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Changes in Rural Service Occupations during the Nineteenth Century: An Evaluation of Two Sources for Hertfordshire, England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

C.A. Crompton
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Extract

Agricultural output per man had risen substantially in the early nineteenth century, partly as a result of greater specialisation. This, in turn, stimulated demand for those trades which served the entire rural community, such as the tailor, bootmaker, baker, butcher and shopkeeper, as craftsmen and tradesmen were increasingly called upon for goods and services, which were formerly provided by members of the household. Demand for traditional services to agriculture, from figures such as the wheelwright and the blacksmith, was also sustained. But in contrast to the situation in agriculture, there appears to have been no increase in productivity in the rural crafts and trades. As a result of growing demand for these services, rural craftsmen and tradesmen increased in numbers and became more specialised in occupation during the first part of the nineteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , October 1995 , pp. 193 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Wrigley, E.A., ‘Men on the land and men in the countryside: Employment in agriculture in early nineteenth-century England’ in Bonfield, Lloyd, Smith, Richard M. and Wrightson, Keith (eds.), The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure (1986) p. 335.Google Scholar

2 Chartres, J.A., ‘Country tradesmen’, in Mingay, G.E. (ed.), The Victorian Countryside, 1 (London, 1981), pp. 300–13Google Scholar and Chartres, J.A. and Turnbull, G.L., ‘Country craftsmen’ in The Victorian Countryside, 1, 314–28.Google Scholar

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6 See Note 3.

7 See Note 1.

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10 Interdepartmental committee on social and economic research. Guides to official sources. No. 2. Census reports of Great Britain, 1801–1931 (London, 1951), p. 32.

11 Armstrong, W.A., Stability and Change in an English County Town: A Social Study of York, 1801–51 (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 13–15.Google Scholar

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13 Ibid., p. 78.

14 Ibid., p. 68.

15 Another approach would be to take Chartres’ alternative definition of threshold population: the mid-point between the smallest village with the trade and the largest village without the trade. This could be calculated using the presence or absence of full-time occupations only. J.A. Chartres, ‘Country trades, crafts and professions’, p. 424.

16 Nine pairs of traders were ascribed to different parishes in the sources. Braughingand Standon were the most affected parishes, where four traders in 1891 were assigned to different parishes. Puckeridge, a village in Standon parish, had expanded over the parish boundary into Braughing parish by 1890. The 1890 directory featured separate headings for Standon and Puckeridge villages where the traders concerned appeared under the Puckeridge heading. They also appeared in the census enumerators’ book for Braughing and were assigned to Braughing parish for linkage purposes. The remaining five pairs of traders were not linked because it was impossible to determine if these were genuine movements between parishes.