GB Historical DB

Amalgamated Engineers' Branch-level Benefit Statistics.

Table ID:
ASE_MR     (28151)
Contents:
Amalgamated Engineers' Branch-level Benefit Statistics.
Approx. number of rows:
56,827
Table type:
Raw Data
Documentation Author:
Humphrey Southall
Geography:
Reporting units are identified by:
   Unspecified Branch
Chronology:
The data cover the period 1851 to 1912.
Dates and times are identified by:
   Year
   Month

Sources:

  1. Contains data input from the monthly returns from branches of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, as published in the union's Monthly Report. Current coverage draws in the January, April, July and October reports for all dates from April 1851 to October 1872, and then the January and July reports to January 1912. In addition to the reports in the above sequence, the database includes returns for April 1900, June 1900, October 1900 and April 1909.

Notes:

  1. The ASE monthly returns constitute a very large body of data and the machine readable transcription is inevitably partial. Firstly, transcription is limited to the reports for January, April, July and October (and to just January and July for 1873 to 1912 inclusive). Secondly, only selected fields are included, principally those required for calculation of an accurate unemployment rate. A more complete transcription was made for the 1865 to 1872 period. The transcription excludes overseas branches, but includes new British branches which were listed at the end of the returns, the Manchester Vacant Book Office and the London Central branch (whose members were generally foremen from all areas who did not wish to belong to the same branch as the men they supervised).
  2. The 1895 and 1896 reports use a compressed format which does not list all information given previously. A separate table holds the original transcriptions (see below), and the relevant fields copied into the 'ase_mr' table using the following SQL statement:

    insert into ase_mr(year, month, number, branch, tot_members,
    state, don_tot, full_wage, contingent,
    sick_tot, super_tot)
    select year, month, number, branch, tot_members, state,
    don_tot=don_full+don_trade+don_mach,
    full_wage, contingent,
    sick_tot=sick_full+sick_prob,
    super_tot=super_full
    from ase_mr_95_96

    NB this involves computing the total number unemployed from the number of full, trade and machinist members on donation. Similarly, the total number of sick is computed as the sum of full and probationary members on sick, and the number of free members on superannuation is treated as the total of all members. These are reasonable assumptions at this date.
  3. In the course of indexing and checking the data, a number of places were found in the original reports where branch names were duplicated within a single report, mainly as a result of obvious mistakes in preparing the report. In order to ensure that names were unique, which was required to build the indices, the following changes were made which resulted in the record in the database not being a strict transcript: (a) the July 1890 report lists 'Cardiff 3rd' among the new branches as well as among the existing ones, so the new branch data was entered as for 'Cardiff 4th' (b) one consequence of the compressed format used for the 1895-6 reports is that the Bradford-cum-Beswick branch in Manchester is listed in the originals simply as 'Bradford', but this was entered as 'Bradford-cum-Beswick' to avoid confusion with the Yorkshire branch (c) Both Barry branches were listed as 'Barry' in the January 1897 report, so the second was entered as 'Barry 2'.

Checking:

  1. The data as entered include the numbers which appeared against each branch return in the original, and these have been checked for continuity as a means of identifying any returns which had been missed out in the data entry process.
  2. Branch names have been checked against a gazetteer, and typing mistakes corrected.
  3. In indexing the data, each combination of year, month and branch was required to be unique, ensuring that data for a given branch was not input twice.
  4. [Not yet carried out] Branch memberships have been compared with the membership given for the same branch in the previous report entered, and those branches with large changes checked manually against the originals. 'Large changes' were defined as (a) for branches with 80 or fewer members, an increase or decrease of more than 20 or (b) for branches with over 80 members, an increase or decrease of more than 30%.
  5. [Not yet carried out] Branches where the numbers in the sub-categories of unemployment did not sum to the figure given for total unemployed were checked manually.

Indices:

IndexTypeColumn(s) indexed
ase_mr_idx Unique year, month, x_branch

Columns within table:

ColumnTypeContents
year Integer number. Year from which report taken.
month Integer number. Month from which report taken. NB this is the date which appears on the report, and the data actually refer to the last day of the previous month.
id_no Integer number. The number of the branch within the particular report. NB branches do not retain the same number, and the main use of this number is to ensure that branches can be listed in their original order.
x_branch Text string (max.len.=29). The name of the branch as it appeared in the original return (NB for reports from 1865-72, the name was abbreviated to 16 characters where necessary).
full_members Integer number. Number of full members in the branch.
machinists Integer number. Number of machinist members in the branch.
apprentices Integer number. Number of apprentice members in the branch (only listed from 1897).
tot_members Integer number. Total number of members in the branch.
don_10 Integer number. Number of members receiving donation benefit at the rate of 10s. per week, i.e. the number unemployed for not more than 14 weeks.
don_7 Integer number. Number of members receiving donation benefit at the rate of 7s. per week, i.e. the number unemployed for more than 14 weeks and less than 44 weeks.
don_5 Integer number. Number of members receiving donation benefit at the rate of 5s. per week, i.e. the number unemployed for over 44 weeks.
don_tot Integer number. Total number of members on donation benefit.
full_wage Integer number. Number of members receiving 'full wages benefit', paid to members victimised for holding union office. This was introduced in October 1874.
contingent Integer number. Number of members receiving strike pay ('contingent benefit'). NB in general contingent benefit was paid to strikers as a supplement to donation benefit, hence the impact of strikes on the unemployment rate is best minimised by deducting the number on contingent from the total on donation.
sick_tot Integer number. Total number of members on sickness benefit.
super_tot Integer number. Total number of members on superannuation benefit.
admitted Floating point number. Number of members admitted into the branch during the preceding twelve months. Where the data are taken from the January monthly report this value will be the number of admissions reported in the ASE Annual Report for the previous year; for other months, the value is interpolated from the admissions totals given in the Annual Reports for the previous and current years. NB members were ineligible for benefit during their first year of membership.
branch_id Integer number. ID number assigned by project
key Integer number. Key added during data entry; used to check for duplicated rows. NB this is not strictly unique, re- starting from 1 in 1895 and 1897.
state Text string (max.len.=44). The 'state of trade'. For the 1865-72 data, derived from HRS's doctoral research, this field contains the state of trade given in the monthly report in a simplified form. For other dates, the field is used to identify branches which failed to report by a value of 'NRPT', and is otherwise empty. As membership numbers are usually given for these branches, calculations of numbers on benefit should specify that the value of state should be not 'NRPT', or that it should be null.
notes Long text. Comments.