Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T06:24:30.473Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

TEMPORALITIES, RITUAL, AND DRINKING IN MASS OBSERVATION'S WORKTOWN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2020

JENNIE TAYLOR  and
SIMON PRINCE Open the ORCID record for SIMON PRINCE [Opens in a new window]
JENNIE TAYLOR
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar
SIMON PRINCE*
Affiliation:
Canterbury Christ Church University
*
Corresponding author: Simon Prince, School of Humanities, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Kent, ct1 1qusimon.prince@canterbury.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Bolton's pubs at the end of the 1930s, the research organization Mass Observation pursued answers to big abstract questions about time by studying small concrete actions. Drawing on field notes, draft manuscripts, and published works, this article sets out the different understandings and experiences of time documented by the team of investigators. Outside the ‘time-clock factory-whistle dimension of living’ and inside ‘pub-time’, individuals bought drinks for their companions, drank at the same pace, and engaged with everyone around them on an equal footing. Mass Observation presented such behaviours as proof that the pub fostered a socially harmonious, egalitarian community from a pre-industrial age. However, this article shows that the pub study's archive contains material that goes against the published findings. Observers turned in reports about authoritarian conduct, hierarchical power structures, and the intrusion of contemporary politics. Blurring the research subject and object, it was sometimes the investigators themselves who broke the spell of the pub. These moments of tension, confusion, and contradiction offer insights into the observers’ own perspectives on modern temporalities and subjective experiences of time. All the people in the pubs were caught up in a state of flux.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , September 2021 , pp. 1083 - 1104
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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.)

Footnotes

jennie.nicole.taylor@gmail.com

Thank you to Chris Hilliard for his generous assistance, the editors and anonymous reviewers of the Historical Journal for reading and commenting on this article, and the trustees of the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex, for their permission to reproduce material.

References

1 T. S. Eliot, ‘The waste land’, ii: ‘A game of chess’, lines 153, 165, 168, 169, in Selected poems (1954; repr. London, 1986), pp. 56–7.

2 Munson, Gorham, ‘The esotericism of T. S. Eliot’, in North, Michael, ed., The waste land: authoritative text, contexts, criticism (New York, NY, 2001), pp. 156–63, at p. 158Google Scholar.

3 Humphrey Jennings, ‘Poetry and national life’, BBC radio broadcast, June 1938, in Kevin Jackson, ed., The Humphrey Jennings film reader (Manchester, 1993), pp. 279–81.

4 James Hinton cautions that ‘the influence of Humphrey Jennings has commonly been exaggerated’. Hinton, James, The mass observers: a history, 1937–1949 (Oxford, 2013), p. ixCrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Mass Observation archive stopped hyphenating ‘Mass-Observation’ in 2006. We retain the use of the hyphen only in quotations and publication titles.

5 ‘The Grapes by day and by night’, WRL, description of exterior of the Grapes during the day and at night, Worktown Collection (WC), box 3, file C, Mass Observation Archive (MOA), p. 2. It is not always possible to specify the authors and dates of reports as this information was not consistently recorded. Authors’ initials are given as recorded on the original document.

6 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people: a Worktown study (London, 1943), p. 252Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., p. 198.

8 Clark, Christopher, ‘Time of the Nazis: past and present in the Third Reich’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 25 (2015), pp. 156–87, at p. 158Google Scholar. For the classic arguments on the transition from a ‘traditional’ to a ‘modern’ experience of time, see Koselleck, Reinhart, Futures past: on the semantics of historical time, trans. Tribe, Keith (New York, NY, 2004)Google Scholar; and Thompson, E. P., ‘Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism’, Past & Present, 38 (1967), pp. 56–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Ogle, Vanessa, ‘Time, temporality, and the history of capitalism’, Past & Present, 243 (2019), pp. 312–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Eadem, The global transformation of time, 1870–1950 (Cambridge, MA, 2015).

11 Kern, Stephen, The culture of time and space, 1880–1918 (Cambridge, MA, 1983), pp. 10–35Google Scholar.

12 Idem, The modernist novel: a critical introduction (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 3 and 101–25.

