ENCHPOPGOS Conference 2017. Auriane Terki-Mignot. Female employment 1787-1851: the Westmorland Census of 1787

Duration: 20 mins 39 secs

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ENCHPOPGOS Conference 2017. Auriane Terki-Mignot. Female employment 1787-1851: the Westmorland Census of 1787's image

Description:	A talk by Auriane Terki-Mignot, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, given at the inaugural meeting of the European Network for the Comparative History of Population Geography and Occupational Structure (ENCHPOGOS) held at Robinson College, Cambridge in September 2017.

Created:

2018-01-09 14:24

Collection:

Economic and Social History

Publisher:

University of Cambridge

Auriane Terki-Mignot

Language:

eng (English)

Keywords:

Occupational Structure; Women's work; Gender; Economic History; Industrial Revolution; Female Labour Firce Participation;

Credits:

Photographer:

Cheng Yang


Abstract:	This paper, deriving from my BA dissertation, is based on a unique source, the so-called ‘Westmorland Census’ of 1787. This pre-census listing recorded, for some areas in the county of Westmorland for which it has survived, the occupations of both men and women. A comparison with the census enumerators’ books from the 1851 census for the same locations suggested that the period witnessed a major decline in female labour force participation rates, associated with the mechanisation of cottage industries. This adds to other evidence, such as Osamu Saito’s 1979 article on Cardington and Corfe Castle, and unpublished work by Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Xuesheng You, also indicating a very substantial fall in female labour force participation rates in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries associated with the mechanisation of spinning. Taken together, the data could suggest that, once female labour is accounted for, any labour ‘shift’ to the secondary sector, thought to be a defining feature of the Industrial Revolution, was in fact complete by the 1780s, if not earlier, and took place over a protracted period of time.

Abstract:

This paper, deriving from my BA dissertation, is based on a unique source, the so-called ‘Westmorland Census’ of 1787. This pre-census listing recorded, for some areas in the county of Westmorland for which it has survived, the occupations of both men and women. A comparison with the census enumerators’ books from the 1851 census for the same locations suggested that the period witnessed a major decline in female labour force participation rates, associated with the mechanisation of cottage industries. This adds to other evidence, such as Osamu Saito’s 1979 article on Cardington and Corfe Castle, and unpublished work by Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Xuesheng You, also indicating a very substantial fall in female labour force participation rates in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries associated with the mechanisation of spinning. Taken together, the data could suggest that, once female labour is accounted for, any labour ‘shift’ to the secondary sector, thought to be a defining feature of the Industrial Revolution, was in fact complete by the 1780s, if not earlier, and took place over a protracted period of time.

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