Welfare and patronage in the Victorian Post Office

邮局是19世纪英国除武装部队外最大的公共和私人雇主。到1914年，它的建立有24万名男性和女性，占整个英国公务员队伍的不到三分之一，分布在全国约2.4万个办公室。邮局虽然有分散的活动网络，但实行共同的国家工资结构和服务条件、养老金制度，并随着时间的推移实行竞争性任命程序。它也是公共部门中第一个拥有自己的医生的部门，可追溯到1855年，并要求其雇员在上岗和离职时接受体检。作为一个受财政部和(有时)内政部控制的中央官僚机构，邮政署对其人员保持着非常全面和全面的记录。然而，这些就业记录从未被系统地用来调查维多利亚时代政治和社会历史中一些反复出现的问题，它们可能会让人更清楚地了解这些问题。首先，邮局作为一个在18世纪末和19世纪不断扩大的组织，是衡量政府增长的一个独特的案例研究，也就是传统上被称为“政府革命”的，在1853年Northcote-Trevelyan报告之后的几十年左右，由业余和裙带关系的部门管理组成的古老的贵族制度让位于基于专业知识的“现代”公务员程序。其次，邮局的编制是19世纪男性和女性的一个相当大的样本，他们与健康、收入和储蓄有关的个人数据可能会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在两个具体领域研究维多利亚邮局的就业文化：第一，19世纪30年代至19世纪80年代在任命工作人员时从赞助制度向竞争性考试的转变；第二，19世纪邮局员工享有的健康和福利标准，以及薪酬和服务条件，但特别强调1855年后的几十年。第一个项目将利用员额1(财务处函件)和员额57(工作人员征聘)中的大量材料，审查在采用竞争性考试之前的一段时间内如何任命邮局人员。到19世纪90年代，通过更公正的方式任命当然已经成为常态，但如何以及何时任命并不清楚。历史学家在维多利亚政府的其他部门，特别是海军部、陆军和英国国教，也研究过类似的从偏爱到优点的转变，但邮局没有受到同样的问题，因为作为一个机构，邮局进一步深入到普通社会和大多数地方，这些发现可能非常有启发性。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员工的社会和经济状况，特别是关注员工的工资、工作时间和健康状况，以及该组织独特的养老金制度。如果证明有可能根据邮局员工的医疗记录创建有意义的纵向数据集，那么博士学位将呈现出更定量的性质，为不断扩大的关于工业化期间健康、营养、发病率和生活水平的研究增添一个新的案例研究。这些数据来自犯罪和军事记录，以及来自友好社会的记录。如果邮局的人员数据不足以进行这样的研究，那么这个项目将更全面和更具描述性地审视19世纪后半叶P

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