13 Canales, Jimena, The physicist and the philosophers: Einstein, Bergson, and the debate that changed our understanding of time (Princeton, NJ, 2015), pp. 30–7Google Scholar.

14 TenHouten, Warren D., Time and society (Albany, NY, 2005), pp. 11–24Google Scholar.

15 Manganaro, Mark, ‘Frazer's The golden bough and Malinowski's Argonauts of the western Pacific: anthropology in 1922’, in Rabaté, Jean-Michel, ed., 1922: literature, culture, politics (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 261–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Staley, Richard, Einstein's generation: the origins of the relativity revolution (Chicago, IL, 2008)Google Scholar.

17 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 198. On the popular reception of the theory of relativity in interwar Britain, see Price, Katy, Loving faster than light: romance and readers in Einstein's universe (Chicago, IL, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 336.

19 Madge, Charles and Harrisson, Tom, First year's work, 1937–1938 (London, 1938), p. 38Google Scholar.

20 Priestley, J. B., English journey: being a rambling but truthful account of what one man saw and heard and felt and thought during a journey through England during the autumn of the year 1933 (London, 1984 edn), p. 380Google Scholar.

21 Madge and Harrisson, First year's work. p. 31.

22 On the foundation and early years, see Hinton, The mass observers; Tom Jeffery, Mass-Observation: a short history (Brighton, 1999 edn); Hubble, Nick, Mass-Observation and everyday life: culture, history, theory (Basingstoke, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Angus Calder, ‘Mass-Observation, 1937–1949’, in Martin Bulmer, ed., Essays on the history of British sociological research (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 121–36; Summerfield, Penny, ‘Mass-Observation: social research or social movement?’, Journal of Contemporary History, 20 (1985), pp. 439–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Highmore, Ben, Everyday life and cultural theory: an introduction (London, 2002), pp. 75–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacClancy, Jeremy, ‘Brief encounter: the meeting, in Mass-Observation, of British surrealism and popular anthropology’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1 (1995), pp. 495–512CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pollen, Annebella, ‘Research methodology in Mass Observation, past and present: “scientifically, about as valuable as a chimpanzee's tea party at the zoo”?’, History Workshop Journal, 75 (2013), pp. 213–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Worktown project, see Gazely, Ian and Langhamer, Claire, ‘The meanings of happiness in Mass Observation's Bolton’, History Workshop Journal, 75 (2013), pp. 159–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, Jennie, ‘Pennies from heaven and earth in Mass Observation's Blackpool’, Journal of British Studies, 51 (2012), pp. 132–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gurney, Peter, ed., Bolton working-class life in the 1930s: a Mass-Observation anthology (Brighton, 1988)Google Scholar; Cross, Gary, ed., Worktowners at Blackpool: Mass-Observation and popular leisure in the 1930s (London, 1990)Google Scholar.

23 Gutzke, David, Women drinking out in Britain since the early twentieth century (Manchester, 2014)Google Scholar; Robinson, Richard, ‘Off beat and in drink: impropriety and insobriety in Brighton's police, 1880–1921’, Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, 30 (2016), pp. 4–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jennings, Paul, A history of drink and the English, 1500–2000 (Abingdon, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooke, Anthony, A history of drinking: the Scottish pub since 1700 (Edinburgh, 2015)Google Scholar; Bennison, Brian, Heady days: a history of Newcastle's public houses, i (Newcastle, 1996)Google Scholar, and Heavy nights: a history of Newcastle's public houses, ii (Newcastle, 1997). On roadhouses, see Michael Laws, John, ‘Turning night into day: transgression and Americanization at the English inter-war roadhouse’, Journal of Historical Geography, 35 (2009), pp. 473–94Google Scholar. On the early modern period, see Hailwood, Mark, Alehouses and good fellowship in early modern England (Woodbridge, 2014)Google Scholar.

