ABSTRACT
Although occupational groups can be identified and measured with some accuracy from 1831, classification for earlier periods must depend on the estimates made by contemporaries. And even with census material to hand, it is notoriously difficult to make qualitative judgements about the kind of work undertaken in any category. In particular, the polarization of the occupied population the ‘sedentary’ and the ‘active’ is a matter of guesswork (and the problem continues: as Damon and McFarland’s anthropometric study of American bus-drivers shows, a literally sedentary job can involve considerable physical exertion1). Terminology is also difficult and relative: ‘sedentary’ might mean ‘on the whole, less active work’, and ‘active’: ‘on the whole more active work’, but judgement as to where the line is drawn must be contentious.
