Autobiographies by working men and women who were born between 1700 and 1878 will be studied to cast light on family life and labour in the first industrial revolution. Subjects to be explored include: the allocation of labour time among waged work, self-provisioning and work in the home; how this allocation varied by age and gender; how children's time was mobilised; if the household's external relationships influenced its internal organisation; whether market work was driven by consumption aspirations or the need to defend standards; what particular goods were desired; whether marriage typically required the accumulation of a standard set of goods. A further issue concerns how families came to decisions on these matters. Was this democratic? Or did husbands dominate wives and parents rule children? Since these questions relate to family relationships, they are difficult to answer using standard sources. The autobiographies provide a rare historical window into humble homes and rich commentary on families' economic strategies. The methodology combines quantitative and qualitative information from the autobiographies to recapture and understand how families responded to both the opportunities and the pressures of industrialisation.

The data set consists of quantitative evidence extracted from a survey of life histories of working-class women who lived between 1667 and 1905. 202 life histories have been identified and constitute the cases in the data set. The variables capture quantifiable aspects of the women's lives such as dob, schooling duration, father's occupation, family structure, age of own marriage, etc..