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Missing from parish records: Anglican and nonconformist occupational differences and the economy of Wales c.1817

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2022

Frances Richardson
Frances Richardson*
Affiliation:
Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, UK
*
Corresponding author. Email: frances.richardson@conted.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

Recent studies of male occupations have used Anglican baptisms as a source. However, in areas where nonconformity was strong, a significant proportion of baptisms were missing from parish registers: in Wales, around a quarter of births were to Nonconformist fathers in the years 1813–1820. This study analyses whether there were significant differences between the occupations of Anglican and nonconformist fathers based on a 14 per cent sample of Welsh baptisms. Revised estimates suggest that Anglican data underestimate employment in mining and industry. These estimates are used to give an overview of the Welsh economy c.1817.

French abstract

French Abstract

De récentes recherches sur les professions masculines ont pris les baptêmes anglicans pour source historique. Cependant, dans les zones où la non-conformité religieuse était répandue, en proportion importante, des baptêmes ne se trouvaient pas enregistrés dans ces registres paroissiaux : au Pays de Galles par exemple, dans les années 1813-1820, un quart des naissances environ étaient de pères non-conformistes. Dans le présent article, sur la base d'un échantillon de quatorze pour cent de baptêmes gallois, nous cherchons s'il existait quelques différences significatives entre les professions exercées par les pères anglicans d'un côté et les non-conformistes de l'autre. Ainsi révisées, les estimations suggèrent que les données anglicanes sous-estiment l'emploi des pères dans les mines et l'industrie. Ces évaluations permettent de donner un aperçu de l'économie galloise vers 1817.

German abstract

German Abstract

Die neuere Forschung zu männlichen Berufen hat anglikanische Taufregister als Quelle genutzt. In Gegenden mit starker religiöser Nonkonformität ist jedoch ein beträchtlicher Anteil der Taufen gar nicht im Taufregister verzeichnet: in Wales gehen im Zeitruam 1813–1830 etwa ein Viertel aller Geburten auf nonkonformistische Väter. Auf der Basis einer 14-prozentigen Stichprobe walisischer Taufen geht dieser Beitrag der Frage nach, ob es signifikante Unterschiede zwischen den Berufen von anglikanischen und nonkonformistischen Vätern gab. Revidierte Schätzungen deuten darauf hin, dass anglikanische Daten die Beschäftigung im Bergbau und in der Industrie unterbewerten. Diese Schätzungen bieten zugleich die Grundlage für einen Überblick über die walisische Ökonomie um 1817.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , August 2022 , pp. 165 - 197
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1 Shaw-Taylor, L. and Wrigley, E. A., ‘Occupational structure and population change’, in Floud, R., Humphries, J. and Johnson, P. eds., The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain, Volume I: 1700–1870 (Cambridge, 2014), 53–88, 54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Kitson, P. M., Shaw-Taylor, L., Wrigley, E. A., Davies, R. S., Newton, G. and Satchell, A. E. M., ‘The creation of a ‘census’ of adult male employment for England and Wales for 1817’, Cambridge Working Papers in Economic and Social History 4 (2012), 1–2Google Scholar.

3 E. A. Wrigley, ‘The PST system of classifying occupations’, http://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/occupations/britain19c/papers/paper1.pdf [accessed January 2017]; www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/occupations/britain19c/occupationsenglandwales/.

4 Shaw-Taylor and Wrigley, ‘Occupational structure’, 61–2; S. A. J. Keibek, ‘The male occupational structure of England and Wales, 1600–1850’ (University of Cambridge unpublished PhD thesis, 2017), https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.8960, 175.

5 Snell, K. D. M. and Ell, P. S., Rival Jerusalems: the geography of Victorian religion (Cambridge, 2000), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Kitson et al., ‘The creation of a ‘census’’, 19–20.

7 A. D. Gilbert, ‘The growth and decline of nonconformity in England and Wales, with special reference to the period before 1850: an historical interpretation of statistics of religious practice’ (unpublished University of Oxford DPhil thesis, 1973); Gilbert, A. D., Religion and society in industrial England: church, chapel and social change, 1740–1914 (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Watts, M., The dissenters. Vol. II: the expansion of evangelical nonconformity 1791–1859 (Oxford, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 I wish to thank the Campop team for providing access to their data on all Anglican baptisms in Wales, 1813–1820, and Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Sebastian Keibek for commenting on earlier drafts of this article.

