Late Nineteenth-century Britain Research Articles

The economic determinants of depreciation accounting in late nineteenth-century Britain

This paper examines the economic incentives for unregulated companies, in late nineteenth-century Britain, to disclose in their published accounts the fact that they had charged depreciation. We argue that the disclosure will be positively associated with whether a company has outside shareholders and long-term debtholders, profitability, extent of depreciable assets, appointment of a professional auditor, and size. These hypotheses are tested using 150 British companies from the years 1880/81, 1889/90 and 1899/01. Our results indicate that whether depreciation was charged is related to profitability and, to a lesser extent, to the presence of outside shareholders, long-term debt holders and the appointment of a professional auditor. However, the amount of depreciation charged is related only to profitability and appears to be opportunistically determined.

Identifying the woman behind the “railed‐in desk”: The proto‐feminisation of bookkeeping in Britain

The study combines data from the electronic version of the transcribed census enumerators’ books and documentary sources to analyse the entry of women to bookkeeping in late nineteenth century Britain. The paper explores the chronology of the feminisation of bookkeeping and presents a socio‐demographic profile and sectoral distribution of women bookkeepers. The study renders more visible the existence of female accounting labour on the boundaries of the private/public divide. It is shown that previous commentators have failed to identify the early sex‐typing of bookkeeping in the south of England and in retailing and distribution. The liberal feminist movement and the use of women as cheap or unremunerated labour are offered as explanations for the employment of female accounting functionaries.

Poisonous Atmospheres: Ventilation and the Late Nineteenth Century Building

The desire for healthy buildings and inhabitants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was of prime concern for hygienists, sanitary engineers, architects and regulatory officials alike. To protect inhabitants a range of “technological and operational strategies were employed to prevent the air in rooms becoming foul and contaminated. At the root of this concern and resulting technology were particular concepts and theories regarding the mechanisms by which disease spread. Foul air, whether from dangerous decomposing organic matter or from the fetid breath of ordinary individuals needed dilution and deodorisation—best managed with good ventilation. Using the situation in late nineteenth century Britain and its colony in Western Australia as a case study this paper explores the way that ventilation technology at its simplest level was informed by concepts of health and disease.

Suitable and remunerative employment: the feminization of hospital dispensing in late nineteenth-century England.

This article looks at the contingent developments that led to the feminization of hospital dispensing at the end of the nineteenth century in England. In the 1870s, as a result of the campaign of the Women's Movement to open medicine to women, the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women found it possible to place some of its protégées in the dispensaries of hospitals founded by members of the Movement. Coincidentally, a radical member of the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society smoothed the way for them to take the Society's examinations, thus setting up an expectation that these women should be qualified. By the 1880s, the practice of employing female dispensers had spread to Birmingham, and the women here adopted a less difficult and expensive qualification, the Apothcaries' Assistant's Certificate, as the qualification of choice. The 1890s also saw increasing pressure on mainstream hospital dispensaries to replace the untrained assistants in their dispensaries, customarily employed on the Babbage Principle to save money, with qualified ones. In consequence, hospital managements sought a new means of containing costs and, turning to the kind of women already shown to be competent in Women's Movement hospitals, found the solution in a vertical gender-segregation, where the lesser qualification of women dispensers made them 'unpromotable' to head dispenser, thus preserving the career ladder for more highly-qualified male dispensers.

Rural Women and Urban Extravagance in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain

This essay discusses two exhibitions that romanticised the rural Celtic fringes of Britain for consumption in London, the ‘metropolis of the world’. Alice Hart's reconstructed Donegal Village at the Irish Exhibition (1888), organised under the auspices of the Donegal Industrial Fund, assuaged the reality of poverty in the Congested Districts; the Duchess of Sutherland's faux Highland cottage at the Victorian Era Exhibition (1897), organised by Scottish Home Industries, suggested hunting, fishing and scenic views rather than land reform and emigration. While the differences between the organisations inform the parts they played in exhibitions, they clearly and precisely converge in one respect: both advertised, glorified and sold the rural when existence in Donegal and in the Highlands was financially precarious and disappearing. They also share another characteristic: the female patrons, their associations and the female workers have ironically disappeared from historical writings while still visible are the colonised representations of exhibitions in which they participated. This essay seeks to recollect the historical moment at which the two associations flourished, examine how each group performed its self-appointed task and analyse their places as urban enthusiasts of the rural experience.

