Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-30T21:52:56.110Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Secrecy and the city, 1870–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2011

David Vincent
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper discusses the treatment of space and social interaction in the emerging modern city, and argues that the notion of ‘reserve’ developed by Georg Simmel blurs the key polarity between secrecy and privacy. Case histories of home visiting and gossip are used to examine how the boundaries between the two forms of blocked communication were constructed and negotiated in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcentury British city. There was no unilinear transition from open to closed personal contacts, but rather a series of conflicts and anxieties generated by issues of class and political authority. The contingent distinction between privacy and secrecy revolved around the question of trust, which was in turn a function of domestic and corporate prosperity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , December 1995 , pp. 341 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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

1 He was persistently denied promotion in Berlin, partly because of his Jewish background, and only became a professor at Strasbourg in 1914, four years before the end of his life. See Frisby, D., George Simmel (London, 1984), 21–4Google Scholar.

2 Simmel, G., The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. and trans. Wolff, K.H. (Toronto, 1950), 336Google Scholar.

3 G. Simmel, ‘The metropolis and mental life’, reprinted in Thompson, K. and Tunstall, J., Sociological Perspectives (Harmondsworth, 1971), 83Google Scholar. The essay was first published in 1903. For the development of the German group of urban sociologists see, Lees, A., ‘The metropolis and the intellectual’, in Sutcliffe, A. (ed.), Metropolis 1890-1940 (London, 1984), 71–4Google Scholar.

4 Simmel, ‘Metropolis and mental life’, 87-8.

5 Engels, F., The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 (London, 1920 ed.), 24Google Scholar.

6 Frisby, D., Fragments of Modernity (Cambridge, 1985), 71Google Scholar.

7 Benjamin, W., Illuminations (London, 1973), 193Google Scholar.

8 Bok, S., Secrets. On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (Oxford, 1984), 6Google Scholar.

9 Vincent, D., The Culture of Secrecy in Britain 1832-1989 (Oxford, 1996, forthcoming), ch. 2Google Scholar.

10 Warren, S.D. and Brandeis, L.D., ‘The right to privacy’, Harvard Law Review, IV, 5 (15 December 1890), 196Google Scholar.

11 Jones, M. (ed.), Privacy (Newton Abbot, 1974), 1Google Scholar.

12 Verlecky, L.C., ‘The concept of privacy’, in Young, J.B. (ed.), Privacy (London, 1978), 18Google Scholar.

13 Westin, A.F., Privaqy and Freedom (New York, 1967), 7Google Scholar.

14 2nd edition, 1760, vol. II.

15 Friedrich, C.J., ‘Secrecy versus privacy: the democratic dilemma’, Nomos (New York, 1971), 105Google Scholar.

16 D.J. Olsen, ‘Victorian London: specialisation, segregation and privacy’, Victorian Studies (March 1974), 12-13.

17 Marshall, H. and Trevelyan, A., Slum (London, 1933)Google Scholar. Title of opening chapter.

18 Masur, G., Imperial Berlin (London, 1971), 29–82Google Scholar; H. Matzerath, ‘Berlin 1890-1940’, in Sutcliffe, Metropolis, 293-8; A.F. Weber, The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century (1899).

19 Vizetelly, H., Berlin under the New Empire (London, 1879), 1, 26Google Scholar.

20 Masterman, C.F.G., ‘Realities at home’, in Masterman, C.F.G. (ed.), The Heart of Empire (London, 1902), 1–52Google Scholar. One of the main contrasts between the German urban sociologists and the post-war Chicago School was the latter's concentration on variation within cities, rather than between cities and other settlements. Lee, ‘Metropolis and the intellectual’, 75-7.

21 See especially the writings collected together in Simmel, Sociology of Georg Simmel, 307-78.

22 Smith, F.B., ‘British post office espionage 1844’, Historical Studies, 4 (1970)Google Scholar; Vincent, D., ‘Communications, community and the state’, in Emsley, C. and Walvin, J. (eds), Artisans, Peasants and Proletarians (London, 1985), 166–70Google Scholar.

23 For a succinct summary of the passage and contents of the Acts, see Report of the Departmental Committee on Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act of 1911 [Franks], Cmnd 5104 (1972), 23–5Google Scholar. Also, Vincent, D., ‘The origins of public secrecy in Britain’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 1 (1991), 238–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Porter, B., The Origins of the Vigilant State (London, 1987), 67–78Google Scholar.

