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Alex Wakelam

@awakelam.bsky.social
252 followers 349 following 66 posts

Economic Historian of Debtors' Prisons, Women's Work, the Census, and Fertility (1700-1921). Constantly meddling with the Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) no matter how much I try to move on from it University of Cambridge PDRA @camunicampop.bsky.social

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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Growing up in Birmingham I loved this book but had no idea what a pheasant was. Given that it was 1996 and the internet lived at the library I had to just sort of guess from my parent’s earnest but vague descriptions - I think I thought they were just chickens but very long chickens mind you.
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It’s on for a very brief time but if you happen to find yourself in Paris unexpectedly as I did this week I highly recommend going to the small, simple, but worthwhile Marc Bloch exhibition at the Pantheon (presented to celebrate his and Simonne’s entry)
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A hell of a 1-2 punch in this 1885 school logbook here: '7th. Mr Jaques absent from school today - No reason sent. 8th. Mr Jaques came to school this morning and informed me that the cause of his absence was Cholera'
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Reposted by Alex Wakelam
Alice Reid @amrcampop.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Interested in a PhD in historical demography/population studies at @camunicampop.bsky.social, @camunigeography.bsky.social, Cambridge University? We have 3 suggested topics (see thread): contact me to discuss, or to suggest your own idea. Apply by early December for funded places.
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
'I punished a boy for using coarse language in School, & in the Afternoon his mother came & used the same kind of language before the whole school'. An absolute queen standing up for her boy Bradford Parish Church School Logbook 1863
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"Excuse me for saying that your answer to my letter contains less of argument and reasoning than of injurious insinuation, claptrap declamation, and revolutionary menace". RIP George Poulett Scrope (1797-1876), you'd have loved BlueSky / peak Twitter discourse
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I remember that first summer after the expansion you could when walking down the main road in my south london borough literally see, feel (in your lungs), and even taste the difference ULEZ brought which has been sustained ever since
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Well that will teach me to check for celestial events the next time I book theatre tickets for a random Wednesday starting at 7
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
I found this in a Cambridge library book several years ago which would suggest it’s c.£1872
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Nobody is as committed to the work from home mindset as the guy I just saw on the bus wearing Zoom merch
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
I love living in a multicultural city of a thousand languages but I do think it should be a legal requirement that if you have a big row outside it should have to legally be in the one I personally speak so I can listen in
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Faculty's decision to make us actually record holiday days (instead of the previous practice where nobody took days off) is going swimmingly as their records currently suggest that I partied so hard on every public holiday this year that it counted as two or even three days off. What a Chirstmas!
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Andy Burnham to the Lords as a parting shot would be a delight
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Also I voted bright and early this morning and when the R*form woman on the door wished me a good morning I instinctively said “Not for you I hope” which might be the politest rebuke of those wankers possible
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
I cannot believe my university is now making us record when we take annual leave instead of just saying “meh go away whenever”. Don’t they realise that if I know how many days I have left I might actually take them instead of just working everyday?
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
Being jumped by a large dog who “was just playing” as a small child in a park play area set me up for a lifetime of not trusting any dog no matter how small or elderly. Dogs are not the same as children and it baffles me that people seem to think they have any equivalence
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
I’ve spent so much time over the last few weeks reading Victorian civil service letters I’ve found I’ve started to talk in keeping with their general style, a source of great discontent amongst many of us here. I have the honour to be Your most Obedient & humble servant A Wakelam, esq
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Bradford Chamber of Commerce learned in 1916 what many of us knew already: women love trams.
Excerpt of a 1916 report into labour shortages in Bradford, identifying that women left weaving jobs to work on the Trams and would not return
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
In the 18th century jury trial was eroded for poor debtors, instead being dealt with by magistrates (sounds familiar to me). Decisions were arbitrary and the poor suffered. MPs, intellectuals, and even local tradesman spoke out in defence of the ‘the ancient and valuable privilege of trial by Jury’
Extract from my book Credit and Debt in Eighteenth-Century England (2020) on the debate around loss of trial by jury for small debts
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Just found in the Department for Education archives the perfect band name and album cover for starting the hottest indie band of 2007
19th Century Folder with "OBSOLETE BYELAWS" typed across it
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
'that they have now determined to ... to' WHAT DID YOU DETERMINE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TELL ME WHAT YOU DETERMINED
Segment from a letter from 1877 sent by the Education Department which inexplicably leaves the results of their determination blank
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
I’m at the national archives and just walked past somebody carrying a bundle of documents with massive “TOP SECRET” stamps all over it and a date mark of 1944. Is it bad form to sit next to them and read over their shoulder?
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
This happend with a long time very close "friend" in my social circle. The only thing that worked was we sat down as a group and agreed to cut him out. Even those hesitant at the time committed long term out of social awkwardness. Only regret was not including more secondary people at that meeting
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
The data always had a login due to copyright requirements of the transcription. Unfortunately the aspect of UKDA’s website which enabled the publicly available aggregate data was discontinued. We haven’t found an alternative that won’t require ongoing funding but that doesn’t mean we’ve given up
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
I’m imagining Paul Bettany as the only human and everyone else as muppets. Fozzy Bear will make an excellent villain
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
“And Tiny Tim, who did not die” clearly implies that either Tiny Tim is still alive in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty five or that he regenerates like the doctor either of which fills me with abject terror.
