Rowntree hailed for laying bare scourge of poverty

From its large-scale factories churning out a handsome profit, to its bustling shops stocked with exotic goods from across the empire – many in the city had never had it so good.

Yet hidden away down rat-infested alleys and rotting over-crowded homes, many more had never had it so bad.

The plight of the city’s poorest, a world away from the image of prosperous Victorian York, remained largely hidden before Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree’s groundbreaking report, Poverty: a study in town life.

The study, which was published in 1901 at the end of the Victorian era, used York as an example to reflect what was happening to the poorest people in society across the country.

It laid bare a bleak reality where two-thirds of the city’s population lived in squalor and sparked a period of soul-searching.

Just a year after his report was published, Seebohm’s father, Joseph Rowntree, bought 150 acres of land near the village of Earswick, two-and-a-half miles to the north of the centre of York, so that employees of his cocoa factory could live in better quality housing.

But through his work, Seebohm Rowntree also unwittingly laid the foundations for the city to become an international leader in social studies, with ensuing generations of academics picking up the baton from where he left off.

It is estimated that hundreds of important studies detailing life in the city have been published over the past 100 years.

While its tradition of social justice has also inspired other important works such as, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, published in 2009 by York University Professors Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, which has been seized on by a host of politicians, including David Cameron.

Now a group of leading researchers from York University has joined forces to identify and catalogue all the social studies carried out in York over the past century, to produce an online archive drawing attention to the city’s importance in the development of international social and urban research.

Dr Rowland Atkinson, from the university’s Centre for Urban Research, said: “Since Seebohm Rowntree’s study was published in 1901, York has been hugely influential for research on key social questions today.

“The main thing that came out of it was, it is possible to have quite significant pockets of poverty in a city where most people seemed to think, at that time, that was thriving.

“In terms of social policy and issues of poverty, it remains hugely influential.

“We are still drawing up exactly what will go in the new archive, but I believe there is an awful lot of smaller studies on residents and various districts in York.

He added: “Our work will draw on York’s prestigious history by cataloguing this influential study and will help emphasise the strong relevance of social sciences to the future life and planning of the city.”

Seebohm Rowntree followed up his work with two further studies, while it is estimated three more major attempts to extend his efforts in York have been attempted by academics in the past century.

With the country currently plunged into economic crisis and inequality continuing to rise as wages stagnate, Dr Atkinson said the archive, which it is hoped will be up and running by October this year, comes at a vital time.

“The debate now has moved more firmly towards inequality,” he said.

“Over the last 20 to 30 years, people in the top one per cent have done phenomenally well.

“There is a lesson to be learnt from Seebohm’s study that in every city there are always pockets of poverty.

“The reality in York today is still more complex than just a well-off successful city.”

The project draws together researchers from the university’s Centre for Urban Research, the Social Policy Research Unit and the Centre for Housing Policy.

The team of researchers are also making contact with key staff across the city’s civic and educational library and archive resources to seek support in identifying studies which have taken place.

Anyone who can help with identifying social studies which have used York, is urged to contact Dr Rowland Atkinson on [email protected] or by telephone on 01904 324742.

Meanwhile, the work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation will be celebrated at two events this week as part of the York Festival of Ideas 2012, which runs until June 30.