UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY
INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH

CENTRE
FOR
METROPOLITAN
HISTORY

Annual Report 1994-5
(1 August 1994-30 November 1995)

1. Director's Report

2. Project Reports

1. DIRECTOR'S REPORT

During 1994-5 the Centre continued to pursue its varied programme and initiated a number of new activities. It has had a full-time staff of up to eight, plus three graduate students and three Research or Visiting Fellows of the Institute of Historical Research closely linked with its activities, and other associates and advisers. Following changes within Senate House, we have rearranged and slightly enlarged our accommodation and have been joined on the third floor by other operations associated with the Institute.

The Metropolitan History Seminar this year took a wide view of 'Metropolitan Infrastructures', ranging from the monarchy and civil society to the treatment and significance of rubbish, waste and industrial by-products in Victorian London. For the first time a seminar contribution was illustrated by films, in a consideration of the way in which the commercial cinema can throw light on the structure of cities: the metropolitan networks of 'Bullitt' and the Ealing comedies provided a striking contrast. A group of papers focused on water: the social and political context of the provision of drinking water in the seventeenth century; the Thames and environmental ideology in the nineteenth, and the failure of river passenger services in 1905-8. Other papers covered the topography of scientific life, street planning, middle-class wealth, and images of the Victorian city.

At the end of the year a new seminar on Artefacts and History was launched, with a discussion of the portrayal of the Renaissance in the new permanent display at the British Museum and, at the second meeting, a discussion of recent detailed study of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the transmission of that monument to the present. Arising from the long-standing interests of several people associated with the Centre, and more recently from the stimulus provided by the 'Skilled Workforce' project, this seminar aims to promote interdisciplinary exchanges between those whose primary concerns are with the documentary, archaeological, or artefactual evidence for the past. It is also intended as a forum which will enable the Institute and the Centre more readily to develop activities in collaboration with other cultural institutions in the metropolis.

The Centre was involved with an ambitious conference in Antwerp in May 1995, comparing that city with Amsterdam and London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and pursuing a theme similar to that of the 'Cities in their Golden Ages' conference in 1994. A book is planned on the basis of the papers. With the Georgian Group it organised a two-day conference on 'The Bourgeois Townhouse in London' (July 1995), following up some of the themes of the 'Aristocratic Townhouse' conference held in 1993 (a group of papers from which was published in The London Journal in 1995), but dealing with a shorter period. Topics covered included the construction and organisation of the houses, furnishing, decoration, gardens, water supply, and servants. One of the most stimulating aspects of the conference arose from the difficulty of defining the theme: the houses in question had many physical features in common, but were occupied by families from a wide social range. As standardised units they could perform many different social functions, and it emerged that, perhaps to a degree unappreciated before, many of them were designed for multiple occupation from the start. In some respects they represented the clearest physical expression up to that date of London as a city of standardised and interchangeable parts. The papers will be published jointly with the Georgian Group in the Centre's Working Papers series.

In June 1995 the Anglo-French working group on 'London and Paris in the Middle Ages' met at the Archives Nationales in Paris, to discuss the comparative theme of 'provisioning' on which the Centre has been working for several years. Substantive papers were given on fuel, grain, the fish trade, building materials, and 'fast food', to be published in Franco-British Studies in 1996. These were clearly topics which can profitably be explored on a comparative basis, although differences in the source material available for the two cities and in historical methodologies employed mean that direct or measurable comparisons are difficult to establish in the first instance. Nevertheless, this is clearly a fruitful field, and it is hoped to set up similar groups on other aspects of comparative metropolitan history.

During the year it became clear that it would be possible to go ahead with the major international conference on 'Archives and the Metropolis' being organised in association with the record offices supported by the Corporation of London and with the financial support of the Corporation. The conference will be held at the Barbican Centre on 11-13 July 1996. It is concerned with the nature and significance of the records produced by metropolises from Antiquity to the present. In particular, it is concerned with the political and cultural role of the archive: how was it kept? who had access to it? and how was it used? A wide range of speakers has been recruited, from Tallinn to Tokyo, and from Cairo to Chicago.

Publications arising from the Centre's work have appeared in a variety of forms. A further volume in the Centre's own Working Papers series appeared in March 1995, incorporating papers from a study day held in 1993, under the title, Goldsmiths, Silversmiths and Bankers: Innovation and the Transfer of Skill, edited by David Mitchell. We are also pleased to report that Heather Creaton's Bibliography of Printed Works on London History to 1939 was awarded the Besterman Medal for the best bibliography published in 1994.

