'Calculating class': Housing, lifestyle and status in the provincial English city, 1900-1950

Urban History

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 113-140

  Hayes, Nick ^a  

^a NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL IDENTITY; HOUSING; LIFESTYLE; PROPERTY MARKET; SOCIAL STATUS; TAX SYSTEM; TWENTIETH CENTURY; URBAN HISTORY;

ENGLAND; EURASIA; EUROPE; NOTTINGHAM [ENGLAND]; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 67849113955     PISSN: 09639268     EISSN: 14698706     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0963926808006007     Document Type: Article

References (144)

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14. S. Bronner (ed.), Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America, 1880-1820 (New York, 1989).
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16. A. Jackson, The Middle Classes 1900-1950 (Nairn, 1991), 11-12
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18. M. Savage and A. Miles, The Remaking of the British Working Class 1840-1940 (London, 1994), 17-18
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22. On the problems of placement, see M. Savage, J. Barlow, P. Dickens and A. Fielding, Property, Bureaucracy and Culture: Middle-Class Formation in Contemporary Britain (London, 1992), 219-26.
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25. R.J. Morris, 'Structure, culture and society in British towns', in Daunton (ed.), Cambridge Urban History, 398.
26. J. Burnett, A Social History of Housing 1815-1970 (London, 1978), 168-70
27. F.M.L. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society (London, 1988), 173-4
28. Perkin, Professional Society, 269
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30. P. Shurmer-Smith and K. Hannan, Worlds of Desire, Realms of Power: A Cultural Geography (London, 1994), 192
31. J.M. Richards, The Castles on the Ground: The Anatomy of Suburbia, 2nd edn (London, 1973), 13-18
32. R. Lewis and A Maude, The English Middle Classes (London, 1950), 18.
33. S. Gunn, 'Class, identity and the urban: The middle class in England, c. 1790-1950', Urban History, 31 (2004), 37-8, 41
34. Morris, 'Structure', 415-22
35. R. Trainor, 'Neither metropolitan nor provincial: The inter-war middle class', in A. Kidd and D. Nicholls (eds.), The Making of the British Middle Class? Studies of Regional and Cultural Diversity since the Eighteenth Century (Sutton, 1998), 203-13.
36. B.T. Robson, Urban Analysis: A Study of City Structure (Cambridge, 1971), 134
37. C.J. Thomas, 'Geographical aspects of the growth of the residential area of greater Nottingham in the 20th century', University of Nottingham Ph.D. thesis, 1968, 259.
38. More recent studies have allocated class within a broader valuation banding, G. Gordon, 'The status areas of early to mid-Victorian Edinburgh', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 4 (1979), 168-91
39. Savage et al., Property, 93-6.
40. Ibid., 35
41. R. Brewer, 'A note on the changing status of the registrar general's classification of occupations', British Journal of Sociology, 37 (1986), 131-40.
42. General Register Office, Census 1951: Classification of Occupations (London, 1956), x, 9
43. R. Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in an Industrial Society (London, 1959), 255
44. J. Hall and D. Caradog Jones, 'The social grading of occupations', British Journal of Sociology, 1 (1950), 31-55.
45. For an overview of classification systems, see I. Reid, Social Classes in Britain, 3rd edn (London, 1989), 52-74.
46. H. Berghoff, 'British businessmen as wealth-holders, 1870-1914: A closer look', Business History, 33 (1991), 236 n. 3.
47. Ibid., 223, 226, 236
48. Trainor (ed.), Elites, 66-70, 388-9
49. W.D. Rubinstein, Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain since the Industrial Revolution (New Jersey, 1981), 119-21
50. Rubinstein, 'Education', 186.
51. Although the subdivision by higher and lower professions does invoke a basic income differential, G. Routh, Occupation and Pay in Great Britain, 1906-60 (Cambridge, 1965), 3-10.
52. Crosland, Future, 174.
53. Perkin, Professional Society', 258-66, 359
