Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

sources often favoured by the wealthier stratum of society, which of course included
many farmers and yeomen, hence their impressive showing in these records.
The bias shown for different nineteenth century records (shown in Table 2.1) was
not the same in each zone in the study area. The different nature of their economies led
to a different bias. In Zones B and C the figures for the secondary sector did not differ
greatly between sources, but in Zone A and particularly in Zone D the secondary figures
in probate and marriage licences were much less than those in the census and in baptisms.
This may partly be explained by proletarianisation in the needle industry, which was
prevalent in Zones A and D, where there were many poorer employees not likely to
feature in probate or marriage licences. For this reason I have shown the different bias in
nineteenth century records in each zone in Chapters 4 to 7. 124
In Coughton and Studley
parish registers between 1695 and 1769 there is a large enough body of data to compare
bias between the registers and probate and marriage licences for this earlier period. This
bias is quantified in Chapter 7. 125
Although the bias of various records is constantly referred to in my analysis and
discussion of the different zones in Chapter 4 to 7, it does not seem realistic to try to
weight the statistics from probate or marriage licences to reflect this bias, as such a
weighting would be speculative and perhaps highly inaccurate due to the changes in bias
in different zones at different times.
124 See Tables 4.9, 5.10, 6.10 and 7.23.
125 See Table 7.24.
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