The Distribution of Personal Wealth in English Towns: A Comment

Abstract

PHILLIP'S and Walton's (I975) recent paper on the distribution of personal wealth in English towns in the mid-nineteenth century was read with interest, but with increasing doubts and dissatisfaction. It is felt that certain observations must be made and answers to a number of specific and critical questions sought. The paper essentially concerns how and where the central exchequer raised 'In all, £I 384 745 . . levied from a total urban population of 5-8 million at a rate of £o024 per head, averaging £7779 for each of the 178 towns' (p. 39) in England between 1845 and I847.1 The authors examine relationships between the amount of assessed taxes (see their note 7) and both the population of urban centres (Law, 1967) and the extremely questionable and 'crude functional classification' presented in the report by the Select Committee on the Health of Towns which was published in 1840 (Carter, 1972). Phillips and Walton claim to have found that personal wealth in (sic) English towns in the middle of the nineteenth century was distributed inequitably, 'was concentrated in those parts of the country with a more traditional economy' and, again, 'was dominant in the south and east' (p. 46). They likewise note that 'Those cities that amazed the Victorians were not those that accumulated personal wealth' (p. 47). We take exception to each of these four 'findings'. It should be stressed that here we are not primarily concerned with the quite basic statistical problems in proving 'inequitable distributions' based, as the investigation is, on regression residuals derived from an unconsidered technique. However, the lack of information relating, for example, to confidence limits does cause a deal of anxiety as the basis for conclusions is not given. Our concern is rather with the real methodological problems, particularly the almost inevitable outcome arising directly from the assumptions regarding their sole data source. A crucial question relates to their unstated but working definition of 'personal wealth' as adopted within their paper. It appears that personal wealth is equated with the possession of property, particularly that property associated with conspicuous consumption (see their Table I). It is felt that the exclusion of wealth as investment (cf. Pen, I971) leads directly to the conclusions that 'those features that were the hallmarks of nineteenth-century urbanizationindustry, commerce and rapid population growth-were unfavourable to the development of personal wealth' (p. 47). Indeed investment savings were taking place often on an unprecedented scale among those who, supposedly, 'possessed little opportunity to accumulate personal wealth' (p. 47). For example, the mid-nineteenth century saw the proliferation of working-class self-help organizations,