54. Rubinstein, 'Education', 186-9
55. I.C. McManus, 'The wealth of distinguished doctors: A retrospective survey', British Medical Journal, 331 (2005), 1520-3
56. Routh, Occupation, 62-74, 103-8
57. W.D. Rubinstein, 'Wealth, elites and the class structure of modern Britain', Past and Present, 76 (1977), 99-126.
58. Perkin, Professional Society, 263, 266, 359.
59. L. Ridding, George Ridding: Schoolmaster and Bishop (London, 1908), 2-3, 242
60. R. Mellors, Men of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire (Nottingham, 1924), 119.
61. Rubinstein, 'Education', 186
62. Weber, 'Class', 186-7.
63. Weber, 'Class', 186-7.
64. A.M. Carr-Saunders and P.A. Wilson, The Professions (Oxford, 1933), 23
65. Routh, Occupations, 62-4
66. Perkin, Professional Society, 78
67. McKibbin, Classes, 44-5.
68. For the Nottingham solicitor Perkin, Professional Society, 78
69. McKibbin, Classes, 44-5. For the Nottingham solicitor sample the probate profile was as follows: Lower quartile -5,505, median -11,459, upper quartile -28,539 (constant prices 1913 base). Obviously, too, professional earnings fluctuated with life cycle.
70. Trainor, Elites, 84, 99
71. Stacey, Tradition, 152.
72. Across a range of 220 local leading joint stock companies (sample 1902) Wells and Hind were two and three times more likely to be named than other practices.
73. T. Barna, The Redistribution of Incomes through Public Finance in 1937 (Oxford, 1945), 68-9, 265-71
74. A.B. Atkinson, Unequal Shares (Harmondsworth, 1974), 37
75. Gunn, Public Culture, 20.
76. Using the Berghoff boundary of -25,000 at 1913 constant prices.
77. Nottinghamshire Archives, NAO CA/TR/5/4, Nottingham City Council, Epitome of Accounts for the Year Ending 31st March 1934. Rateable value median and average for the group was -68 p.a., standard deviation - 20 (base year 1934), clergy excluded.
78. The rateable value of a house was its gross estimated rental, less an allowance for maintenance, repairs and insurance. Rateable value offers a significantly finer objective measure of house prestige than that say used by Lloyd Warner's Index of Status Characteristics, which graded property on a seven point scale from very poor to excellent, see W. Lloyd Warner, Social Class in America: The Evaluation of Status (New York, 1960), 149-50.
79. For Nottingham, say in the 1930s, skilled working-class families' rateable expenditure accounted for some 3% of income at the median (±0.5% for our sample range), compared to 3-4% for lower- and lower-middle-middle-class incomes. Thereafter, for other than top earners, at incomes over -450 p.a., the rate/income ratio remained constant, J.R. Hick and U.K. Hicks, The Incidence of Local Rates in Great Britain (Cambridge, 1945), 24-5, 38, 40; Routh, Occupation 64, 68-9, 88.
80. Central Valuation Committee, First Eight Series of Representations Received by the Ministry of Health (London, 1934), 48-9
81. Rubinstein, Property, 117.
82. P. Masey, 'The expenditure of 1,360 British middle-class households in 1938-39', Journal of Royal Statistical Society, 105 (1942), 169.
83. Nottingham Guardian Journal, 4 May 1962.
84. Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth: Report No 1 Cmd 6171 (London, 1975), 98-9
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86. M. Daunton, Just Taxes: The Politics of Taxation in Britain 1914-1979 (Cambridge, 2002), 213, 333
87. Atkinson, Unequal Shares, 126-8
88. E.G. Horsman, 'The avoidance of estate duty by gifts inter vivos: Some quantitative evidence', Economic Journal, 85 (1975), 516-30
89. J. Whalley, 'Estate duty as a "voluntary tax": Evidence from stamp duty statistics,' Economic Journal, 84 (1974), 638-44.
90. Some 85% of adults left less than -100 on death before 1914, falling to 70% by 1950, Report of the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Inland Revenue for the Year Ending 31st March, 1901: Cd 764 (London, 1902)
91. ibid., Year Ending 31st March 1951: Cmd 8436 (London, 1952).
92. S. Groak, The Idea of Building: Thought and Action in the Design and Production of Buildings (London, 1992), 38-9
93. T. Gieryn, 'What buildings do', Theory and Society, 31 (2002), 35.
