The historical context of literacy

Professor David Vincent

PVC Strategy, Planning & External Affairs

European male literacy1800 - 1914

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90Aus

Bel

Eng

Fra

Prus

It

Ire

Ned

Spa

Rus

Scot

European female literacy 1800 - 1914

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Spa

Bel

Eng

Fra

Scot

It

Ire

Ned

Aus

Prus

Annual percentage males & females unable to sign at marriage 1839 -1912 (E&W)

Number of books published in the UK

• 1828: 842

• 2005: 206,000

Occupational literacy of grooms 1839 - 1914

Literacy by generation 1859 - 1914

Literacy by age 1839 - 1914

Thomas Cooper, shoemaker• “Historical reading, or the grammar of some language, or

translation, was my first employment on week-day mornings, whether I rose at three or four, until seven o’clock, when I sat down to the stall. A book or a periodical in my hand while I breakfasted, gave me another half-hour’s reading, I had another half-hour, and sometimes an hour’s reading or study of language, at from one to two o’clock, the time of dinner – usually eating my food with a spoon, after I had cut in pieces, and having my eyes on a book all the time. I sat at work till eight, and sometimes nine, at night; and then, either read, or walked about our little room and committed ‘Hamlet’ to memory, or the rhymes of some modern poet, until compelled to go to bed from sheer exhaustion …”

John Sykes Slawit in the ‘Sixties • There was a billposter who could neither read or write,

neither did he give a straw for those who could. At one place he had posted a bill the wrong way up, and when a bystander asked him how the folks were to read the bill, he walked away swearing that they could do as they liked, ‘they could stand on their heads if they wanted to’