Edward H. (Eddie) Hunt – 1939-2025
Eddie’s long association with Economic History at LSE began in the 1960s when he arrived for his undergraduate studies. He remained at the School and completed his PhD on the topic Regional Wage Variations in Britain, 1850-1914 under the supervision of Donald Coleman.
He briefly left in the late ‘60s to take up a position as Assistant Lecturer in Economic History at Queen’s University, Belfast, before returning to Houghton Street in 1969 where he stayed for rest of his career.
Described as being “among the most promising of economic historians of my generation” by Patrick O’Brien, Eddie participated in the life of the Department and the field of Economic History more generally, with relish being Assistant Editor (1971-75), then Book Review Editor (1982-86) of The Economic History Review, the journal published by the Economic History Society.
Along with his co-author Stephen Pam, Eddie published widely on agricultural history, most notably debunking the long-held theory that Essex farmers had needed rescuing by the incoming Scots. Their paper Essex Men Vindicated: output, incomes and investment in agriculture, 1850-73 (1993) has been downloaded from the LSE archive more than 1,200 times.
Eddie’s research, especially his studies of wages in the long-nineteenth century, remains a vital ingredient of discussions in economic history and his monograph British Labour History, 1815-1914 was ground-breaking in the way it covered the changing face of the life and labour of the British working class in the century before the First World War.
It is as the head of the MSc Programme, a position he inherited from Walter Stern in the mid-1970s, that Eddie will be remembered most fondly. Stern had nurtured the programme while it was still regarded as a vehicle for those who had read history (possibly economics) to obtain a broad understanding of the discipline but, under Eddie the number of Masters’ students grew, and different programmes were added to the portfolio of offerings. Most notably, the MSc Economic History (Research) designed to represent a shift to a four-year doctorate, with the MSc training year becoming a formal requirement for entry onto the MPhil/PhD programme.
Eddie was unfailingly kind and generous, with a wicked sense of humour, and a great raconteur. He enjoyed travelling (particularly to vineyards) and once gave a particularly nice bottle of Zinfandel to one of the administrators as a gift following a trip to California. When, a couple of days later, he asked what she had enjoyed it with, he was horrified to be told “Eastenders”. The following Christmas she was gifted a bottle of port as ‘punishment’!
Eddie passed away on 8th February and will be deeply missed by family, friends, and colleagues. The funeral will take place on Monday 10th March, and full details (including a link to the webcast for those who can’t be there in person) can be found here.