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Professor Leigh Shaw-Taylor
Professor of Economic History
Built from more than 160 million records and spanning over three centuries, the University of Cambridge’s Economies Past website uses census data, parish registers, probate records and more to track changes to the British labour force from the Elizabethan era to the eve of World War One.
The site, a collaboration between the University's Faculty of History and Department of Geography, has compiled and summarised employment statistics at local levels across England and Wales, allowing users to track changes to the workforce. It also breaks down by sector and, after 1851, by gender as well as age – revealing the extent of child labour.