A generation has passed since the appearance of Oliver MacDonagh's article 'The Nineteenth-century Revolution in Government: A Reappraisal' (Historical Journal, 1958), which gave enormous impetus to the study of the 'silent revolution' that had overtaken Whitehall and Westminster between 1830 and 1914. Following MacDonagh, scholars have turned with fresh eyes to old sources - departmental archives, bill payers and private memoirs - to explore the ways and means by which the changes he described had occurred. This book offers selected perspectives on an important facet of new research into the administrative revolution: the idea of 'expertise', the role of 'experts' and of administrators and professionals in creating the technique of Victorian government. It also pays tribute to MacDonagh's seminal insight, in offering an indication of work in progress along a research front which now incorporates disciplines beyond administrative history in an international setting.

Preface; Introduction Roy Macleod; Part I. Ways and Means: 1. Lawyers and statutory reform in Victorian government Gavin Drewry; 2. Engineers and government in nineteenth-century Britain R. A. Buchanan; 3. Law and order: expertise and the Victorian Home Office Jill Pellew; 4. The struggle for the occupational census, 1841-1911 Edward Higgs; Part II. Professions and Powers: 5. Expertise and the dangerous trades, 1875-1900 Peter Bartrip; 6. Politics and germ theories in Victorian Britain: the Metropolitan Water Commissions of 1867-9 and 1892-3 Christopher Hamlin; 7. Public health and the expert: the London Medical Officers of Health, 1856-1900 Anne Hardy; Part III. Imperial Administrators and the Expertise of Empire: 8. Ireland and the expertise of imperial administration D. M. Schreuder; 9. The technique of government: governing mid-Victorian Australia John Eddy; Part IV. Clerks, Experts and Bureaucrats: 10. The 'new woman' in the machinery of government: a spanner in the works? Meta Zimmeck; 11. 'Experts' and interests: David Lloyd George and the dilemmas of the expanding state, 1906-19 John Turner; 12. William Beveridge in Whitehall: maverick or mandarin? Jose Harris; 13. Envoi: humanity, economy, policy: on common sense and expertise in the life of Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick Oliver MacDonagh; Notes; Bibliography; Index.