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My research explores the economic, social and medical history of Britain and Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. I am particularly interested in wages, guilds, training and growth. At present, I have three large projects.

Apprenticeship and human capital

The supply of skilled labour is one of the fundamental factors in economic performance and growth. And for centuries, apprenticeship was the main way that most people outside of agriculture gained skill. My research aims to understand how apprenticeship worked in England in the three centuries leading up to the industrial revolution.

I use very large collections of apprenticeship records from guild and tax sources to provide new insights into the openness, effectiveness and outcomes of apprenticeship training in early modern Britain and Europe. By looking beyond the legal framework, we have uncovered a more flexible and accessible system of training than historians used to believe and uncovered how it contributed to the remarkable structural transformation and acceleration of productivity growth that began in these centuries.

The findings from this work on Britain are brought together in my forthcoming book, The Market for Skill (Princeton, 2025). The results of a comparative project on apprenticeship across Europe from 1600 to 1900 were published in 2019 in a book I edited with Maarten Prak, (CUP).

Prostitution and precarity in the eighteenth century

In the late eighteenth century, the Lock Asylum was founded to provide young women with a way to find salvation and a new life after being treated for syphilis in the Lock Hospital. Most of the women were former prostitutes.

Their life histories before their admission survive, offering a unique insight into their experiences of work, poverty, sexual assault, and coercion. Working with a large cohort of undergraduate students and public researchers, I am preparing an edition of the case book. 

The transformation of healthcare in early modern England

Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century, the English people profoundly changed their response to ill health. Previously, they had relied on their families and communities. Now they increasingly turned to commercial providers: they learned to pay doctors, buy medicines, and hire nurses.

My research is exploring how and why this transformation in healthcare occurred. By using a range of sources – from the debts left by the dying to the customs records of drug imports – I am uncovering the timing and nature of this change, showing the massive growth in the use of commercial drugs and the frequency by which people sought help from medical practitioners.

Recent publications 

'The Historical Journal (2024). doi:10.1017/S0018246X24000335. (with Adam A, Adès R, Banks W, et al.)

, Economic History Review (2024) (with Meredith Paker and Judy Stephenson) DOI 10.1111/ehr.13346

' Journal of Economic History (forthcoming 2023) (with Meredith Paker and Judy Stephenson)

View Professor Wallis's CV: Professor Patrick Wallis's CV [PDF]