ABSTRACT
Throughout the Victorian period, employment in the service sector increased rapidly, so that its share of national employment increased from a little over one-quarter in 1851 to almost 40 per cent by 1911 (Lee, 1979). Services include a wide variety of activities whose growth was stimulated by different social and economic forces. Some were primarily a response to increasing population, such as transport and distribution. When population growth is accompanied by increasing concentration in major cities as in the nineteenth century, engendering the scale effects of very large urban centres, there is a necessary growth in these services. One effect of large markets and large-scale production was an increasing separation between production and distribution. This was apparent in Victorian Britain in the food industries, in which processing became increasingly a separate activity rather than, as hitherto, the preserve of the grocer. Such activities were found principally in large cities and urban concentrations.
