Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T14:39:31.172Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Boarding and lodging practices in early twentieth-century Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2016

JEFF MEEK
JEFF MEEK*
Affiliation:
Economic and Social History, University of Glasgow.
*
Jeffrey.Meek@glasgow.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The social and economic position of lodgers in Europe and North America has attracted considerable scholarship, yet the financial and interpersonal relationships between lodgers and boarders and their hosts in working-class homes is somewhat underdeveloped. This article examines patterns of lodging and boarding in working-class homes in Scotland between 1861 and 1911, focusing upon multiple layers of connection between paying guests and householders. This article demonstrates that connections had national and ethnic roots, and that taking in lodgers and boarders was of prime cultural and economic importance for many. The ability to offer space played a crucial role in the social and economic status of single, separated and widowed women, and this article offers an insight into the sometimes troubled relationships between landladies and their tenants.

Pensionnaires et locataires: les pratiques en écosse au début du xxe siècle

La situation économique et sociale des locataires en Europe et en Amérique du Nord a déjà fait l'objet de travaux érudits, mais on a encore peu abordé la question des relations financières et interpersonnelles qu'entretiennent locataires et pensionnaires avec ceux qui les hébergent au sein de foyers appartenant aux classes populaires. Cet article examine les divers modèles d'hébergement de pensionnaires et locataires dans les ménages ouvriers d'Ecosse, entre 1861 et 1911, mettant l'accent sur les interconnexions multiples entre ces hôtes payants et les chefs de ménage qui les reçoivent chez eux. L’étude montre d'une part que ces connexions reposaient sur des bases nationales et ethniques et que d'autre part prendre pensionnaires et locataires étaient d'une importance culturelle et économique majeure pour beaucoup. Pour les femmes célibataires, séparées ou veuves, la possibilité d'avoir un espace d'accueil à proposer jouait un rôle crucial dans leur situation sociale et économique, et l'article offre un aperçu des relations parfois conflictuelles entre logeuses et locataires.

Kostgänger und untermieter in schottland im frühen 20. jahrhundert

Trotz beachtlicher Forschungen zur sozialen und ökonomischen Position von Untermietern in Europa und Nordamerika ist die Frage der finanziellen und persönlichen Beziehungen zwischen Untermietern und Kostgängern und ihren Hauswirten in Arbeiterhaushalten ziemlich unterbelichtet. Dieser Beitrag untersucht Verpflegungs- und Unterbringungsmuster im Arbeiterhaushalten in Schottland zwischen 1861 und 1911 und fragt insbesondere nach den vielfachen Beziehungsschichten zwischen zahlenden Gästen und Haushaltsvorständen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass diese Verbindungen nationale und ethnische Wurzeln hatten und die Aufnahme von Kostgängern und Untermietern für viele Arbeiterhaushalte von wesentlicher kultureller und ökonomischer Bedeutung war. Die Möglichkeit der Raumvergabe spielte eine entscheidende Rolle für den sozialen und ökonomischen Status von ledigen, geschiedenen und verwitweten Frauen, und dieser Beitrag vermittelt Einsichten in die zuweilen schwierigen Beziehungen zwischen Vermieterinnen und ihren Untermietern.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 31 , Issue 1: Lodgers in Rural and Urban Europe in the Past , May 2016 , pp. 79 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

ENDNOTES

1 Peter Laslett and Richard Wall eds., Household and family in past time: comparative studies in the size and structure of the domestic group over the last three centuries in England, France, Serbia, Japan and colonial North America, with further materials from Western Europe (Cambridge, 1972).

2 Michael Anderson, Family structure in nineteenth century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971).

3 Leonore Davidoff, Worlds between: historical perspectives on gender and class (London, 1995).

4 Holmes, Vicky, ‘Accommodating the lodger: the domestic arrangements of lodgers in working-class dwellings in a Victorian provincial town’, Journal of Victorian Culture 19 (2014), 314–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Hoskins, Lesley, ‘Stories of work and home in the mid-nineteenth century’, Home Cultures 8, 2 (2011), 151–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See, for example, Peel, Mark, ‘On the margins: lodgers and boarders in Boston, 1860–1900’, Journal of American History 72, 4 (1986), 813–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 823–9; Modell, John and Hareven, Tamara K., ‘Urbanization and the malleable household: an examination of boarding and lodging in American families’, Journal of Marriage and the Family 35, 3 (1973), 467–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, Family structure, 155–7; Humphries, Jane, ‘Female-headed households in early industrial Britain: the vanguard of the proletariat?’, Labour History Review 63, 1 (1998), 31–65, here 39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For the purposes of this paper, householders relate to the head of household, but more broadly, adult (16 years and over) family members, as connections between home occupiers may be wider than simply to a head of household.