Should the cobbler stick to his last? Silvanus Phillips Thompson and the making of a scientific career

Silvanus Phillips Thompson, FRS (1851–1916) began his career in the 1870s when there were still few academic posts for scientists, and when it was still uncertain whether the newer professional ideals would overtake the older, more gentlemanly, ones – in terms of both career advancement and of what being a ‘good’ scientist entailed. Thompson's many scientific, technical and literary activities are discussed in this paper, as is his Quakerism, perhaps the chief motivating force in his life. The paper raises the question of how success in science is measured, and shows how Thompson's sabbatarian impulse influenced both his scientific practice and his pedagogical approach. In detailing the ways in which Thompson made a successful career, despite his lack of professional research focus, the paper relates to larger contexts of science, class, religion and education in late nineteenth-century Britain.

Public health administration in late-nineteenth century England, with special reference to the activities of Brighton Sanitary Authority

Public health administration in late-nineteenth century England, with special reference to the activities of Brighton Sanitary Authority

Waif Stories in late nineteenth-century England

Waif Stories in late nineteenth-century England

Mary Carpenter and India: Enlightened liberalism or condescending imperialism?1

The English social and educational reformer, Mary Carpenter, became involved in the imperialist venture in India in the 1860s and 1870s. Imbued with liberal, anti‐racist attitudes, she was drawn to India particularly because of gender interests. Inspired by and working with Indian reformers, she was apparently welcomed on her four visits to India where her own ideas on women's rights were further developed. In England she eagerly publicised her experiences and strove, with some success, to achieve her interpretation of what Indian reformers desired. How far Mary Carpenter actually could understand the Indian situation, how far her liberalism in fact was touched by cultural imperialism and class attitudes — her own ethnicity as an Englishwoman — indeed, are examined here. It will be seen that to understand fully racial and imperial attitudes of late nineteenth century England it is crucial to interrelate gendered notions with them. 1 A separate paper, originally based on this and given at the History of Education conference in Dec. 1999 in Winchester, but written up with a different emphasis, published entitled “Breaking the boundaries of Victorian imperialism or extending a reformed “paternalism“? Mary Carpenter and India” in History of Education 29 : 5, pp. 443–456.

Land ownership and social change in late nineteenth‐century Britain

The Economic History ReviewVolume 53, Issue 4 p. 767-776 Land ownership and social change in late nineteenth-century Britain† Julia A. Smith, Julia A. Smith Cardiff Business SchoolSearch for more papers by this author Julia A. Smith, Julia A. Smith Cardiff Business SchoolSearch for more papers by this author First published: 22 January 2003 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0289.00177Citations: 4Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume53, Issue4November 2000Pages 767-776 RelatedInformation

Reading history through autobiography: politically active women of late nineteenth-century britain and their personal narratives

Abstract In line with a substantial body of feminist scholarship interrogating the representational agency of women's personal narratives, this article examines the autobiographical writings of politically active British women in the late nineteenth century and their particular relationship to issues of politics and genre. It begins by outlining the attitudes and approaches taken by a number of female activists of the period towards the interrelation of autobiography with history and politics, and it then focuses this issue in a discussion of Edith Simcox's Autobiography of a Shirt Maker. The argument positions these women's writings alongside the multitude of contemporary class-related and gender-specific constraints which aimed to ‘outlaw’ female behaviour in order to examine how their desire to ‘write to history’ provided a significant motivation for their life-writings, at the same time as their writings reveal a representation of selfhood that is both ontologically and epistemologically complex.

