Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:25:13.186Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why was urban overcrowding much more severe in Scotland than in the rest of the British Isles? Evidence from the first (1904) official household expenditure survey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2010

IAN GAZELEY ,
ANDREW NEWELL  and
PETER SCOTT
IAN GAZELEY
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Sussex, UK, [email protected]
ANDREW NEWELL
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Sussex, UK and IZA, Bonn, Germany, [email protected]
PETER SCOTT
Affiliation:
School of Management, University of Reading, UK, [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of British urban working-class housing conditions in 1904, using a rediscovered survey. We investigate overcrowding and find major regional differences. Scottish households in the survey were more overcrowded despite being less poor. Investigating the causes of this overcrowding, we find little support for supply-side theories or for the idea that the Scottish households in our survey experienced particularly great variations in income, causing them to commit to overly modest accommodation. We present evidence that is consistent with idea that particularly tough Scottish tenancy and local tax laws caused excess overcrowding. We also provide evidence that Scottish workers had a relatively high preference for food, rather than housing, expenditure, which can be at least partly attributed to their inheritance of more communal patterns of urban living.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Review of Economic History , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , April 2011 , pp. 127 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © European Historical Economics Society 2010

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

Bourdieu, P. (2005). The Social Structures of the Economy. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Bowley, A. L. (1937). Wages and Income in the United Kingdom since 1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bowley, A. L. and Burnett-Hurst, A. R. (1915). Livelihood and Poverty. London: G. Bell and Sons.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers (1905). Consumption and the Cost of Food in Workmen's Families in Urban Districts of the United Kingdom, Cd 2337. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers (1907). Report of the Departmental Committee on House-letting in Scotland. vol. I, Cd 3715. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers (1908). Cost of Living of the Working Classes. Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working-Class Rents, Housing and Retail Prices Together with Standard Rates of Wages Prevailing in Certain Occupations in Principal Industrial Towns in the United Kingdom, Cd 3864. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers (1908). Returns Showing the Housing Conditions of the Population of Scotland, Cd 4016. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers (1912–13). Cost of Living of the Working Classes. Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working-Class Rents and Retail Prices Together with the Rates of Wages in Certain Occupations in Industrial Towns in the United Kingdom, Cd 6955. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Bullock, N. and Read, J. (1985). The Movement for Housing Reform in Germany and France 1840–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Butt, J. (1987). Housing. In Cage, R. A. (ed.), The Working Class in Glasgow, 1750–1914. Beckenham: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Cage, R. (1994), Infant mortality rates and housing: twentieth-century Glasgow. Scottish Economic and Social History 14, pp. 74–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Church, R. (1986). The History of the British Coal Industry, vol. 3: 1830–1913: Victorian Pre-eminence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gazeley, I. and Newell, A. (2010). Poverty in Edwardian Britain. Economic History Review, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Gibb, A. (1983). Glasgow: The Making of a City. Beckenham: Croom Helm,Google Scholar
Haines, M. (1979). Industrial work and the family life cycle, 1889–1890. Research in Economic History 4, pp. 289–356.Google Scholar
Johnson, P. (1985). Saving and Spending. The Working-class Economy in Britain 1870–1939. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lee, C. H. (2004). Scotland 1850–1939: growth and poverty. In Floud, R. and Johnson, P. (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Britain, vol. 2: Economic Maturity, 1860–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 428–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, C. H. (2005). Economic progress; wealth and poverty. In Devine, T. M., Lee, C. H. and Peden, G. C. (eds.), The Transformation of Scotland: The Economy since 1700. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Melling, J. (1989). Clydeside rent struggles and the making of Labour politics in Scotland, 1900–39. In Rodger, R. (ed.), Scottish Housing in the Twentieth Century. Leicester: Leicester University Press, pp. 54–88.Google Scholar
Pacione, M. (1979). Housing policies in Glasgow since 1880. Geographical Review 69 (4), pp. 395–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Power, A. (1993). Hovels to High Rise: State Housing in Europe since 1850. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rodger, R. (1985). Employment, wages and poverty in the Scottish cities, 1841–1914. In Gordon, G. (ed.), Perspectives of the Scottish City. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.Google Scholar
Rodger, R. (1986). The Victorian building industry and the housing of the Scottish working-class. In Doughty, M. (ed.), Building the Industrial City. Leicester: Leicester University Press, pp. 152–206.Google Scholar
Rodger, R. (1989). Crisis and confrontation in Scottish housing 1880–1914. In Rodger, R. (ed.), Scottish Housing in the Twentieth Century. Leicester: Leicester University Press, pp. 25–53.Google Scholar
Rodger, R. (1992). Scotland. In Pooley, C. G. (ed.), Housing Strategies in Europe, 1880–1930. Leicester: Leicester University Press.Google Scholar
Rodger, R. (1993). Employment, wages, and poverty in the Scottish cities 1840–1914. In Morris, R. J. and Rodger, R. (eds.), The Victorian City. A Reader in British Urban History. Harlow: Longman, pp. 73–113.Google Scholar
Rodger, R. (1999). Urbanisation and the housing of the Scottish people, 1800–1914. In Glendenning, M. and Watters, D. (eds.), Home Builders: Mactaggart & Mickel and the Scottish Housebuilding Industry. Edinburgh: RCAHMS, pp. 193–210.Google Scholar
Royal Commission on the Coal Industry (1925) Report, vol. 3: Appendices and Index. London, 1926.Google Scholar
Russell, J. B. (1887). The house in relation to public health. Transactions of the Insurance and Actuarial Society of Glasgow, 2nd series, no. 5.Google Scholar
Ryder, R. (1984). Council house building in County Durham, 1900–39: the local implementation of national policy. In Daunton, Martin J. (ed.), Councillors and Tenants: Local Authority Housing in English Cities, 1919–1939. Leicester: Leicester University Press, pp. 39–100.Google Scholar
Scott, P. and Walker, J. (2009). Demonstrating distinction at ‘the lowest edge of the black-coated class’: the family expenditures of Edwardian railway clerks. University of Reading School of Management discussion paper.Google Scholar
Wordsall, F. (1979). The Tenement: A Way of Life. A Social, Historical, and Architectural Study of Housing in Glasgow. Edinburgh: Chambers.Google Scholar