‘Real’ wages? Contractors, workers, and pay in London building trades, 1650–1800

Self Cite

This article provides new information and data on the work and pay of skilled and semi-skilled men on a large London construction project in the early 1700s. It offers firm-level evidence on the employment relation in the construction industry at the time and sheds some light on the number of days worked per year and per week, showing that employment was more irregular and seasonal than current estimates of income infer. The patterns are considered in the context of new debates about industriousness and economic growth.

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This point, and the difference between the charge out rates found in the existing wage series and the lower amounts men actually earned, are discussed in Stephenson, ‘“Real” wages?’.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Working days in a London construction team in the eighteenth century: evidence from St Paul's Cathedral

Stephenson

2019

Self Cite

“…Humphries, ‘Lure’; Allen, ‘Restatement’; Humphries and Schneider, ‘Spinning the industrial revolution’; Stephenson, ‘“Real” wages?’.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Class structure and inequality during the industrial revolution: lessons from England's social tables, 1688–1867

Allen¹

2018

This article measures the size and incomes of six major social classes across the industrial revolution using social tables for England and Wales in 1688, 1759, 1798, 1846, and 1867. Lindert and Williamson famously revised these tables, and this article extends their work in three directions. First, servants are removed from middle‐ and upper‐class households in the tables of King, Massie, and Colquhoun and tallied separately. Second, estimates are made for the same tables of the number and incomes of women and children employed in the various occupations, and, third, incomes are broken down into rents, profits, and employment income. These extensions to the tables allow variables to be computed that can be checked against independent estimates as a validation exercise. The tables are retabulated in a standardized set of six social groups to highlight the changing structure of society across the industrial revolution. Gini coefficients are computed from the social tables to measure inequality. These measures confirm that Britain traversed a ‘Kuznets curve’ in this period. Changes in overall inequality are related to the changing fortunes of the major social classes.

“…For agricultural labourers, see Muldrew, Food ; Hassell Smith, ‘Labourers’; Everitt, ‘Farm labourers’. For urban labourers, see Woodward, Men at work ; Stephenson, ‘“Real wages”?’.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The price of the poor's words: social relations and the economics of deposing for one's ‘betters’ in early modern England

Taylor

2018

Historians of early modern England are aware that the legal testimony of poor, dependent, and subordinated individuals was regarded with suspicion. Contemporaries believed that labouring people would provide false evidence in return for ‘gifts’ or ‘rewards’. To what extent did such assumptions accurately reflect the processes whereby such witnesses came to depose for their ‘betters’? This article uses sixteenth‐ and early seventeenth‐century perjury and subornation suits from the court of Star Chamber to reconstruct labouring people's experiences and understandings of the politics of testimony. In explicating the structural and material factors that could militate against their deposing, override their reservations about doing so, and colour the contents of the depositions they gave, it makes two broader contributions to our understanding of the period. On the one hand, it presents a markedly more pessimistic account of the social relations involved in the increase in litigation. On the other, it reappraises a category of source—depositions—that historians have long regarded as providing singularly privileged access to the expressions of social groups that left little trace in the historical record.