirty million pounds per year by the 1790s to over fifty million pounds per year in the decade after 1800.[25] In Manchester alone the number of cotton mills rose dramatically from two in 1790 to sixty six in 1821, earning Manchester and its environs the title ‘Cottonopolis.’[26] In other parts of the country it was the interaction between coal, rivers and ports that saw port expansion and local growth. The Durham and Northumberland Coalfield, otherwise known as the Great Northern Coalfield, in the North East of England was connected to the Port of Sunderland via the Tyne and Wear rivers, making it both the largest coal port in the country for both international and coastal shipments and at the same time making it one of the main importing centres of the East Coast.[27] The coastal or riverine locations of the four largest towns, London, Bristol, Norwich, and Newcastle also demonstrate the importance of water transport in fostering regional urban growth.
The massive increase in the use of coal confronted a bottleneck by the mid eighteenth century with the growing difficulty of transporting the increasingly large amounts of coal demanded for domestic use and industry with the existing transport facilities. Wrigley puts it thus, ‘When the production of the coal industry came to be measured in hundreds of thousands and even millions of tons annually a new solution was necessary if the coal was to reach inland centres of consumption.’[28] Coastal and river trade could no longer meet the increased demand and road transport was both impractical and expensive. Indeed, it is estimated that coal moved ten miles by land doubled the cost and was equivalent of 200 miles of water transport.[29] Coal production is punctiform, it is produced in a single location and transported in bulk. Unlike, say agricultural production, which is areal, resources which are produced and transported over a much wider area. The difference between the two creates two quite different transport problems. Wrigley explains the problem thus, ‘The transport problems involved in moving a million tons of coal from pitheads scattered over an area of only a few square miles are quite different from those involved in moving the same weight of grain or timber from an area of several thousands of square miles. The former Implies heavy tonnage moving along a small number of routeways, whereas the latter implies the reverse.’[30] The solution was canals. Canals have one great advantage over rivers as a source of transport. Rivers were constrained by their natural course and didn’t reach many parts of the country. Goods and materials had to be first transported overland to rivers for water transport or manufacturing sites deliberately built close to river locations, increasing their costs. Canals however could be constructed by careful rational planning and calculation and built to link directly with industrial locations, bringing bulk water transport to industry instead of having to move materials to transport. Canals thus reversed the relationship between transport and the economy.[31] Competition between coal companies over markets was fierce and access to cheap transport could make all the difference between success and failure. Cheap transport meant goods and resources could be marketed to a larger area. When this happened, local high cost manufacturers and local monopolies which had been protected from competition by the high costs of transport to their regions, were, in Mathius’ phrase, ‘cracked open.’[32] Both hardship and opportunity followed. Cheap transport made the natural resources in regions previously not considered economically viable due to transport costs, suddenly viable and it promoted economic activity in the regions it became available. Regions which sat on bulk resources such as coal, stone or ores now had access to cheap transport in order to market them. Mathias puts it thus ‘Quarries, mines, manufacturing plants sprang into life along the lines of the new canals’.[33] This ‘cracking open’ however, by threatening local monopolies, also led to local interests fiercely resisting canal expansion and the competition it brought with it. Leicestershire coal for example was relatively high cost but, until 1780 at least, it enjoyed a local monopoly on trade due to the impracticality and expense of transport which inhibited competitors. However, in the 1780s, the Erewash and Cromford canals opened the market for cheaper coal from Nottingham which undercut the price of the local product. As a result, Leicester coal pits closed.[34] Concerned about competition from the South Staffordshire coalfield, Warwickshire coal masters unsuccessfully lobbied to stop the extension of Warwick and Napton and Warwick and Birmingham canal links which tied Birmingham into the regional canal network.[35] This kind of regional protectionism was in vain however as cheap transport brought opportunity, disruption and dislocation in its wake. Turnbull puts it thus, ‘Canal construction not only raised the temperature of the politics of coal but led to realignments in its location of production. Investments in new pits […] for example, went hand in hand with disinvestment in existing ones, now less favourably placed. Both between and within coalfields there were, therefore, gains and losses.’[36]