The Director's own research this year has focused on aspects of the fuel supply of medieval London, the international standing of the city in the late medieval and early modern period, the role of alien groups in the medieval city, and the evolution of London over the seven hundred years up to 1300. He has lectured by invitation on these and other topics in urban history in London, Münster, Paris, Regensburg, and Washington.

The 'Skilled Workforce' project formally finished at the end of 1994, but the Centre maintains close contacts with those involved, and the book incorporating the results of the investigation continues to be written. Two important new research projects began in 1995. After a long period of planning, the study of 'Mortality in the metropolis, 1860-1920' began in July. This project, co-ordinated by Bill Luckin and funded by the Wellcome Trust, addresses a critical issue in metropolitan history, the dramatic shift in the pattern of mortality which took place in London during this period, an experience which was shared by many of the world's leading cities. Graham Mooney began work in July on the statistical database which is to be one of the cornerstones of the project, while Andrea Tanner, who joins the team in January 1996, will be concerned with detailed studies of selected districts. This is an interdisciplinary and group project in several respects, involving a valuable technical contribution from geographers at Queen Mary College, and an advisory group which includes a nutritionist and a specialist in social medicine as well as historians. In October 1995 Perry Gauci joined the Centre to pursue a new study, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, on English merchant culture in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It aims to build on recent work concerning the commercial activity of merchants and, while it focuses on the formation of a political culture among London merchants, will also explore important aspects of the relationship between the metropolis and provincial centres. This study has an obvious connection with some of the themes of the 'Skilled Workforce' project. Unfortunately, attempts to secure funding for an innovative study of the diverse activities of London goldsmiths during the same period have not yet been successful.

Towards the end of 1995 the 'Virtual Teaching Collection' project, based at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, completed its development stage. During 1996 the Centre will undertake its contribution to the project, which will be to use the multi-media database system developed in the project to assemble a collection of images and texts concerning early modern London, and to organise an assessment of the technology as a teaching and research tool. Many of the images to be assembled in the London collection concern the themes of manufacture and innovation explored in the 'Skilled Workforce' project, and a part of the work will be funded by a grant from the Renaissance Trust. One aim of the collection is to promote the use of artefactual evidence in studies of the past.

The Centre has also reviewed other possible contributions to graduate education. It now provides supervision for a small number of graduate students, and has explored the possibility of providing short training courses on themes related to its own research. During 1996 it will offer an experimental course on the theme of 'Mortality and environment in the nineteenth-century metropolis'.

The Director served as a member of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, of the International Commission for the History of Towns, of the Fabric Advisory Committee of St Paul's Cathedral, of the advisory committee for the 'Winchester Pipe Rolls' project at the Hampshire Record Office, of the British Historic Towns Atlas Committee, and as managing Trustee of the London Journal. He is also a member of a small group based at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (Paris), which is organising a series of seminars on the theme of 'Les étrangers et la ville: les modalités d'implantation dans l'espace physique urbain'.

The Centre welcomed many visitors during the year. They included Justin Champion, whose short book on the London Plague of 1665, based on research at the Centre, was published in 1995. Graham Twigg, who has worked closely with Justin in the past, has begun to pursue his research work on epidemic disease in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London at the Centre. Iain Black spent an extended period as a Visiting Fellow, continuing his investigation, begun at the Centre, into business headquarters in the nineteenth-century city and into the evolution of the textile marketing district. Bernard Attard was also present for a few weeks continuing his work on the jobbers of the London Stock Exchange whom he interviewed as part of a Centre project. Visitors from outside the British Isles included those from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Japan, Sweden, and the USA.

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2. PROJECT REPORTS

i MARKET NETWORKS IN THE LONDON REGION: THE TRADE IN AGRARIAN PRODUCE, c.1400

This 30-month project seeks to reconstruct the operation of market networks in the London region in the period 1375-1400, by investigating the ways in which agrarian produce was channelled through the system of local markets towards London and other major centres of consumption. During the first year, which has now been completed, Jim Galloway and Margaret Murphy have made considerable progress in the areas of data collection and computerisation, and along with Derek Keene and the project's advisers are developing methodological and conceptual frameworks within which the data will be interpreted.

The first documentary source to be systematically examined has been a sample of plea rolls from the Court of Common Pleas, preserved in the Public Record Office in London (class CP40). Each roll covers one legal term and contains, on average, records of about 6,000 cases. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the majority (75%) of the cases heard by the Court of Common Pleas concerned the recovery of debt, ranging in amount from 40 shillings to thousands of pounds. Virtually all the cases are recorded in formulaic language with names of parties and value of debt almost invariably given, residence and occupation of parties frequently given and details of how the debt arose only occasionally included.

