Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T00:51:32.477Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assessed taxes as sources for the study of urban wealth: Bristol in the later eighteenth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Elizabeth Baigent
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Little is known of the value of eighteenth-century rates and taxes as sources for the urban historian. Corfield, in her study of eighteenth-century Norwich, stated in 1976 that ‘the stereotyped nature of eighteenth-century tax assessments precludes use of fiscal data from national sources’ and this is a fair reflection of the then and to some extent the current orthodoxy, despite Rudé's pioneering studies of the 1960s in which he used land tax and poor rate returns to estimate the wealth of the electorate of Hanoverian London and Middlesex. Schwarz, in a study of late-eighteenth-century London, could still comment in 1979 that for eighteenth-century rates and taxes ‘little is known beyond general impressions’. Recently, however, Wright has thrown interesting light on the use of the Easter books and poor rates of early-modern towns and cities, and the 1986 volume on the land tax edited by Turner and Mills, although still largely concerned with the use of rural land tax assessments, includes three chapters on the value of the assessments in urban and industrial history. The writers hope that city rate and national tax returns might play a fuller role as historical sources, but their optimism is tempered with caution because of the returns' intractability and inconsistency. It is hoped here to reinforce both their enthusiasm and their caution, to reveal additional pitfalls and suggest ways to avoid them and in particular to extend the debate to the neglected pre-1780 assessments and to the city of Bristol.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 15 , May 1988 , pp. 31 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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

Notes

I am grateful to the SSRC and the Bryce Fund for Historical Research for financial support and to the staff of the Oxford University Computing Service and Bristol Record Office and especially to Jack Langton for patient help and advice.

1 Corfield, P. J., ‘The social and economic history of Norwich, 1650–1850: a study in urban growth’ (unpublished University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1976).Google Scholar

2 Rudé, G. E., ‘The Middlesex electors of 1768–1769’, English Historical Review, 75 (1960), 601–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rudé, G. E., Wilkes and Liberty: a Social Study of 1763–1774 (1962).Google Scholar

3 Schwarz, L. D., ‘Income distribution and social structure in London in the late eighteenth century’, Econ. Hist. Review, 2nd series, 32 (1979), 205–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Wright, S. J., ‘Easter books and parish rate books: a new source for the urban historian’, Urban History Yearbook (1985), 30–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Turner, M. and Mills, D. (eds), Land and Property: The English Land Tax 1692–1832 (1986).Google Scholar

6 Michinton, W., ‘Bristol – Metropolis of the West in the eighteenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1954), 70–85.Google Scholar

7 Baigent, E., ‘Bristol society in the later eighteenth century with special reference to the handling by computer of fragmentary historical sources’ (unpublished University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1985, 36–69).Google Scholar

8 Anon, ., Bristol Poll Book (1775).Google Scholar Pine, W., Bristol Poll Book (1775).Google Scholar

9 Sketchley, J., Bristol Directory (1775; reprinted 1971).Google Scholar

10 Rate and Tax returns in Bristol Record Office.

11 The lamping and scavenging rate was levied under 11 & 12 William III c.23, 1700; the watching rate under 28 George III c.32, 1755; the bridge tax under 33 George II c.52, 1759; the sewer rate under 6 George III c.34, 1766; and the poor rate under 7 & 8 William III c.32, 1696.

12 Ward, W. R., The English Land Tax in the Eighteenth Century (1953), 4, 6, 7, 22, 95.Google Scholar

13 Ward, W. R., The Administration of the Window and Assessed Taxes 1696–1798 (1963), 3.Google Scholar

14 Ralph, E., Guide to the Bristol Archives Office (1971), 44–5.Google Scholar

15 Beckett, J. V., Local Taxation, National Legislation and the Problems of Enforcement (1980), 24.Google Scholar

16 Ginter, D. E., ‘The incidence of revaluation’, in Mills, and Turner, Land and Property, 180–8.Google Scholar

17 Ward, , Administration … Taxes, 3.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., 1–7.

19 Beckett, , Local Taxation, 20.Google Scholar

20 Little, B. D. G., The City and County of Bristol: a Study in Atlantic Civilisation (1954), 327.Google Scholar

21 Ward, , English Land Tax, 4, 6, 7.Google Scholar

22 Noble, M., ‘The land tax assessments in the study of the physical development of country towns’, in Mills, and Turner, , Land and Property, 93–117.Google Scholar

23 1 All Saints; 2 Castle Precincts; 3 Christ Church; 4 St Augustine; 5 St Ewen; 6 St James City; 7 St John; 8 St Leonard; 9 St Mary le Port; 10 St Mary Redcliff; 11 St Michael; 12 St Nicholas; 13 St Peter; 14 SS Philip and James; 15 St Stephen; 16 St Thomas; 17 St Werburgh; 18 Temple; 19 St James's Outparish.

