Mass-Observation

One of the suggestions making the rounds in this time of Covid-19 is for everyone to keep a journal of what daily life is like. This could provide a much-needed context for future generations. But this is nothing new. People have been keeping daily journals as far back as there has been writing.

In 1937, a project was started in England to recruit observers and writers. They named the project Mass Observation and the project continued into the ’50s. The purpose of the project, started by an anthropologist, was to study the everyday lives of ordinary Brits. The project restarted in 1981 and continues today.

M.O archives are kept at the University of Sussex and include reports, diaries, questionnaires, and other items. Most materials are only available by visiting the archives (or if you are part of an affiliated academic institution) but there are catalogs for the collection. https://www.thekeep.info/collections/mass-observation-archive/the-mass-observation-collection/

It requires some digging to see what kind of diaries they have available. 
At https://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/special-collections/massobssearch/diaries you can search the 1939-1965 diaries by occupation or place of residence among other fields. Unfortunately, there are no names included so you can’t search to see if your family member participated but you might be able to locate a similar person.

There have also been a number of books written based on M.O materials. There’s a long list of them at http://www.massobs.org.uk/mass-observation-1937-1950s. Many of these are available in libraries or to order. (I have 4 or 5 on order.) If you are interested in families that lived in England during World War II, some of these books may give you some good details.

Currently, the project sends out three questionnaires or directives a year to participants. These questionnaires ask a variety of questions depending on current events or other topics. For example, in the Summer of 1981, they asked observers to provide details of how they spent Wednesday 29 July – from getting out of bed until going to sleep. The title of this directive was “Royal Wedding – Celebration or bore?.”  While you can’t easily access the responses online you can see what type of questions were asked on each directive. http://www.massobs.org.uk/mass-observation-project-directives. Looking through these questions gives you a really good idea of what was on the minds of ordinary Brits at various times.

Hopefully, at some point, all this great material will be made easily available to the “ordinary” researcher. It looks like it could be a genealogical gold mine.

Thanks to Erik Larson in his book The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz for his mention of the M.O. and sending me digging for more information.