94. H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (London, 1991), 121, 338
95. Gieryn, 'Buildings,' 41
96. Richards, Castles, 33.
97. G. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places (Boston, MA, trans., 1964), 4-5, 47-8, 61.
98. J. Tosh, A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (Yale, 1999), 24-5, 47
99. C. Pooley, 'Patterns on the ground: Urban form, residential structure and the social construction of space', in Daunton (ed.), Cambridge Urban History, 429, 434
100. Jackson, Middle Classes, 34.
101. Lefebvre, Space, 160
102. Savage, 'Urban history', 71-2.
103. Crosland, Future, 176.
104. D. Cannadine, 'Victorian cities: How different?', in R.J. Morris and R. Rodger (eds.), The Victorian City: 1820-1914 (London, 1993), 134-5
105. K.C. Edwards, 'The Park Estate, Nottingham', in M.A. Simpson and T.H. Lloyd (eds.), Middle Class Housing in Britain (Newton Abbot, 1977), 162-4
106. Gunn, Public Culture, 70.
107. Weber, 'Class', 186, 188
108. Bourdieu, Distinction, 56
109. McKibbin, Classes, 198-202
110. D. Chapman, The Home and Social Status (London, 1955), 155-61.
111. Savage et al., Property, 94.
112. J. Gold and M. Gold, '"A place of delightful prospects": Promotional imagery and the selling of suburbia', in L. Zonn (ed.), Place Images in Media: Portrayal, Experience and Meaning (Savage, 1990), 159, 173
113. Burnett, Housing, 169, 249-51
114. Richards, Castles, 34-5.
115. J.W.R. Whitehand and C.M.H. Carr, Twentieth-Century Suburbs: A Morphological Approach (London, 2001), 68-80
116. H.J. Dyos, Victorian Suburb: A Study in the Growth of Camberwell (Leicester, 1961), 187-9.
117. J.R. Hicks, U.K. Hicks and C.E.V. Lesser, The Problem of Valuation for Rating (Cambridge, 1944), 37, 60.
118. C. Feinstein, National Income, Expenditure and Output of the United Kingdom 1855-1965 (Cambridge, 1972), Table 25, 65
119. A.E. Holmans, House Prices: Changes through Time at the National and Sub-National Level (London, 1990), 57-8
120. A.L. Bowley, Wages and Income in the United Kingdom since 1860 (Cambridge, 1937), 121-2. Before 1914, and in the second half of the twentieth century, the excess of income over housing cost was some 0.3-0.4% p.a.
121. Importantly, the market distortions introduced through rent control had lessened noticeably by 1934: The standardized valuation date used in this study, see Ministry of Health, Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Rent Restrictions Act Cmd 5621 (London, 1937)
122. Ministry of Health, Report to the Minister of Health by the Departmental Committee on Valuation for Rates 1939 (London, 1944), 9-11
123. Hicks et al., Problem, 56-60.
124. D. Caradog Jones, 'The cost of living for a sample of middle-class families', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 91 (1928), 471-5. Figures used are for large towns, upper and lower quintile range.
125. N.J. Morgan and M.J. Daunton, 'Landlords in Glasgow: A study of 1900', Business History 25 (1983), 264-5
126. Rubinstein, Property, 49
127. Jackson, Middle Classes, 34
128. J. Raynor, The Middle Class (London, 1969), 88.
129. In the range of 10-14% extra of incomes on rent, rates and repairs on incomes of £200-£500 p.a., but rising slightly thereafter, P.K. O'Brien, 'A middle-class budget enquiry', Review of Economic Studies 4 (1937), 218
130. Hicks and Hick, Incidence, 40-1.
131. S.D. Chapman, 'Economy, industry and employment', in J. Beckett (ed.), Centenary History of Nottingham (Manchester, 1997), 491.
132. NAO CA/TR/5/4, Epitome of Accounts.
133. Trainor, 'Middle class', 692
134. H. Long, The Edwardian House: The Middle-Class Home in Britain 1880-1914 (Manchester, 1993), 31.
135. Evening News, 27 Oct. 1934
136. Times, 29 Oct. 1934.
137. McKibbin, Classes, 61-2, 71-3.
138. Burnett, Housing, 186-7.
139. Brewer, 'Classification', 131-3.
140. Robson, Urban Analysis, 105, 134.
141. Marwick, Class, passim.
142. This marries to the 1930s characterization of houses with a gross valuation of over £40 p.a. (approximately £30 p.a. rateable value) as being 'large' - that is middle middle class or above, Hicks et al., Problem, 83.
143. Centers, Psychology, chs. 4 and 11
144. Lloyd Warner, Class, passim.