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
It should do as the census counted pews I beleive. The returns also included Sunday School attendance which definitely didn't descriminate by age as in areas where adults attended (such as in Wales) the number of attendees massively outnumbered the population under 15
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
Oh all recipes should be shared and readily. I have saved in my notes app my strong recommends and will send the out after people come over for dinner. Macaroni is my only red line
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
Mac and cheese recipes, if done well, should be kept to yourself. I sometimes worry my wife only married me for my macaroni cheese (she brought it up twice in her wedding speech as did her best woman) and so I daren’t tell anyone my hidden truths.
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Reposted by Alex Wakelam
Lewis Goodall @lewisgoodall.com · 07/10/2025
Birmingham, my home city, is a fantastic city, with fantastic people- a success story. It has its problems, like anywhere. But the obsession the online right has with it is as transparent as it gets.
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Zebulon Swingewood (imprisoned debtor in 1769) has been living rent free in my head for almost the last decade
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
Ah the Victorian period, when it was more important to save a few pennies on a second sheet of paper than for the recipient of your letter to be able to read what you’d written
A letter from the middle of the nineteenth century. Rather than using another sheet of paper, the writer has turned the page 90 degrees and written over what they had already written.
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Loving all the various “this is what causes low birth rates” posts tonight when we still haven’t fully worked out what caused them to start declining IN 1850 (when kids were still very much at work and there was no easy contraception)
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Surely we can at least go from the act of union as formation of Britain? A healthy diet of boiled potatoes (none of that modern frying) and gin is all I need
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Begging 19th Century writers to just be normal for five minutes was apparently a fools errand. I'm several pages in and none the wiser at what should be a mild complaint about an aspect of Bradford society c.1820: 'Tweedle, Tweedle, Tweedle, Some Catgut to my Feedle' (??)
The title page of a 19th Century book published in Bradford inexplicably called "The Retort Courteous; or, The Descent of Mr Baines, From the Pinnacle to the Pickle Pot"
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Reposted by Alex Wakelam
John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Seeing a lot of critical responses from medievalists about this BBC 1066 thing. As an early modernist, just to say that I'm happy to confirm that medieval people were indeed covered in dirt all the time and did all sound like they were in the Wurzels.
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
I remember discovering in shock as an undergraduate that Eric Hobsbawm was still alive only for him to die the next day
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
There is no better feeling when travelling abroad than your phone magically picking up Eduroam
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
Measuring worth (again now a little out of date) but slightly more detailed / recent than TNA www.measuringworth.com
measuringworth.com
Measuring Worth - Relative Worth Comparators and Data Sets
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
I maintain that early modern historians remain the most whimsical historians
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The London Journal @thelondonjournal.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Followed by 'Jewish Credit, Debt, and Economic Integration in Eighteenth-Century London', by @awakelam.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract
Early modern London’s population explosion was reliant upon the constant arrival of migrants, predominantly from the provinces but joined by a variety of those born overseas. After re-admittance during the Commonwealth in 1656, Jews made up an increasingly large proportion of immigrants. However, centuries of antisemitic distrust did not disappear, and London’s Jews faced unique obstacles to integration in the city, not least in their ability to engage in the credit market that underpinned commerce. Using surviving debt imprisonment records, this article analyses the extent to which Jews were able to overcome sustained prejudice and integrate broadly in London’s commercial environment. It suggests Jews were, by the second half of the century, just as likely to be imprisoned for debts as to imprison others, while the sums owed, the occupational structure, and residential geography of Jewish Londoners suggest that integration was frequently dependent on wealth and class.
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
If you want to play around with the visualisation of the data and see fertility decline (particularly marital fertility) can’t recommend the Populations Past website enough www.populationspast.org
populationspast.org
Populations Past atlas
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
This is 19th century UK focussed by the way. There is no single global pattern of fertility decline and we don’t yet understand what really caused it in any setting but we are good at working out what didn’t cause it.
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Oh they were absolutely still having sex. Pre-contraception, couples were much better at coitus interuptus than you’d expect. Ultimately it comes down to whether women are able to negotiate it - wage earning women have fewer children.
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Unfortunately that’s not the answer. It would be delightful If it was that simple. The major fertility transition in Britain had already occurred by 1911, average children per family falling from 6 to 2 1851-1911 without contraception.
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Reposted by Alex Wakelam
Alice Reid @amrcampop.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Campop blog #50: In 2021, 76% of UK women with children at home were employed: a century earlier about the same % were engaged in 'home duties'. @awakelam.bsky.social explores patterns and implications from the 1921 census @camunicampop.bsky.social www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/05...
campop.geog.cam.ac.uk
The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, CambridgeHome Duties in the 1921 Census « Top of the Campops: 60 things you didn't know about family, marriage, work, and death...
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
'Miss Ashworth ... sang the air "Pious Orgies" tastefully and correctly', sometimes its ok to acknowledge the meaning of a word has changed without trying to work out what it used to mean using a work laptop. (Todmorden and Hebden Bridge Weekly Advertiser 8th March 1862)
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Loved getting to chat debt imprisonment with Layton Williams, one of the nicest human beings I've ever met, on Who Do You Think You Are? last night even if I only had bad news for him www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
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Alex Wakelam @awakelam.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Went to Rome. Got threatened by a mirror. 10/10
A sing on a mirror in a church in Rome reading: “Mirror yourself, mirror yourself, one day you'll end up like this! Beyond aesthetics, take more care of your soul that does not age or die, save it!”
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