24 Fryxell, Allegra, ‘Tutankhamen, Egyptomania, and temporal enchantment in interwar Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 28 (2017), pp. 516–42CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

25 Highmore, Everyday life and cultural theory, p. 77.

26 Harrisson, Tom, Britain revisited (London, 1961), pp. 25–6Google Scholar.

27 Geoffrey Pyke, ‘King and country’, Correspondence, New Statesman and Nation, 12 Dec. 1936, p. 976; Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 7; Heimann, Judith, The most offending soul alive: Tom Harrisson and his remarkable life (Honolulu, HI, 1999), p. 127Google Scholar.

28 Bailkin, Jordanna, The afterlife of empire (Berkeley, CA, 2012), pp. 23–54Google Scholar.

29 Hinton, The mass observers, p. 19.

30 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 327–8.

31 Tom Harrisson, ‘Preface’, Typescripts of the Pub and the People, WC, 2/A, MOA, p. iii.

32 Madge, Charles and Harrisson, Tom, Britain by Mass-Observation (London, 1939), p. 227Google Scholar.

33 Todd, Selina, ‘Young women, work, and leisure in interwar England’, Historical Journal, 48 (2005), pp. 789–809, at p. 791CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Langhamer, Claire, ‘“Who the hell are ordinary people?” Ordinariness as a category of historical analysis’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 28 (2018), pp. 175–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Gill, Eric, Work and leisure (London, 1935), p. 44Google Scholar. For an overview of the debate on leisure, see Snape, Robert and Pussard, Helen, ‘Theorisations of leisure in inter-war Britain’, Leisure Studies, 32 (2013), pp. 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Priestley, English journey, pp. 149 and 402–3.

37 ‘Analysis of political material available to 1st. September 1937’, BB, 1 Sept. [1937], Former Mass Observers: Brian Barefoot, MOA, p. 3.

38 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 106–7, 109, 143–8, and 154. For an exploration of female pub-going at this time, differences between Bolton and other parts of the country, and criticism of Mass Observation's calculations, see Gutzke, Women drinking out in Britain, pp. 52–69.

39 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 11.

40 Transcript of interview with Dennis Chapman by Nick Stanley, 23 Feb. 1979, Former Mass-Observers: Dennis Chapman, MOA, p. 13.

41 Charles Madge and Tom Harrisson, Mass-Observation (London, 1937), p. 52.

42 Notes and queries on anthropology (5th edn, London, 1929), pp. 17–19.

43 Roger Sanjek, ‘The secret life of fieldnotes’, in Roger Sanjek, ed., Fieldnotes: the making of anthropology (Ithaca, NY, 1990), pp. 187–270, at pp. 207–8.

44 Madge and Harrisson, First year's work, p. 103.

45 On ethnography and time, see Birth, Kevin, ‘The creation of coevalness and the danger of homochronism’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14 (2018), pp. 3–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Igo, Sarah, The averaged American: surveys, citizens, and the making of a mass public (Cambridge, MA, 2008), pp. 28 and 35–7Google Scholar; Robert, and Lynd, Helen, Middletown: a study in contemporary American culture (New York, NY, 1929), pp. 4–5 and 7Google Scholar.

47 Hans Zeisel, ‘The Vienna years’, in Robert Merton, James Coleman, and Peter Rosi, eds., Papers in honor of Paul F. Lazarfeld (New York, NY, 1979), pp. 10–15, at p. 11.

48 Jahoda, Marie, Lazarsfeld, Paul F., and Zeisel, Hans, Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (Frankfurt am Main, 1975 edn), pp. 83–92 and 134Google Scholar.

49 Heimann, The most offending soul alive, p. 179.

50 Madge and Harrisson, First year's work, p. 84.

51 Idem and idem, Mass-Observation, pp. 36 and 61.

52 Idem and idem, Britain by Mass-Observation; Highmore, Everyday life and cultural theory, pp. 85–6.

53 Transcript of interview with Charles Madge by Nick Stanley, 23 Mar. 1978, Former Mass-Observers: Charles Madge, MOA, p. 2.

54 Angus Calder, ‘Introduction to the Cresset library edition’, in Madge and Harrisson, Britain by Mass-Observation, p. x.

55 Moran, Joe, ‘Mass-Observation, market research, and the birth of the focus group, 1937–1997’, Journal of British Studies, 47 (2008), pp. 827–51, at pp. 831–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Madge and Harrisson, Mass-Observation, p. 61.