25 Dickens, , Bleak House (Everyman, ed., London, 1907), 196Google Scholar.

26 O. Hill, Homes of the London Poor (2nd ed., 1883; reprinted London, 1970), 56; Summers, A., ‘A home from home — women's philanthropic work in the nineteenth century’, in Burman, S. (ed.), Fit Work for Women (London, 1979), 43–5Google Scholar.

27 Lewis, J., Women and Social Action in Victorian and Edwardian England (Aldershot, 1991), 38–9Google Scholar.

28 Bosanquet, C., A Handy Book for Visitors of the Poor in London (London, 1874), 3Google Scholar.

29 Hill, Homes of the London Poor, 25. Also, Steer, M.H., ‘Rescue work by women among women’, in Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, Women‘s Mission to Women (London, 1893), 153Google Scholar.

30 Sims, G.R., How the Poor Live (London, 1883), 10Google Scholar. Also, A. Mearns, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London (1883; reprinted London, 1970), 9; Bowmaker, E., The Housing of the Working Class (London, 1895), 13Google Scholar; Wright, T., The Great Unwashed (London, 1868), 149Google Scholar.

31 See, Wohl, A.S., ‘Sex and the single room: incest among the Victorian working class’, in Wohl, A.S. (ed.), The Victorian Family (London, 1978), 197–218Google Scholar.

32 Loch, C.S., Charity and Social Work (London, 1910), 402Google Scholar.

33 Young, A.F. and Ashton, E.T., British Social Work in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1956), 104Google Scholar.

34 Surridge, H.A.D., A Manual of Hints to Visiting Friends of the Poor (London, 1871), 6Google Scholar.

35 Young and Ashton, British Social Work, 89, 103-5.

36 Burdett-Coutts, Women‘s Mission to Women, xvii.

37 Richmond, M.E., Friendly Visiting Among the Poor (London, 1899), 147Google Scholar.

38 Bosanquet, A Handy Book for Visitors, 16-17.

39 Surridge, Manual of Hints, 10-11.

40 On the growing collaboration between the visitors and the Poor Law authorities, see Summers, ‘A home from home’, 54.

41 Vincent, Poor Citizens, 14.

42 Loane, M., From Their Point of View (London, 1908), 74–5Google Scholar.

43 For a detailed account of an eventually unsuccessful attempt to avoid the humiliation of exposure by a family whose poverty was forcing it towards the workhouse, see Steel, F., Ditcher's Row (London, 1939), 57, 72–8Google Scholar.

44 Ross, E., “‘Not the sort that would sit on the doorstep”; respectability in pre-World War I London neighborhoods’, International Labor and Working Class History, 27 (Spring 1985), 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Loane, M., Neighbours and Friends (London, 1910), 18Google Scholar.

46 Vincent, D., Literacy and Popular Culture (Cambridge, 1989), 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Digby, A. and Searby, P., Children, School and Society in Nineteenth-Century England (London, 1981), 90–1Google Scholar.

47 Pensions were to be denied to those who had been in receipt of Poor Law Relief during the previous ten years, or who had a recent criminal record. The provisions were dropped in 1919.

48 The report on which the legislation was based had drawn attention to the increasing difficulty of ‘ascertaining the wants of the applicant’, especially in the ‘large towns’, and recommended a self-acting test which would avoid the necessity for detailed knowledge. Administration and Operation of the Laws for the Relief of the Poor (1834), PP 1834 XXVII (Harmondsworth, 1974 ed.), 116.

49 Dickens, Bleak House, 161.

50 But see Melanie Tebbutt‘s recent pioneering study, ‘Women‘s talk? Gossip and “women‘s words” in working-class communities, 1880-1939‘, in Davies, A. and Fielding, S. (eds), Workers' Worlds. Cultures and Communities in Manchester and Salford 1880-1939 (Manchester, 1992)Google Scholar.

51 Tebbutt, ‘Women's talk’, 49-68.

52 Rice, M. Spring, Working-Class Wives (London, 1981Google Scholar; 1st pub. 1939), 15.

53 On the growth of the ideology of ‘self-containedness’ and seclusion, see Muthesius, S., The English Terraced House (New Haven, 1982), 249Google Scholar.

