R. J. Morris – författare

This is an innovative study of middle-class behaviour and property relations in English towns in Georgian and Victorian Britain. Through the lens of wills, family papers, property deeds, account books and letters, the author offers a reading of the ways in which middle-class families survived and surmounted the economic difficulties of early industrial society. He argues that these were essentially 'networked' families created and affirmed by a 'gift' network of material goods, finance, services and support, with property very much at the centre of middle-class survival strategies. His approach combines microhistorical studies of individual families with a broader analysis of the national and even international networks within which these families operated. The result is a significant contribution to the history, and to debates about the place of structural and cultural analysis in historical understanding.

This is an innovative study of middle-class behaviour and property relations in English towns in Georgian and Victorian Britain. Through the lens of wills, family papers, property deeds, account books and letters, the author offers a reading of the ways in which middle-class families survived and surmounted the economic difficulties of early industrial society. He argues that these were essentially 'networked' families created and affirmed by a 'gift' network of material goods, finance, services and support, with property very much at the centre of middle-class survival strategies. His approach combines microhistorical studies of individual families with a broader analysis of the national and even international networks within which these families operated. The result is a significant contribution to the history, and to debates about the place of structural and cultural analysis in historical understanding.

Originally published in 1976, this is the account of British society’s response to the threat of disease. It is the story of an administrative fight to exclude the disease by quarantine and to persuade commerce and working-class people to observe carefully thought-out regulations. The story of one of failure – of men hampered by lack of information, lack of resources and lack of a convincing scientific explanation. Medical science failed to see that infected water supplies were the major carriers of the epidemic and failed to acknowledge saline infusion (the basis of successful modern treatment) when it was presented to them by an obscure local surgeon in Leith. The social structure of the medical profession was as much a barrier to scientific advance as the technical limitations of statistical method and microscope. These reactions are explained in terms of the expectations and the understanding of those involved as well as in terms of modern medical knowledge and sociological theory.