Data on debts contracted in London and in the ten surrounding counties which comprise the project's study area have been collected from three sample rolls, covering the Michaelmas terms of 1384, 1403 and 1424. In total, records of just under 8,000 debts relating to the project's ten-county study area have been collected, and entered into a dBase computer database. Many of the debts contracted within the area involved parties outside it, so that the geographical scope of the study extends well beyond the ten counties. Editing and preliminary analysis of this database in now nearly complete, permitting broad patterns of debt to be identified within the region. The inclusion of data on the residence of a significant proportion of the parties involved in debt litigation points to, and permits some quantification of, the involvement of particular towns in the networks of regional trade. The dominant position of London within the region, and within England as a whole, emerges clearly. Nearly 40 per cent of the debts sampled for the study area were contracted in London, while the credit relations of Londoners extended to the furthest reaches of the kingdom.

While data on the commodities traded is sparse, the combination of residence and occupational data provides many suggestive indications and for some of the more important towns sufficient information is available to delineate debt fields. Furthermore, the residences and patterns of indebtedness of such groups as drovers, butchers, maltmen and chapmen provide valuable evidence of the provisioning and distributive systems which linked London and its hinterland. Methods of conceptualising and expressing the overall dynamics of market systems within the London region as revealed by this very rich source are currently being explored.

The second major data collection is well underway and will continue until the end of January 1996. This concerns the more scattered evidence from local courts, recording debt litigation and other trade-related matters, for a sample of market towns within the London region, ranging from important cities such as Canterbury to small market towns like Ashwell in Hertfordshire. During the first months of the project the researchers undertook preliminary visits to 18 county and other record offices in order to identify the most promising local court series. So far data has been collected for 15 places located in different parts of the study area (see Fig. 1). The data from local court series will also be entered into computerised databases to facilitate analysis, while the mapping package Mapinfo and the drawing package Autosketch will be used to present and summarise spatial variables.

Fig. 1. Location of towns for which local court series have been examined (as of 30 November 1995)

Fig. 2. Stated residences of outsiders appearing in Canterbury debt, detinue and contract pleas, 1370-1418.

The information available for individual towns varies widely in quantity and quality. Many local debt cases, however, give details on the transaction leading to the debt, on the commodities changing hands and on the nature of the commercial relationship between the parties. Analysis of the frequency with which commodities were traded and of their relative value can reveal market specialisms. Evidence for outsiders and their activities in market towns permits comparison of the size and shape of local trade hinterlands, and patterns of connection between market towns and London. A preliminary map based on the appearance of non-residents in cases heard by the Canterbury Court of pleas in the period 1370-1418 shows that the majority of outsiders came from within 20km of the city and particularly strong links were evident with the ports of Faversham and Sandwich (see Fig 2). Londoners, however, were frequent visitors to Canterbury and longer distance links with coastal towns from Newcastle to Fowey (Cornwall) also emerge. Of the debt cases where the commodity traded is named over 60 per cent related to agrarian produce.

Central place theory provides one valuable tool for understanding and organising the data relating to local and regional trade. The project is attempting to reconstruct the hierarchy of markets which existed c.1400 within the metropolitan region, to identify the 'nested' market areas pertaining to centres of different size, and in particular to estimate the impact of London. As part of this exercise each market settlement within the area is being characterised in a further database according to its taxed wealth and population and its status as trading centre or town. Wealth and population data are to be used in an exercise to measure 'urban potential', which promises to shed more light on the area within which the London market decisively influenced the trade of smaller settlements. Other sources are also being drawn on as appropriate to help clarify the significance of particular towns, both within the urban system as a whole and within the networks of trade in agrarian and other produce. Records of the Clerk of the Market, an officer of the royal household, point to the relative importance of market towns as sources of victuals. A detailed list of fines levied by the Clerk on victuallers in towns close to London during 1375-6 has proved to be particularly revealing. In addition, a database of references in secondary literature and published sources to particular market towns has been set up using the package Idealist, and will continue to be added to during the remainder of the project.

Regular meetings are held with the project's advisers (Richard Britnell and Stephan Epstein), and contacts have been established with other scholars researching into medieval trade and related subjects. A one-day specialist conference on Systems of markets in the metropolitan region of Medieval England is planned for 2 July 1996. The purpose of this meeting is to publicise the work of the project, and to obtain the advice of fellow economic historians and historical geographers on a range of specific issues of methodology and interpretation. That meeting should also prove helpful in refining plans for production of the book which will form the project's major output.