24 Noble, , ‘Land tax assessments’, 97.Google Scholar

25 Little, , City and County of Bristol, 327.Google Scholar

26 Corfield, P. J., The Impact of English Towns 1700–1800 (1982), 129.Google Scholar

27 P-STAT, the Princeton Statistical Package, was used. It can handle large incomplete datasets and so is more suitable than many business packages for the needs of the historian.

28 Campbell, R., The London Tradesman (1747).Google Scholar Anon., A General Description of Trades, Digested in Alphabetical Order (1747).

29 Phillips, A. D. M. and Walton, J. R., ‘The distribution of personal wealth in English towns in the mid-nineteenth century’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2nd series, 64 (1975), 35–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Schwarz, L. D., ‘Occupation and incomes in late eighteenth-century London’, East London Papers, 14 (1972), 87–100, note to p. 100.Google Scholar

31 Schwarz, L. D. and Jones, L. J., ‘Wealth, occupations and insurance in the late eighteenth century: the policy registers of the Sun Fire Office’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 1 (1983), 365–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Langton, J., ‘Late medieval Gloucester: some data from a rental of 1455’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2nd series (1977), 259–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Jones, E., ‘London in the early seventeenth century: an ecological approach’, London Journal, 6 (1980), 123–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Butlin, R., ‘The population of Dublin in the late seventeenth century’, Irish Geography, 5, no.2 (1965), 51–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Langton, J., ‘Residential patterns in pre-industrial cities: some case studies from seventeenth-century Britain’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 65 (1975), 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Power, M. J., ‘The urban development of East London 1550–1700’ (unpublished University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1971).Google Scholar Hibberd, D. J., ‘Urban inequalities: social geography and demography in seventeenth-century York’ (unpublished University of Liverpool Ph.D. thesis, 1981).Google Scholar

35 Drawn up using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) (version 4:2).

36 Ralph, E. and Williams, M. E. (eds), ‘The inhabitants of Bristol in 1696’, Publications of the Bristol Record Society, 25 (1968).Google Scholar Slack, P., ‘The local incidence of epidemic disease: the case of Bristol 1540–1650’, in Slack, P. et al., The Plague Reconsidered: a New Look at its Origins and Effects in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England, Local Population Studies Supplement (1977), 49–62.Google Scholar Holman, J. R., ‘Orphans in pre-industrial towns: the case of Bristol in the late seventeenth century’, Local Population Studies, 15 (1975), 40–4.Google Scholar

37 Vance, J. E., ‘Land assignment in the pre-capitalist, capitalist and post-capitalist city’, Economic Geography, 47 (1971), 101–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Sjöberg, G., The Pre-industrial City (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

38 Ison, W., The Georgian Buildings of Bristol (1952; repr. 1978), 25–9.Google Scholar Pevsner, N., North Somerset and Bristol, The Buildings of England (1958), 364.Google Scholar

39 Quilici, R. H., ‘Turmoil in a city and an empire: Bristol factions 1700–1775’ (unpublished University of New Hampshire Ph.D. thesis, 1976), 38–89.Google Scholar

40 Ralph, and Williams, , ‘Inhabitants of Bristol 1696’, xxiii.Google Scholar

41 Power, , ‘Urban development of East London’, 164.Google Scholar

42 Walvin, J., English Urban Life 1776–1851 (1984).Google Scholar

43 Parish boundaries, of course, may not have coincided with social ones. Most of the Bristol parishes are small enough to reflect social boundaries accurately, but there were some larger more heterogeneous parishes: St James's City parish contained older, meaner houses near the centre as well as elegant new houses towards the city boundary. Analysis by street avoids this problem and is possible using computer sorting techniques but is too complicated to report here.

44 Patten, J. H. C., English Towns 1500–1700 (1978), 190.Google Scholar Corfield, , ‘Norwich 1650–1850’, 211.Google Scholar Power, , ‘Urban development of East London’, 163.Google Scholar

45 Hill, B., Eighteenth-Century Women: an Anthology (1984), 156–76.Google Scholar

46 Corfield, , ‘Norwich 1650–1850’, 257.Google Scholar Hoskins, W. G., ‘The Elizabethan Merchants of Exeter’, in Clark, P. (ed.), The Early Modern Town: A Reader (1976), 150.Google Scholar

47 Beier, A. L., ‘The social problems of an Elizabethan county town: Warwick 1580–90’, in Clark, P. (ed.), Country Towns in Pre-industrial England (1981), 45–85, 60–1.Google Scholar Slack, P., ‘Poverty and politics in Salisbury, 1597–1666’, in Clark, P. and Slack, P. (eds), Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500–1700. Essays in Urban History (1972), 164–203, 166–7.Google Scholar Malcolmson, R. W., Life and Labour in England 1700–1780 (1981), 79.Google Scholar

48 Holman, , ‘Orphans in pre-industrial towns’, 43.Google Scholar

49 Baigent, , ‘Bristol society’.Google Scholar