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Accidents, disasters and cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Bill Luckin
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Abstract

Despite a massive proliferation in the literature on ‘risk’ and ‘disaster management’ in the contemporary world, historians have been slow to clarify their thoughts on these issues. The paper seeks to remedy this state of affairs. For the purposes of exegesis, it separates disasters, mishaps and accidents into ‘natural’, ‘social’, ‘symbolic’ and ‘individual’ categories, before summarizing and interrogating the influential theoretical work of Karl Figlio in this field. In terms of conclusions, the article suggests a provisional social-historical methodology for the recovery and reconstruction of the individual ‘moment’ of the accident; proposes a breaking down of the barriers between ‘domestic’ and ‘non-domestic’ occurrences of this type; and analyses reasons for lack of scholarly interest in the area as a whole. Focused predominantly on Britain, the paper also draws selectively on European and extra-European experience; and deploys numerous examples derived from urban history in order to press home its major points.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , October 1993 , pp. 177 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

* This paper was first given at a meeting of the informal seminar at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester in January 1993. I would like to thank members of the group for their comments and especially for numerous bibliographical suggestions which may have improved the comparative dimensions of the article.

1 See Figlio, K., ‘What is an accident?’ in Weindling, P. (ed.), The Social History of Occupational Health (London, 1986), 180–206Google Scholar and ‘How does medicine mediate social relations?’, in Wright, P. and Treacher, A. (eds), The Problem of Medical Knowledge: Examining the Social Construction of Medicine (Edinburgh, 1982), 174–224.Google Scholar

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3 Jones, E.L. has posited a four-fold categorization of ‘disasters’ in The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge, 1981), 24.Google Scholar He highlights the ‘geophysical’, the ‘climatic’, the ‘biological’ and the ‘social’ but does not ‘move down’ to the level of the individual accident.

4 But there has also been an Annales-influenced commitment to the ‘autonomous’ or quasi-autonomous activity of ‘microorganisms’ in the past. See Braudel, F., Capitalism and Material Life 1400–1800, trans. Kochan, M. (London, 1973), 1–65Google Scholar and Le Roy Ladurie, E., ‘A concept: the unification of the globe (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries)’, in Ladurie, , The Mind and Method of the Historian, trans S. and Reynolds, B. (Brighton, 1981), 28–83.Google Scholar Similar, ‘global’ tendencies are also to be found in McNeill, W.H., Plagues and Peoples (Oxford, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 The stereotypical example here is the repeated devastation of Bangladesh by hurricane and flood. See Khondaker, M.S., ‘Perception of and response to floods in Bangladesh’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1989).Google Scholar

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8 The key texts are Lovelock, J., Gaia (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar and The Ages of Gaia (Oxford, 1988).Google Scholar Gribbin, J. has provided a useful primer, Hothouse Earth: The Greenhouse Effect and Gaia (London, 1990).Google Scholar

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10 The classic ‘nostalgic’ interpreters are John and Barbara Hammond and G.M. Trevelyan. There is no adequate biography of the Hammonds, but Hartwell, R.M., ‘The rise of modern industry: a review’, in Hartwell, , The Industrial Revolution and Economic Growth (London, 1971), 377–89Google Scholar begins to clear the ground. On Trevelyan see Cannadine, D., G.M. Trevelyan: A Life in History (London, 1992).Google Scholar

11 Such a judgement is, of course, dependent on the view that one takes of the chronology and ‘pace’ of the Industrial Revolution. For a classic statement of the ‘new’ ‘gradualism’ of the late 1970s and 1980s see Samuel, R., ‘The workshop of the world: steam power and hand technology in mid-Victorian Britain’, History Workshop Journal, 3 (1977), 6–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a reaction against this view see Berg, M. and Hudson, P., ‘Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution’, Economic History Review, XLV (1992), 24–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hudson, P., The Industrial Revolution (London, 1992).Google Scholar The historiography of a seemingly unending debate is well handled by Cannadine, D. in ‘The past and the present in the English Industrial Revolution’, Past and Present, 103 (1984), 131–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 The figures in Hanawalt's, B. The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (Bloomington, 1986), 271–4Google Scholar, are highly suggestive on this point. Rule, J. presents tantalizing hints on the eighteenth century in his Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England 1750–1850 (London, 1986), 139–41.Google Scholar Intermittent nineteenth century parliamentary returns remain unexplored but official investigations undertaken in the late twentieth century are legion. See, for example, Health and Safety Executive, One Hundred Fatal Accidents in Construction (London, 1978).Google Scholar

