Originally published in 1968, English Prisons Under Local Government gives a detailed account of the evolution of the English Prison System from the common gaol and the house of correction of the sixteenth century down to the statutory changes of the twentieth century, and survey the successive efforts at reform of John Howard and Elizabeth Fry, Jeremy Bentham and James Neild, Sir T. Fowell Buxton and J. J.Gurney. The origin and development of the cellular system, the treadwheel and the crank, the penal dietary and the 'system of progressive stages' all come under review, together with the administrative changes made by Sir Edmund Du Cane and Sir Evelyn Ruggles, and the reforms during the first part of the 20th century.

Originally published in 1963, this book examines the English Local Government, and more specifically, the Manor and the Parish, considering the various exemptions, immunities and franchises which enabled the inhabitants of particular localities to exclude the authority of the county at large, or that of one or other of its officers, and thereby enjoy, within their own favoured areas, some peculiar forms of self-government. The book includes chapters on the city and borough of Westminster, the boroughs of Wales, administration by municipal democracies and the municipal revolution.

Originally published in 1963, this volume is devoted to an analysis of the organisation of the Commissioners of Sewers, the Incorporated Guardians of the Poor, the Turnpike Trusts and the Improvement Commissioners, and depicts the important development of these bodies during the eighteenth century. By examining the constitutional features of these statutory authorities Mr. & Mrs. Webb support their main contention that here are to be found the beginnings of most of the Local Government services of the present day. But to most readers the chief interest of this volume will lie in the last two chapters, which analyse the whole development of English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act. This description of how the 'Old Principles' between 1689 and 1835 were gradually superseded by the 'New Principles' affords a convenient summary of the first four volumes.

Originally published in 1963, this volume is devoted to an analysis of the organisation of the Commissioners of Sewers, the Incorporated Guardians of the Poor, the Turnpike Trusts and the Improvement Commissioners, and depicts the important development of these bodies during the eighteenth century. By examining the constitutional features of these statutory authorities Mr. & Mrs. Webb support their main contention that here are to be found the beginnings of most of the Local Government services of the present day. But to most readers the chief interest of this volume will lie in the last two chapters, which analyse the whole development of English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act. This description of how the 'Old Principles' between 1689 and 1835 were gradually superseded by the 'New Principles' affords a convenient summary of the first four volumes.

First published in 1910, this volume is a dispassionate analysis of the changes in and the various aspects of official policy towards pauperism from the 'Revolution of 1834' to the Majority and Minority Reports of 1909. In their preface to this volume the Webbs wrote: "What obscured the history was the manner in which masses of heterogeneous facts were heaped together. To read, one after another, these complicated Orders and lengthy Reports, each dealing with all kinds of paupers and various methods of relief, was but to accumulate confusion. They resembled a heap of geological conglomerates which could not be assayed until they had been broken up in such a way as to sort the different materials into separate homogeneous parcels". This book succeeds in presenting a masterly survey of this sector of the British social services on the eve of the foundation of the Welfare State, and completes the corpus of the Webbs on the Poor Law.

In Methods of Social Study Sidney and Beatrice Webb describe in detail how they conducted their investigations into social history and institutions - from the collection, recording and classification of the data (both documentary and oral), through the processes of hypothesis and analysis, down to the preparation of the final report. The Webbs were in many respects pioneers, and what they achieved and the way in which they achieved it are of an importance that has been increasingly recognised as the passage of times gives us perspective. Their constant concern was to ensure that their work would be 'scientific'. They stress the need in scientific research for complete objectivity, to be achieved in their case by keeping their historical and sociological studies wholly separate from their political writings. Because the first drafts for the book were made by Beatrice in 1921 and the final text was written by Sidney in 1931/2, one can also see expressed here, more clearly than elsewhere, the different temperaments of the two collaborators.

My Apprenticeship has long been cited as an important and fascinating source for students of social attitudes and conditions in late Victorian Britain, and this new paperback edition makes it once more generally available. Beatrice Webb, the eighth of the nine daughters of the railway magnate Richard Potter, was an exceptionally able person, with a zest for observation, a knack for pointed comment, and a habit of self-examination - all of which gifts she put to good account in the private diary she kept all her life and in this brilliant volume of autobiography which she based on that diary. It tells the story of a craft and a creed, of a withdrawn but talented girl, growing up in a prosperous household, who turned to social investigation and social reform, moving between the two starkly contrasted worlds of West End smart society and East End squalor. She served a hard apprenticeship, as a woman as well as a professional worker, and in a new introduction to this edition Norman MacKenzie describes the severe personal stresses which lay behind her life of dedication to social improvement, particularly her frustrated passion for Joseph Chamberlain and the troubled courtship which preceded her marriage to Sidney Webb. This volume ends on the eve of that marriage, when she was about to begin her famous and astonishingly productive collaboration with her husband. As historians, publicists and Fabian politicians the Webbs were pioneers of the modern age. The ensuring volume, which chronicles their mature career and was appropriately titled Our Partnership, is also published by the Cambridge University Press in collaboration with the London School of Economics and Political Science.