"Mrs Harvey came home from Norwich ... her pocket picked at the station and all her money stolen”:using life writing to recover the experience of travel in the past

In most societies the ability to move easily from place to place is a taken-for-granted aspect of twenty-first century life, but much less is known about such mobility in the past with a tendency for accounts to focus on the exceptional rather than the routine. In this paper we use two personal diaries written in England in the mid-nineteenth century and early-twentieth centuries to explore the ways in which everyday mobility was accomplished in the past. Attention is focused on the ease with which people could move around, the variety of modes of transport used, the enjoyment that travel generated, and the difficulties that were encountered. It is concluded that frequent everyday mobility was commonplace and mostly unproblematic, and was as closely enmeshed with society and economy as is the case in the twenty-first century. Such mobility also facilitated residential migration by providing knowledge about potential locations

"My father found it for me”:changing experiences of entering the workforce in twentieth-century urban Britain

Leaving education and gaining employment is a significant life-course transition for most people. This paper explores the processes by which young people gained their first job in mid-twentieth century urban Britain, and examines the ways in which this changed in relation to major shifts in society, economy and culture. Key themes include the role of parents and other family members, changes in levels of autonomy and control and the impacts of societal change. Data are drawn from oral testimonies collected in three major urban areas: Glasgow, Manchester and London, and span a period from the 1920s to the 1980s

Migrants and the media in nineteenth-century Liverpool

Migration is a controversial topic in twenty-first century Britain, and similar debates were equally visible in the nineteenth century with ample evidence that migrants from Ireland and Europe faced stigmatization and discrimination in British cities. Today the media plays a major role in fuelling such debates, but little is known about the impact of newspaper reporting on public perceptions of migrants in the past. This paper focuses on the reporting of cases brought before the police courts in Liverpool in 1851, 1871 and 1891 and, through the use of nominal record linkage to census data, examines the extent and manner in which migrant origin was commented on in one major Liverpool newspaper. It is demonstrated that, perhaps surprisingly, this media outlet largely ignored migrant origin in its reporting, and thus was not a significant factor in shaping public perceptions of migrants in the city

Walking spaces:Changing pedestrian practices in Britain since c. 1850

Walking is one of the most sustainable and healthy forms of everyday travel over short distances, but pedestrianism has declined substantially in almost all countries over the past century. This paper uses a combination of personal testimonies and government reports to examine how the spaces through which people travel have changed over time, to chart the impacts that such changes have had on pedestrian mobility, and to consider the shifts that are necessary to revitalise walking as a common form of everyday travel. In the nineteenth century, most urban spaces were not especially conducive to walking, but many people did walk as they had little alternative and the sheer number of pedestrians meant that they could dominate urban space. In the twentieth century successive planning decisions have reshaped cities making walking appear both harder and riskier. Motorised transport has been normalised and pedestrianism marginalised. Only radical change will reverse this

Cities, spaces and movement:everyday experiences of urban travel in England c1840-1940

Travelling through a city was (and remains) a routine experience for many people, but direct information on such movements is hard to uncover for the more distant past. This paper uses selected diaries to explore the ways in which urban residents interacted with and responded to the spaces through which they travelled in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century England. It is argued that while some types of travel and associated environments did generate strong responses that diarists felt worth recording, for the most part urban travel was unproblematic and unremarkable and was therefore rarely remarked upon in life writing

Connecting historical studies of transport, mobility and migration

This paper argues that the sub-disciplines of transport history, migration history and mobilities studies too rarely interact directly with each other, and that there is much to be gained from the integration and cross-fertilisation of different approaches. Migration historians rarely directly consider the modes of transport used to travel, and although there has been increased interaction between transport historians and mobilities scholars in recent years the full potential of such interactions is yet to be exploited. The experience of travelling, and the convenience of the modes of transport used, can significantly influence later decisions about migration and mobility. This paper calls for a greater focus on such topics and explores some of the potential benefits

Newspaper reporting of migrants in England 1851-1911:spatial and temporal perspectives

England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was no stranger to migrants and, inevitably, migrants were not always warmly received. They were often stigmatised for their perceived differences of language, religion and behaviour, and were blamed for a range of social ills including crime and low wages. In this paper I examine print news reporting in six English port cities from c1850 to 1910. I focus on the ways in which crime reporting in particular characterised both offenders and victims, and the extent to which migrant origin was considered a relevant characteristic to report. It is argued that for the most part migrant origin was not widely mentioned in crime reports in regional newspapers, though there were periods when migrant origin was increasingly foregrounded and these coincided with times when migration to England was becoming increasingly politicised, especially before and immediately after the passing of the Aliens Act in 1905