9 A hundred was a sub-unit within a county. The 1821 census records 90 hundreds in Wales and Monmouthshire, with an average of seven hundreds per county. The population of the eight sample areas was 110,861, out of a total for Wales and Monmouthshire of 794,154.

10 Welch, E., ‘Nonconformist registers’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 2 (1964), 411–7, 412CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Rev. W. Leary, My ancestors were Methodists: how can I find out more about them? (London, 1999).

12 D. Ifans, Nonconformist registers of Wales (Aberystwyth, 1994), xxviii.

13 Catalogued in List & Index Society, Vols. 265–6, ‘General Register Office, registers of births, marriages and deaths surrendered to the Non-Parochial Registers Commissions, RG 4 and RG 8’ (Richmond, 1996); List & Index Society, Vol. 267, ‘General Register Office, Society of Friends’ registers, notes and certificates of births, marriages and deaths: (RG 6)’ (Richmond, 1996); ‘Ancestry’, http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=2972 [accessed May to July 2017].

14 Locally-held records are identified in Ifans, Nonconformist registers; G. R. Breed, My ancestors were Baptists: how can I find out more about them? (London, 2002); Leary, My ancestors were Methodists; A. Ruston, My ancestors were English Presbyterians/Unitarians: how can I find out more about them? (London, 1993).

15 Previous historians have used a variety of frameworks to analyse social class from fathers’ occupations, but none are compatible with Campop's PST framework.

16 Everitt, A., The pattern of rural dissent: the nineteenth century (Leicester, 1972)Google Scholar.

17 E.g. Snell, K. D. M., Church and chapel in the north Midlands: religious observance in the nineteenth century (Leicester, 1991)Google Scholar; Gilbert, Religion and society; Smith, M. A., Religion in industrial society: Oldham and Saddleworth, 1740–1865 (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar; Watts, Dissenters, Vol. II; Field, C. D., ‘Zion's people: who were the English nonconformists? Part 2: Occupations (Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists)’, Local Historian 40, 3 (2010), 208–23Google Scholar, and ‘Part 3: Occupations (Methodists) and conclusions’, Local Historian 40, 4 (2010), 292–308.

18 Gilbert, Religion and society, 66–7.

19 Watts, Dissenters, Vol. II, 712–7.

20 Gilbert, ‘Growth and decline’.

21 F. A. Richardson, ‘Rural change in north Wales during the period of the industrial revolution: livelihoods, poverty and welfare in Nantconwy, 1750–1860’ (unpublished University of Oxford DPhil thesis, 2016), 40.

22 Watts, Dissenters, Vol. II, 305, 319.

23 E.g., B. J. Biggs, ‘Methodism in a rural society: north Nottinghamshire, 1740–1851 (unpublished University of Nottingham PhD thesis, 1975), 428–32; P. Rycroft, ‘Church, chapel and community in Craven 1764–1851’ (unpublished University of Oxford DPhil thesis, 1988), 208; Smith, Religion in industrial society, 231, 367.

24 Watts, Dissenters, Vol. II, 324–5.

25 Gilbert compared to Colquhoun's 1806 estimate of income distribution – Gilbert, Religion and society, 66; Smith used a sample of Anglican baptisms from Oldham and Saddleworth – Smith, Religion in industrial society, 129–31, 197; Watts’ comparison with 1841 census occupations produces some significant anomalies, e.g. the surprisingly small difference between nonconformist fathers and the general population among Welsh miners is more likely to be the result of a rapid increase in the number of miners in the general population between the 1810s and 1841: Watts, Dissenters, Vol. II, 718–88.

26 Areas representing major sectors of the Welsh economy based on Anglican fathers’ occupations are shown on the Campop Occupational structure of Britain website, www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/occupations/britain19c/occupationsenglandwales/ [accessed 8/09/2020].

27 See Watts, Dissenters, Vol. II, 864–70 for mapping the 1851 distribution of worshipers in Wales.

28 Kitson et al., ‘The creation of a ‘census’’, 20.

29 A. N. Palmer, A history of the older nonconformity of Wrexham and its neighbourhood (Wrexham, 1888), 102.

30 J. G. Jenkins, The flannel makers: a brief history of the Welsh woollen industry (Llanrwst, 2005), 25–6.

31 C. Gresham, ‘Eifionydd administrative districts’, in T. M. Bassett and B. L. Davies eds., Atlas of Caernarvonshire (Caernarfon, 1977), 75–8.

