Research shareholding and investment in England and Wales: approaches, sources and methods

There is considerable scope for increasing the understanding of the history of share ownership. Existing studies of shareholders in the UK are limited in the industries, time periods and shareholder populations they study. This article outlines the methods used by the authors in an ESRC-funded study of shareholders in companies in England and Wales from 1870 to 1930. Data were drawn from companies' shareholder records — the Form Es submitted annually to the Registrar of Companies and the share registers and ledgers maintained by companies. The article outlines the rationale for the industrial sectors selected for study, the choice of companies and the basis on which shareholder records were sampled. The resulting database contains details of over 29,000 individual shareholders who collectively had over 33,000 shareholdings, and is larger and more representative of the investor population than any previously compiled in the UK