Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-31T03:20:17.470Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Community’ and the social geography of Victorian cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Richard Dennis  and
Stephen Daniels
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Quantitative studies of nineteenth-century cities have made rapid advances in the last decade in terms of both the complexity of techniques and the range of sources to which techniques have been applied. Simple representations of material from the census enumerators' books like graphs and pie diagrams have been superseded by location quotients, indices of segregation and factor analyses. Synchronic descriptions of urban structure have been supplemented by assessments of change (for example, of residential persistence and mobility) and analyses of relationships (for example, journeys to work and marriage patterns). Researchers have ventured beyond the census to examine other nominal listings—in directories, electoral registers, ratebooks and church records—often using record linkage techniques to check or supplement information from one source with another. Our enthusiasm to apply new techniques to new sources has often left us exposed to Anderson's criticism that ‘we have been paying too little attention to the question of why we are measuring what we are measuring’. Many quantitative historical geographers justify their enterprise as the testing of modern theory on such subjects as migration and modernization. Some such theories, particularly those concerned with Sjoberg's and Burgess' stereotypes of pre-industrial and industrial cities and the ‘transitional’ nature of Victorian cities, are little more than rough generalizations and some urban historians have been more than sceptical about them. Certainly the retrospective application of the methods, concepts and theories of contemporary social research is a critical issue. In this paper we consider the significance of ‘what we are measuring’ for a particularly contentious concept, that of ‘community’. We assess the usefulness or relevance of more sophisticated methodological techniques to the identification and investigation of communities in Victorian cities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 8 , May 1981 , pp. 7 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 M. Anderson, ‘Indicators of population change and stability in nineteenth century cities: some sceptical comments’, paper presented to SSRC Seminar on ‘The internal structure of nineteenth-century British cities’, Lancaster 1978.

2 See, for example, two collections of papers by urban historical geographers: ‘Change in the town’, Trans. Inst. Brit. Geographers, N.S. II (3) (1977), 257–416Google Scholar; ‘The Victorian city’, Trans. Inst. Brit. Geographers, N.S. IV (2) (1979), 125–319.Google Scholar

3 See the reviews of the two IBG collections by Beresford, M. W., J. Hist. Geography, V (1979), 346–8Google Scholar; Cannadine, D., Urban History Yearbook (1980), 105–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Daunton, M. J., J. Historical Geography, VI (1980), 332–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Williams, R., Keywords (1976), 65–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Coleman, B. I., The Idea of the City in Nineteenth-Century Britain (1973)Google Scholar; Disraeli, B., Sybil (1845)Google Scholar, Books II and III, and Coningsby (1844), Book IV, chapter 3.

6 Bell, C. and Newby, H., ‘Community, communion, class and community action’, in Herbert, D. T. and Johnston, R. J. (eds.), Social Areas in Cities (1978), 283–301.Google Scholar

7 Roberts, R., The Classic Slum (1971)Google Scholar and A Ragged Schooling (1976).

8 See Marr, T. R., Housing Conditions in Manchester and Salford (1904)Google Scholar, which includes a map of land uses and house types on which Roberts' community stands out like the proverbial sore thumb!

9 Mann, P. H., An Approach to Urban Sociology (1965), 155.Google Scholar

10 T. R. Lee, ‘Cities in the mind’, in Herbert and Johnston, op. cit., 253–81.

11 Boal, F. W., ‘Territoriality on the Shankill-Falls divide, Belfast’, Irish Geography (1969), VI, 30–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Stacey, M., ‘The myth of community studies’, Brit. J. Sociology, xx (1969), 134–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Connell, J., ‘Social networks in urban society’, in Clark, B. D. and Gleave, M. B. (eds.), Social Patterns in Cities (1973), 41–52.Google Scholar For examples of ‘urban villages’ see Young, M. and Willmott, P., Family and Kinship in East London (1957)Google Scholar and Gans, H., The Urban Villagers (1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Dennis, R. J., ‘Why study segregation? More thoughts on Victorian cities’, Area, XII (4) (1980), 313–7.Google Scholar

15 Carter, H. and Wheatley, S., ‘Residential segregation in nineteenth-century cities’, Area, XII (1) (1980), 57–62Google Scholar; Ward, D., ‘Environs and neighbours in the “Two Nations” residential differentiation in mid-nineteenth-century Leeds’, J. Hist. Geography, VI (1980), 133–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a critique of American studies, see Zunz, O., ‘Residential segregation in the American metropolis: concentration, dispersal and dominance’, Urban History Yearbook (1980), 23–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Daunton, M. J., Coal Metropolis: Cardiff 1870–1914 (1977)Google Scholar; Pooley, C. G., ‘Residential mobility in the Victorian city’, Trans. Inst. Brit. Geographers, IV (2) (1979), 258–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pritchard, R. M., Housing and the Spatial Structure of the City (1976)Google Scholar; Anderson, M., Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (1971)Google Scholar; Jackson, J. T., ‘Housing and social structures in mid-Victorian Wigan and St Helens’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Liverpool, 1977).Google Scholar