57 Oeser, O. A., ‘Methods and assumptions of field work in social psychology’, British Journal of Psychology, 27 (1937), pp. 343–63Google Scholar.

58 Liz Stanley, ‘The archaeology of a 1930s Mass-Observation project’, Manchester Sociology Occasional Paper, 27 (Manchester, 1990), p. 20.

59 Hubble, Mass-Observation and everyday life, pp. 135–6.

60 Hinton, The mass observers, pp. 55–60.

61 Highmore, Everyday life and cultural theory, pp. 87–8, 98, and 101–2.

62 Madge and Harrisson, Mass-Observation, pp. 35–6.

63 ‘Mass-Observation in Bolton: a social experiment’, n.d., WC 1/C, MOA, 1–2.

64 Isaac, Joel, ‘Tool shock: technique and epistemology in the postwar social sciences’, History of Political Economy, 42 (2010), pp. 133–64, at pp. 135 and 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Highmore, Everyday life and cultural theory, p. 77.

66 Harrisson, Tom, Savage civilisation (London, 1937), pp. 366–7Google Scholar.

67 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 16–17, 122, and 198. Original emphasis.

68 ‘Peel Hotel’, observations and overheard conversations and comments, JAS, 28 Feb. 1938, WC, 3/D, MOA, p. 1.

69 ‘Star and Garter’, observations and conversations, THH, 29 Aug. [?], WC, 3/D, MOA, p. 1.

70 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 122–3 and 170–6.

71 Untitled document, guidelines for pub observers, n.d, WC, 3/A, MOA, p. 1.

72 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 109–18 and 121–2.

73 ‘Social diversions in a cotton town’, Manchester Guardian, 24 Mar. 1938, WC, 3/A, MOA.

74 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 119–20 and 122–3; untitled report, observations of staff and customers in an unspecified pub, undated, WC, 3/C, MOA, p. 1.

75 Ibid., p. 122.

76 Ibid., p. 210.

77 Fryxell, ‘Tutankhamen, Egyptomania, and temporal enchantment’, p. 529.

78 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 214.

79 Frazer, James George, The golden bough: a study in comparative religion (2 vols., London, 1890)Google Scholar.

80 Vickery, John B., The literary impact of the golden bough (Princeton, NJ, 1973), p. 26Google Scholar.

81 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 12.

82 Ibid., pp. 167 and 199.

83 Untitled report, observations of staff and customers in an unspecified pub, undated, WC, 3/C, MOA, p. 1.

84 Madge, Charles, ‘Drinking in Bolton’, New Writing, 1 (1938), p. 47Google Scholar.

85 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 194–7.

86 ‘Waterloo Tavern, Folds Road’, conversations with customers, 8 June [?], WC, 3/A, MOA, p. 1. Italics replace underlining in the original.

87 ‘Pubs’, brief description of interiors and customers at the St George Vault, the Balmoral, the One Horse Shoe, the Grapes, and Yates Wine Bar, JS, 23 Apr. [?], WC, 3/A, MOA, p. 2; ‘Pubs Moses Gate’, observations at the Walkers Arms, the Moses Gate vault, the Railway Hotel, and the Walkers Arms big lounge, 7 May [?], WC, 3/B, MOA, p. 3.

88 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 167.

89 Ibid., pp. 218–19.

90 ‘Paying turns, treating’, account of arrangements for paying for rounds of drinks, TH, undated, WC, 3/C, MOA.

91 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 143, 177, 180–3, 256, 267–8, 312, and 336.

92 ‘Pubs’, observations in the Three Tuns, Moor Lane, and the Dog and Partridge small lounge, JS, 5 May [?], WC, 3/C, MOA, p. 1.

93 Untitled report, observations at One Horseshoe parlour, 18 June [?], WC, 3/B, MOA, p. 1. Italics replace underlining in the original.

94 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 170 and 176–7.

95 ‘Dog and Snipe, Folds Road’, description of interior and customers, 8 June [?], WC, 3/A, MOA, p. 1.

96 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 169.

