Profile Major Works Resources

Rev. David Davies, ?-c.1819.

English clergyman and empirical social scientist.

Rev. David Davies was a rather obscure Anglican rural priest.  The particulars of his life are rather murky, little is know about him, other than that he graduated from Oxford and was a rector in the parish of Barkham (Berkshire).   He is primarily known for his empirical social study of the English rural poor in 1795.

Fiscal concern over the Poor Laws had led Parliament in the 1780s to requisition reports from the counties and parishes of England on the poor rate revenues and expenses, but no reports on the actual condition of the laboring poor.  On his own, Rev. David Davies decided to also compile a survey of household budget accounts from poor families in his parish, which were published in the Easter of 1787.  He soon expanded his exercise, and, via friends, requested similar surveys from other parishes and counties in England, collecting some two or three surveys per county.

The results were compiled by Rev. David Davies and published in 1795 as the The Case of Labourers in Husbandry in 1795.  in his empirical social study on the English rural poor in Davies was motivated by the alarming conditions of the working poor during the "famine year" of 1794-95, and contemporary debates over the provision of poor relief and rising poor rates.

Davies's study was arguably the first major empirical work on the English poor, including arguably the first use of household surveys to gather data (Davies claims to have collected two or three surveys per county, via friends).  In this sense, Davies's study was more systematic that the Tours of Arthur Young (1768-71).  Davies estimates that poor households spent around 75% of their income on food. 

Davies's study of 1795 was the first of the three great studies on the English poor of the 1790s. It precedes Frederick Morton Eden's State of the Poor (1797) and T.R. Malthus's Essay on Population (1798).  Although their data is not too dissimilar, e.g. they find that the great majority of the working poor (some four-fifths) do not earn enough to cover their expenses, they explain it differently. Unlike the latter two, Davies supported the Poor Laws and defended the right to relief, and blamed the pauperization of the working poor on general economic factors such as enclosures and unemployment. 

 

  

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Major Works of David Davies

  • The Case of Labourers in Husbandry stated and considered, in three parts, part i, a view of their distressed condition; part ii, the principal causes of their growing distress and number, and of the consequent increase of the poor-rate; part iii, means of relief proposed, with an appendix containing a collection of accounts shewing the earnings and expences of labouring families in different parts of the kingdom, 1795 [bk]
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Resources on  David Davies

  • "David Davies" in C. Coquelin and G.U. Guillaumin, editors, 1852, Dictionnaire de l'économie politique [1864 ed.]
  • "M" in L. Say and J. Chailley-Bert, editors, 1892, Nouveau Dictionnaire de l'économie politique
  • "David Davies" in R.H. Inglis Palgrave, editor, 1894-1899, Dictionary of Political Economy [1918 ed.]
  • "M" in Leslie Stephen & Stephen Lee, editor, 1885-1901 Dictionary of National Biography [1908-09 ed]
  • "M"  in J. Conrad et al, (1891-94) Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften [2nd ed, 1898-1901]
  • "" in 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
  • "A-E" in H.D. Macleod, 1863, Dictionary of Political Economy: Biographical, bibliographical, historical and practical, vol.1

 

 
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