17 First Report of the Commissioners for inquiring into the State of Large Towns and Populous Districts (1844, XVII), Appendix, 108.Google Scholar

18 Pritchard, op. cit, 51; Pooley, op. cit., 261.

19 Pritchard, op. cit., esp. 115–22. For the modern housing market, see Murie, A. et al. , Housing Policy and the Housing System (1976)Google Scholar; Dennis, R. and Clout, H., A Social Geography of England and Wales (1980), chapter 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Anderson, , ‘Family structure’, 41–2.Google Scholar

21 Ward, op. cit., 157.

22 Pooley, op. cit., 270. A more detailed discussion is included in Pooley, C. G., ‘Migration, mobility and residential areas in nineteenth-century Liverpool (Ph.D. thesis, University of Liverpool, 1978).Google Scholar

23 Daniels, S., ‘Moral order and the industrial environment in the woollen textile districts of West Yorkshire, 1780–1880’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1980), 226.Google Scholar

24 Anderson, ‘Indicators of population change’.

25 Ward, op. cit., 143; Dennis, R. J., ‘Community and interaction in a Victorian city’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1975), 145–6.Google Scholar

26 Daunton, Coal Metropolis.

27 Dennis, R. J., ‘Intercensal mobility in a Victorian city’, Trans. Inst. Brit. Geographers, N.S. II (1977), 349–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. G. Pooley, ‘Residential mobility’; Lawton, R., ‘Mobility in nineteenth century British cities’, Geographical J., cvl (1979), 206–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Pritchard, op. cit, 54–60.

29 Greg, S., Two Letters to Leonard Horner (1840), 16.Google Scholar

30 Daniels, op. cit., 172–3.

31 Ibid., 278–9.

32 F.E.E.Bell, At the Works (1911).

33 Ibid., 40–1.

34 Dingsdale, A., ‘Yorkshire mill town: study of the spatial patterns and processes of urban industrial growth and the evolution of the spatial structure of Halifax’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1974).Google Scholar

35 Dennis, , ‘Community and interaction’, 323–9.Google Scholar

36 Warnes, A. M., ‘Early separation of homes from workplaces and the urban structure of Chorley, 1780–1850’, Trans. Hist. Soc. Lanes. Ches., cxxii (1970), 105–35Google Scholar; Dingsdale, op. cit.

37 Daniels, op. cit., 201.

38 Joyce, P., ‘The factory politics of Lancashire in the later nineteenth century’, Hist. J., XVIII (1975), 525–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 See also Marshall, J. D., ‘Colonisation as a factor in the planting of towns in north-west England’, in Dyos, H. J. (ed.), The Study of Urban History (1968), 215–30.Google Scholar For a case study, see Ashmore, O. and Bolton, T., ‘Hugh Mason and the Oxford Mills and Community, Ashton-under-Lyne’, Trans. Lanes. Ches. Ant. Soc., lxxviii (1975), 38–50.Google Scholar For a discussion of the factory as community in modern society see Jackson, B., Working Class Community (1968).Google Scholar

40 Vance, J. E., ‘Housing the worker: determinative and contingent ties in nineteenth-century Birmingham’, Economic Geography, IIIL (1967), 95–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Laslett, P., ‘Size and structure of the household in England over three centuries’, Population Studies, XXIII (1969), 199–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, A., ‘Family, household and residence since the eighteenth century’, paper presented to Anglo-Canadian Historical Geography Conference, Danbury 1977Google Scholar; Armstrong, W. A., Stability and Change in an English County Town: a social study of York, 1801–1851 (1974)Google Scholar; Anderson, ‘Family structure’.

42 Anderson, , ‘Family structure’, 56–62.Google Scholar

43 Lees, L. H., Exiles of Erin: Irish Migrants in Victorian London (1979), chapter 3.Google Scholar

44 Foster, J., Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (1974)Google Scholar; Gray, R. Q., The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (1976)Google Scholar; Crossick, G., An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society (1978).Google Scholar

45 Lees, op. cit, chapter 6; Pooley, ‘Migration, mobility and residential areas’.

46 For example, Perry, P. J., ‘Working-class isolation and mobility in rural Dorset, 1837–1936’, Trans. Inst. Brit. Geographers, IVL (1969), 121–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ogden, P. E., ‘Marriage patterns and population mobility’, Univ. of Oxford School of Geography Research Papers, 7 (1973).Google Scholar

47 Dennis, R. J., ‘Distance and social interaction in a Victorian city’, J. Hist. Geography, III (1977), 237–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Warner, S. B., The Private City (1968), 61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Best, G., Mid-Victorian Britain, 1851–75 (1971), 197.Google Scholar

50 Dyos, H. J., Victorian Suburb (1961), 163.Google Scholar

51 Roberts, R., The Classic Slum (1971), 47.Google Scholar

52 A recent affirmation of the writing of historical and regional syntheses is Harris, C., ‘The historical mind and the practice of geography’, in Ley, D. and Samuels, M. (eds.), Humanistic Geography (1978), 123–37.Google Scholar