EH.R: Location of British workplaces in 6th & 7th annual report of Commissioner of Labor, 1890 and 1891

[Andrew John Hobbs]

The 6th & 7th annual reports of the US Commissioner of Labor, 1890 and 1891,contain valuable information on incomes and expenditure of individual families in Great Britain, as comparators for US data in the reports, including expenditure on books and newspapers.

The locations of the families (I'm particularly interested in textile workers and iron/steel workers) were omitted from the reports, by agreement with the employers who permitted the data-gathering.

This is part of my PhD research on print culture and sense of place. I am looking at localised 'reading cultures', so need geographically specific information on reading habits, in Lancashire in particular.

I wondered whether the original correspondence (e.g. from British employers giving permission for interviews) and working papers detailing the preparation of those Commissioner of Labor reports has survived, which might reveal where those particular statistics (on household expenditure on books and newspapers) came from, i.e. which town(s).

Thanks

Andrew Hobbs
PhD candidate
University of Central Lancashire
UK
ajhobbs at uclan.ac.uk