It has been noted that, like the Industrial Revolution itself, the impact of canals is often viewed in national terms, with research focussing on the connections with rivers and ports, ease of access to London and other major towns, the manner in which long distance transport was facilitated and the impact on the national economy.[37] However, as Turnbull points out, such accounts misrepresent the history and economic impact of canals which was ‘heavily local and regional.’ [38] Constructing the canal network was a monumental task and one that took generations to complete. ‘The canal network took much longer to construct than is commonly appreciated […] Almost a century elapsed between the first and last constructions of the ‘canal age’ as demarcated by the Newry and the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction canals.’[39] The result of this long construction time is that for much of the period we consider to be the Industrial Revolution, canal transport was restricted to just a limited number of regional routes. A consequence of this is that, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, they had nearly half a century of operating as regional assets, strengthening the regional economies in which they operated. Turnbull again notes ‘Canals were built and operated as local enterprises first and formed parts of a national network second. In this form they had, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, long been aiding the restructuring of the economies of the areas through which they passed, but progressively over time and in a regionally concentrated way.’[40] Due to the sparsity and geographical limitations of canal networks, a few locations enjoyed enormous advantages in industrial growth and production which in turn strengthened and solidified their regional specialisms. The majority of canal traffic from the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth century was by heavy goods such as coal and other minerals. Turnbull estimates that 52 per cent of all traffic on the Chesterfield Canal between 1777 and 1789 was heavy goods, mainly coal. On the Cromford Canal, coal and other heavy goods amounted to between 70 and 75 per cent of all canal traffic between 1798 and 1835 and averaged 66 per cent between 1836 and 1852.[41] The typical distance for this traffic was about twenty-six miles.[42] Even on the Grand Junction Canal, the great thoroughfare canal of the mid nineteenth Century, less than a quarter of transport travelled the whole length of the line.[43] Langton put it thus, ‘The vast majority of shipments were, for these various reasons, over short distances or to and from the main coastal ports. Dense patches on the network thus developed highly integrated economies largely separate from each other […] As they developed on the basis of their comparative advantages and the external economies of scale available to particular industries within them, the canal based economies became more specialised, more differentiated from each other and more internally unified’ [44]
Langton argues that people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were increasingly conscious of their separate regional identities and interests. He points out that regional differences were demonstrable in the ‘regional fragmentation’[45] of social and political movements, manufacturers groups, pressure groups, lobbies, trade unions and political organisations which repeatedly dissolved or collapsed from nationally focussed organisations into regional interest groups. One such group was the Yorkshire Association of 1779 which represented manufacturing and commercial interests. It began as an organisation concerned with opposition to high taxation used to fund the American Independence war and grew into an instrument campaigning for economic reform and reform of the political system. The Yorkshire Association began as a provincial pressure group in a single county and quickly grew into a national movement for political and economic reform as it was joined by representatives of other counties. The group organised national meetings in London in 1780 and 1781 and produced petitions containing thousands of names, including a high proportion of clergy, gentry and manufacturers as signatories, but then the movement collapsed into regional factionalism with each country and district emphasising different demands reflecting the different interests of their regions.[46] Another example is that of the General Chamber of Manufacturers created in 1784 with the intention of acting as a national pressure group putting forward the interests and concerns of manufacturers. The group suffered a fatal split, along regional lines, over a proposed commercial treaty with France. The cotton and pottery manufacturers supported the treaty, but it was opposed by delegates from London and the South representing traditional handicrafts and the organisation suffered ‘a fatal split’ which caused the organisation to collapse.[47] Likewise, on the other side of the class divide, such regional disunity and factionalism was suffered by working class social protest movements such as Luddism as economic pressures such as rising prices, low wages, and unemployment were experienced differently in different regions of the country, provoking regional rather than national responses. As Gregory puts it ‘It is clear that the depression of 1811 was expressed through a series of regional crisis. Popular reactions were thus to some degree the product of regional experiences and regional expectations rather than national evaluation […] There was certainly little effective inter regional co-ordination in practical terms.’[48] Even great national movements such as Chartism suffered from regional divisions with a split between the South, mainly London, with its middle class artisan leaders and political demands and the Northern textile towns where workers were more concerned with living conditions such as wage levels and working hours.[49]