13 A highly perceptive culturalist interpretation can be found in Schivelbusch, W., The Railway Journey: The Industrialazation of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century (Leamington Spa, 1977), 129–49.Google Scholar See, also, Crouzet, F., The Victorian Economy, trans. Forster, A. (London, 1982), 285–7Google Scholar and Craven, P., ‘The meaning of misadventure: the Baptiste Creek railway disaster of 1854 and its aftermath’, in Hall, R. et al. (eds), Patterns of the Past: Interpreting Ontario's History (Toronto, 1988), 108–29.Google Scholar But much empirical work still remains to be done on the primary sources in relation to nineteenth century railway accidents. The car is not much better served; but see Plowden, W., The Motor Car and Politics 1896–1970 (London, 1971)Google Scholar, chapter 13 and Luckin, B., ‘Class war on the roads: the black-out, traffic accidents and social relations in Britain, 1939–45’, in R.J. Cooler and B. Luckin (eds), Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities and Social Relations (forthcoming).Google Scholar Recent developments are discussed in Irwin, A., Risk and the Control of Technology: Public Policies for Road Traffic Safety in Britain and the United States (Manchester, 1985).Google Scholar For a social constructivist approach to the automobile accident in the United States during the 1970s see Gusfield, J.P., The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-Driving and the Symbolic Order (Chicago, 1984).Google Scholar

14 On the issue of risk and anxiety in the pre-nuclear and nuclear ages see Wager, W.W., Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things (Bloomington, 1982)Google Scholar and Weart, S.R., Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).Google Scholar

15 The literature on risk is now dauntingly massive: see the bibliographies in Bryant, E., Natural Hazards (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar and Smith, K., Environmental Hazards (London, 1991).Google Scholar Beck's, U. controversial Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. Ritter, M. (London, 1992)Google Scholar should also be consulted.

16 Very few historians have yet engaged with these problems but Houlbrooke, R. (ed.), Death, Ritual and Bereavement (London, 1989)Google Scholar is a useful collection of essays. Theoretical issues are outlined in Parkes, C.M., Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life (London, 1972).Google Scholar

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18 Anthropological insights are provided in plenty by Douglas, M., Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966)Google Scholar and ‘Environments at risk’, in her collection Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London, 1975), 230–48.Google Scholar See also Douglas, M. and Wildavsky, A., Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley, 1982).Google Scholar For a brilliant analysis of ‘loaded’ environments in England during the early modern period, see Thomas, , Religion and Decline of Magic, chapter 1. The same author's Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800 (London, 1983)Google Scholar is also invaluable for contextual purposes.

19 Thomas, , Religion and Decline of Magic, chapters 21 and 22.Google Scholar

20 See Eyler, J.M., ‘William Farr on the cholera: the sanitarian's disease theory and the statistician's method’, Journal of the History of Medicine, 28 (1973), 79–100Google Scholar and the same author's Victorian Social Medicine: The Ideas and Methods of William Farr (Baltimore, 1979).Google Scholar See also Cullen, J., The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain: The Foundations of Empirical Social Science (New York, 1975)Google Scholar and Porter, T.M., The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820–1900 (Princeton, 1988).Google Scholar

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22 This is an under-researched field: but for continuing technical difficulties, culminating in a series of gas-work explosions in the inter-war period, see Redford, A. and Russell, I.S., The History of Local Government in Manchester: Vol. III, The Last Half Century (London, 1940), 77–93 and 274–81Google Scholar and especially 279. ‘The gas industry's turnover in cash and corpses is a world wonder. They consider it a very popular industry and it certainly is the most popular form of suicide, many hundreds die of it every year, but it is painless and that is in its favour’, Electrical Times, 12 02 1931, 280.Google Scholar An element of truth lurked behind some of this ‘electrically-inspired’, ‘anti- gas’ propaganda.

23 In the British context, the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1897 has seemed to be highly significant. P. Bartrip has argued that the legislation was the best that could be secured in the prevailing political and economic climate: Bartrip, , ‘The rise and decline of workmen's compensation’, in Weindling (ed.), Social History of Occupational Health, 157–79.Google Scholar But he also admits that coverage was very patchy in the years between 1897 and 1918. Furthermore, real levels of assistance were decisively determined by numbers of dependents: ‘A father of six children who was injured at work could expect to receive no more in compensation than a similarly incapacitated married, yet childless man’, 167. For further detail see Bartrip, P., The Wounded Soldiers of Industry: Industrial Compensation Policy 1833–1897 (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar and Bartrip, P.W.J., Workmen's Compensation in Twentieth Century Britain: Law, History and Social Policy (Aldershot, 1987).Google Scholar

24 Figlio, , ‘What is an accident?’, 180–206.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., 184. For a revealing twentieth century context see G. Wilke and K. Wagner, ‘Family and household: social structures in a German village between the two world wars’, in Evans, R.J. and Lee, W.R. (eds), The German Family: Essays in the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany (London, 1981), 120–47.Google Scholar

26 Figlio, , ‘What is an accident?’, 185.Google Scholar

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid., 183.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., 201–2.