8 C. Dalglish, S. T. Driscoll, I. Maver, N. F. Shead and I. Shearer eds., Historic Govan: archaeology and development (Edinburgh, 2009), 80.

9 Census of Scotland 1861, Population Tables and Reports, Vol. II (Edinburgh, 1864), lix.

10 Irish-born population of Govan, derived from the Censuses of Scotland, 1861.

11 Census of Scotland 1901, Eleventh decennial census of the population of Scotland taken 31st March 1901, with report, Vol. I (Edinburgh, 1902), 818.

12 Alison Kay, The foundations of female entrepreneurship: enterprise, home and household in London, c. 1800–1870 (London, 2009), 101.

13 Anderson, Family structure, 45–6.

14 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Speeches of the Earl of Shaftesbury in Glasgow, August, 1871 (Glasgow, 1871), 76.

15 ‘A vision of Glasgow City’, www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10217751/cube/TOT_POP (accessed 14 May 2011).

16 J. J. Smyth, ‘Lodging houses, public health and moral hygiene: Glasgow, 1850–1911’, paper presented to the Annual Conference of the European Network on Housing Research, University of Cambridge (2004), 4.

17 Anne Crowther, ‘Poverty, health and welfare’, in W. Hamish Fraser and R. J. Morris eds., People and society in Scotland: volume II, 1830–1914 (Edinburgh, 1990), 265–6.

18 John Smith, The grievances of the working classes; and the pauperism and crime of Glasgow; with their causes, extent and remedies (Glasgow, 1846), 9.

19 Smith, Grievances of the working classes, 12.

20 Report from the Select Committee on Poor Law (Scotland); together with the proceedings of the committee, minutes of evidence, and appendix (London, 1870), 267.

21 Ibid., 112.

22 Ibid., 112.

23 Miles Glendinning, Ranald MacInnes and Aonghus MacKechnie, A history of Scottish architecture: from the renaissance to the present day (Edinburgh, 1996), 256.

24 William Logan, The moral statistics of Glasgow in 1863 (Glasgow, 1864), 25.

25 R. J. Morris, ‘Urbanisation and Scotland’, in W. Hamish Fraser and R. J. Morris eds., People and society in Scotland: volume II, 1830–1914 (Edinburgh, 1990), 85.

26 Royal Commission on Housing in Scotland. Report of the Royal Commission on the housing of the industrial population of Scotland rural and urban (Edinburgh, 1917), 119.

27 Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, vol. 7 (Glasgow, 1871), 248–50.

28 Census of Scotland 1871, Eighth decennial census of the population of Scotland taken 3rd April 1871, with report, vol. I (Edinburgh, 1872), xxxv.

29 Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, vol. 7 (Glasgow, 1871) 248–9.

30 Morris, ‘Urbanisation and Scotland’, 83.

31 ‘Fever in Govan’, Glasgow Herald, 1 July 1863, 6.

32 ‘Progress of the Glasgow city improvements’, The Scotsman, 10 April 1872, 5.

33 ‘Overcrowded dwellings’, Dundee Courier, 24 March 1887, 2; ‘Overcrowding in Glasgow’, Dundee Courier, 3 May 1888, 2.

34 ‘Tuberculosis and the housing problem’, Glasgow Herald, 17 March 1900, 4.

35 ‘More than four to a room’, The Scotsman, 4 April 1908, 8.

36 Board of Trade, Cost of living of the working classes: report of an enquiry by the Board of Trade into working class rents, housing and retail prices together with the standard rates of wages prevailing in certain occupations in the principal industrial towns of the United Kingdom (London, 1908), 533.

37 Glasgow Parish Council, Collection of Prints: T.PAR 1.14, 15 May 1910.

38 Beatrice Moring, ‘Women, work and survival strategies in urban northern Europe before the First World War’, in Beatrice Moring ed., Female economic strategies in the modern world, perspectives in economic and social history (London, 2012), 64.

39 Davidoff, Worlds between, 151–79.

40 Holmes, ‘Accommodating the lodger’.

41 The New Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. VI, Lanark (Edinburgh and London, 1845), 696–8.

42 Dalglish, Driscoll, Maver, Shead and Shearer, Historic Govan, 80.

43 Census of Scotland, 1911. Report on the twelfth decennial census of Scotland, vol. II (Edinburgh, 1913), p. c.

44 Percentage of working-class homes with boarders, derived from the Censuses of Scotland, 1861 to 1911.

45 Census of Scotland 1891, Tenth decennial census of the population of Scotland taken 5th April 1891, with report, vol. II, part I (Edinburgh, 1892), 311.

