Peter Laslett

Thomas Peter Ruffell Laslett (18 December 1915 – 8 November 2001) was an English historian.

Biography Laslett was the son of a Baptist minister and was born in Bedford on 18 December 1915. Although he spent much of his childhood in Oxford, he was educated at the Watford Grammar School for Boys. In 1938, he took a double first in history from St John's College, Cambridge. He stayed in Cambridge for some time, conducting historical research, then in 1940 joined the Fleet Air Arm. After a period working on protection of Arctic convoys, Laslett then learned Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as a lieutenant and worked on decoding Japanese naval intelligence. He was stationed first at Bletchley Park and later, after VE Day, in Washington, DC. It was at Bletchley Park that he met his future wife, Janet Crockett Clark, whom he married in 1947.

Laslett was demobilised in 1945

In 1953, having earlier discovered and begun research into a substantial proportion of the library of John Locke, privately held at a shooting lodge in the Scottish Highlands, He published an edition of the treatises in 1960,

Laslett was Reader in Politics and the History of Social Structure at Cambridge University (the title reflecting his own unusual mix of historical interests) from 1966 until retirement in 1983. At this point, his interests turned to the historical understanding and practical betterment of the elderly. Laslett played a pivotal role in founding the University of the Third Age in 1982.

He died on 8 November 2001, aged 85, and was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford, and was survived by his wife, Janet, and two sons. His library of early printed books by and about Filmer, Locke, and political thought (including political economy) was sold by Quaritch in 2006.

Works The World We Have Lost: England Before the Industrial Age (London, 1965; New York, 1966; 2nd ed., 1971, 3rd ed., 1984; re-issued and updated 2000) An Introduction to English Historical Demography: From the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (with David Edward Charles Eversley and Edward Anthony Wrigley, London and New York, 1966) Household and Family in Past Time (ed. with the assistance of Richard Wall, Cambridge, 1972) Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations: Essays in Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1977) Statistical Studies of Historical Social Structure (with Kenneth W. Wachter and Eugene A. Hammel, London, 1978) Bastardy and its Comparative History: Studies in the History of Illegitimacy and Marital Nonconformism (co-edited with Karla Oosterveen and Richard M. Smith, Cambridge, 1980) The World We Have Lost: Further Explored (London, 1983; New York, 1984; 3rd ed., 2000, 4th ed., 2004) Family Forms in Historic Europe (edited by Richard Wall in collaboration with Jean Robin, Cambridge, 1983) A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age (London, 1989; Cambridge, 1991; 2nd ed., 1996) Justice Between Age Groups and Generations (co-edited with James S. Fishkin, New Haven and London, 1992) Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age (co-edited with David Kertzer, Berkeley, 1995)

Also The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure, Essays presented to Peter Laslett on his seventieth birthday (edited by Lloyd Bonfield, Keith Wrightson, Oxford, 1996)