Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
Population decentralisation from inner-urban areas to new suburban communities has constituted a major long-term social and economic trend over the last century. For the working-classes, suburbanisation first became significant during the interwar period; with about a quarter of urban working-class families moving to the suburbs. Moves to private and municipal suburban housing estates had important socio-economic impacts, foreshadowing trends that were to become generally obvious during the post-1945 period. These included major shifts in household consumption patterns, with an increase in the proportion of expenditure devoted to accommodation, furniture, consumer durables, and other items necessary to meet the social expectations of the new communities. Such priorities were often met via cut-backs in items of daily consumption, such as food, fuel and lighting. Suburbanisation was also associated with other important changes in working-class lifestyles, including the diffusion of new notions of ‘respectability’, neighbourliness, and community relations. The project examined these changes mainly via the composition and analysis of two databases: a quantitative database of surviving working-class household budget summaries collected by the Ministry of Labour in April 1938 and a qualitative database of biographical accounts concerning working-class people who moved from traditional inner-urban accommodation to owner-occupation, or suburban council housing, during the interwar period.
Main Topics:
The dataset comprises summary details regarding 170 biographical accounts of working-class people who moved from inner-urban areas to council estates or into owner-occupation during the interwar period, covering a total of 174 relevant house moves, with 47 fields of data. The sources used included published and unpublished autobiographies and contemporary interviews, though most were taken from oral history archives and studies. Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.
Purposive selection/case studies
Face-to-face interview
Transcription of existing materials
Compilation or synthesis of existing material
Audio recording
