Nicola Tynan

MILL AND SENIOR ON LONDON'S WATER SUPPLY: AGENCY, INCREASING RETURNS, AND NATURAL MONOPOLY

In recent years, water utilities have received increasing attention. Issues of ownership and market structure have been the focus of academic research, policy debates and grassroots activism. These recent concerns echo the contentious debate that raged over water supply in nineteenth century London from 1810 to 1902. Nassau W. Senior and John Stuart Mill were major players in the debates, as both theorists and policy makers.

Network Externalities and Standardization: A Classroom Demonstration

This paper presents a classroom game that can be used to demonstrate network externalities, standardization, and switching costs. In the basic game, students independently choose a technology whose value depends on the total number of students choosing that technology. In the next round, sequential decision making is allowed that quickly leads to standardization. Introducing imperfect information and switching costs into subsequent rounds can lead to the real-world phenomenon of an inferior technology becoming the standard. This exercise can be used in principles of economics classes to teach these important concepts without requiring mathematical models. In more advanced classes, construction of the mathematical model behind the game may be assigned.

Sir Waldron Smithers and the Muddle of the Tory Middle

Waldron Smithers was highly critical of Attlees post‐war Labour government and placed much weight on Hayek having dedicated The Road to Serfdom to ‘the Socialists of all parties’. Accordingly, Smithers was assiduous in combating what he saw as a dangerous turn towards middle‐way policy within his own party in the late 1940s.

Mapping London's Water Companies and Cholera Deaths

Abstract John Snow has become a legendary figure partly for his use of spatial data to support his once controversial theory that cholera is a water-borne disease. For his study of London south of the Thames, Snow used data compiled by William Farr for the Registrar General during the 1853–4 epidemic. Using a larger data set compiled by William Farr in 1868, we use geographical information system-based software ArcGIS to spatially illustrate the cholera mortality rate in London subdistricts during the Asiatic cholera epidemics of 1848–9, 1853–4, and 1866. We then map the waterfields of Londons eight water companies allowing us to highlight the connection John Snow saw between the rate of cholera mortality within a subdistrict and which water company operated within that particular subdistrict. Our maps also show the connection between the rate of cholera mortality in each subdistrict and average subdistrict elevation, a variable which Farr initially believed was more significant than water source.

West Ham and the River Lea: A Social and Environmental History of London’s Industrialized Marshland, 1839–1914

crowds in front of print shops did not reflect the commercial reality of the trade: caricatures were aimed at those who could afford them, and ‘a crowded, bustling print-shop window did not sustain a business’ (150). Because the cost limited the market for graphic satires, print sellers often offered a variety of other commodities as well, including books, artists’ paints, and stationery supplies. The final chapter ‘Satiric Stock’ identifies significant patterns and trends in the satires produced by specific artists and publishers, and applies the technique of network visualisation graphing to examine changes in content evident in the prints Cruikshank and his publishers published between 1789 and 1810. As with any scholarly book, there are some deficiencies. Despite Baker’s repeated emphasis on the importance of location and geography, he includes no map of London to help the reader visualise these connections. Similarly, this book would have benefitted from a more judicious selection of illustrations; although Baker produces seven network visualisation graphs, he includes no caricatures to show how worn-out plates created imperfect prints, or how artists changed the copper plates to update an older print or correct an error. Since he identifies these features as a mark of the economic context within which such prints were produced, examples would have been useful. Chapter 5, ‘Trade Networks’ deservedmore attention; in its brief seven pages of text, it makes questionable assumptions, e.g. geographical location equates with business ties (118) or women in the print trades joined men in clubs and associations (118). In addition, it cites no source for the lengthy description of the career of apprentice Samuel Allgar (115–16) or for the assertion that print seller Samuel Fores and artist James Gillray were arrested for a print they published in 1796 (113–14). Failure to provide citations occurs elsewhere in the book, e.g. citations to letters of printer Thomas Spilsbury (69), or the account of the Cruikshank family (90). In other places, an entire book or article is cited, leaving the reader to search for the specific material mentioned in the text. In a few cases, the material Baker uses does not appear in the works cited, such as the quote from Thomas Tegg (139, n. 57). Despite these issues, Baker’s work is a welcome contribution to the literature and has many things to recommend it. His analysis takes a new approach to the study of caricature by focusing on the economic context in which prints were created and sold rather than the social, cultural, and political conditions that they reflected. He makes good use of such sources as Old Bailey online trial accounts, tax records, publisher’s catalogues, city directories and insurance records to provide welcome breadth to our understanding of graphic satire in late Georgian England. His detailed analysis of the economic forces that influenced the creation and distribution of caricature is an important contribution to our understanding of the era’s graphic satire and its marketplace. The appeal of this well-written and engaging book should extend beyond specialists in graphic satire, for it provides insight into business relationships, as well as the factors that influence the construction of social and cultural imagery.

The Control of Engagement Order: Attlee’s Road to Serfdom?

F. A. Hayek’s ideas have repeatedly reared their head in political debate and commentary over the past 70 years. For example, Hayek’s arguments in The Road to Serfdom are widely thought to have influenced the caustic tenor of Winston Churchill’s infamous “Gestapo” election broadcast of June 4, 1945.1 According to Churchill, any “Socialist Government” that sought to conduct “the entire life and industry of the country … would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo … [and] would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants—no longer servants and no longer civil.”2 Unsurprisingly, the average voter viewed Churchill’s charges with much dismay. As Ford Moran (Churchill’s personal physician) noted in his diary, the Gestapo jibe had “not gone down with anybody … No one agreed with the line that Winston had taken.”3 Similarly, The Recorder (a rabidly pro-Churchill popular newspaper) reported that many voters who heard “Mr. Churchill’s broadcast … [were much] surprised by his statement that Socialism must inevitably lead to totalitarianism.” As The Recorder went on to note, however, “the fact has already been well proved. Fast year appeared a book ‘The Road to Serfdom.’ It was recognized as one of the most important books of our generation.”4