Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T04:21:52.911Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Reproductive Behavior of the English Landed Gentry in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Mark Rothery
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 674 - 694
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2009

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

1 Tranter, N. L., Population and Society, 1750–1940: Contrasts in Population Growth (London, 1985), 57Google Scholar.

2 Anderson, Michael, “The Social Implications of Demographic Change,” in People and Their Environment, ed. Thompson, F. M. L., vol. 2 of The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950 (Cambridge, 1990), 1–67Google ScholarPubMed.

3 For a detailed guide to the contemporary material focused on fertility during the earlier part of the period, see Banks, J. A. and Glass, D. V., “A List of Books, Pamphlets and Articles on the Population Question Published in Britain in the Period 1793–1880,” in Introduction to Malthus, ed. Glass, D. V. (New York, 1953), 250–79Google Scholar. For a specific example in the later period, see Webb, Sidney, “The Decline in the Birth-Rate,” Fabian Tract no. 131 (London, 1907), 1–19Google Scholar.

4 See Banks, J. A., Victorian Values: Secularism and the Size of Families (London, 1981)Google Scholar. For commentary on the early declines among elites, see Hollingsworth, Thomas Henry, “The Demography of the British Peerage,” Supplement to Population Studies 18, no. 2 (November 1964): 29–52Google Scholar; and Gerard, Jessica, Country House Life: Family and Servants, 1815–1914 (Oxford, 1994), 25Google Scholar. Simon Szreter has recently paid close attention to the earlier decline of fertility among the “gentlemanly milieu,” including those of gentry origins, in his engaging study of the British fertility decline. See Szreter, Simon, Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860–1940 (Cambridge, 2000)Google Scholar, and Szreter's collaborative article with Eilidh Garrett focusing on the earlier nineteenth century, “Reproduction, Compositional Demography and Economic Growth: Family Planning in England Long before the Fertility Decline,” Population and Development Review 26, no. 1 (March 2000): 45–80. For other examples of early starters among the nobilities of eighteenth-century France, Austro-Hungary, and Italy, see Livi-Bacci, Massimo, “Social Group Forerunners of Fertility Control in Europe,” in The Decline of Fertility in Europe, ed. Coale, Ansley J. and Watkins, S. C. (Princeton, NJ, 1986), 182–200Google Scholar, and Livi-Bacci's earlier monograph A History of Italian Fertility during the Last Two Centuries (Princeton, NJ, 1977). An interesting analysis of the early declines among the gentry in twentieth-century Sicily can be found in Schneider, Jane and Schneider's, Peter, “‘Going Forward in Reverse Gear’: Culture, Economy, and Political Economy in the Demographic Transitions of a Rural Sicilian Town,” in The European Experience of Declining Fertility, 1850–1970: The Quiet Revolution, ed. Tilly, Louise A., Levine, David, and Gillis, John R. (Oxford, 1992), 146–75Google Scholar.

5 John R. Gillis, Louise A. Tilly, and David Levine, “Introduction,” in their Declining Fertility, 1850–1970, 1–30; Wally Seccombe, “‘Starting to Stop’: Working Class Fertility Decline in Britain,” Past and Present, no. 126 (February 1990): 151–89.

6 F. M. L. Thompson, “English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century, III,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., vol. 3 (1993), 1–20. Also see Hollingsworth, “Demography”; and Gerard, Country House Life, 25–26.

7 Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), 269–303Google Scholar; Jenkins, Philip, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry, 1640–1790 (Cambridge, 2002), 38–41Google Scholar.

8 “Landed gentry” is defined here as rentier agrarian landlords in ownership of 1,000 acres or more who did not hold aristocratic titles and who were resident for at least part of the year on their estates. The 1,000 acres lower margin to gentry society is one widely accepted by historians in the area. See Thompson, F. M. L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1963), 111Google Scholar; Mingay, G. E., The Gentry: The Rise and Fall of a Ruling Class (Oxford, 1976), 11–14Google Scholar; Cannadine, David, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London, 1992), 8–10Google Scholar. For a description of the methodology employed in this research, see the caption to fig. 1.

