Mass Observation was established in 1937 by anthropologist Tom Harrisson, film-maker Humphrey Jennings and journalist Charles Madge.<\/p>\n
Harrisson argued that more was known about the people of the New Hebrides (now known as Vanuatu), where he had lived for three years, than industrial workers of Lancashire. He later wrote that: \u201cWhile anthropologists\u2026 go all over the world studying so-called primitive peoples, no one is making comparable studies of ourselves. I was determined to return to study the cannibals of Britain. So I headed up here to the less savage, but to me equally exotic Bolton.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project was also a successor to a Victorian tradition that investigated the social conditions of the poor in London and other cities. It led to a number of bestselling books exposing, often in graphic detail, the lives of slum dwellers, such as In Darkest England and the Way Out<\/em><\/a> by William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army<\/a>, and The People of the Abyss<\/em><\/a> by Jack London, author of The Call of the Wild<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Mass Observation sought to record the mundane and the ordinary. Charles Madge, looking back in 1961, was thankful that \u201csome sort of a net had been spread to catch that fleeting, glinting apparition, the essence of the time\u201d. And one of the volunteer observers, Christopher Tomlin, was attracted to the organisation because \u201cit wants to know and inform, tell all classes about the emotions, acts, thoughts and struggles of the ordinary or \u2018average\u2019 man and woman. Too many articles and books have been written on high-flown subjects but none about the prosaic things of everyday life.\u201d<\/p>\n The immediate spur for the formation of Mass Observation was the abdication of Edward VIII in December 1936. The newspapers were universally hostile to the king\u2019s decision, yet the vast majority of the British people supported him. Tom Harrisson and Charles Madge wanted to make sure that their opinions were heard.<\/p>\n The Mass Observation project began in early 1937 in Bolton, Lancashire \u2013 known as \u2018Worktown\u2019 to Mass Observation. Bolton was chosen in part as it was thought to be fairly typical of an industrial area, but also because Harrisson knew several industrialists in the area who were sympathetic to the project.<\/p>\n To begin, Harrisson rented a small house in Davenport Street. For nearly three years it housed a variety of men and women who observed, often in great detail, the lives and activities of local people. Some of these volunteers were from the area but most were students or intellectuals from London. The observers were sent out on specific tasks to note down everything they observed.<\/p>\n Harrisson was a great visionary, but not a great organiser. Many projects were never completed and money was always tight. Only one book resulting from their work in Bolton was ever published \u2013 The Pub and the People<\/em><\/a> \u2013 and this only in 1943. In Worktown, the book explains \u201cthe pub has more buildings, holds more people, takes more of their time and money, than church, cinema, dance-hall, and political organisations put together\u201d.<\/p>\n The statistics are thorough and often meaningless. In the course of a single Thursday night, pub-goers drink, on average, 3.16 pints of beer; on a Saturday, the average goes up to 3.45 pints. However, among the statistics there are graphic vignettes of the drinkers and their lives. A woman drinker memorably praises snuff: \u201cEeee, it\u2019s lovely, makes your navel perk like a whelk!\u201d<\/p>\n And in the lounge of the Dog and Partridge on 27 May 1937, one observer found a group of market traders: \u201cLarge tough guy with masses of hair held down by a hairnet sits at a table with a group of four (one woman)\u2026 Hairnet suddenly takes a small live tortoise out of his overcoat pocket and threatens woman with it. She screams a little. \u2018What do you feed it on?\u2019 someone asks. \u2018Milk\u2019. \u2018How much?\u2019 A quiet thin man in bowler sitting in another group leans forward and says quickly \u2018quart and a half\u2019. Hairnet says \u2018I gave it a saucer full on Sunday\u2019\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, Mass Observation began to recruit volunteers from all over Britain for particular projects. The first was to record what they did on 12 May 1937, the day of the coronation<\/a> of King George VI, Edward VIII\u2019s brother.<\/p>\n The Second World War is now regarded as being the most important period in the organisation\u2019s history, although it was not thought so at the time. In the early years of the war, Mass Observation undertook various projects for the Ministry of Information, but increasingly its work was taken over by another project, the Wartime Social Survey.<\/p>\n At the beginning of the war, appeals were put in newspapers asking people to keep a diary of their lives. Some 500 people responded and began to write about their experiences, hopes and fears. They were not typical of the population as a whole, largely living in the South-east, and often clerical workers, teachers, students, journalists and librarians. One of the most unusual, and most notable, participants, was Nella Last, a housewife from Barrow-in-Furness, who began her dairy in 1939 and continued it until her death in 1968. Her diaries were subsequently published<\/a> and dramatised in the 2006 TV programme Housewife, 49<\/em>.<\/p>\n![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/26\/2023\/08\/GettyImages-104395698-8539d4a.jpg?quality=90&resize=549%2C413\" "\\"Tom")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/26\/2023\/08\/GettyImages-50879559-b6d8ec8.jpg?quality=90&resize=569%2C413\" "\\"A")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>![\"Nella](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/26\/2023\/08\/NellaLast-c1c3618.jpg?quality=90&resize=284%2C413\" "\\"Nella")
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