IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/euract/v11y2002i2p377-399.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

'Men of small standing'? Locating accountants in English society during the mid-nineteenth century

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Walker

Abstract

The census enumerators' books for three counties in 1851 are utilized to explore the social standing of accountants in early-Victorian England. The objective is to illuminate sources of differential status within the occupation of accountancy and thereby enhance understandings of the problems of boundary definition and closure which confronted those who organized the profession in England from 1870. It is shown that accountants occupied various strata in local social structures, from the professional class to the pauper. Accountants were, however, predominantly positioned on the margins of the middle class and very few of their number exhibited styles of living which contemporaries identified as characteristic of professional men. The findings confirm that the term 'accountant' encompassed a wide range of occupational experiences and employment statuses and its meaning appears to have been subject to spatial variation.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Walker, 2002. "'Men of small standing'? Locating accountants in English society during the mid-nineteenth century," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 377-399.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:11:y:2002:i:2:p:377-399
    DOI: 10.1080/09638180220125562
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09638180220125562
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09638180220125562?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthews, Derek & Anderson, Malcolm & Edwards, John Richard, 1998. "The Priesthood of Industry: The Rise of the Professional Accountant in British Management," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198289609.
    2. Willmott, Hugh, 1986. "Organising the profession: A theoretical and historical examination of the development of the major accountancy bodies in the U.K," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 11(6), pages 555-580, October.
    3. Kirkham, Linda M. & Loft, Anne, 1993. "Gender and the construction of the professional accountant," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 507-558, August.
    4. Bougen, Philip D., 1994. "Joking apart: The serious side to the accountant stereotype," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 319-335, April.
    5. Walker, Stephen P., 2000. "Benign sacerdotalist or pious assailant. The rise of the professional accountant in British management," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 313-323, April.
    6. Walker, S. P., 1998. "How to secure your husband's esteem. Accounting and private patriarchy in the British middle class household during the nineteenth century," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 23(5-6), pages 485-514.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. McPhail, Ken & Paisey, Catriona & Paisey, Nicholas J., 2010. "Class, social deprivation and accounting education in Scottish schools: Implications for the reproduction of the accounting profession and practice," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 31-50.
    2. Poullaos, Chris, 2016. "Canada vs Britain in the imperial accountancy arena, 1908–1912: Symbolic capital, symbolic violence," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 47-63.
    3. Sian, S. & Verma, S., 2021. "Bridging the divide: The rise of the Indian Accountant from 1900 to 1932," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(2).
    4. Edwards, John Richard & Walker, Stephen P., 2010. "Lifestyle, status and occupational differentiation in Victorian accountancy," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 2-22, January.
    5. Cooper, David J. & Robson, Keith, 2006. "Accounting, professions and regulation: Locating the sites of professionalization," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(4-5), pages 415-444.
    6. Anderson, Malcolm & Walker, Stephen P., 2009. "‘All sorts and conditions of men’: The social origins of the founders of the ICAEW," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 31-45.
    7. Thomas A. Lee, 2009. "British public accountants in America," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 22(2), pages 247-271, January.
    8. Czarniawska, Barbara, 2008. "Accounting and gender across times and places: An excursion into fiction," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 33-47, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Napier, Christopher J., 2006. "Accounts of change: 30 years of historical accounting research," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(4-5), pages 445-507.
    2. Cooper, David J. & Robson, Keith, 2006. "Accounting, professions and regulation: Locating the sites of professionalization," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(4-5), pages 415-444.
    3. Stephen Walker, 2004. "Conflict, collaboration, fuzzy jurisdictions and partial settlements. Accountants, lawyers and insolvency practice during the late 19th century," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 247-265.
    4. Noguchi, Masayoshi & Edwards, John Richard, 2008. "Harmonising intergroup relations within a professional body: The case of the ICAEW," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 123-147.
    5. John Edwards & Malcolm Anderson & Roy Chandler, 2005. "How not to mount a professional project: the formation of the ICAEW in 1880," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(3), pages 229-248.
    6. Carnegie, Garry D. & Edwards, John Richard, 2001. "The construction of the professional accountant: the case of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria (1886)," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 26(4-5), pages 301-325.
    7. Edwards, John Richard & Anderson, Malcolm & Chandler, Roy A., 2007. "Claiming a jurisdiction for the "Public Accountant" in England prior to organisational fusion," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-2), pages 61-100.
    8. Kyriacou, Orthodoxia, 2016. "Accounting for images of ‘equality’ in digital space: Towards an exploration of the Greek Accounting Professional Institute," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 35-57.
    9. Dambrin, Claire & Lambert, Caroline, 2012. "Who is she and who are we? A reflexive journey in research into the rarity of women in the highest ranks of accountancy," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-16.
    10. Annisette, Marcia, 2003. "The colour of accountancy: examining the salience of race in a professionalisation project," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(7-8), pages 639-674.
    11. Steve Evans & Kerry Jacobs, 2010. "Accounting: an un‐Australian activity?," Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 7(3), pages 378-394, August.
    12. Phillip Cobbin & Graeme Dean & Cameron Esslemont & Patrick Ferguson & Monica Keneley & Brad Potter & Brian West, 2013. "Enhancing the Accessibility of Accounting and Business Archives: The Role of Technology in Informing Research in Accounting and Business," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 49(3), pages 396-422, September.
    13. Walker, Stephen P., 2003. "Professionalisation or incarceration? Household engineering, accounting and the domestic ideal," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(7-8), pages 743-772.
    14. Edwards, John Richard & Walker, Stephen P., 2010. "Lifestyle, status and occupational differentiation in Victorian accountancy," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 2-22, January.
    15. Dragos Zelinschi, 2012. "Une loi suffit-elle ? Le mouvement des comptables roumains dans les années 1920," Post-Print hal-00691074, HAL.
    16. John Edwards & Roy Chandler & Malcolm Anderson, 1999. "The ‘public auditor’: an experiment in effective accountability," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 183-197.
    17. Walker, Stephen P., 1995. "The genesis of professional organization in scotland: a contextual analysis," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 285-310, May.
    18. Carlos Ramirez, 2013. "‘We are being Pilloried for Something, We Did Not Even Know We Had Done Wrong!’ Quality Control and Orders of Worth in the British Audit Profession," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(5), pages 845-869, July.
    19. Sian, S. & Verma, S., 2021. "Bridging the divide: The rise of the Indian Accountant from 1900 to 1932," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(2).
    20. Young, Joni J., 2015. "(En)gendering sustainability," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 67-75.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:11:y:2002:i:2:p:377-399. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REAR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.