The Account Book of Richard Latham, 1724-1767 - (Records of Social and Economic History) by Lorna Weatherill (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This account book of a small yeoman farmer in Lancashire, running from 1724 (just after his marriage) to his death in 1767, provides a record of expenditure on domestic, personal, and farming items. It is unique in offering a detailed view of household life and domestic economy in a stratum of society from which very few documents of any sort have survived.

Shedding light on the informal economy of the locality, entries cover payment for services, clothing, household goods, seeds, farming equipment, servants, medical expenses, books and education. A computer-generated concordance provides a comprehensive listing of all references likely to be of interest to historians.

Review Quotes

`This book is most welcome. It gives very valuable information from the eighteenth century of a type not readily available to the historian'.
Sylvia Harrop and Patricia Perrins.

'It provides an unusually detailed insight into the household and economy of a class whose records, originally not profuse at this period, have survived with the utmost rarity. It brings to life one of the larger, lower strata of Godfrey King's and Joseph Massie's social tables. The volume is succinctly introduced and sensibly edited. The index produced by the Micro Oxford Concordance Package is extensive and innovatory.'
R.g. Wilson, University of East Anglia, Northern History

`provides a wealth of material on the economic and social behaviour of a small-scale yeoman farmer in Hanoverian Lancashire ... The detailed coverage, in a period for which evidence about small households is extremely rare, gives this text a unique value and ensures that all interested in rural social and the rural economy of Hanoverian England will wish to read it ... Wetherill's valuable work offers the sort of specific information that is such a useful complement to more statistical studies.'
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