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the secondary literature. While offering interesting nuances rather than startlingreinterpretations, it has the great merit of integrating the administration of thepoor law with the functioning of other traditional forms of relief for the poor,namely private charity and the availability of credit. There are six substantialchapters, arising from the author’s doctoral dissertation; most of the evidence isderived from statistically precise investigations into selected parishes in threemedium-sized eighteenth-century English towns, Shrewsbury, York and Oxford.A particularly interesting chapter on pawnbroking and the use of credit, usingthe case study of George Fettes of York, illustrates the many varieties of theways in which credit formed an important role in the ‘makeshift’ economies ofthe poor.

The problem faced by historians of poverty in the eighteenth century, ofcourse, is that the lower down the social scale one’s investigations are conducted,the harder it becomes to individualize, and the more one has to fall back upongroup or subgroup categorization. One of the methods by which Dr Tomkinsseeks to confront this problem is an analysis of life in urban workhouses, whichpresents some vivid, impressionistic accounts from the poor themselves,reinforced by detailed statistical evidence concerning expenditure, diet and thequality of the material surroundings. But it remains difficult to avoid a ‘top-down’approach to this subject; among the main sources for this chapter are workhouseinventories which, as the author points out (p. 65), ‘must be read with theintentions of compilers in mind’. Most of our evidence about the conditions ofthe poor still comes from the written records of those occasions when they cameinto contact with the agencies of the state, or with those in authority, of whateverkind, over philanthropic activity. Nonetheless, Dr Tomkins has given us one ofthe most impressive studies of eighteenth-century poverty to have appeared inrecent years. Its tone is one of carefully qualified optimism: every allowance ismade for regional variations; it is shown that the relationship between theofficialdom and the poor was not completely one-sided; and that workhouseinmates were not ‘entirely dispossessed’ (p. 72). The economies of many familieswere precarious and highly vulnerable to commercial fluctuations. But the poorwere often in a position to negotiate with those who held power locally in whatremained a highly devolved system of poor relief, and, in the experience ofmany, a ‘face-to-face society’.University of Kent G. M. DITCHFIELD

Politics, Finance and the People: Economical Reform in England in the Age of theAmerican Revolution, 1770–92. By Earl A. Reitan. Palgrave Macmillan. 2007.viii + 278pp. £50.00.

This is a good old-fashioned narrative of high politics in the reign of GeorgeIII. The traditional approach is perhaps not surprising since its author turnedeighty-two in its year of publication! Earl A. Reitan, Emeritus Professor ofHistory at Illinois State University, first came to the attention of scholarsworking on Hanoverian political history with a seminal article on ‘The Civil Listin Eighteenth-Century British Politics’ which appeared as long ago as 1966.Apart from two other publications on the Civil List, his contributions to thehistoriography of modern Britain moved to other topics, including ‘the ThatcherRevolution’. Now he has returned to the theme he began to explore all those

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years ago, and has produced the definitive account of the campaign for economicalreform. While his approach is basically Namierite, he does take on board criticsof Namier who have argued that he left out external pressures on parliamentsuch as the county associations, as the mention of ‘the people’ in the title indicates.By and large, however, he sticks to the parliamentary proceedings on economicalreform, for example making excellent use of the reports of the commissionersfor public accounts. These, as he points out, are buried in the Journals of theHouse of Commons. To make them more accessible he provides detailed summariesof them in the text. The aim of the opposition’s bid to reduce crown expenditure wasto curtail the crown’s ability to reward members of both houses of parliamentwith places, which helped to build up a body of support for the government’spolicies, especially in the Commons. This lay behind Dunning’s celebratedmotion that the influence of the crown had increased, was increasing and oughtto be diminished. Although North took the initiative in the setting-up of a com-mission of public accounts in 1780 this did not mean that he went along with thereform programme. On the contrary, he successfully resisted the bills brought into make Dunning’s motion effective. Instead of reducing the influence of thecrown, North channelled the energies of the commissioners into exposing bottle-necks in the collection of revenue, such as the system whereby officials profitedfrom retaining sums raised from taxation instead of forwarding them promptlyto the treasury. It was not until North was replaced by Rockingham in 1782that measures to effect economical reform, such as the Acts associated withBurke and Crewe, were finally enacted. By then, however, as a result of the effortsof the commission, ‘economy and efficiency had replaced influence as thewatchwords of economical reform’. Reitan demonstrates this by examiningfurther measures proposed during the ministries of Shelburne, the Fox–Northcoalition and the Younger Pitt to 1792, while a brief ‘Afterword’ takes thestory into the nineteenth century.University of Nottingham W. A. SPECK

Late Modern

Women in Science: A Social and Cultural History. By Ruth Watts. Routledge.2007. ix + 300pp. £17.99.

This is an important book. Its careful organization and accessible style makesit an excellent introductory text for students from a range of disciplines butWomen in Science also challenges scholars to appreciate the quantity and qualityof historical work that has been undertaken in the fields of science, gender andeducation. The synthesis of these concerns provides a fruitful line of enquiry forWatts that avoids the danger of assuming that the history of women in science isuncharted territory or making too much of the individual contributions of thebetter-known scientific women of the past. The approach adopted allows Wattsto bring fresh insights to a comprehensive overview of the historiographywhile also making a powerful argument that understanding the past is crucial tocreating a different future for women in science. This is important becausethroughout the text, which develops an international perspective as well asambitious chronological coverage, Watts emphasizes the marginalization ofwomen in science rather than their exclusion from science. By doing so she opens