Contrasting and comparative aspects of the ¿shock¿ cities of Manchester and Bilbao-the legal professions and the emergence of a professional ¿ideal? in Bilbao (1830-1914)

Abstract

This Thesis is a comparative and e constructive analysis of certain aspects of the two Shock cities of Manchester and Bilbao during their respective Industrial Revolutions, separated by at least fifty years. The principal aim centres on the effects of industrialization and the growth of the Liberal Professions with particular attention to Legal Professionals, above all lawyers, their diversification and geographical distribution in the Casco Viejo and Ensanche of Bilbao in the nineteenth century. Another aim is the analysis of the emergence of a professional Ideal of liberal professionals, unencumbered by the interests, as in the example of the Pitman's Attorney- W.P. Roberts. The findings of the research show that there was an elite group of lawyers, or lawyers intelligentsia often involved in politics and business rather than practicing the law in tandem with a much larger proletarian group of lawyers, in numbers, rather than living in any kind of hardship. The overwhelming majority of lawyers originated from either Bilbao or Biscay according to data gleaned from the Padrones of census of Bilbao. Although lawyers played their part in developing the emerging professional ideal especially as councilors in the Bilbao town council at the turn of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, as ex-oficio lawyers, collegiate lawyers were obliged to defend the poor for little or no remuneration, but they did not as a group stand out as liberal professionals amongst those who worked on behalf of the workers until the 1920s.