32 For the Anglican chapelry of Capel Curig which served parts of Nantconwy and another hundred, baptisms from parishes outside Nantconwy were excluded.

33 I. G. Jones and D. Williams, The religious census of 1851, a calendar of the returns relating to Wales, Vol. I, south Wales (Cardiff, 1976); I. G. Jones, The religious census of 1851: a calendar of the returns relating to Wales, Vol. II, north Wales (Cardiff, 1981); National Library of Wales, Capeli Cymru database, available in the library; http://www.coflein.gov.uk [accessed May 2017]. For locating nonconformist registers see List & Index Society, Vol. 266; Ifans, Nonconformist registers; Breed, My ancestors were Baptists; Leary, My ancestors were Methodists; D. J. H. Clifford, My ancestors were Congregationalists in England and Wales: with a list of registers (London, 1992); Ruston, My ancestors were English Presbyterians/Unitarians.

34 For the early modern period, Keibek also argued that by-employments of male household heads were relatively small in economic importance compared to their principal employment, and necessitate only a very minor adjustment of the principal-employment-only male occupational structure: S. Keibek, ‘By-employments in early modern England and their significance for estimating historical male occupational structures’, Cambridge Working Papers in Economic and Social History 29 (2017), 25–6.

35 In Llanberis Anglican baptisms for example, 25 fathers were recorded as farmers, none as labourers, 93 as quarrymen, 18 as farmer and quarrymen, and 3 as labourer and quarrymen. Ignoring by-employment would overcount agricultural occupations and under-count quarrying.

36 http://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/occupations/britain19c/pst.html [accessed August 2017].

37 Kitson et al., ‘The creation of a ‘census’, 30–3; S. A. J. Keibek, ‘Allocating labourers to occupational (sub-) sectors using regression techniques’, Cambridge Working Papers in Economic and Social History 27 (2017).

38 Ibid., 15–16.

39 See Table 6.

40 Smith, Religion in industrial society, 130.

41 Registers deposited with the Registrar General are now at The National Archives and available on Ancestry. See Table 1 sources for the location of the remaining registers.

42 Wrigley and Schofield estimated that English nonconformist baptisms were 5.45 per cent of Anglican baptisms in the 1810: E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The population history of England 1541–1871: a reconstruction (Cambridge, 1989), 92. Kitson et al. give a crude Anglican baptism rate per thousand population of 22.9 for Wales compared to 30.3 for England: Kitson et al., ‘The creation of a ‘census’’, 20. This implies around 28 per cent ‘missing’ baptisms in Wales due to nonconformity.

43 Estimate based on assumption that chapels with missing records were approximately the same size as those with birth/baptism records. In the 1851 Religious Census, the average estimated number of people attending services in Caerphilly Hundred chapels with 1813–1820 birth/baptism records was 570, compared to 650 for chapels without records. Estimated 1851 congregations were based on congregation at the best-attended service, plus a third of the congregation at the worst-attended service. (See Watts, Dissenters, Vol. II, 681); Sunday school attendances were excluded as we are interested in adults.)

44 In Coleshill, the proportion of nonconformist miners may have been under-counted due to the loss of records for a Wesleyan chapel in the Northop lead mining area: A. H. Dodd, The industrial revolution in north Wales (Cardiff, 1951), 176. See H. Jones, Hanes Wesleyaeth Gymreig, Cyfrol IV (Bangor, 1913), 1695 for the building of this chapel in 1802. It may have fallen into abeyance after the Wesleyan Conference withdrew financial support for Welsh-speaking ministers by the 1820s: G. T. Hughes, ‘Welsh-speaking Methodism’, in L. Madden ed., Methodism in Wales (Llanrwst, 2003), 29–30. Miners constituted 21 per cent of fathers in the Anglican and nonconformist baptism records, but 27 per cent in an 1821 census listing of Northop parish (Flintshire Record Office P/45/1/201-2). The discrepancy may well be due to missing Wesleyan baptisms.

