Settler colonialism and migrant letters: the Forbes family and letter-writing in South Africa 1850–1922

Abstract

The ‘migrant letter’ has been proposed as a separate genre of letter-writing around features concerning absence, identity and relationships and location. However, questions arise about this claim, made using largely North American material. Explored in a different context, important complexities and differences come into view. This is discussed regarding the settler colonial context of South Africa using data from the Forbes family collection, containing around 15,000 documents written between 1850 and 1922. The Forbes were Byrne migrants to Natal, then Transvaal. The majority of letters in the collection were written and exchanged within South Africa, with significant numbers from family members remaining in Scotland or who removed elsewhere, and many drafts and copies of letters written by the South African end exist too. The size and composition of contents enable migrant letters to be explored within the greater entirety of the family’s letter-writing, conceived as a scriptural economy with characteristic writing practices. This is examined by looking in detail at the writing practices of a range of letter-writers and their correspondences. Important differences concerning how absences, identities and relationships and locations are inscribed in the context of South Africa are explored and traced to features of its settler colonial mode of production.

Keywords:

• Family
• household
• migrant letters
• settler colonialism
• scriptural economy
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

Whites Writing Whiteness research is supported by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as a Professorial Research Fellowship (ES J022977/1). The ESRC’s support is gratefully acknowledged. No financial interest or benefit has arisen from this research.

Notes

1. Different temporal ends to the collection can be posited. The family figuration of letter-writing largely concludes in 1922, when Kate Forbes died. However, between then and 1930 there are some additional letters, although concerning more distant family members. Between 1930 and 1938, there are handfuls of letters but with the writers and recipients not traced to the Forbes family figuration, although almost certainly connected in some way. The very last document is dated 1938, when the collection was donated to the National Archives Repository of South Africa. Consequently 1922 has been used as the cut-off date for the analysis here.

2. The various archiving activities of Kate, Dave junior and a succession of estate managers were involved. The collection is organized in a confusing and at times muddled way, with some boxes covering periods of years and then writers within this, but in a higgledy-piggledy fashion with regard to specific date order; other boxes contain bundles of letters by particular writers with no date order; some have wide mixtures of dated letters and writers but in no order at all; yet others contain partially or entirely undated letters placed in no order. Systematic work on the collection could not occur until all items were entered into a database then on to the VRE (Virtual Research Environment) that manages Whites Writing Whiteness project (http://[email protected]) data. The extant letters it seems have been structured by various ‘local’ factors rather than any deliberate destructions. The main keepers of letters were Kate and David Forbes senior and their son Dave junior when at home at Athole. The main gaps are (i) the ‘actual’ letters sent to Lizzie Forbes, Jemima Condie and Jemima’s children in Scotland, although many drafts especially of the former survive; (ii) letters to James senior and Jim junior, who both lived in a mobile peripatetic way because of their economic and business involvements and did not keep their letters; (iii) similarly Dave junior when on duty as the manager of the Swazi coal mine; (iv) letters to Lizzie Forbes after 1903; (v) letters by Sarah Purcocks Straker after 1899; (vi) all letters during the South African War (1899–1902); (vii) most letters around the decline and death of David senior in 1905; (viii) letters following Kate Forbes’ last illness then death in 1922.

3. See http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk. This research includes a number of large family and organizational collections, as well as case studies of particular networks. Family collections researched thus far are those of the Findlays, Forbes, Pringles, Schreiner-Hemmings, Whites and Godlontons, with combined contents of around 23,000 letters, plus many other documents. Other family collections are being added. The organizational collections are the South African part of London Missionary Society papers, and the papers of the Cecil Rhodes-controlled group of businesses. There are also case studies focused on particular letter-writers or topics.

4. Something that occurred regarding settlers in North America and also Australia and New Zealand too.

5. On affect, see Cancian (2010); Gerber (2006); for a view similar to that discussed here, see Fitzpatrick (1994).

6. For a counter-view, see Stanley (2015a).

7. For interesting discussions using a Bourdieusian framework, see Davis (2010); Erel (2010, 2012); Noble (2013); Nowicka (2013); Plüss (2013); Pöllman (2013).

8. See Davis (2010); DeHaan (2010); Middleton (2010).

9. The literature indicates these migrants included a higher proportion of people of an educated ‘respectable’ and ‘middling sort’, with a higher than usual literacy level, although not necessarily much formal schooling.

10. See note 1 concerning the end-date of the collection. All letters discussed are from the Forbes Collection, National Archives Repository, Pretoria, South Africa.