9 The regional diversity of the observed process raises the issues of place and environment in demographic behavior. Through their analysis of thirteen local communities in the 1911 census, Szreter, Garrett, and others have found a strong link between levels of fertility and the socioeconomic structure of each residential district. Although they stressed the complex diversity of the fertility decline, they did draw a broad distinction between the higher fertility observed in the industrial areas of the north (although not the textile areas) and the lower fertility of the agricultural and service sectors of the south, particularly the lowland agricultural areas and the white-collar communities of the Home Counties. Given that these three counties were not located in the north, apart from the north of Lincolnshire, and did not have large concentrations of heavy industry, it is entirely possible that the trends in reproductive behavior discussed here were not entirely representative of the English landed gentry but rather of the “southern gentry.” See Eilidh Garrett, Alice Reid, Kevin Schurer, and Szreter, Simon, Changing Family Size in England and Wales: Place, Class and Demography, 1891–1911 (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar.

10 For further comments on this issue, see Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, esp. 112–13 and 119–25. Thompson found that 20 percent of Burke's “landed gentry” did not own a sufficient amount of land to be considered as “landed” by other observers, such as John Bateman, and that Burke was slow to recognize new gentry families after their acquisition of large amounts of land.

11 See Hollingsworth, “Demography,” 29–52, and also his “A Demographic Study of the British Ducal Families,” Population Studies 11, no. 1 (July 1957): 4–26.

12 See table A1 in the appendix for the standard deviation figures.

13 Tranter, Population and Society, 60.

14 Woods, Robert, The Demography of Victorian England and Wales (Cambridge, 2000), 121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Hollingsworth, “Demography.” The “secondary universe” referred to all the legitimate offspring of the peers and their eldest sons.

16 Gerard, Country House Life, 25.

17 Michael Anderson, “Highly Restricted Fertility: Very Small Families in the British Fertility Decline,” Population Studies 52, no. 2 (July 1998): 177–99.

18 ibid.

19 See Szreter and Garrett, “Reproduction, Compositional Demography and Economic Growth.”

20 These averages should be distinguished from age-specific fertility, which is a more complex and precise calculation of the affects of marital age on fertility. See Stockwell, Edward G., The Methods and Materials of Demography (London, 1976), 5 and 314Google Scholar, for an accessible explanation of the calculation of age-specific fertility and the fertility rate.

21 Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, 342. Also see F. M. L. Thompson, “English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century, I,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., vol. 39 (1989): 1–20. For the effects on aristocratic estates, see J. V. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England, 1660–1914 (Oxford, 1986), 219.

22 For a detailed analysis of these behaviors among the gentlemanly milieu, see Szreter, Fertility, 335–50, 569.

23 Burke's Landed Gentry (London, 1937–65); Burke's Peerage (London, 1949–64). This finding is based on the sample of families used for the figures on family size.

24 Mark Rothery, “The Wealth of the English Landed Gentry, 1870–1935,” Agricultural History Review 55, no. 2 (2007): 251–68.

25 This is based on the average declines in rental income in the three counties between 1873 and 1894. See Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, 310. For a more detailed description of the effect in Lincolnshire, see Thirsk, Joan, English Peasant Farming: The Agricultural History of Lincolnshire from Tudor to Recent Times (London, 1957), 310–21Google Scholar.

26 This was argued long ago, although in a different form, by Joseph Banks, whose study of middle-class consumption habits in the mid-nineteenth century led him on to look for other deeper motivations for their behavior. For the study of the relationship between fertility and conspicuous consumption, see Banks, J. A., Prosperity and Parenthood: A Study of Family Planning among the Victorian Middle Classes (London, 1954)Google Scholar. For the later study on mentality, see Banks, Victorian Values.

27 Stone, Lawrence, ed., The University in Society (London, 1975), 3–110Google Scholar; Mingay, Gentry, 58–63; Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, 82; Jenkins, Making of a Ruling Class, 217; Vickery, Amanda, The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England (London, 1998), 31Google Scholar; Brander, Michael, The Georgian Gentleman (Farnborough, 1973), 15–17Google Scholar. For an example of a specific institution, see Lucas, Paul, “A Collective Biography of Students and Barristers of Lincoln's Inn, 1680–1804: A Story in the Aristocratic Resurgence' of the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Modern History 46, no. 1 (March 1974): 227–62Google Scholar.

28 Banks, Prosperity, 188.

29 Thompson stresses the regional nature of the agricultural depression, along with many other historians in this area. See Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, 310.

