It has been said that no other British industry, with the possible exception of coal mining, can claim such a rich or conflict-prone history of labour relations as the docks. In fact the major issues of more recent years in port transport concerning the nature of employment, strike activity and restrictive practices can only be fully understood within a historical perspective. The main focus of interest, however, of the plethora of public inquiries and research studies relating to the docks over many years has inevitably been the nature of employment – especially the effects and reforms of the casual system. Far less attention has been devoted to methods of job regulation and control over work as tools of analysis, now regarded as core elements in the study of industrial relations.

How did philanthropy adjust to the transformation of society in the nineteenth century? What was its role in social relations and in relieving poverty? Recent writers studying these issues have suggested the need for detailed studies at local level, and in studying some English towns and cities in the earlier part of the nineteenth century they have come to varying conclusions. Roger Smith's study of Nottingham shows that philanthropy added insignificantly to the amount of relief available through the Poor Law. By contrast Peter Searby's study of Coventry shows that philanthropic funds were quite abundant and after some reforms in the 1830's even applied to the relief of the poor! Professor McCord's articles on the North-East of England in the early nineteenth century seek to establish the more ambitious claim “that nineteenth-century philanthropy provided increasing resources and extended machinery with which to diminish the undesirable effects of that period's social problems”.