The Geography of Old Age in England and Wales, 1851-1911

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The study of old age in history has generally had a narrow focus on welfare needs. Specific studies of the extreme poverty, or pauperism, of older people in late nineteenth-century London by Victorian contemporary Charles Booth (1840-1916) have remained remarkably influential for historical research on old age (Booth, 1894; Boyer and Schmidle, 2009). Old age is also examined through institutional care, particularly workhouse accommodation (Lievers, 2009; Ritch, 2014), while the subgroup of the elderly population that were not poor has been underexplored. However, my PhD thesis shows that pauperism was not a universal experience of old age between 1851 and 1911. Using transcribed census data for five selected counties in England and Wales, I find that pauperism was contingent upon many socio-economic factors recorded in census datasets, such as the occupational structure of older people, their living arrangements and their capacity to voluntarily retire from work based on their savings, land and capital. I find that, in some districts of the northern counties of Cheshire and the Yorkshire West Riding, the proportion of men described in the census as 'retired' and the proportion of women 'living on their own means' was greater than the respective proportions of men and women on welfare. For elderly men in particular, there were regional differences in agrarian work, where those in northern England are more likely to run smallholding 'family farms' whereas, in southern England, elderly men generally participate as agricultural labourers. I find that these differences play an important part in the likelihood of becoming pauperised, and adds to the idea of a north-south divide in old age pauperism (King, 2000). Furthermore, pauperism was predicated on the events and circumstances of people throughout their life histories and approaching their old age. My fellowship will enable me to expand upon these findings through limited additional research that stresses an examination of the experiences of all older people in England and Wales. Old age has to be assessed more widely in relation to regional and geographical characteristics. In this way, we refine Booth's London-centric focus on the relationship between poverty and old age. My fellowship will achieve these objectives by systematically tracing the diversity of old age experiences. A pilot study will link welfare data recorded on 1 January 1891 from the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers archive with the socio-economic indicators contained in the 1891 census conducted on 5 April, all incorporated at the level of c. 650 registration districts in England and Wales. I will also visit record offices to extract data on the names of older people recorded as receiving welfare in materials related to the New Poor Law, thereby expanding on the PhD's examination of the life histories of older people. With the key findings from my PhD presented above, I will spend my time addressing a wider audience on my research. As I will argue in blogs and webinars addressed to Age UK, the International Longevity Centre UK and History and Policy, a monolithic narrative of old age as associated with welfare dependency and gradual decline has been constructed since Booth's research in the late nineteenth century. This narrative has remained fixed through the growth of our ageing population, and the development of both old age pensions and the modern welfare state. My research alternatively uses historical censuses that reveal the economic productivity of older people in a manner that is not satisfactorily captured in present day discourse. I will also receive training on how to address my PhD to local schools, through the presentation of maps that present variations in the proportions of older people receiving welfare, and in the application of transcribed census data.