30 Banks, Prosperity, 170–93.

31 Tosh, John, A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (London, 1999), 4Google Scholar.

32 Milne-Smith, Amy, “A Flight to Domesticity? Making a Home in the Gentlemen's Clubs of London, 1880–1914,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 4 (October 2006): 796–818CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Tosh, John, “Masculinities in an Industrializing Society: Britain, 1800–1914,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2002): 330–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Tosh, A Man's Place, 170–95.

35 Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (London, 2002), 18–23; Tosh, A Man's Place, 1–8Google Scholar.

36 For a broad description of the gentry life cycle, see Gerard, Country House Life, 21–37.

37 Milne-Smith, “A Flight to Domesticity?” 796–818.

38 de Symons Honey, John Raymond, “Tom Brown's Universe: The Nature and Limits of the Victorian Public Schools Community,” in The Victorian Public School: Studies in the Development of an Educational Institution, ed. , Brian Simon and Ian Bradley (Dublin, 1975), 19–34Google Scholar.

39 Mason, Phillip, The English Gentleman: The Rise and Fall of an Ideal (London, 1993), 229Google Scholar. Also see the material on the decline of public violence from the late eighteenth century in Robert Shoemaker, “Male Honour and the Decline of Public Violence in Eighteenth Century London,” Social History 26, no. 2 (2001): 190–209; J. A. Sharpe, “The History of Violence in England: Some Observations,” Past and Present, no. 108 (August 1985): 206–15; Tosh, John, “The Old Adam and the New Man: Emerging Themes in the History of English Masculinities, 1750–1850,” in English Masculinities, 1660–1800, ed. Cohen, Michèle and Hitchcock, Tim (London, 1999), 217–38Google Scholar; Wiener, Martin J., Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (Cambridge, 2006)Google Scholar.

40 Lieber, Francis, The Character of a Gentleman (London, 1847), 33Google Scholar; Vernon, J. R., “The Gentleman,” Contemporary Review 2 (1869): 561–80, 571Google Scholar; Smiles, Samuel, Life and Labour (London, 1887), 34Google Scholar;Friswell, J. Hain, The Gentle Life (London, 1868), 31Google Scholar.

41 Mason, English Gentleman, 411.

42 Smythe-Palmer, A., The Ideal of a Gentleman: Or a Mirror for Gentlefolks, A Portrayal in Literature from the Earliest Times (London, 1892), 139Google Scholar.

43 Shapin, Steven, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeeth Century England (Chicago, 1994), 47Google Scholar.

44 Szreter, Fertility, 416–7; Szreter and Garrett, “Reproduction, Compositional Demography and Economic Growth.” On the impact of evangelicalism on the landed classes, see David Spring, “Aristocracy, Social Structure and Religion in the Early Victorian Period,” Victorian Studies 6, no. 3, Symposium on Victorian Affairs (1) (March 1963): 263–80; Bradley, Ian, The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London, 1976), 34–40 and 152–54Google Scholar.

45 Szreter and Garrett, “Reproduction, Compositional Demography and Economic Growth”; see also the comments in Szreter, Fertility, 460–62; and John Tosh, “Domesticity and Manliness in the Victorian Middle-Class: The Family of Benson, Edward White,” in Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800, ed. Roper, Michael and Tosh, John(London, 1991), 44–73Google Scholar.

46 Honey, “Tom Brown's Universe.”

47 The Acland estates were centered on Killerton House in Devon. At the time of the Parliamentary Return of Owners of Land (London, 1873–75), the Acland family owned just over 30,000 acres in England and Wales. This placed them in the upper bracket of gentry landowners, with estates that would have rivaled much of the aristocracy.

48 Letter from Arthur Herbert Dyke Acland to his father, 28 July 1879, Papers of the Acland Family, MS1148M/add 14/Series I/169, Devon Record Office (DRO).

49 The Kekewich family were seated at Peamore near Exeter. According to the Parliamentary Return of Owners of Land, their estates in Devon and Cornwall extended to 4,734 acres with annual rentals of £5,942. They were members of the group termed “great landowners“ but of far less wealth and national influence than the Acland family. Also see Burke's Landed Gentry (London, 1937), 1276–77.

50 Reminiscences of Sir George Kekewich, ca. 1920, Papers of the Kekewich Family, MS 2821M/F10, DRO.

51 ibid.

52 For example, see the account of William Vere Reeve Fane in Reminiscences of William Fane, 1942, MS FANE/6/11/1/7, Lincolnshire Archives.