Finally, the process of accelerating regional industrial specialisms is demonstrated by Hunt who, in a study of regional wages, living standards and labour migration, pointed to a shift in wage differentials between regions in favour of high paying Northern Industrial regions and away from Southern England.[50] According to Hunt, in the mid eighteenth century, around 1765, wages were highest in Southern England. He notes that as distances from London increased, especially to the North, wages fell. Carpenters in Exeter for example, earned less than their counterparts in London but earned higher wages than carpenters in Manchester. Carpenters in Edinburgh earned about two thirds, and those in Aberdeen earned about half, of the Exeter wage.[51] Likewise he notes a ‘substantial differentiation’ in farm wages with the highest wages in the Southeast from Hampshire to East Anglia and the ‘greatest concentration of low wage counties in the North of England.[52] He notes ‘The wages map of Britain at the beginning of the industrial revolution thus had much in common with the pattern that has prevailed since the 1920s: the south was relatively prosperous, the north relatively poor.’[53] All this, however was to change as the Industrial revolution reversed the pattern. He points out that between the 1760s and the 1790s, ‘regional wage differentials, were transformed’[54] In Manchester, carpenter’s wages rose from 64 per cent of the London rate to 88 per cent and from below to well above that of Exeter. Carpenters wages in Edinburgh and Aberdeen also moved closer to London rates, though still below that of Exeter. The most significant finding however is that by 1795 most of the better paid counties were in the North of England, a complete contrast to the pattern in 1767-1770. In 1767 none of the eleven highest wage English counties were to the north of Nottinghamshire and most were in the Southeast, by 1795 however, six out of the eleven high wage counties were North of Nottinghamshire, two others were in the Midlands and only three were in the Southeast. Five Northern counties which in 1767-1770 were amongst the lowest wage counties, Northumberland, Westmorland, Lancashire, North and West Riding of Yorkshire, were among the highest wage counties by 1794-1795.[55] Hunt says, ‘Thus between 1760 and 1800 the wages geography of Britain changed to the advantage of the industrializing regions. London remained a high-wage centre and wages were still high in some counties nearby but southern counties more distant from London suffered a substantial fall in relative wages.’[56] Wages in Scotland and Wales improved in the nineteenth century, but the patterns of North high, South low, wage differentiation continued throughout the nineteenth century.[57]
This essay has tried to demonstrate how the process of industrialisation throughout the Industrial Revolution created and strengthened specialised industrial regions which became more specialised, more internally integrated and more differentiated from each other as the process of industrialisation unfolded. As this essay has shown, Industrial regions enjoyed an initial advantage based on their access to raw material natural resources, water power or water transport. Market forces acted on these initial advantages, reinforcing and strengthening them at the expense of those areas not enjoying such advantages. The development of cheap bulk transport services and other economies of scale acted as a magnet encouraging new economic activities which clustered around the original industrial ‘growth poles’.[58] The result was growing economic productivity and, as we have shown, rising incomes, in those regions which stimulated local demand, increased local markets and encouraged migration, pulling skilled workers and entrepreneurs away from surrounding areas. This process created both a ‘clustering’ of economic activities and a negative ‘backwash’[59] on the more peripheral regions who lost their most skilled and able workers to migration and who found it difficult to compete with the more modern factories and workshops which arose from increased economic investment and regional growth in the industrialising regions. The result was an acceleration of specialised regional industrial activity, growing differentiation between regions and a growing awareness of regional identity and articulation of regional, as opposed to national, interests.
5045 words
Bibliography
Journal Articles
Berg, Maxine, Pat Hudson, ‘Rehabilitating the Industrial revolution’, The Economic History Review, 1 (1992), 22-50.
Hunt, E.H, ‘Industrialisation and Regional Inequality: Wages in Britain, 1760-1914’, The Journal of Economic History, 46.4 (1986), 935-966.
Langton, John, ‘The Industrial Revolution and Regional Geography of England’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 9.2 (1984) 145-167.
Turnbull, Gerard, ‘Canals, coal and regional growth during the Industrial Revolution’, The Economic History Review, 40.4 (1987), 537-560.
Wrigley, E. A, ‘The supply of raw materials in the Industrial revolution’, The Economic History Review, 1 (1962), 2-16.
Books
Phyllis Deane, The First Industrial Revolution, 2nd edn (Cambridge: CUP, 1990)
Hudson, Pat, Regions and Industries: A Perspective on the Industrial Revolution in Britain (Cambridge: CUP, 1993)
Hudson, Pat, The Industrial Revolution (London: Arnold, 2002)
King, Steven, Making sense of the industrial revolution: English economy and society 1700-1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001)
Langton, John, R. J. Morris, eds, Atlas of Industrialising Britain 1780-1914 (Cambridge: CUP, 1986)
Mantoux, Paul, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Alden Press, 1955)
Mathias ,Peter, The First Industrial Nation: The Economic History of Britain 1700-1914 (New York:
Routledge, 2011)
Osborne, Roger, Iron Steam and Money, The Making of the Industrial Revolution (London: Random House, 2013)
Royle, Edward, Modern Britain: A Social History 1750-2011, 3rd edn (London: Bloomsbury, 1987)
Sidney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialisation of Europe 1760-1970 (Oxford: OUP, 1981)
Stobbart, Jon, The First Industrial Region, North West England 1700-1760 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004)
Trinder, Barry, Britain’s Industrial Revolution, the making of a manufacturing people:1700-1870 (Lancashire: Carnegie Publishing, 2013)
[1] Maxine Berg, Pat Hudson, ‘Rehabilitating the Industrial revolution’, in Economic History Review, 1 (1992) 24-50.
