Jean Turnbull

Modal choice and modal change: the journey to work in Britain since 1890

The paper uses 1,834 individual life histories to examine changes in journey to work transport modes in Britain since 1890, and 90 in-depth interviews to investigate modal choice amongst commuters since the 1930s. There have been three main periods of change in the transport mode used for commuting, but there has also been considerable inertia in individual modal choice. The reasons why people use particular forms of transport have been quite stable over time, with some long-established differences between men and women. It is suggested that such trends have implications for the formulation of present-day transport policy.

Migration and mobility in Britain since the eighteenth century.

This book provides a new perspective on migration in [Great Britain] in the past examining in detail the life-time residential moves of over sixteen thousand people spanning the eighteenth nineteenth and twentieth centuries.... The migration experience [is] related both to other life-cycle events affecting families and individuals and also to broader social economic and cultural changes in the structure of society. [The book] discusses in detail the reasons why people moved and the ways in which migration was related to factors such as employment change housing aspirations family circumstances personal crises and external events such as war. (EXCERPT)

The Impact of New Transport Technologies on Intraurban Mobility: A View from the Past

In this paper the authors reappraise the ways in which travellers in urban areas have interacted with new transport technologies and argue that mobility change over the past century or so may be less than is sometimes assumed. Attention is focused on changes in the journey to work over the 20th century, on the experience of new travel technologies by an adolescent female in the late 19th century, on perceptions of competing forms of urban transport in Manchester and Glasgow in the interwar period, and on changes in the everyday mobility of children aged 10–11 years since the 1940s. It is argued that, although the material experience of everyday transport has changed significantly over the past century with the advent of new transport technologies, these did not necessarily change the aspirations and decisions of people with regard to everyday mobility. Moreover, such changes did not always bring benefits to all travellers.

COMMUTING, TRANSPORT AND URBAN FORM: MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW IN THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY

The paper explores the links between changing transport technology, individual mobility and urban form in the British cities of Manchester and Glasgow in the mid-twentieth century. The variability of individual commuting preferences is stressed, and it is argued that decisions about the provision of public transport rarely took into account the views of individual commuters. It is also suggested that factors governing modal choice have remained quite stable from the 1930s to the 1960s.

...everywhere she went I had to tag along beside her: Family, life course and everyday mobility in England since the 1940s.

Mobility is one of the most important constituents of everyday life, yet it is rarely studied historically and we know little of how it relates to changing family and life course constraints. Using data drawn from oral life histories, this article examines changes in everyday mobility over the past 60 years focusing both on changes over the life course and on the constraints imposed by family structures. We argue that, like residential migration, daily mobility has been closely related to the life course, with women especially affected by the constraints of motherhood and marriage. However, there is evidence that such constraints have changed over time, and that some older people today enjoy more mobility than they did at earlier life stages. We also argue that the independent mobility of children was closely related to the family structure in which they were situated, but that these constraints have changed much less over the past 60 years. The oral testimonies examined also highlight the variability of mobility experiences and the role of the individual in fashioning mobility behavior.

Changing home and workplace in Victorian London: the life of Henry Jaques, shirtmaker

The paper uses unusually rich evidence from a manuscript life history written in 1901 from personal diaries to explore the changing relationship between home and workplace in Victorian London. The life history of Henry Jaques demonstrates the way in which decisions about employment and residence were related both to each other and to stages of the family life course. The uncertainty of work, lack of income to support a growing family, rising aspirations, the constant threat of illness, the ease of moving between rented property, close ties between home and workplace, the stresses produced by home working, and the attractions of suburbanization all interacted to shape the residential and employment history of Jaques and his family. The themes exemplified by this detailed life history were also relevant to many other people. Evidence collected from a large-scale project on lifetime residential histories is used to place the experiences of Henry Jaques in a broader context, and to show how they related to the changing social and economic structure of Victorian London.

Leaving Home: the Experience of Migration From the Parental Home in Britain Since c. 1770

Leaving the parental home for the first time is one of the most significant migration decisions in the life course, but relatively little is known about such events in the past. This article uses high-quality longitudinal data on the lifetime residential history of individuals to investigate changes in the age at leaving home both over time and between different groups of the population. The age at which men and women left the parental home fell from the late eighteenth century to the twentieth century, with women usually leaving home earlier than men before the twentieth century. Men were most likely to leave home for employment and women for marriage, and the number of men and women leaving home alone increased over time. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was quite common for the first move from the parental home to occur with a spouse and children after a period of coresidence with parents. The article sheds new light on an important life course transition and raises questions about the meaning of leaving home.