Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

marriage and larger families, but population growth was also influenced by many other
factors. 118
Probate inventories become scarcer and unreliable in this period, disappearing
almost entirely by the 1770s. Unfortunately, occupational information in Coughton and
Studley parish registers ceases around the same time. However, Alcester features in the
Universal British Directory (UBD) of 1792, and other new sources include jurors’ lists,
land tax returns, enclosure awards, lists of users of weights and measures and the returns
of mills and cart-owners. 119
The inland revenue apprenticeship books and Worcester and
Birmingham newspapers also continue through this period.
Period D:1800-1840
Between 1801 and 1841 the regional and national population growth was
dramatic. Population growth in the Study Area as a whole was more modest, but certain
parishes grew rapidly, as demonstrated in Chapter 3. Regional specialisation,
technological innovation and improved transport furnished food and fuel, cheaper
clothing and other items to meet the needs of a growing population with changing
tastes. 120
Some areas prospered while others stagnated or declined, ‘causing dislocation
118 Habbakuk, ‘English population in the eighteenth century’, p. 129.
119 There were 538 male inventories in 1720-39, 114 in the period 1740-59 and only 37 between 1760 and
1779. The average (mean) amount also dropped in mid-century perhaps reflecting a change in use of
inventories rather than a real drop in personal wealth for the population as a whole. WaRO, QS76/3/1,
Jurors’ lists give occupations of jurors for the Warwickshire parishes in the study area from 1772. WaRO,
CR114A/226, 1798 Return of mills, carts, etc., and WaRO, QS89/2, 1796 List of users of weights and
measures.
120 J. Kennedy, ‘Observations on the Influence of Machinery upon the Working Classes of the Community’,
(Manchester, 1829) quoted in N. Tranter, Population and Industrialization, (London, Black, 1973), p. 207.
Berg, The Age of Manufactures, p. 135, stresses that women’s wants and desires helped drive the Industrial
Revolution.
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