46 Census of Scotland 1901, Eleventh decennial census of the population of Scotland taken 31st March 1901, with report, vol. I (Edinburgh, 1902), 361.

47 L. Niethammer and F. Bruggemeier, ‘Urbanisation et expérience ouvrière de l'habitat dans L'Allemagne impériale’, in L. Murard and P. Zyklberman eds., L'Haleine des Faubourgs (Fountenay-sous-Bios, 1978), 127, as quoted in Paul White, The west European city: a social geography (London and New York, 1984), 47.

48 White, West European city, 47.

49 Census of Scotland 1901, Eleventh decennial census of the population of Scotland, vol. II, lxv.

50 Geraldine Vaughan, The ‘local’ Irish in the west of Scotland (Basingstoke, 2013), 20.

51 Anderson, Family structure, 155–7.

52 Modell and Hareven, ‘Urbanization and the malleable household’, 472–3.

53 Peel, ‘On the margins’, 823–9.

54 Tuathaigh, M. A. G. Ó, ‘The Irish in nineteenth-century Britain: problems of integration’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Fifth Series) 31 (1981), 149–73, here 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Census of Scotland 1901, Eleventh decennial census of the population of Scotland, vol. II, xxviii.

56 Census of Scotland 1901, Eleventh decennial census of the population of Scotland, vol. II, 829.

57 Including those identified as ‘Russian Poles’.

58 Laura Anker, ‘Family, work, and community: southern and eastern European immigrant women speak from the Connecticut Federal Writers’ Project’, in Dorothy O. Helly and Susan Reverby eds., Gendered domains: rethinking public and private in women's history (New York, 1992), 312.

59 Kenneth Collins, Ephraim Borowski and Leah Granat, Scotland's Jews: a guide to the history, community of the Jews in Scotland (Glasgow, 2008), 20.

60 ‘The Jew in Scotland’, Aberdeen Daily Journal, 30 June 1906, 6.

61 Linda Fleming, ‘Jewish women in Glasgow c.1880–1950: gender, ethnicity and the immigrant experience’ (unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2005), 195–9.

62 Ibid., 199.

63 Individuals aged 16 years or over who were not living with parents in lodgings.

64 Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair, Public lives: women, family and society in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London, 2003), 44–5.

65 Ancestry.com, 1901 Scotland Census [database on-line]. Parish: Govan; ED: 20; Page: 16; Line: 4; Roll: CSSCT1901_327 (Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2007).

66 Ancestry.com, 1901 Scotland Census [database on-line]. Parish: Glasgow St Mark; ED: 7; Page: 26; Line: 22; Roll: CSSCT1901_304 (Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2007).

67 Peel, ‘On the margins’, 816.

68 Humphries, ‘Female-headed households’, 39.

69 Ibid., 31–2.

70 Moring, ‘Women, work and survival strategies’, 64.

71 Davidoff, Worlds between, 151–79.

72 His Majesty's Stationery Office, Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress: report on Scotland (London, 1909), 102.

73 Ibid., 103

74 Ibid.

75 The author of the letter was originally writing to criticise the campaign for prohibition in Scotland.

76 ‘The evils of lodgings’, Glasgow Herald, 6 November 1893, 11.

77 Ibid.

78 Smyth, ‘Lodging houses’, 14.

79 ‘Death dormitory: 39 lodgers lost at Glasgow’, Hull Daily Mail, 20 November 1905, 4.

80 ‘Truth’, ‘Truth and the landlady’, Dundee Evening Post, 14 August 1902, 2.

81 ‘A Victim’, ‘Truth and the landlady’, Dundee Evening Post, 15 August 1902, 2.

82 Ibid.

83 ‘Fair Play’, ‘Truth and the landlady’, Dundee Evening Post, 16 August 1902, 2.

84 ‘Divinity’, ‘Truth and the Landlady’, Dundee Evening Post, 16 August 1902, 2.

85 ‘One of Them’, Truth and the landlady’, Dundee Evening Post, 15 August 1902, 2.

86 ‘Lodger’, ‘Truth and the landlady’, Dundee Evening Post, 16 August 1902, 2.

87 ‘Landlady’, ‘Truth and the landlady’, Dundee Evening Post, 16 August 1902, 2.

88 For example, see: Modell and Hareven, ‘Urbanization and the malleable household'.

89 Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. Report on Scotland, 1909 (London, 1900), 18.