Metropolitan estates of the middle class, 1800-50: Probates and death duties revisited

Historical Research

Volumn 70, Issue 173, 1997, Pages 294-311

  Green, David R ^a   Owens, Alastair ^b  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^b QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 1642481698     PISSN: 09503471     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2281.00045     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. Recent studies have included C. Behagg, Politics and Production in the Early 19th Century (1990)
2. G. Crossick and H.-G. Haupt, The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe, 1780-1914 (1995)
3. L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes (1987)
4. P. Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class (1989)
5. Class, Power and Social Structure in British 19th-century Towns, ed. R J. Morris (Leicester, 1986)
6. idem, Class, Sect and Party (Manchester, 1990)
7. S. Nenadic, 'Businessmen, the urban middle classes and the "dominance" of manufacturers in 19th-century Britain', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xliv (1991), 66-85
8. J. Seed, 'From "middling" sort to middle class in late 18th and early 19th century England', in Social Orders and Social Classes in Europe since 1500, ed. M. L. Bush (1992), pp. 114-35
9. D. Wahrtnan, Imagining the Middle Class (Cambridge, 1995)
10. The Culture of Capital, ed. J. Wolff and J. Seed (Manchester, 1988)
11. Many of the criticisms levelled at the use of these sources have focused on research by W. D. Rubinstein on the very wealthy. For early discussion of the use of probate data in this research see W. D. Rubinstein, 'The Victorian middle classes: wealth, occupation and geography', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xxx (1977), 602-23
12. idem, Men of Property (1981), pp. 12-16
13. F. Inderwick, The Law of Wills as administered in the Court of Probate in England (1866), p. 3
14. For more detailed discussion of women's rights in relation to inheritance and disposal of property see L, Holcombe, Wives and Property (Oxford, 1983)
15. S. Staves, Married Women's Separate Property in England, 1600-1833 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990)
16. Camp, p. xxxviii; J. Cox, Wills, Inventories and Death Duties (1988), p. 1
17. J. Dodds, Probate, Administration and Legacy Duties (Middlesbrough, 1879), p. 5
18. See W. D. Rubinstein, 'The structure of wealth-holding in Britain, 1809-39: a preliminary anatomy', ante, lxv (1992), 86
19. Whilst the PCC itself specialized in probate the other ecclesiastical courts also dealt with a variety of other matters, including matrimonial disputes and some forms of defamation. Between 1855 and 1868 these jurisdictions, together with probate business, were removed from the remit of the ecclesiastical courts (see S. Waddams, Law, Politics and the Church of England (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 4-7)
20. Rubinstein, 'Structure of wealth-holding', p. 76 notes that a total of 905 persons left £100,000 or more in Britain between 1809 and 1839
21. S. Gunn, 'The "failure" of the Victorian middle class: a critique", in The Culture of Capital, pp. 20-2; Seed, pp. 121-3
22. T. Gwynne, The Law Relating to the Duties on Probates (1834), p. 23
23. See D. Cannadine, 'Aristocratic indebtedness in the 19th century: the case reopened', Econ. Hist, Rev., 2nd ser., xxx (1977), 624-50
24. Rubinstein, Men of Property, p. 24
25. Our knowledge of landownership in cities is relatively limited and largely restricted to studies of aristocratic estates. With a few notable exceptions we know relatively little about patterns of land or house ownership amongst the urban middle class. For a general discussion of this issue see R. J. Morris, 'The middle class and British towns and cities of the Industrial Revolution', in The Pursuit of Urban History, ed. D. Fraser and A. Sutcliffe (1983), pp. 293-7
26. More specifically, Morris has suggested the existence of a property cycle whereby investment in housing took place later in life as a means of increasing rentier income (see R. J. Morris, 'The middle class and the property cycle during the Industrial Revolution', in The Search for Wealth and Stability, ed. T. C. Smout (1979), pp. 91-113)
27. See Morris, 'Middle class and property cycle', p. 109
28. W. D. Rubinstein, 'Cutting up rich: a reply to F. M. L. Thompson', Earn. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser, xlv (1992), 357
29. D, M. Evans, The City, or the Physiology of London Business (1845), p. 190
30. See in particular Rubinstein, Men of Property and idem, Capitalism, Culture and Decline in Britain, 1750-1990 (1993), esp. pp. 21-44. Rubinstein's work has provoked several responses too numerous to list here
31. For discussion of the term 'gentleman' see G. Crossick, 'From gentleman to residuum: languages of social description in Victorian Britain', in Language, History and Class, ed. P. J. Corfield (Oxford, 1991), pp. 150-78, 'Gentlemen' often appeared on the boards of guardians in several eastern London poor law unions. For example, in St George-in-the-East in 1846 3 of the 17 members were 'gentlemen' and in neighbouring Bethnal Green in 1853 7 of the 18 guardians were similarly recorded as 'gentlemen'
32. Exceptions to this rule include M. Berg, 'Women's property and the Industrial Revolution', Jour. Interdisciplinary Hist, xxiv (1993), 233-50