Applies various classifications to 1841 occupation data, including Booth-Armstrong, RG Social Class and SIC2007

Table ID:

OCC_1841_CODEBOOK     (1251766)

Contents:

Applies various classifications to 1841 occupation data, including Booth-Armstrong, RG Social Class and SIC2007

Approx. number of rows:

3,654

Table type:

Codebook

Documentation Author:

Humphrey Southall

Chronology:

The data are for the single year 1841.

Sources:

1. Values of order21 and group21 were assigned using the full codebook published as Census 1921: Classification of Occupations (HMSO, 1924), which uses 32 orders and groups in the range 0 to 999 (although not all of the latter range is used).
2. Values of booth were assigned from Armstrong, A., 'The use of information about occupation', pp.191-310 in: Wrigley, E.A. (ed.), Nineteenth Century Society: Essays in the use of quantitative methods for the study of social data (Cambridge: CUP, 1972).

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Notes:

1. Where occupational descriptions in the 1841 table did not appear in the two codebooks, the closest equivalent was used. In some cases, the Complete Oxford English Dictionary was checked for the meaning of specialist occupational descriptions.
2. Where an occupational description in the 1841 table included two or more occupations, a classification was assigned on the basis of the first occupation named.
3. All 1841 occupations have values for booth, order21/ord21_rom, group21 and class21, but at present only a minority have values for class51. NB the 1841 table includes some broad residual categories which are very hard to assign to social classes.
4. Assignment to the 2007 Standard Occupational Classification is particularly problematic. Particular issues are:
   • Very many 1841 occupations were listed as 'Maker and Dealer' or as 'Dealer and Makes', or similar terms. In these cases great weight was given to which term appeared first, to assign the occupation to either Manufacturing or to 'Wholesale and Retail Trade'. However, this may well be giving far too much weight to arbitrary choices of phrasing by census clerks when working on particular counties. The general point to remember is that in this historical period very many people sold what they made and made what they sold, to trying to separate manufacturing from services is deeply problematic.
   • Distinctions within 'Wholesale and Retail Trade' are even more problematic, and for products that were capable of being directly consumed by individual people came down to guessing whether the product specialisation was extreme enough that most customers would not be end users. Dealers, merchants etc selling raw materials were generally assumed to be in Wholesale.
   • Some occupations are impossible to assign to specific industries. Some of these were assign to 'Division' 100, which we invented to cover unclassifiable descriptions, but wherever possible we assigned people who seemed to be making something to Division 31, 'Other Manufacturing', and diverse vague commercial jobs were assigned to Division 82, 'Office administrative, office support and other business support activities'.

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Checking:

1. This table was created by selecting all distinct values of 'occup' from the 'occ_1841' table, downloading these into Excel, and then adding codes manually; this work was done by Humphrey Southall in summer 1999. The only checking was proof-reading.

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Acknowledgments:

We are extremely grateful to the following:

1. Jason Long: Humphrey Southall provided most of the entries in 'booth' and a minority of those in 'class21'; these columns were completed by Jason Long in July 2001.

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Indices:

Index	Type	Column(s) indexed
occ_1841_codebook_pkey	Primary key	occupation

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Constraints:

The table has the following associated constraints:

Constraint	Type	Details
occ_1841_codebook_pkey	Primary Key	See details above for primary key index

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Columns within table:

Column	Type	Contents
seq_num	Integer number.	A unique sequence number identifying each row, starting from 1.
occupation	Text string (max.len.=84).	The occupation as listed in the 1841 census report and as held in the 'occ_1841' table.
formatted	Text string (max.len.=84).	Text to be output in table reconstructions in Vision of Britain. Identical to 'occupation' except for the total of the individual occupations and the overall total population, which have added HTML tags to set them to bold.
booth	Text string (max.len.=10).	The occupational category under the Booth-Armstrong coding scheme. Set to 'TOTAL' for the categories at the end of the table which are not occupations at all.
ind_sector	Text string (max.len.=9).	This is an ad hoc code which, broadly speaking, maps the Booth classification to a much simpler system of sux sectors as used in the 'Vision of Britain' web site. Most of the assignments are obvious. However, the following specific groups were assigned to Utilities, not Services: those employed in posts and telegraph in PP1; those employed at waterworks in PP3; and labourers in IS2.
order21	Integer number.	The occupational order under the classification used by the 1921 census held as a conventional number.
ord21_rom	Text string (max.len.=10).	The occupational order under the classification used by the 1921 census, held as a roman numeral and therefore matching the categories in the table 'occ_1921'.
group21	Integer number.	The occupational group under the classification used by the 1921 census.
class21	Integer number.	The social class under the 1921 occupational classification, as provided by Armstrong.
class51	Integer number.	The social class under the 1951 occupational classification, as provided by Armstrong.
sic_query	Text string (max.len.=6).	This is a flag column which holds 'Q' if our assignment of the 1841 category to the 2007 SIC was seen as especially problematic; otherwise empty.
sic_division	Integer number.	Integer number identifying the 2007 SIC 'Division' to which we have assigned the 1841 group. These form a single sequence running from 1 to 99.
sic_division_name	Text string (max.len.=142).	Name of the 2007 SIC 'Division'. For example, 'AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHING' is divided into (01) 'Crop and animal production, hunting and related service activities', (02) 'Forestry and logging', and (03) 'Fishing and aquaculture'. Some Sections contain only one division.
notes	Long text.	Notes, mainly used to explain the basis for problematic allocations. This includes information copied from other sources, including the Oxford English Dictionary and Wikipedia.