The Archive results from the work of the social research organisation, Mass Observation. This organisation was founded in 1937 by three young men, part of a small group of like-minded friends. The origins resulted from a strange coincidence. Early in 1937, Tom Harrisson's one and only published poem appeared in the New Statesman on the same page as a letter from Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings, in which they outlined their London-based project to encourage a national panel of volunteers to reply to regular questionnaires on a variety of matters. Interested by the similarity in aims to his own current anthropological study in Bolton, Harrisson contacted Madge and Jennings. Within the space of a month, the two projects, related in their ideals, although different in the techniques they employed to gather information, joined together under the title of Mass Observation.
Harrisson and a team of observers continued their study of life and people in Bolton (the Worktown Project), while Madge remained in London to organise the writing of the volunteer panel. Their aim, stated in a further letter to the New Statesman, was to create an 'anthropology of ourselves' - a study of the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain.
Although Jennings and then Madge moved on, Mass Observation continued to operate throughout the Second World War and into the early 1950s, producing a series of books about their work as well as thousands of reports. Gradually the emphasis shifted away from social issues towards consumer behaviour. In 1949, Mass Observation was registered as a limited company.
Information for Mass Observation's reports was gathered by two means:
- the observational work: a team of paid investigators recorded people's behaviour and conversation in as much detail as possible in a variety of public situations: meetings, religious occasions, sporting and leisure activities, in the street and at work.
- the National Panel, composed of people from all over Britain who either kept diaries or replied to regular open-ended questionnaires send to them by the central team of Mass Observers.
From the guide to the Archive of Mass Observation, 1937-1967, 1937-1967, (University of Sussex Library)