97 Ibid., pp. 147, 265, 312, and 336–8.

98 ‘Waterloo Tavern’, 1 July [?], THH, observation of customers and explanation of the ‘curio’ idea (a raffle) at the Waterloo Tavern, THH, 1 July [?], WC, 3/A, MOA, p. 1.

99 ‘Pubs round Brownlow Fold’, observations in the Lord Ashley vault, the Swiss, the pub with no visible name, the Mount Street Tavern, and the Poplar, JS, 23 July [?], WC, 3/B, MOA, p. 1.

100 Untitled report, description of pub interior, observations, and overheard conversations at the Waterloo taproom, 22 June [?], WC, 3/C, MOA, p. 1.

101 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 56, 134, and 146–7.

102 Untitled report, observations and conversations at the Union Arms vault, the Waterloo vault, and the Grapes vault, JS, 21 June [?], WC, 3/B, MOA, p. 1.

103 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 139.

104 Ibid., p. 212.

105 ‘One Horseshoe vault’, observation of customers and details of argument at the One Horseshoe vault, 21 Jan. [?], WC, 3/B, MOA, p. 4.

106 ‘Bother’, account of incident between wife and husband, TH, 7/10/1937, WC, 3/B, MOA, p. 1.

107 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 312.

108 Untitled report, observations of staff and customers in an unspecified pub, undated, WC, 3/C, MOA, p. 5.

109 ‘Pint hole’ referred to a pub's vault. Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 149–50.

110 ‘Pubs’, [NOTES], 26 May [?], WC, 3/D, MOA, p. 2.

111 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 242.

112 ‘Hen and Chickens vault’, observations and conversations overheard, JS, 10 June [?], WC, 3/B, MOA, p. 1. Italics replace underlining in the original. The pub and the people's only example of a ‘Political’ argument was one about the ideas of Robert Owen and Charles Darwin. Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 189.

113 ‘Waterloo Tavern, Folds Road’, conversations with customers, 8 June [?], WC, 3/A, MOA, p. 1. Italics replace underlining in the original.

114 The publication of Malinowski's diary in 1967 would show that even ‘the doyen of the discipline had been exposed to temptation, had displayed the frailties of boredom, malice, frustration, longing for his own kind, and gave his most petty miseries full expression’. Firth, Raymond, ‘Second introduction 1988’, in Malinowski, Bronislaw, A diary in the strict sense of the term (London, 1989 edn), p. xxixGoogle Scholar.

115 ‘Woodman Inn, Carlyle St’, observations and overheard conversations, 25 June [?], WC, 3/A, MOA, p. 1. Italics replace underlining in the original.

116 ‘The Packhorse restaurant’, observations and overheard conversations at the restaurant, 31 July [?], WC, 3/D, MOA, p. 3.

117 The report contains typographical errors and missing letters which we have edited for grammatical coherence. Ibid.

118 When Sommerfield returned to Bolton's pubs after the war, he found ‘the fundamental rhythm’ ‘unchanged’. Harrisson, Britain revisited, p. 188.

119 ‘Pubs’, observations and conversations at the Fleece lounge bar, JS, 28 Apr. [?], WC, 3/D, MOA, p. 1.

120 ‘Survey of pubs, Bradshawgate’, EL, 7 May 1937, WC, 3/B, MOA, p. 2.

121 ‘Pubs’, observations at Yates Wine Lodge, JS, 22 Apr. [?], WC, 3/B, MOA, p. 1.

122 Campsie, Alexandre, ‘Mass-Observation, left intellectuals, and the politics of everyday life’, English Historical Review, 131 (2016), pp. 92–121, at pp. 95–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

123 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, p. 210.

124 Untitled report, observations of staff and customers in an unspecified pub, undated, WC, 3/C, MOA, pp. 2–5 and 7.

125 See Frizzell, Deborah, Humphrey Spender's humanist landscapes: photo-documents, 1932–1942 (New Haven, CT, 1997)Google Scholar.

126 Mass-Observation, The pub and the people, pp. 198, 213, and 330.

127 On nostalgia as a response to the modern experience of time, see Boym, Svetlana, Future of nostalgia (New York, NY, 2002)Google Scholar.