31 Ibid., 202.

32 Obelkevich, , Religion and Rural Society, passim.Google Scholar

33 A suggestive theoretical framework may be derived from Mauss, M., The Gift, trans. Cunnison, I. (London, 1954)Google Scholar and Titmuss, R.M., The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy (London, 1970).Google Scholar

34 The precise chronologies of three processes — the withdrawal of the gentry from urban affairs, the purchase by the merchant interest of suburban or semi-rural residences, and increased spatial segregation within industrializing areas themselves — are crucial. For regional and local detail see Wilson, R.G., Gentlemen Merchants: The Merchant Community in Leeds 1700–1830 (Manchester, 1971), chapters 9 and 10Google Scholar: Foster, J., Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns (London, 1974), chapter 5 and esp. p. 182Google Scholar: and Earle, P., The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London 1660–1730 (London, 1989).Google Scholar

35 Yet this is precisely the ‘equation’ which is implicitly central to but not resolved in Cowan's, R.S. otherwise impressive More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York, 1983).Google Scholar Hayden, D., The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods and Cities (Cambridge, Mass., 1981)Google Scholar is also germane to this problem and the period in which it is located. British feminist historians have been slow to follow up the leads provided by Cowan and Hayden.

36 For Britain the best general survey is Wohl, A.S., Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (London, 1983).Google Scholar But see also McKeown, T., The Modern Rise of Population (London, 1976).Google Scholar

37 Luckin, B., Pollution and Control: A Social History of the Thames in the Nineteenth Century (Bristol, 1986), chapter 4.Google Scholar

38 See, on this issue, Plowden, , Motor Car and British Politics, chapter 13.Google Scholar

39 Explicitly political movements and agendas also played a role. See Parkin, F., Middle-Class Radicalism: The Social Bases of the British C.N.D. (Manchester, 1968)Google Scholar and Byrne, P., The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (London, 1988).Google Scholar

40 But Wohl emphasizes the uneven nature of improvement in chronological, regional and spatial terms: see Endangered Lives, 327Google Scholar and The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London (Leicester, 1977), chapter 12.Google Scholar

41 See the informative diagrams in Boys, J. and others, ‘House design and women's roles’, in Matrix Collective (ed.), Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment (London, 1984), 55–80.Google Scholar I am grateful to Susan Ford for drawing my attention to this article.

42 The key articles here are Bowden, S., ‘The consumer durables revolution in England 1932–1938: a regional analysis’, Explorations in Economic History, 25 (1988), 42–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Credit facilities and the growth of consumer demand for electric appliances in England in the 1930's', Business History, XXXII (1990), 52–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 The literature on the nineteenth century fertility decline is extensive. For an overview see Woods, R., The Population of Britain in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1992), chapter 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the methodologically-based polemic between Woods and Seccombe, W., ‘Debate: working-class fertility decline in Britain’, Past and Present, 134 (1992), 200–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 On this point see Abrams, P., Historical Sociology (Shepton Mallet, 1982), chapter 6Google Scholar; Anderson, P., Arguments within English Marxism (London, 1980)Google Scholar; and Eley, G. and Nield, K., ‘Why does social history ignore politics?’, Social History, 5 (1980), 249–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Green, J., ‘Some problems in the development of a sociology of accidents’, in Cooler and Luckin (eds), Accidents in HistoryGoogle Scholar, and Cornwell, J., ‘Health — a coincidence? Accounts of health and illness in a working class community: the case of Bethnal Greeny’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1984).Google Scholar See also Cornwell, J., Hard Earned Lives: Accounts of Health and Illness from East London (London, 1984).Google Scholar

46 That so many of the individuals and groups referred to by the contributors to Weindling (ed.), Social History of Occupational Health were the victims of lingering ‘industrial’ conditions suggests that these were in fact legislatively and administratively defined states, rather than ‘accidents’. Figlio seems to arrive at just such a conclusion in ‘What is an accident?’, 201–2.

47 Agendas on how to write medical history ‘from below’ threaten to torpedo the project itself. But see Fissell, M.E., Patients, Power and the Poor in Eighteenth Century Bristol, (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar, chapter 8; Porter, R. (ed.), Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar: and Porter, R. and Porter, D., In Sickness and in Health: The British Experience 1650–1850 (London, 1988).Google Scholar

48 The extent to which there has been a shift away from Webbian chronicles of trade unions — committees, subcommittees and national, regional and local organizations — may be assessed in the light of the lengthy bibliography appended to Joyce, P., ‘Work’, in Thompson, F.M.L. (ed.), Cambridge Social History of Britain Vol. 2: People and their Environment (Cambridge, 1990), 131–94.Google Scholar