Reading history through autobiography: politically active women of late nineteenth-century Britain and their personal narratives

In line with a substantial body of feminist scholarship interrogating the representational agency of women's personal narratives, this article examines the autobiographical writings of politically active British women in the late nineteenth century and their particular relationship to issues of politics and genre. It begins by outlining the attitudes and approaches taken by a number of female activists of the period towards the interrelation of autobiography with history and politics, and it then focuses this issue in a discussion of Edith Simcox's Autobiography of a Shirt Maker. The argument positions these women's writings alongside the multitude of contemporary class-related and gender-specific constraints which aimed to ‘outlaw’ female behaviour in order to examine how their desire to ‘write to history’ provided a significant motivation for their life-writings, at the same time as their writings reveal a representation of selfhood that is both ontologically and epistemologically complex.

Physical purity feminism and state medicine in late nineteenth-century england

Late nineteenth-century England saw the development of a number of campaigns and social movements which were connected by both a hostility towards the medical profession and by the use of discourses of purity and sanitary reform. This article explores the involvement of women within these movements, analysing their activism as an aspect of social purity feminism. It argues that many of these movements drew on widespread female anxiety regarding male violence – both physical and sexual – towards women. The anti-medical feminists claimed that some pieces of ‘sanitary’ legislation represented a state-sanctioned violation of the bodies of women and children. Finally, this article analyses the use made, by some of these activists, of the discourses of sanitary reform to challenge the gender ordering associated with the reason/nature dualism in Victorian society.

Physical purity feminism and state medicine in late nineteenth-century england

Physical purity feminism and state medicine in late nineteenth-century england

Public health versus private practice: the contested development of compulsory infectious disease notification in late-nineteenth-century Britain.

Public Health versus Private Practice: The Contested Development of Compulsory Infectious Disease Notification in Late-Nineteenth-Century Britain Graham Mooney* (bio) The administrative structures established in the Victorian era for the registration of sickness exist to this day. The pivotal epidemiological role of notification for the surveillance of diseased individuals continues to be discussed globally; the issues include ethical problems regarding HIV notification and patient confidentiality, the monitoring of reemergent infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, and the politically explosive issue of food hygiene scares such as salmonella and BSE. 1 Recent research has also begun to demonstrate the historical importance of disease notification for the development of local public health intervention in the late nineteenth century and the expansion in the volume and type of medical [End Page 238] services. 2 Nonetheless, the development of legislation for the compulsory notification of infectious disease remains largely a neglected topic. The understandable temptation thus far has been to subsume the few existing accounts of the history of disease notification under the more convenient umbrellas of cause-of-death reporting, death certification, and the collection of mortality statistics. 3 This article demonstrates that recent works examining the changing nature of public health policies toward the end of the nineteenth century in Britain, and the commodification of health care, all suggest a fresh way forward for research into infectious disease notification. The focus of public health action in mid-nineteenth-century Britain was primarily upon large-scale projects of “preventive” sanitary engineering. 4 However, very important incremental moves were made toward controlling individuals with contagious or infectious diseases who were perceived as a threat to wider society. By the beginning of the 1870s, for example, common lodging-house tenants with an infectious disease were reported to the local sanitary authority; prostitutes were inspected as a precautionary measure against the spread of venereal disease; and all infected people’s public movements were restricted, under the threat of removal from the community and into hospital. But these measures provided a means of control over only a small percentage of the populace. In the absence of a national register for sickness or disease, town authorities were pressured by their salaried public health officials to legislate for infectious disease notification, which would serve to bring all infected individuals—regardless of their economic status or occupation—under the gaze of the local sanitary department. 5 [End Page 239] The notification clauses that were introduced under Local Improvement Acts eventually found their way into countrywide legislation for the compulsory notification of infectious disease, but by no means was this transition from parochial to state law a smooth one. Legislation was most effectively hampered by opposition from the private medical profession—family practitioners—who maintained that notification jeopardized their confidential relationship with their patients, which was enshrined in the ancient Hippocratic oath. The inviolability of this confidentiality was contested by the public health profession, on the grounds that notification placed a greater value upon the physicians’ responsibility to the well-being of society than it did upon their relationship with individuals. In this article I will seek to evaluate the legitimacy of these claims and underline their central importance for a conflict that set the fundamental precepts of public and private medicine against one another. After providing a detailed examination of one particular case of medical opposition to notification in Liverpool, I will consider how the many theoretical and practical themes recurring in this conflict were articulated: the mode of notification—compulsory or voluntary, by either the householder or the family physician; the financial issues of remuneration and penalization; and state incursion into individual freedom. First, however, an introduction to the legislative framework is required. Legislation Preceding Compulsory Infectious Disease Notification Dorothy and Roy Porter have suggested that the introduction of the Infectious Disease Notification Acts in England and Wales in the 1880s and 1890s represented “a striking infringement of the traditional freedom to be sick, and to spread one’s sickness, with impunity.” 6 Despite this, they argue, the Acts aroused little public opposition, because “by the last quarter of the nineteenth century the public was becoming acclimated to a new medical rationality that might involve the trimming of its...

