Stafford

Regardless of the changing social and political landscapes throughout the relatively long time period covered by this research will making did not become common practice among Stafford residents.  However for those who did make a will in the majority of cases it was a planned document, not written in haste on a deathbed.

This research investigates the testamentary elements contained in the wills of Stafford residents during the period 1761-1860, a period of paradigm change which resulted in Stafford transforming from a small County Town with a population of almost four thousand in 1801, to an industrial centre of over twelve thousand by 1860. The article explores only a small portion of the testamentary content found in Stafford wills, but the results give a unique insight into aspects of life not always covered by other historical documents. Industrialisation resulted in cheaper goods being made available to more people, so the testamentary elements of Stafford wills were investigated to see if bequests of personal and household items increased. The nineteenth century also raised many social concerns, of which funerals were one. The first half of the nineteenth century was known for its extravagant and expensive funerals so testator’s funeral instructions were investigated to see what type of funeral arrangements were requested.
The results highlight that changes cannot always be identified unless research covers a long enough timespan. Also, that despite campaigns to promote will making, in Stafford the number of testators as a percentage of the population declined in the nineteenth century. Industrialisation and the availability of cheaper goods also did not, as might have been expected result in an increase in testamentary bequests of specific ‘things’, but rather a decline. Using the preamble of a will for funeral arrangements also became less common in the nineteenth century.

The nineteenth century was a period of paradigm change when work industrialised, the middle classes grew and government bureaucracy gradually took control of many aspects of everyday life. It is also the century that has been identified for its funeral extravagance. Complaints about undertakers’ practices and the expense of funerals had been made from the late eighteenth century, but it was not until industrialisation concentrated large numbers of people in towns that funeral reform also became linked to health issues and a candidate for social and political reform. This research looks at the cost of funerals in the County Town of Stafford between 1878 and 1889, in order to see if funerals in Stafford were cheaper or less extravagant in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, a period when many contemporaries claimed funeral expense had been significantly reduced due to funeral reform and finds no evidence to support such claims.

"To date there appears to have been little academic research that concentrates on investigating nineteenth century professions and none that could be located which consider their role in relation to the development of small provincial towns during this period of occupational flux. For example  Holmes (1982 ) and Corfield  (1999 ) concentrate on profession in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; Abbott (1988) nineteenth and twentieth century profession in England, France and America and other researchers on the development of specific occupations such as medicine (Friedson 1970); accountancy (Matthews 2006); librarianship (Goode 1961) and although Larson’s (1977) research locates the beginning of professional mobilisation projects in the nineteenth century, it is primarily concerned with the twentieth. This research therefore explores how professional services developed in small English county towns during the nineteenth century and uses the county town of Stafford as its focus. It takes the form of a series of three interrelated case studies that move from providing a macro view of professional life and work in Stafford; to a more focused case study of one specific occupation, that of chemist/druggist; to investigating one particular Stafford family that for several generations had members who worked as chemists/druggists. This approach provides an overview of the type and level of professional services on offer in Stafford during this period along with an in-depth analysis of one particular occupation.

Research results indicate that profession as a concept held little value for the folk of Stafford throughout the nineteenth century and that professional services in the town were slow to develop, even during a period of rapid population growth. A range of twentieth century research theories and frameworks for categorising profession were tested and appeared not to be appropriate for accurately identifying professional work at this time and a nineteenth century framework is proposed. The growth of educational opportunities throughout the century and the use of profession as a marketing tool are however found to be intrinsically linked to the growth of the concept of profession by the end of the nineteenth century.
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This research investigates if any discernable change in the way people planned for death took place in the county town of Stafford from 1761-1860 by analysing a total of six hundred and seventy wills and letters of administration during the period when industrialisation fundamentally changed society. The results indicate that although industrialisation triggered an initial rise in the number of male and female wills going through probate that this rise was not sustained and by the mid nineteenth century the number of male wills was declining and the number of female wills had returned to almost mid eighteenth century levels. Sustained change was however discovered in the occupational makeup of will makers; the number of letters of administration granted and the probate valuation of estates. Research findings indicate that although the industrialisation period brought negative changes to some peoples living and working conditions, in Stafford it also resulted in increased prosperity for the town and at some of its residents. Not all findings for Stafford are in line with those for other areas and highlight the difficulty in attempting to roll out findings from one place to another. However because this research covers one hundred years and all surviving probate documents that could be traced for the town it has enabled several patterns of change to be identified which were not found by earlier researchers and emphasises the fact that social changes can be slow to develop.