54 Craddock, M., A North Country Maid (London, 1960), 51Google Scholar. Also, Hoggart, R., The Uses of Literacy (Harmondsworth, 1958), 120–31Google Scholar; Seabrook, J., The Everlasting Feast (London, 1974), 157Google Scholar.

55 Vincent, Poor Citizens, 3.

56 Ayers, P., The Liverpool Docklands (Liverpool, 1988), 67Google Scholar; White, J., The Worst Street in North London (London, 1986), 72–80Google Scholar.

57 Goodhead, E.E., The West End Story. Derby During the Depression: A Social and Personal History (Matlock, 1983), 25Google Scholar.

58 Tebbutt, ‘Women's talk?’, 63.

59 White, Worst Street in North London, 134.

60 For a sensitive study of the gains and losses of moving to a new estate, see A. Hughes and K. Hunt, ‘A culture transformed? Women's lives in Wythenshawe in 1930’, in Davies and Fielding, Workers' Worlds, 74-96.

61 Attlee, C.R., The Social Worker (London, 1920), 126Google Scholar.

62 Sewell, M., ‘The beginnings of social training 1890-1903’, in Macadam, E., The Equipment of Social Workers (London, 1925), 25–32Google Scholar.

63 For a full account of the statutory and professional encouragement of systematic record keeping in the various branches of relief and welfare, see Macadam, E., The New Philanthropy (London, 1934), 94–7Google Scholar.

64 Gilbert, B.B., Social Policy 1914-1939 (London, 1970), 25–32Google Scholar; Abrams, P., ‘The failure of social reform 1918-20’, Past and Present, 24 (1963), 44Google Scholar; Lowe, R., ‘The erosion of state intervention in Britain, 1917-24’, Economic History Review, XXXI (May 1978), 270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Deacon, A., In Search of the Scrounger (London, 1976), 26–8Google Scholar.

66 Halstead, J., Harrison, R. and Stevenson, J., ‘The reminiscences of Sid Elias’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 38 (Spring 1979), 45Google Scholar; Croucher, R., We Refuse to Starve in Silence (London, 1987), 203–21Google Scholar; Morgan, J., Conflict and Order (Oxford, 1987), 245–56Google Scholar.

67 Vincent, Poor Citizens, 70-9.

68 Willis, E., Whatever Happened to Tom Mix? (London, 1970), 110Google Scholar. Also, Dash, J., Good Morning Brothers (London, 1969), 10Google Scholar; Oxley, W., ‘Are you working?’, in Common, J. (ed.), Seven Shifts (London, 1938), 126Google Scholar; Walsh, J., Not Like This (London, 1953), 82Google Scholar.

69 Hill, A., A Cage of Shadows (London, 1977), 33Google Scholar.

70 Brierley, W., Means-Test Man (Nottingham, 1983Google Scholar; 1st pub. 1935), 204.

71 Benson, E., To Struggle is to Live. A Working Class Autobiography, Vol. 2 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1980), 30Google Scholar.

72 Benson, To Struggle is to Live, 38-9. The encounter degenerated into a shouting match, and Benson‘s relief was suspended for five weeks, including the Christmas period.

73 Bakke, F.W., The Unemployed Man, A Social Study (London, 1933), 94Google Scholar; Beales, H.L. and Lambert, R.S. (eds), Memoirs of the Unemployed (London, 1967), 153Google Scholar; Deacon, In Search of the Scrounger, 59. This was a well-established tradition. For an account of neighbours reporting anonymously On alleged breaches in the Poor Law regulations in the otherwise supportive Lancashire factory communities during the cotton famine of the early 1860s, see Waugh, E., Home Life of the Factory Operatives (London, 1867), 50-2, 183Google Scholar.

74 Orwell, G., The Road to Wigan Pier (Penguin, ed., London, 1989), 72Google Scholar.

75 Investigation of Claims for Benefit (1929), Appendix 1, PRO, PIN7/160.

76 PRO, PIN7/160.

77 Report of the Committee on Privacy [Younger], Cmnd. 5012 (July 1972), 24Google Scholar.

78 Ibid., 23.

79 Ibid.