Leading figure in the development of the oral history movement
The historian and sociologist Trevor Lummis, who has died aged 83, played a key role in the oral history movement, attempting to bring the voices, perceptions, beliefs and actions of ordinary people – which are often overlooked – into the general analysis of history. He shared this aim with other members of the movement, led by Paul Thompson, with whom he worked at the University of Essex. One of Trevor's contributions was to insist that oral accounts should be used not on their own but alongside the more traditional sources of historical research.
His work covered diverse fields, with titles ranging from The Woman's Domain (1990) to Life and Death in Eden: Pitcairn Island and the Bounty Mutineers (1997) and Pacific Paradises (2005), about the discovery of Tahiti and Hawaii. His magnum opus was The Labour Aristocracy 1851-1914 (1994), in which he challenged one of the central notions in British labour and Marxist historiography, the thesis of the "labour aristocracy". Trevor suggested that this should be abandoned, finding no support for it in his own investigations of the lives of real people in Britain.
The son of Reginald Lummis, a hedger and ditcher, and his wife, Anne (nee Dowsett), Trevor was born in the village of Bulphan, Essex. He left school at 14 and in 1947 joined the merchant navy. On leaving the service 10 years later, he became a builder. During the 1960s he began taking part in international work camps in France, often alongside student volunteers, and came to recognise his own intellectual potential.
He applied to study at Newbattle Abbey College, Dalkeith, then progressed to Edinburgh University, where he gained a degree in history. At Newbattle he met his future wife, Sandra, and they married in 1971. He went on to do a master's in sociology at Essex University in 1973. He was then appointed senior research officer in the Essex sociology department and subsequently made an honorary fellow.
Trevor was a great raconteur and conversationalist. In the introduction to his Listening to History (1987), he commented on the deep scepticism of historical writing expressed in the newspaper the Poor Man's Guardian in 1835 by one James Bronterre O'Brien and concluded: "The multitude is now more widely represented in written history: and if the 'truth' of the more recent accounts is just as open to question, at least there is a wider selection of 'frauds' from which to choose."
But, of course, for Trevor there was a profound question about the methodology used in historical research and writing – the authenticity of the evidence. In order fully to appreciate his own meticulous scholarship, it is necessary to read Trevor's notes and appendices to his Occupation and Society: The East Anglian Fishermen 1880-1914 (2002). This book was a long time coming, based as it was on his 1981 doctoral thesis from Essex, as well as subsequent research with Thompson, and drew on around 60 in-depth interviews with fishermen and their wives and children.
Trevor was a keen gardener, baker and a highly skilled carpenter who generously helped friends in need of any of these skills. He and Sandra moved to southern France in 1991. Active to the end, Trevor gained great pleasure from his love of classical music and literature, was engaged in writing three more books and was happily learning the art of sculpting.
Sandra survives him.
• Trevor Lummis, oral historian, born 25 August 1930; died 23 September 2013
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