Most interpretations of late-Victorian and Edwardian social and economic trends have relied heavily upon the industrial labour statistics published by Whitehall. This book, originally published in 1985 incorporates a critical examination of the human resources, motivation and statistical techniques which generate that data base. It focuses on the production, structure, and output of the official statistics relating to a range of imperfections in the labour market and industrial relations, characterised by contemporary social observers, administrator and policy makers as ‘the labour problem.’ This study makes a significant contribution to the recent debate over the nature and motivation of late-Victorian and Edwardian social policy. It provides a case study with which to assess the hypotheses put forward by social scientists as to the relationship between social statistics and policy. Thirdly, in examining the motivation of official statisticians, the book will illuminate the changing role of the expert in British government growth since 1800. This book, with its wide range of primary sources, will be valuable to students of the history of late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and to the development of British industrial relations and the welfare state.

Roger Davidson is Emeritus Professor of Social History in the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely on the history of medical and governmental responses to sexual issues. He is author of Dangerous Liaisons: A Social History of Venereal Disease in Twentieth-Century Scotland (2000), The Sexual State: Sexuality and Scottish Governance, 1950-80 (2012), and Illicit and Unnatural Practices: The Law, Sex and Society in Scotland since 1900 (2019).