Humphrey Southall

The Great Britain Historical GIS Project: From Maps to Changing Human Geography

Abstract A major project is building a specifically historical Geographical Information System (GIS) for Britain, mapping the evolving human geography of the past two centuries. This system combines the changing boundaries of administrative units with a large database of historical statistics. This paper focuses on England and Wales, where work is most advanced, and examines the sources for the mapping work, how the GIS is built, the uses of the GIS to map past geographies, and the potential for using mid-nineteenth-century boundaries for mapping much earlier sources including the Domesday Book.

On historical gazetteers

Gazetteers play an important but largely unsung role in historical research, used with maps to help place people and events in spatial context. Recent years have seen new interest in digital gazetteers as bridges between the geospatial web and the semantic web, but many existing digital gazetteers and data models do not meet the needs of historians, as they focus on physiographic landforms rather than places of cultural meaning or administrative units. Historical researchers need to know about places whose locations are not knowable with certainty. They need to know about alternative names for places, about how names have evolved over time, and the specific historical contexts in which names were used. While GIS researchers propose temporal gazetteers, which will somehow include the precise dates at which features were created and removed, we propose historical gazetteers in which dates appear mainly in order to help reference particular instances of place names. Longer term, we need cultural gazetteers o...

A century of inequality in England and Wales using standardized geographical units

This paper analyses geographical trends in relative poverty in England and Wales over the last century by comparing key quantitative indicators from key dates. The comparison is made possible by interpolating all the datasets onto a single standardized geography. Results suggest rising inequality in spite of the decline in absolute poverty.

Towards a geography of unionisation: the spatial organisation and distribution of early British trade unions

The paper examines the organizational structure and spatial distribution of the British trade union movement in the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the pre-1850 period. A number of novel sources are used, notably the archives of the Registrar of Friendly Societies. It is argued that existing stereotypes place excessive emphasis on the highly localised cultures of the miners; a number of different strands of experience are identified, but the dominant artisan unions evolved rapidly to organization on a national scale, reflecting a trade union culture in which loyalty to a craft dominated local ties.

Rebuilding the Great Britain Historical GIS, Part 1: Building an Indefinitely Scalable Statistical Database

Abstract The Great Britain Historical Geographical Information System (GIS) has been rebuilt around a single central table holding all statistics in one column, currently containing 14,541,491 data values. This architecture enables extremely flexible data handling, but requires that the context of each data value be captured entirely as metadata. Statistical reporting areas are defined via an ontology of administrative units, in which hierarchical relationships are compulsory while boundary polygons are optional. What a number measures is recorded via a relational implementation of the Data Documentation Initiative standard, locating each value within an n-dimensional matrix, or nCube, whose dimensions are variables such as age, gender, and occupation. The data library can be extended to additional countries or more statistical topics without adding any database tables.

Regional unemployment patterns among skilled engineers in Britain, 1851–1914

The paper presents an initial analysis of the distribution of unemployment by region among skilled engineering workers in the period 1851–1914. Statistics are derived from the unemployment insurance system operated by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (A.S.E.), the largest national union in Victorian Britain. The history of such union-run insurance schemes is briefly sketched, the focus on the A.S.E. being justified by its size, the length of its records, and the crucial economic position of its members. Methods of calculating an accurate unemployment rate from the available data are discussed and a crude monthly series for the entire period is presented. For each of the eight major economic depressions in the period, a sequence of maps depicts regional unemployment. Various other primary and secondary materials have been drawn on to corroborate the union unemployment statistics, and these suggest that the A.S.E. membership was, to some extent, representative of the industrial sector generally. The experience of the union in the depression years of 1858, 1862 and 1868 reflected that of the textile industry, while in later recessions the highest unemployment occurred in heavy engineering and shipbuilding districts. Regional and urban unemployment rates for the eight depressions are tabulated.

Area Deprivation Across the Life Course and Physical Capability in Midlife: Findings From the 1946 British Birth Cohort

Physical capability in later life is influenced by factors occurring across the life course, yet exposures to area conditions have only been examined cross-sectionally. Data from the National Survey of Health and Development, a longitudinal study of a 1946 British birth cohort, were used to estimate associations of area deprivation (defined as percentage of employed people working in partly skilled or unskilled occupations) at ages 4, 26, and 53 years (residential addresses linked to census data in 1950, 1972, and 1999) with 3 measures of physical capability at age 53 years: grip strength, standing balance, and chair-rise time. Cross-classified multilevel models with individuals nested within areas at the 3 ages showed that models assessing a single time point underestimate total area contributions to physical capability. For balance and chair-rise performance, associations with area deprivation in midlife were robust to adjustment for individual socioeconomic position and prior area deprivation (mean change for a 1-standard-deviation increase: balance, −7.4% (95% confidence interval (CI): −12.8, −2.8); chair rise, 2.1% (95% CI: −0.1, 4.3)). In addition, area deprivation in childhood was related to balance after adjustment for childhood socioeconomic position (−5.1%, 95% CI: −8.7, −1.6). Interventions aimed at reducing midlife disparities in physical capability should target the socioeconomic environment of individuals—for standing balance, as early as childhood.

Rebuilding the Great Britain Historical GIS, part 2: a geo-spatial ontology of administrative units

Abstract Mainstream geographical information systems techniques and packaged geographical information systems software are often inappropriate in historical contexts because they use geographical coordinates as a framework around which all other information is organized as “attribute data,” whereas in history locations are often the least certain part of our knowledge. A new and general architecture for documenting administrative units and organizing historical statistics is detailed, which prioritizes named entities and explicit semantic relationships such as “IsPartOf,” while holding coordinate data where available. This architecture is easily aligned with the recent development of geo-semantics by information scientists, meeting the formal requirements for a geo-spatial ontology, but was originally developed to enable the systematic computerization of traditional historical reference works, notably Frederick Youngs’ Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England.

Challenges in examining area effects across the life course on physical capability in mid-life: findings from the 1946 British Birth Cohort.

A major limitation of past work linking area socioeconomic conditions to health in mid-life has been the reliance on single point in time measurement of area. Using the MRC National Survey of Health and Development, this study for the first time linked place of residence at three major life periods of childhood (1950), young adulthood (1972), and mid-life (1999) to area-socioeconomic data from the nearest census years. Using objective measures of physical capability as the outcome, the purpose of this study was to highlight four methodological challenges of attrition bias, secular changes in socio-economic measures, historical data availability, and changing reporting units over time. In general, standing balance and chair rise time showed clear cross-sectional associations with residing in areas with high deprivation. However, it was the process of overcoming the methodological challenges, which led to the conclusion that in this example percent low social class occupations was the most appropriate measure to use when extending cross-sectional analysis of standing balance and chair rise to life course investigation.

Rebuilding the Great Britain Historical GIS. Part 3, Integrating qualitative content for a sense of place

Abstract. This article describes the integration of old maps, descriptive gazetteers, and a large library of travel writing into the Great Britain Historical GIS, presenting a range of approaches to geo-referencing diverse historical sources. While previous parts focused on legally defined administrative areas and statistical reporting units, these qualitative sources concern a less formal geography of “places.” The article links these to administrative units in two ways: Places are contained within units, but units are named after places and are consequently subsidiary to them. While rejecting existing gazetteer data standards, the approach aligns well with that of historical place-name researchers. The final section describes how the structure interacts with search engines to support a very popular website for lifelong learners.