Welfare and patronage in the Victorian Post Office

邮局是19世纪英国除军队外最大的公共和私人雇主。到1914年，共有24万名男性和女性，占英国公务员总数的近三分之一，分布在全国约2.4万个办公室。尽管邮局的活动网络分散，但它实行全国统一的工资结构和服务条件、退休金制度，并逐步实行竞争性任命程序。自1855年以来，它也是公共部门中第一个拥有自己的医务官员的部门，并对其雇员在上任和离职时进行体检。作为一个受财政部和（偶尔）内政部控制的中央官僚机构，邮局保存着非常完整和全面的人员记录。然而，这些就业记录从未被系统地用于调查维多利亚时代政治和社会历史上一些反复出现的问题，而这些问题可能会给人们带来更清晰的启示。首先，作为一个贯穿18世纪末和19世纪的持续扩张的组织，邮局是衡量政府增长的一个独特的案例研究，或者通常被称为“政府革命”，即在1853年Northcote-Trevelyan报告发表后的几十年左右，一个业余和裙带关系部门管理的旧贵族制度让位于基于专业知识的“现代”公务员服务程序。第二，邮局机构是19世纪男女的一个相当大的样本，他们有关健康、收入和储蓄的个人数据可能产生关于维多利亚时代英国生活水平的新的定量和定性信息。本项目寻求资助的两名博士将从两个具体领域研究维多利亚邮局的雇佣文化：第一，19世纪30年代至80年代在任用员工方面从任免到竞争考试的转变；第二，健康和福利的标准，以及支付和服务的条件，邮政雇员在19世纪享有，但特别强调1855年之后的几十年。第一个项目将使用POST 1（库务通信）和POST 57（工作人员招聘）的大量材料，研究在引入竞争性考试之前的一段时间内邮局的任命情况。到19世纪90年代，以更公正的方式任命无疑已成为常态，但如何以及何时任命尚不清楚。历史学家在维多利亚政府的其他部门，特别是海军部、陆军和英格兰教会，也调查了类似的从青睐到功绩的转变，但邮局没有受到同样的问题，因为作为一个机构，它深入到普通社会和大多数地方，调查结果可能非常有启示意义。第二个博士学位将使用POST 58-66的一系列就业记录来研究维多利亚邮局劳动力的社会和经济状况，特别是关注员工的工资、工作时间和健康，以及该组织独特的养老金制度。如果有可能根据邮局雇员的医疗记录创建有意义的纵向数据集，博士学位将具有更多的定量性质，为工业化期间的健康、营养、发病率和生活水平的不断扩大的研究增加一个新的案例研究，这些研究来自犯罪和军事记录的类似数据，以及来自友好社会的记录。如果邮局的人事数据不足以进行这样的研究，那么这个项目将更广泛和描述性地研究福利国家的缩影，这是由19世纪下半叶P的演变所提出的

The Post Office was the single largest public and private employer in 19th century Britain outside of the armed forces. By 1914 its establishment was 240,000 men and women, representing just under one third of the entire UK civil service, distributed nationwide in c. 24,000 offices. Although a diffuse network of activities, the Post Office operated a common national wage structure and conditions of service, superannuation system, and over time, a competitive appointment process. It was also the first part of the public sector to have its own Medical Officer, dating from 1855, and to subject its employees to medical examination on appointment to and on discharge from duty. As a centralised bureaucracy subject to both Treasury and (on occasion) Home Office control, the Post Office maintained remarkably full and comprehensive records of its personnel. Yet these employment records have never been used systematically to investigate some recurrent problems of Victorian political and social history on which they might throw a clearer light. Firstly, as a continuous and expanding organisation across the late 18th and19th centuries the Post Office is a unique case-study for measuring government growth, or what has conventionally been called the 'revolution in government', whereby an older aristocratic system of amateur and nepotistic departmental management gave way to 'modern' civil service procedures based on expertise, some time around the decades following the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1853. Secondly, the Post Office establishment is a significantly large sample of 19th century men and women whose personal data relating to health, income and savings might generate new quantitative and qualitative information about the standards of living in Victorian Britain. The two PhDs for which funding is sought in this project will look at the employment culture of the Victorian Post Office in two specific areas: first, the shift from patronage to competitive examination in the appointment of staff between the 1830s and the 1880s; and secondly, standards of health and welfare, and conditions of pay and service, enjoyed by Post Office employees across the 19th century, but with particular emphasis on the decades after 1855. The first project will use the large run of material in POST 1 (Treasury correspondence) and POST 57 (Staff recruitment) to examine how post office appointments were made in the period before the introduction of competitive examination. Appointment by more disinterested means had certainly become the norm by the 1890s, but how and when is not clear. Historians have investigated similar shifts from favour to merit in other parts of Victorian government, notably, the Admiralty, the Army and the Church of England, but the Post Office has not been subjected to the same questions, and since as an institution it reached further into ordinary society and most localities, the findings could be very revealing. The second PhD will use the series of employment records at POST 58-66 to study the social and economic conditions of the Victorian Post Office workforce, looking particularly at the wages, hours and health of employees, as well as the distinctive pension system of the organisation. If it proves possible to create meaningful longitudinal datasets based on the medical records of the Post Office employees, the PhD will take on a more quantitative nature, adding a new case-study to the expanding research on fitness, nutrition, morbidity and standards of living during industrialisation provided by similar data from criminal and military records, and from the records of friendly societies. If the Post Office personnel data is not robust enough for such a study, then this project will look more generally and descriptively at the welfare state in miniature suggested by the evolution over the second half of the 19th century of the P