Join us to explore some of the findings of the Wellcome Trust funded collaborative project, Addressing Health: Morbidity and Mortality in the Victorian and Edwardian Post Office. Following the digitisation and transcription of the pension records for over 26,000 individuals who worked for the Post Office in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales between 1860 and 1908, the Addressing Health project team have been investigating what life was like for men, women and children employed by this hugely important government department. 

Work forms an important part of our lives: we spend much of our time doing it and as a result our working conditions can have a huge impact on our health and wellbeing. The same was true for nineteenth-century workers and the Post Office pension records provide a unique insight to the health of its workforce. Through the records we can explore differences in health for workers in a variety of different occupations and places. We can identify the reasons why so many workers had to retire early and the amount of sickness that each worker took prior to retirement. With this information we can learn about different medical conditions – including mental health – along with how poor health affected the ability to work. We also explore occupational roles influenced health outcomes how geography also had a part to play. 

In this webinar we explore the historical evidence behind the stories of thousands of Post Office workers and show how this can be used to answer important questions about what it was like to live and work in towns, cities and villages during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.