11. South Africa was not a unified political entity until 1910. Before then, there were four settler colonies: the two Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, and two British colonies, Natal and the Cape.

12. And at times also South Australia, where other kin had migrated.

13. The most substantial African settlements were in the South African settler colonies of the Cape and Natal, recognizing that Britons were a minority of white migrants apart from in Natal, and also there were more black migrants from elsewhere in southern Africa than those from white European backgrounds. See Conway and Leonard (2014); Family and Colonialism Network (2014); Harper and Constantine (2010, pp. 111–147); Murdock (2004); Richards (2004).

14. The best-known are Benjamin Moodie’s 1817 emigration scheme, taking around 200 Scottish indentured laborers to the Western Cape; the well-known ‘1820 Settlers’ of some 4000 government-sponsored British migrants to the Eastern Cape; Edward Brenton’s schemes for child emigration between 1832 and 1841; and Joseph Byrne’s ‘Emigration and Colonisation’ venture that took around 2500 British migrants to Natal between 1849 and the early 1850s; with a late-1850s smaller initiative by Alexander McCorkindale through his (variously named) Glasgow and South African Company also taking migrants to Natal (Harper, 2003; MacKenzie, 2007, pp. 157–161).

15. The first generation of Forbes siblings were Alexander (1825–1866), David (1829–1905), Lizzie (1831–1916), James (1835–1896) and Jemima (1837–1889). The Forbes men have appeared in a number of published accounts, although the family tradition of recycling personal names across generations and different parts of the family has led to sometimes inaccurate attributions. For the most interesting, see Bonner (1982); Crush (1987); MacKenzie (2007, pp. 146–149).

16. Now Mpumalanga.

17. For detailed discussion of the factors underpinning the scale and structure of Scottish migrations, see especially Harper (2003); also Brock (1999).

18. The children of Kate and David senior who survived to adulthood were, in birth order, Nellie, Alexander junior (Alex), David junior (Dave), James junior (Jim), Catherine (Kitty) and Madge. Alex junior died of malaria in 1885. The Forbes daughters had equal shares in the economic and finance aspects with their brothers, although for them this resided mainly in land and crops rather than stock until after their father’s death in 1905, when they became important farmers.

19. Settler colonialism involves domination over an indigenous people, with settler colonists founding a social and political order, rather than joining a pre-existing one, as most migrants do (Lambert & Lester, 2006; Lester, 2001; Stanley, 2015b).

20. This eventuated from the earlier period when both white and black engaged in peasant farming of a pastoral or small-holding kind, via the rapid creation by white settlers of cheap black labor as the equivalent of new technology. See Bundy (1988); Stanley (2015b).

21. See Cavanagh (2013); Markelis (2006); Mosley (1983); Versteegh (2000); and on the Forbes, Stanley (2015b). This has been described as proto-capitalism (Krikler, 1993, pp. 128–131). However, it is more accurately seen as thoroughly if not entirely imbued with capitalist forms of production (Denoon, 1983, 1995), with black labor being both the ‘engine’ and also the recurrent ‘technology’ that enabled many such farms to only partially mechanize production methods (Stanley, 2015b).

22. See here note 15. Natal was chosen because David was a good shot, and hunting and trading among the Zulu were envisaged as providing better economic opportunities than elsewhere.

23. Few letters to or by Alexander Forbes senior are extant and only a small number of Jemima’s.

24. The dearth of archival collections suggests this was less so regarding migrant groups from elsewhere in Europe and Russia, and less so again respecting the longer-term resident Boer farmer population of mixed Dutch and other origins.

25. There are, for example, many letters to and from children at school in the Findlay collection and significant numbers in the Forbes collection, and also from marriages in and out in the Pringle and Schreiner-Hemming collections.

26. Rather than absence as a permanency, ‘interruption of presence’ signifies that letter-writing occurs with the expectation of future meetings. This is a general characteristic of letter-writing, not just of the Forbes or other South African letter-writers.

27. In birth order, Nellie, Alex, Dave, Jim, Kitty and Madge.

28. In birth order, Nellie, Susie, Lizzie and John Condie.

29. There is no easy means of referring to this complex entity, for none of the available conceptual categories such as family, household, domus and so on stretch far enough. In relation to the wider Whites Writing Whiteness project and its analytical purposes, it is most usefully thought about in Norbert Elias’ terms as a figuration. See Elias (1994); Ladurie (1980 [1978]); http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/forbes-domus-figurations/.

30. Stanley (2015b); see also http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/action-research/the-scriptural-economy/.

