Professor Peter Kirby

Professor Peter Kirby
Chair of Social History (GCU) and Joint Director of CSHHH‌

Hamish Wood W619A
peter.kirby@gcu.ac.uk
+44 (0)141 273 1824

I have held academic posts in the universities of Sheffield, Sunderland and Manchester and before joining GCU I was a Research Associate at St John’s College, Oxford. I sit on the Executive Committee and the Council of the Economic History Society and I am Chair of the Information Technology Committee. I am also an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I am currently researching the history of child labour and child occupational health. My new book, Child Workers and Industrial Health, 1780-1850 (2013) discusses the illnesses, disabilities and ill-treatment of child labourers in textiles and mining. I have also published widely in journals including Past and Present, Economic History Review and Continuity and Change. I am interested in the labour market more generally and recently published an article in the Economic History Review on the attendance patterns and productivity of men in the coalmining industry (2012). I have given invited lectures in the UK, Europe, the US and China and most recently organised a conference on ‘Child Health in Historical Perspective’ at St John’s College, Oxford. In May 2012 I was the guest of Fudan University Shanghai as a Visiting Professor and delivered a series of lectures on the history of child health, industrialisation and child labour and I shall be returning as visiting professor in early 2013. Most recently (Feb 2013) I delivered a research paper on the health and welfare of industrial children at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris.

I would be very happy to hear from students or anyone else interested in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British social, demographic and economic history or any aspect of the history of child and family labour.

Publications

Kirby, P., Child Workers and Industrial Health, 1780-1850 (2013).

Kirby, P., ‘Victorian Social Investigation and the Children’s Employment Commission, 1840-42’, N. Goose and K. Honeyman ed., Children and Childhood in Industrial England: Diversity and Agency, 1650-1900 (2013).

Kirby, P., ‘Attendance and work effort in the Great Northern Coalfield, 1775-1864’, Economic History Review, LXV (2012).

Kirby, P., ‘The Transition to Working Life in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century England and Wales’, in K. Lieten and E. van Nederveen Meerkerk (eds.), Child Labour’s Global Past: 1650-2000 (2011).

Kirby, P., ‘Review of periodical literature for 1700-1850’, Economic History Review, LXIII, 1 (2010).

Kirby, P., The Physical Stature of 16,402 Children in Northern English Factory Districts, 1837 [Database], UK Data Archive, University of Essex (2010).

Kirby, P., Productivity and Household Economy in a Tyneside Mining Community, 1775-1861 [Database], UK Data Archive, University of Essex (2010) (including Baptisms, Marriages and Burials in the Parish of Ovingham, Northumberland, ca. 1774-1864).

Kirby, P., ‘History of Child Labor in Coal Mining in Britain’ in H.D. Hindman (ed.), The World of Child Labor: An Historical and Regional Survey (2009).

Kirby, P., ‘History of Child Labor in Britain’ in H.D. Hindman (ed.), The World of Child Labor: An Historical and Regional Survey (2009).

Kirby, P., ‘Review of periodical literature for 1700-1850’, Economic History Review, LXII, 1 (2009).

Kirby, P., ‘Miner absenteeism in the Great Northern Coalfield, 1775-1864’, Manchester Papers in Economic and Social History, 65 (2009).

Kirby, P., Evidence to the Children's Employment Commission, 1842 [Database], UK Data Archive, University of Essex (2009).

Kirby, P., ‘Review of periodical literature for 1700-1850’, Economic History Review, LXI, 1 (2008).

Kirby, P., ‘Child labour, public decency and the iconography of the Children’s Employment Commission of 1842’, Manchester Papers in Economic and Social History, 62 (2007).

Kirby, P., ‘Review of periodical literature for 1700-1850’, Economic History Review, LX, 1 (2007).

Kirby, P., ‘How many children were “unemployed” in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England?’, Past and Present, 187 (2005).

Kirby, P., 'A brief statistical sketch of the child labour market in mid-nineteenth century London', Continuity and Change, 20 (2005).

Kirby, P., 'Child labour and state intervention in Britain, 1800-1870', Perspective, 6 (in Chinese translation) (2004).

Kirby, P., Child Labour in Britain, 1750-1870 (2003).

Kirby, P., ‘Child “unemployment” in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England’, Manchester Papers in Economic and Social History, 53 (2002).

Kirby, P., 'The historic viability of child labour and the Mines Act of 1842', in M. Lavalette, ed., A Thing of the Past? Child Labour in Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1999).

Kirby, P., 'The standard of living debate and the British industrial revolution', ReFRESH, 25 (Economic History Society, 1997).

Kirby, P., 'Short stature among coalmining children: a rejoinder', Economic History Review, L, 3 (1997).

Kirby, P., ‘Human heights and the standard of living’, Social Consequences of Industrialisation (TLTP Courseware Consortium CD-ROM, University of Glasgow / Renaissance Virtual Software Ltd., 1996).

Kirby, P., 'Causes of short stature among coalmining children, 1823-1850', Economic History Review, XLVIII, 4 (1995).