R. J. Morris

Civil society and the nature of urbanism: Britain, 1750–1850

The concept of civil society provides a useful means of evaluating the social and political relationships of British towns. Civil society refers to the non-prescriptive relationships that lie between the state and kin. Such relationships are associated with the existence of the free market, the rule of law and a strong voluntary associational culture. Both theoretical analysis and historical evidence link civil society with the nature of urban places, their complexity, their function as a central place and their operation as a focus for flows of information. Between 1780 and 1820 the agencies of civil society in Britain provided an arena for making choices, for reasoned informed debate and for the collective provision and consumption of services in an open and pluralist manner.

Urban biography: Scotland, 1700–2000

Urban biographies are growing in numbers upon the shelves. A clutch of mainly English ones were reviewed recently in these pages by David Reeder with a sense of cautious enthusiasm and warnings about the dangers of fragmentation in these often topic-oriented multi-authored volumes. Recent examples include Donald Millers 1996 study of Chicago, an example of unashamedly scholarly boosterism. The massive Burrows and Wallace study of New York followed in 1999 and presented a detailed episodic account of the city. In 1,383 pages they have still only got to 1898. This book displayed a love of city with overwhelming knowledge, but presented a very readable story for those with stamina. Scotland already has the two Glasgow volumes, also included in Reeders review. To this have now been added multi-authored studies of Aberdeen and Dundee and two more accounts of Glasgow

In Search of the Urban Middle Class: Record linkage and methodology: Leeds 1832

The developing techniques of historical nominal record linkage can make substantial contributions to the questions raised by our present understanding of the urban middle class in the first half of the nineteenth century. Cheap printing, institutionalization, and increasing political and state action provided a growing variety of information about individuals – directories, poll books, lists of shareholders, pewholders, stallholders, members of committees and societies, signatures to petitions and requisitions, wills, insurance policies, and by the 1840s marriage and census data. By their nature most of these listings were concerned with the politically and socially active, and with those above a minimal level of social status and economic power. In practice, this meant predominantly but not exclusively members of a potential middle class. Under certain constraints the lists may be merged to provide surrogate answers to some ghostly questionnaire regarding patterns of association, behaviour and social status, major social divisions and networks, and the characteristics of those who took part in institutions and activities traditionally identified with the middle class.