31. See Stanley (2015c) on methodological aspects of working with very large letter collections, using the Findlay Papers as an exemplar. See also Cochran and Hsieh’s (2013) work on the letters of the (partly migratory) Liu family of Shanghai, Rothschild’s (2011) epistolary history of the Scottish Johnstone family living in different areas of the British Empire, and Hougaz’s (2015) work on the stories of multi-generational Italian-Australian business dynasties.

32. Discussion of materials concerning the Forbes, Findlay, Pringle and Schreiner-Hemming collections will be found at http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/.

33. They included Forbes siblings, partners, offspring, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, friends, employees, neighbors, business connections, shop owners, merchants, tax inspectors, vets, bank managers, magistrates and others. A central sub-set was David Forbes senior, his sisters Lizzie Forbes and Jemima Condie and brothers Alexander senior and James senior; David’s wife Kate, their children Alex junior, Dave junior, Jim junior, Nellie, Kitty and Madge; Kate’s parents David and Anne Purcocks, her sister Sarah and brothers George, Vincent and David; and Kate and Sarah’s maternal aunt Mary McCorkindale and her husband Alexander. The women involved wrote as much as, and when the full range of Forbes documents of life are considered more than, the men, contra the contention otherwise in the migrant letter literature.

34. They were not together. Jim was still in Europe at this time, and while Alexander and David sometimes worked together, they also at times engaged in different economic pursuits in different areas.

35. In part, Jemima’s indecisiveness was because she worried about leaving Lizzie with no immediate family in Scotland; see National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/6, Jemima Forbes to David Forbes senior, 3 October 1859.

36. Just before Alexander’s early death from an abscess on the liver, following a grueling trading trip, Lizzie had been anticipating his return, with this a likely reality rather than fantasy as shown by later extended returns by both David and James. These visits included Kate Forbes on three occasions, and the three or four year residency in Scotland of David and Kate’s daughters Nellie, Kitty and Maggie Forbes while at school. There were also later lengthy visits to South Africa by two of Jemima’s children, Susie Condie (who contemplated migration) and John Condie (who did migrate, to Cape Town).

37. When the letters commenced in 1850, there was very little visual imagery available to guide the imagination, as even engravings of ‘ordinary’ South Africa were then rare.

38. They included Lizzie relaying to Kate the events of her working life and friendships, business matters, reports of fashion and later, after Kate’s first ‘return’ visit to Britain, news of people known in common, with Kate reciprocating similarly.

39. Although they made at least one lengthy trip to Britain and Lizzie met them, there are very few letters to her Forbes nephews Dave junior and Jim junior extant.

40. See Stanley (2015d); the randomly selected years are 1854, 1866, 1876, 1885, 1893, 1908, 1917 and 1921.

41. There would also be issues in confining analysis to temporal considerations and general flows. First, there are over 400 partially or wholly undated letters that cannot be included in such an exercise. As many are by James senior and Dave junior, a temporal approach underestimates their presence and significance in the collection as a whole. Secondly, there are distributional skews resulting from who was a keeper of letters and who was not, and a cross-sectional analysis can compound the effects because the absences that propel letter-writing tend to be bunched in particular time-periods rather than evenly distributed across years. An example here is that David senior was on a lengthy prospecting trip during 1887 and his letters to Kate (a letter-keeper) survive, but not any to James senior (who was not), although James was his major collaborator in such ventures and the indications are that David wrote frequently to him. Thirdly and as noted above, letters are written by individuals, and a temporal approach on its own conveys little of the specific writing practices and variant usages of the different letter-writers. Relatedly, correspondences are part of a relationship between a letter-writer and their addressee, something also difficult to convey in a temporal examination of so many letters as exist in the Forbes collection. Thus the two-part strategy adopted.

42. After the death of David Forbes in 1905, relatively few letters by Lizzie are extant. However, mentions in letters by others indicate that the flow continued, so these seem to have been mislaid or lost.

43. Lizzie Forbes’ letters pass on information about events in southern Africa that her family there might not have heard about. And after the establishment of the Forbes Henderson mining company, they comment on share prices and fluctuations, particularly regarding family investments and shareholder meetings Lizzie or family friends attended. Kate Forbes’ letters survive mainly as drafts, while their contents can also be gauged through Lizzie’s often quite detailed responses. Over time, Kate became the record-keeper and accountant of the farming side of the Forbes’ economic undertakings and in this capacity produced lists, inventories, accounts of financial incomings and outgoings documenting the economic fabric of the Athole Estate, as well as drafting important letters for others and making handwritten copies of key incoming communications. Although there are fewer letters by her in the collection than by, for example, her son Dave junior, overall the majority of Forbes documents are in her hand. Kate’s last letter to Lizzie in 1916 was returned with news of her death.

