Linking Owners and Tenants: Montréal at the Turn of the 20th Century

Friday, Oct. 13, 1-12 p.m.

A-4004

Dr. Robert Sweeney presents.

In 2020, Montréal, l’avenir du passé (MAP) completed its linkage of the 1901 census of Montréal to its map of who owned the city in 1903. In order to examine landlord/tenant relations, we ran an automated linkage of family names from the census with those of the proprietors. The results were surprising: at 5% home ownership was exceptionally rare (NYC had a rate of 12% in 1900) and most proprietors did not own where they lived. They were themselves tenants. A parallel study of patients at the city’s general hospitals suggested, however, that a computerized linkage, even where we had the addresses, was catching only half of the potential linkages. Using additional information from the online tax roll, MAP redid the linkage manually. These new results placed 1,800 more proprietors, out of the city’s 10,700, on properties they owned. Furthermore, newly added occupational data suggests that the presumed proletarianisation of the working class seriously over-simplifies the impact of industrialisation on the popular classes.

Presented by Department of History Brown Bag Seminar

Event Listing 2023-10-13 13:00:00 2023-10-13 12:00:00 America/St_Johns Linking Owners and Tenants: Montréal at the Turn of the 20th Century Dr. Robert Sweeney presents. In 2020, Montréal, l’avenir du passé (MAP) completed its linkage of the 1901 census of Montréal to its map of who owned the city in 1903. In order to examine landlord/tenant relations, we ran an automated linkage of family names from the census with those of the proprietors. The results were surprising: at 5% home ownership was exceptionally rare (NYC had a rate of 12% in 1900) and most proprietors did not own where they lived. They were themselves tenants. A parallel study of patients at the city’s general hospitals suggested, however, that a computerized linkage, even where we had the addresses, was catching only half of the potential linkages. Using additional information from the online tax roll, MAP redid the linkage manually. These new results placed 1,800 more proprietors, out of the city’s 10,700, on properties they owned. Furthermore, newly added occupational data suggests that the presumed proletarianisation of the working class seriously over-simplifies the impact of industrialisation on the popular classes. A-4004 Department of History Brown Bag Seminar