Eliminating the humanity of the masses can also be effected by converting them into scientific specimens. This was the enterprise undertaken in the 1930s by Mass Observation. Tom Harrisson, co-founder of the project, was a naturalist and anthropologist who had been a keen bird-watcher at Harrow. He and his team of middle-class observers based themselves in Bolton (‘Worktown’ in Mass-Observation code) and mingled with the natives, collecting data on local customs such as the cult of the aspidistra, football pools, dirty jokes, armpit hygiene and the proportion of males wearing bowler hats in pubs. Observers were instructed to use an impersonal notation when identifying human specimens. The formula ‘M 45 D’, for example, meant a man of about forty-five who looked or sounded unskilled working class (Category D).

John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939 (1992)