[2] Pat Hudson, The Industrial Revolution (London: Arnold, 2002), p. 101
[3] Jon Stobbart, The First Industrial Region, North West England 1700-1760 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 3.
[4] Pat Hudson, Regions and Industries: A Perspective on the Industrial Revolution in Britain (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), p. 2.
[5] Steven King. Making sense of the industrial revolution: English economy and society 1700-1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), p.36.
[6] King, p. 36.
[7] King, p. 36.
[8] Hudson, Regions and Industries, p. 3.
[9] Hudson, Regions and Industries, p. 3.
[10] Hudson, Regions and Industries, p. 3.
[11] Stobart, p. 2.
[12] Sidney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialisation of Europe 1760-1970 (Oxford: OUP, 1981), p. 4.
[13] E A Wrigley, ‘The supply of raw materials in the Industrial revolution’, The Economic History Review, 1, (1962), p. 2.
[14] Wrigley, p. 2.
[15] Wrigley, p. 2.
[16] Barry Trinder, Britain’s Industrial Revolution, the making of a manufacturing people:1700-1870 (Lancashire: Carnegie Publishing, 2013), p. 203.
[17] Pollard, p. 4.
[18] Pollard, p. 4.
[19] Daniel Defoe, ‘A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain’, quoted in Roger Osborne, Iron Steam and Money, The Making of the Industrial Revolution (London: Random House, 2013), p. 229.
[20] Osbourne, p. 239.
[21] Edward Royle, Modern Britain: A Social History 1750-2011, 3rd edn (London: Bloomsbury, 1987), p.44.
[22]. Peter Mathias, The First Industrial Nation: The Economic History of Britain 1700-1914 (New York:
Routledge, 2011), p.99.
[23] Phyllis Deane, The First Industrial Revolution, 2nd edn (Cambridge: CUP, 1990), p. 78
[25] Mathius, p. 85
[24] Paul Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Alden Press, 1955), p. 225.
[26] Trinder, p. 414.
[27] Mathias, p. 99.
[28] E.A. Wrigley, ‘The supply of raw materials in the Industrial Revolution’, The Economic History Review, 15.1 (1962), 7.
[29] Gerard Turnbull, ‘Canals, coal and regional growth during the Industrial Revolution’, The Economic History Review, 40.4 (1987), 547.
[30] Wrigley, p.3.
[31] Turnbull, p .539.
[33] Mathius, p. 98.
[34] Turnbull, p. 549.
[35] Turnbull, p. 549.
[36] Turnbull, p. 550.
[37] Turnbull, p. 540.
[38] Turnbull, p. 540.
[39] Turnbull, p. 540
[40] Turnbull, p. 541.
[41] Turnbull, p. 543.
[42] Turnbull, p. 543.
[43] Turnbull, p. 543.
[44] John Langton, ‘The Industrial Revolution and Regional Geography of England’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 9.2 (1984), 162.
[46] Ian R Christie, ‘The Yorkshire Organisation 1780-4: A study in Political Organisation’, The Historical Journal, 3.2 (1960), 145.
[47] Langton, p. 151.
[48] Derek Gregory, ‘Regional transformation and the industrial revolution: a geography of the Yorkshire woollen industry’ (London 1982), Quoted in Langton, p. 152.
[49] Langton, p. 153.
[50] E.H Hunt, ‘Industrialisation and Regional Inequality: Wages in Britain, 1760-1914’, The Journal of Economic History, 46.4 (1986), 936.
[51] Hunt, p. 936.
[52] Hunt, p. 936.
[53] Hunt, p. 936.
[54] Hunt, p. 936.
[55] Hunt, p. 941.
[56] Hunt, p. 941.
[57] Hunt, p. 941.
[58] Hunt, p. 949.
[59] Hunt, p. 949.
Notes From Nowhere 