53 On the impact of public school education on pupils, see Honey, “Tom Brown's Universe”; and Gagnier, Regenia, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832–1920 (Oxford, 1991), 188Google Scholar.

54 Professional research on landed women is scarce, but, for a good example, see Gerard, Country House Life, 115–42. Gerard also provides a synopsis of the field as it currently stands; see 136–37.

55 Sutherland, G., “Education,” in Social Activities and Institutions, ed. Thompson, F. M. L., vol. 3 of Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950 (Cambridge, 1990), 119–71Google Scholar. For a contemporary perspective, see Stanley, H. M. (Lady Stanley of Alderley), “Personal Recollections of Women's Education,” Nineteenth Century 6, no. 34 (1879): 308–21Google Scholar.

56 Jordan, Ellen, “‘Making Good Wives and Mothers?’ The Transformation of Middle Class Girls' Education in Nineteenth Century Britain,” History of Education Quarterly 31, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 439–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Pederson, Joyce Senders, “The Reform of Women's Secondary and Higher Education: Institutional Change and Social Values in Mid and Late Victorian England,” History of Education Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 61–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Jordan, “‘Making Good Wives and Mothers?'” 439–62; Kathleen E. McCrone, “‘Play Up! Play Up! And Play the Game!’: Sport at the Late Victorian Girls’ Public School,” Journal of British Studies 23, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 106–34.

59 Dyhouse, Carol, “Family Patterns of Social Mobility through Higher Education in England in the 1930s,” Journal of Social History 34, no. 4 (2001): 817–42CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

60 See Lush, M., “Changes in the Law Affecting the Rights, Status and Liabilities of Married Women,” in A Century of Law Reform, ed. Lush, M. (London, 1901), 341–57Google Scholar. For a comparative study of the gradual nature of these changes and a broad perspective on the debates such changes stimulated among political thinkers, see Allen, Ann Taylor, Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890–1970 (Basingstoke, 2005)Google Scholar.

61 For contemporary examples, see Cowper, Lady Kate, “The Decline of Reserve among Women,” Nineteenth Century 27, no. 187 (1890): 65–71Google Scholar; B. A. Crackenthorpe, “The Revolt of the Daughters,” Nineteenth Century 35, no. 205 (1894): 23–31; Bell, Lady, Landmarks: A Reprint of Some Essays and Other Pieces Published between the Years 1894 and 1922 (London, 1929), esp. 53–73Google Scholar. For a historical perspective, see Hammerton, A. James, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth Century Married Life (London, 1992)Google Scholar; Rubinstein, David, Before the Suffragettes: Women's Emancipation in the 1890s (Brighton, 1986)Google Scholar; and Joan N. Burstyn, “Education and Sex: The Medical Case against Higher Education for Women in England, 1870–1900,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117, no. 1 (1973): 79–89.

62 These figures were obtained from an examination of the same families as those used for the fertility figures and for those on male education.

63 Burke's Peergage, 16.

64 Letters of congratulation on Eleanor Cropper's first class degree in history at Somerville College, Oxford, July-October 1900, and letters congratulating Eleanor on the publication of her first novel The Straights of Hope, 1904, Papers of the Acland Family, MS 1148M add 14/series II/210–300 and 308–40, DRO. Also, see Lady Ann Acland, A Devon Family: The Story of the Aclands (Chichester, 1981), 141.

65 Letters from Eleanor Cropper to Francis Acland, January to March, 1905, 1148M add 14/series II/51–55, DRO.

66 Burke's Peergage, 16.

67 ibid.

68 Letter from Francis Acland to his wife Eleanor, 14 January 1907, 1148M Add 14/series II/464, DRO.,

69 Burke's Peerage, 16. The longer birth intervals between the second, third, and fourth child were, perhaps, due to the earlier birth of two sons and the future security this gave for the inheritance of the family name and estates.

70 Szreter, Fertility, 553–58.

71 ibid., 465–81.

72 Strong and significant links between landed society and the professional middle classes were found by Lawrence Stone in his monumental study An Open Elite? England, 1540–1880 (London, 1984), although Stone considered these less significant in the process and focused on seeking evidence of closer connections between landowners, industrialists, and merchants. Connections between the gentry and the professions have also been emphasized by other historians in the area, although generally in terms of social mobility into and out of the landed gentry. See Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, 22, for an example of this.

73 Szreter, Fertility, 380–81.

74 ibid., 474–75.

75 ibid., 342–44.

76 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 35–37.