44. See National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/51, Lizzie Forbes to Kate Forbes, 2 August 1862. Verbatim extracts of all Lizzie Forbes letters quoted from or referenced will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/). The transcription conventions followed are that: nd shows that no date was provided for a letter by the author nor can it be surmised from a post-mark, a question-mark in front of a ?word indicates a doubtful reading, while ^insertion^ marks text inserted by the writer and deletions are also by them, with … indicating a researcher-omission of text, and comments [in square brackets] being researcher-provided elucidations.

45. It also comments about her brothers’ trading trip, whether it had produced ‘good returns’ and that improved trade would make ‘money easier got’. This reflects Lizzie’s wish that they should buy farms because she considered (correctly) that hunting and trading entailed considerable danger.

46. Extracts from these and other Lizzie/Kate letters discussed will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/). All transcriptions are verbatim.

47. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 11/245, Lizzie Forbes to Kate Forbes, no date but ?1890; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 9/290, Lizzie Forbes to Kate Forbes, 1 September 1899.

48. The backcloth was that James senior had always been ‘unsteady’, not settling, fathering a number of illegitimate children (financially supported by Lizzie on behalf of ‘the Estate’), liking the good life and drinking too much.

49. While there, James senior lived in Edinburgh, London and the Highlands; he seems also to have made a return trip to South Africa and back, around his mining interests.

50. Lizzie Condie had spent most of her short life being ill and looked after by her aunt; she had at this point recently been committed to an asylum, but probably had a brain tumor.

51. This was between Britain and the Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State and began on 1 October 1899. During the War, the Forbes were evacuated from Athole. They returned in mid-1902 to find Athole largely destroyed.

52. ‘There’ aspects are still present although background, concerning the death of Paul Kruger (ex-President of the Transvaal), linked with Sir Alfred Milner ‘putting right’ Swaziland land concessions for mining rights, something all the Forbes had financial stakes in.

53. Extracts from all James Forbes senior letters discussed will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness / In Progress / Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/). A high proportion of his extant letters are undated or minimally dated with just a day and the addresses they were sent from are usually perfunctorily indicated.

54. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 11/29, James Forbes senior to David Forbes senior, 5 December 1882.

55. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/252, James Forbes senior to David Forbes senior, 14 June 1888.

56. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/141, James Forbes senior to DF junior 29 December 1890; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/261, James Forbes senior to DF senior, 12 January 1895.

57. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/171, James Forbes senior to Nellie Forbes, 26 February 1892. Its detailed comments also confirm that Nellie was fully knowledgeable about these business matters.

58. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 9/11, Kate Forbes to James Forbes senior, 26 February 1896. Initially it was supposed James had typhoid, but this was instead the final stages of stomach cancer exacerbated by liver failure from his alcoholism. James died in early March 1896. David senior traveled to Johannesburg and looked after him during his last few days.

59. Mary McCorkindale’s key correspondents in the collection were Kate Forbes, Sarah Purcocks, David Forbes senior and Joshua Straker (who married Sarah in 1880). Most are to Kate, who carefully kept them as a group separate from her other letters.

60. Now Zinkwazi.

61. Extracts from this and other Mary McCorkindale letters will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/).

62. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection Annex 7/261, Mary McCorkindale to Kate Forbes, 14 March 1860.

63. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection Annex 7/278, Mary McCorkindale to Sarah Purcocks, 25 October 1869.

64. After Kate’s marriage in 1860, the 10-year-old Sarah kept the accounts and did other business tasks for her mother, wrote letters for her parents, then as a 13-year-old sorted out her parents’ housing problems; later, she also ran what was in name her father’s farm at Westoe.

65. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/107, Mary McCorkindale to Kate Forbes, 24 December 1868.

66. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection Annex 7/295, Mary McCorkindale to Kate Forbes, 8 August 1875; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection Annex 7/315, Mary McCorkindale to David Forbes senior, 10 August 1877.

67. One of the few is to Anne Purcocks in 1865, detailing a sea-voyage and visit to Cape Town. See National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/161, Mary McCorkindale to Anne Purcocks, 12 March 1865.

68. Extracts from Dave Forbes junior letters will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/). His first letter was written when he was 13, when with his brother Alex junior he had been commandeered for commando duty.

69. Dave junior had obtained a concession for this, then sold it, although retaining its wood and water rights.

70. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/252, Dave Forbes junior to David Forbes senior, 25 June 1888; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/1, Dave Forbes junior to David Forbes senior, 19 September 1890.