"Simple Words": Peter Ackroyd's Autobiography of Oscar Wilde

This article discusses Peter Ackroyd's fictionalized autobiography, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde . It suggests that the text opens up significant questions about biographical and autobiographical interpretation, and more specific issues concerning the relationship between Wilde's own self-fashioning as a celebrated public figure and the social construction of sexualities in late nineteenth-century Britain.

James C. Riley, Sick, Not Dead: The Health of British Workingmen During the Mortality Decline. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. xvii + 348 pp. $58.00 cloth.

This is a fine and original study of the paradoxical relationship between declining mortality rates and rising morbidity rates among working men in late nineteenth-century Britain. Following Simon Szreter's argument, Riley provides new evidence of the positive effects of investment in the infrastructure of health services, understood as investing social capital to improve water, sanitation, and roads and to provide more medical and paramedical care for the whole population. Illnesses that were lethal at midcentury were not lethal forty years later. The period of illness lengthened, the illness recurred, but death was less likely. This is the meaning of the central contention, captured in the title Sick, Not Dead. Factors producing mortality declined but sickness rates rose. Readers should not be put off by the title, and occasionally the statistical evidence is too detailed. Nonetheless, this is a book full of insight and analytical force. Riley offers a corrective to the likes of F. B. Smith, whose view of Victorian health was a shade or two too dark.

The Besotted King and his Adonis: Representations of Edward II and Gaveston in Late Nineteenth-Century England

The Besotted King and his Adonis: Representations of Edward II and Gaveston in Late Nineteenth-Century England

Economic factors in the decline of mortality in late nineteenth century Britain

Although mortality in Britain showed a long term decline from as early as the eighteenth century, it stagnated in the nineteenth century under the pressures of urbanisation and industrialisation. This paper examines the economic factors which lay behind the resumption of the mortality decline in Britain 1870–1914. A framework of analysis is developed which distinguishes factors in the physical environment (like population density) which affected mortality directly, from price and income movements which affected decisions about expenditure on sewers, water supplies, food, medical staff. A regression analysis of mortality in a sample of 36 towns in England and Wales suggests increases in the incomes of households and town council tax revenues were instrumental in the decline of mortality. This allowed extra spending not only on food, as McKeown emphasised, but also on a wide range of health-enhancing goods and services. The major improvement in the physical environment was the housing stock which rose faster than the population whilst its quality and dimensions were increasingly regulated by central and local government.

Evangelical Christianity, Secular Humanism, and the Genesis of British Social Work

This paper is a reappraisal of the Christian origins of social work and, as such, is a contribution to writing the profession's history. It examines the competing ideological roots of the concept of 'social work' which emerged in late nineteenth-century Britain, and the extent to which they are derived from the Christian charitable tradition or its secular transformation. Two features of early social work are examined in particular depth: its moral purpose in relation to the Evangelical belief in charity as an instrument of spiritual revival; and its rational methods in relation to secular beliefs about the possibility of personal and social change. Much of the paper focuses on the ideological and institutional relationship between the emerging activity of social work and Evangelical revivalism which formed the context for most late nineteenth-century philanthropy. The crisis of faith experienced by Victorian intel lectuals is a significant motif throughout this period. This is not an attempt to rewrite the history of social work, but to re-examine neglected features in its origins: Evangelical Christianity and its secular humanist transformation. In doing so, it is hoped to throw light on the recent revival of interest in the importance of religion to social work.