45 J. G. Jenkins, The Welsh woollen industry (Cardiff, 1969), 238.

46 Richardson, ‘Rural change in North Wales’, 40.

47 Anglican baptisms: Conwy Archives CEP 11, 14, 20, 21. Estate rentals: BUA Bangor Mostyn 8480; Gwynedd Archives [hereafter GA] XD 38/68; NLW NLW MS 9727D; Nerquis Hall 7. Manor court: GA XD/38/1. Land tax GA XQA/LT 2/1-6. Tithe commutation schedules: TNA IR 18/14097, 14112, 14152, 14158. 1841 census enumerators’ books for Betws y Coed, Dolwyddelan, Penmachno, Trefriew and Llanrhychwyn.

48 The method used for scaling up from known Anglican and nonconformist occupations in the sample areas to provide an estimate of adult male occupations for the whole of Wales was as follows. The number of known nonconformist births/baptisms for each occupation in Table 4 was scaled up for each hundred to take account of missing chapels and occupational data and summed to give an estimated number of nonconformist births/baptisms for each occupation in the sample areas. The total number of Anglican and estimated nonconformist baptisms was divided by the number of Anglican baptisms for each occupation to give a markup of estimated total to Anglican baptisms. This markup was then applied to the number of Anglican baptisms in each occupational group from the Campop database for the whole of Wales to give an estimate of the total Anglican and nonconformist baptisms in each occupational group.

49 Keibek, ‘Allocating labourers’, 16.

50 Key industry and county histories include: Dodd, Industrial revolution in north Wales; D. W. Howell, Land and people in nineteenth century Wales (London, 1977); D. W. Howell ed., Pembrokeshire county history, Vol. IV, Modern Pembrokeshire, 1815–1974 (Haverfordwest, 1993); L. Ince, The south Wales iron industry 1750–1885 (Birmingham, 1993); Jenkins, Welsh woollen industry; G. H. Jenkins and I. G. Jones, Cardiganshire county history. Vol. 3: Cardiganshire in modern times (Cardiff, 1998); A. H. John, The industrial development of south Wales 1750–1850 (Cardiff, 1950); A. H. John ed., Glamorgan county history, Vol. V: Industrial Glamorgan (Cardiff, 1980); Sir J. E. Lloyd, A history of Carmarthenshire, Vol. II: From the Act of Union (1536) to 1900 (Cardiff, 1935–1939); J. Lindsay, A history of the north Wales slate industry (Newton Abbot, 1974); W. E. Minchinton, The British tinplate industry: a history (Oxford, 1957); W. E. Minchinton, Industrial south Wales 1750–1914: essays in Welsh economic history (London, 1969); C. A. J. Skeel, ‘The Welsh woollen industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Archaeologia Cambrensis LXXIX (1924), 1–38; C. M. Williams and S. R. Williams eds., The Gwent county history, Vol. 4: Industrial Monmouthshire, 1780–1914 (Cardiff, 2011).

51 T. Boyns, D. Thomas and C. Baber, ‘The iron, steel and tinplate industries, 1750–1914’, in A. H. John ed., Glamorgan county history, Vol. V, 101.

52 K. Davies and C. J. Williams, The Greenfield valley; an introduction to the history and industrial archaeology of the Greenfield valley, Holywell, North Wales (Holywell, 1986), 9–11.

53 Davies and Williams, The Greenfield Valley, 9–11.

54 A. Aikin, Journal of a tour through north Wales and part of Shropshire (London, 1797), 76; E. Hamer, ‘A parochial account of Llanidloes’, Montgomeryshire Collections V (1872), 1–48, 36; Jenkins, Welsh woollen industry, 58.

55 BPP 1896, XXXIV.1 (C8221), Report of the Royal Commission on Land in Wales and Monmouthshire, 45.

56 ‘The Cambrian Pottery, Swansea’, Gower 5 (1952), 44–5.

57 J. Evans, Letters written during a tour through north Wales, in the year 1798, and at other times (London, 1804), 67–8; Jenkins, Welsh woollen industry, 213.

58 See e.g. A. H. Dodd, ‘The growth of trade and industry’, in A. H. Dodd ed., A history of Wrexham (Wrexham, 1957), 228 for the late development of shops in the major town of north Wales.

59 See e.g. A. H. John, ‘Introduction: Glamorgan, 1700–1750’, in A. H. John ed., Glamorgan county history, Vol. V, 1–46, page 3 for Bristol's role as the ‘Welsh metropolis’.

60 Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, 118–9, 167–8: Kitson et al., ‘The creation of a ‘census’’, 19.

61 Wrigley and Schofield, Population history of England, 92.