71. His father David senior agreed, but also thought that selling out because of his insider knowledge before a price collapse occurred would be unethical.

72. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/1, Dave Forbes junior to David Forbes senior, 19 September 1890.

73. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 9/46, Dave Forbes junior to Madge Forbes, 22 July 1896.

74. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 10/176, Dave Forbes junior to Kate Forbes, 10 February 1912.

75. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 15/147, Kate Forbes to J. Macintosh, 17 January 1910.

76. Dave junior’s letter to Kate of 22 July 1908 is indicative in its to-ing and fro-ing of business and farming matters. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 10/143, Dave Forbes junior to Kate Forbes, 22 July 1908.

77. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 10/176, Dave Forbes junior to Kate Forbes, 10 February 1912.

78. There are relatively few letters by Jim junior and fewer still from Nellie, Kitty and Madge Forbes, probably mainly because Jim farmed at nearby Tolderia and the sisters were ‘at home’; those that do exist have the characteristic writing practices noted.

79. After David senior’s death, official communications were sent to Kate and Dave junior because the two were executors of the David Forbes Estate.

80. Containing bound duplicates made by a ‘manifold writer’ carbon device.

81. Kate Forbes and Dave junior were the family archivists. They were also major letter-writers and also wrote other kinds of documents of life, including in Kate’s case a farming diary, and in Dave’s a memoir. Dave also ensured the preservation of the family papers as a collection.

82. Extracts from these and other David Forbes senior letters will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/). David senior wrote many letters before 1860, but the recipients by and large did not keep them; the earliest extant is to Kate, written a short time after their marriage.

83. In broad chronological order, these were for trading and hunting, land surveying, trekking, diamonds digging, gold prospecting, and business trips including but not only to Britain.

84. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/82, David Forbes senior to Kate Forbes, 16 December 1866; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/81, David Forbes senior to Kate Forbes, 26 December 1866.

85. This was Bishop John Colenso, both a travel writer and in 1861 author of a controversial commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. This rejected the idea of external punishment, a foretaste of even more controversial religious pronouncements from him later.

86. Kate and David had nursed the dying Alexander.

87. None would have arrived with their respective addressees until probably February.

88. Georgie was one of a number of Forbes children who died very young.

89. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/127, David Forbes senior to Kate Forbes, 7 June 1871.

90. As in a 13 July 1871 letter commenting that ‘I am doing it without consulting you’; National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/129, Kate Forbes to David Forbes senior, 13 July 1871.

91. A focus on the correspondence between David senior and James senior and to a lesser extent him and Dave junior shows the existence of family economy networks that David was part of but Kate was not, specifically regarding prospecting and mining.

92. Extracts from all Sarah Purcocks Straker letters referenced or quoted will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/).

93. Sarah was widowed in 1883, when Joshua Straker died from heart disease. Westoe was given by or leased from David Forbes senior. Nominally, until his death in 1899, her father David Purcocks senior ran it, but in practice this had been Sarah from when she was a young woman.

94. From the recurrence of breast cancer, following earlier medical treatment.

95. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/75, Sarah Purcocks to Kate Forbes, 23 April 1866.

96. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/94, Sarah Purcocks to Kate Forbes, 29 May 1867.

97. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/230, Sarah Purcocks to Kate Forbes, 1 August 1886.

98. Sarah had financial interests in the trusts established under the wills of Mary McCorkindale, David Purcocks senior, and also David Forbes senior.

99. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/115, Sarah Purcocks Straker to Kate Forbes, 16 July 1889; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/35, Sarah Purcocks Straker to Kate Forbes, 4 May 1890.

100. Letters by Bella Pryde, an acquaintance of Nellie, Kitty and Madge Forbes employed locally as a governess, are very demonstrative. This was disapproved of, with comments made about its inappropriateness.

101. For instance, Anne Purcocks was functionally literate, her husband David was not literate at all, and the three Purcocks sons varied.

102. For instance, Anne Purcocks was a lodging-house keeper in Zinkwazi, and Mary McCorkindale had her own investments and later took over the McCorkindale Estate.

103. Susie Condie became a specialist nurse, and better professional training opportunities in Europe seem to have been involved in her decision. Her brother John Condie went to Cape Town for a trial period and decided to stay.

Additional information

Funding

Whites Writing Whiteness research is supported by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as a Professorial Research Fellowship [ES J022977/1]. The ESRC’s support is gratefully acknowledged. No financial interest or benefit has arisen from this research.