Study 4023 - Trade Union Statistics, 1851 - 1918

For further details of these sources, see H.R. Southall, 'Regional Unemployment Patterns in Britain, 1851-1914: a study of the "Trade Union Percentages", with special reference to engineering workers', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1984, and H.R. Southall, D.M. Gilbert and C. Bryce, Nineteenth Century Trade Union Records: an introduction and select guide (Historical Geography Research Group, Edinburgh, 1994). The broader history of trade union welfare benefits, from which these sources derive, is discussed in H.R. Southall, 'Ni etat ni marche: Les premieres prestations sociales en Grande-Bretagne' ('Neither state nor market: early welfare benefits in Britain'), Geneses: sciences sociales et histoire (1995), pp.6-29.

Analyses of regional unemployment patterns derived from these data have been published as: H.R. Southall, 'Regional Unemployment Patterns among Skilled Engineers, 1851-1914', Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 12, (1986), pp. 268-286; H.R. Southall, 'The Origins of the Depressed Areas: Unemployment, Growth, and Regional Economic Structure in Britain before 1914', Economic History Review, 2nd series, Vol. 41 (1988), pp. 236-258.

Tables described in this section:

'ase_mr': monthly returns from branches of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. January, April, July and October reports from April 1851 to October 1872, January and July reports to January 1912.

'ase_mr_95_96': fuller version of the data from the ASE Monthly Returns from January and July Monthly Reports 1895 and 1896, when a special compressed format was used.

'ase_admit': numbers admitted during the calendar year for all ASE branches in the British Isles for 1853 to 1909.

'ase_mem': changes in membership for all ASE branches in the British Isles for 1871 to 1872. Will eventually replace the ase_admit table.

'cj_mr': monthly returns from branches of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. January 1863 (the first such report) to January 1912, for January and July (excluding 1870 reports).

(c) Humphrey Southall, David Gilbert and Ian Gregory, 1996.