Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1954435 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

Local History with much wider connections
Ernest Bevin, the 'Old' Labour Minister of Labour just after WW2, obviously considered that domestic employment was still important enough for a National Institute of Houseworkers to be set up to regulate training and working conditions; "...domestic work...has a great contribution to make to the wellbeing of the nation," he is quoted as saying. It was with incredulity that I was reading this in 2001, together with tables such as Timed Household Tasks (5 minutes for laying and lighting fires in a modern grate, an extra ten minutes being allowed for blackleading an old grate), Minimum Weekly Wage (£3 4s 0d per week non-resident, £1 14s 0d resident).

Aspects of Leeds 3 is a fascinating dip into the local history of the wider Leeds area (it covers the Leeds post code) in twelve articles. Most of these, such as Christine Nolan's on domestic service, above, deserve a wide audience.

Margaret Ratcliffe's article on Arthur Ransome is another which deserves a wide audience. Ransome was born and spent his early years in Leeds. We read of his friendship with the Russian Prince Peter Kropotkin there and how Kropotkin taught the young Ransome to ice skate (Ratcliffe points to Ransome writing the skating lesson in 'Winter Holiday', the fourth of his 'Swallows and Amazons' books); and of their meeting again in Russia when Ransome was reporting on the Revolution. Through the work of Ransome's father on a Leeds charity we also gain a snapshot of life amongst the poor around 1880.

There are a further ten excellent articles, I have chosen the two which most appealed to me with no specific Leeds connections. This book is profusely illustrated and well indexed.

From inside!
I have only read this one of the three so far, and though it reaches a bit further out of leeds than the others, it puts over life in the 18th and 19th Centuries, in particular, in vivid ways. This by means of a number of closely involved authors. Furthermore, this particular aspect will be of interet to anyone with an appreciation of recent history in the North, whether or not they live there