Directories contain a wealth of information about life in the towns and villages of Britain over the past two hundred or more years. Below is an outline of some ways in which academic historians use, or have used, directories to explore this rich heritage.
As a starting point, we will look at different forms of academic study.
Early research tended to focus on establishing the number and location of businesses. For example, Hall used directory data to plot the industrial landscape of London during the nineteenth century.
More recent work uses directories to explore business communities, business networks and the scale of industrial activities. For example:
Other studies have traced the evolution of individual enterprises.
Although the information in directories relates primarily to towns, many also include descriptions and listings for villages in their hinterlands. Also, national and provincial directories usually cover all parishes in a given area.
Historians have exploited this to produce a variety of studies looking at different aspects of rural life including service provision, rural industries, and craft activities. For example:
There are also a few papers looking at specifically rural trades such as market gardening and dairying.
Directories have been used to explore retailing in a variety of ways. Some studies look at the retail structure of particular towns, for example.
Researchers have also investigated the detailed geographies of shopping districts.
Other research traces the evolution of particular firms.
This area has seen renewed interest in recent years. Town descriptions in directories have provided a useful source of information for studies looking at various aspects of improvement and urban renaissance.
Directories are ideally suited for the study of particular towns, since they provide information on most aspects of urban life. Indeed, many early directories also acted as town histories in their own right.
Researchers have made particular use of the topographic descriptions found at the beginning of many editions.
They have also drawn on the listings of inhabitants to explore issues such as economic development and urban spheres of influence.
More recently attention has switched to explorations of particular types of town, most notably seaside resorts.
Most directories contain a wealth of information about transport services and infrastructure covering road, rail, canals, and shipping. There are national and more localised studies on transport history.
Although the problems of using directories to study population are well known, they can be used to explore issues such as urban class segregation, residential mobility and migration.
Historians have only recently begun to recognise the potential value of directories as a source for investigating church history. Most contain a great deal of information on the clergy:
As well as exploring a whole range of topics, historians have also conducted their analyses in a variety of ways. Some of these are outlined below.
Use of other sources
Historians have increasingly recognised the importance of combining directory material with other sources in order to offset some of the problems of reliability. For example, Stobart and Hann’s study of retail hierarchy in north-west England combines directory listings with shop tax and probate data.
Longitudinal analysis
This is possible where directories run to a number of editions that are roughly comparable. It involves tracing an individual, company, or residents of a particular street over time by identifying the relevant entries in each directory.
Such analyses are useful for compiling biographies, or tracing the development of a particular street.
Cross-sectional analysis
This approach is more familiar to the historian. It involves taking a snapshot of life in a particular town or village at a moment in time and then comparing this with some other point in the future.
Again directories are very useful for this in that they have been produced over a considerable period, and provide relatively consistent coverage.
Scales of analysis
Directories have been used in studies at a variety of spatial scales: the nation, the region, the town, and the individual.
Large-scale studies are possible due to the wide availability of consistent data, particularly in national and provincial directories produced by companies such as Kelly’s and Pigot’s. The level of detail in each volume, however, also opens up opportunities for exploration of particular localities, streets and individual businesses.
Types of data
Directories are a source of both quantitative and qualitative data. Data is quantitative when it contains numbers and is susceptible to categorisation and measurement. This applies most obviously to data derived from the listings of inhabitants.
Examples include studies looking at the retail provision of a particular town, or tracing the number of wagons serving settlements in a particular region.
Other parts of directories, most notably the town descriptions, are more likely to be used as qualitative sources. A common qualitative technique is to use selected quotations from the directories to support a line of argument.
This section has highlighted some of the potential uses of directories, revealing what a versatile source they really are. The next section, however, will look at some of the possible pitfalls.