This 30-month project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

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ii THE GROWTH OF A SKILLED WORKFORCE IN LONDON, c.1500-c.1750

The Skilled Workforce project came to an official end on 31 December 1994, so this report covers only a few months of full-time activity, plus informal work during 1995.

Over this period as a whole, work has continued on drafting chapters of the book which will encapsulate the results of this investigation into the ways in which London's workforce acquired the skills and the cast of mind which over the period transformed the city from a relative backwater to one of the most innovative centres of manufacture in Europe. A substantial section of the text has been submitted to a prospective publisher. Topics covered include the various ways in which 'skill' and 'human capital' have been conceptualised; the changes in London's position in international networks and in its internal infrastructure; the significance of new forms of work organisation, education and the communication of knowledge; the geography of production in the metropolis and its environs; migration of skills; and the dynamics of skill and innovation; together with a group of substantial case studies of particular industries.

Particular themes explored during 1995 have included the significance of London's international standing over the long run. At the beginning of the period London depended heavily on imports for manufactured commodities, especially those of high quality associated with personal consumption. The city was in some important respects a less successful producer of those goods than in earlier centuries. To a great extent that arose from the remarkable development of the Low Countries, especially Bruges and then Antwerp, as European and to some degree world markets, a process assisted by the long-term evolution of northern trade and by the political structure and culture of the duchy of Burgundy. London had long been a vigorous member of the North Sea trading community, and so was quickly drawn into this new world of goods and styles. Initially, the city's peripheral situation caused its manufactures to suffer in relation to those products which were transmitted through the markets of the Low Countries. In the medium and longer term, however, its inhabitants thereby came to be exposed to a wider range of opportunities for innovation than ever before. As the political situation in the Low Countries changed, and as the significance of Atlantic trade grew, London was able to capitalise on those opportunities. The city's change in status thus owed more to its international role than to its character as an English capital. That change in circumstances, however, allowed it to make the most of the exceptional resources of a hinterland to which as the capital of a unified state it had unrestricted access, in contrast to some of its rivals overseas.

Fig. 3 A pile-driver of a type used for the contruction of Westminster Bridge in 1738 and as illustrated in Diderot and d'Alembert, L'Encyclopédie (Paris, 1751 onwards; 'Charpente', Pl. XXVI).

This large and elaborate mechanism symbolises both the new world of machines and the new urban infrastructure which came into being in London towards the end of the period covered by the 'Skilled Workforce' research project.

In November 1994 a one-day conference was organised in association with the Museum of London with a view to presenting some of the findings and methods of the project to an audience largely composed of the general public. It was a highly successful event which drew an enthusiastic response. Within an interpretative framework supplied by the project, a number of experts explored the evolution of techniques and styles of a wide range of artefacts, sometimes with dramatic and aethestically-startling effect. It is hoped that the Museum will publish the proceedings. In March 1995 the Centre published the proceedings of an earlier symposium on the goldsmith's trade, organised and edited by David Mitchell as part of the project and with the title Goldsmiths, Silversmiths and Bankers: Innovation and the Transfer of Skill, 1550 to 1750.

It is clear that the project will have a number of long term effects. Those involved directly have been stimulated to think in new ways and to adjust the disciplinary framework of their enquiries. Among other outcomes are the new seminar on 'Artefacts and History' and the forthcoming database on early modern London described above in the Director's Report.

This three-year project was part of the Achievement Project funded by the Renaissance Trust.

Over the year, Lien Bich Luu's postgraduate research into the role of aliens in the transfer of skills to sixteenth-century London neared completion. A report on her findings follows.

Archival research having been completed in 1994, much of 1995 was devoted to writing up the PhD thesis, which will be submitted in early 1996.

The thesis consists of ten chapters, and is divided into two parts. The five chapters of the first part are devoted to a discussion of immigrants and skill transfer, of sources used, and of background events in London and the Low Countries. The findings of the analysis of the Returns of Aliens of 1571 and 1593 are presented in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 explores the attitudes towards aliens in Elizabethan London.

The second part of the thesis seeks to assess the role of immigrants in the silk, goldsmithing, beer brewing, coopering, and tailoring trades in sixteenth-century London. Several conclusions can be drawn from these case studies with regard to the questions which this thesis sets out to investigate. The first issue concerns the question of what skills were transferred to London by immigrants. The Returns of Aliens of 1571 and 1593 suggest that the immigrants made their greatest contribution to the manufacturing sector, particularly new and luxury trades. The proportion of strangers engaged in the manufacturing sector increased from 59 per cent in 1571 to 69 per cent in 1593 (see Table 1). Within the manufacturing sector, a significant proportion practised one of the luxury trades such as silk weaving, diamond cutting, sugar baking, refining, coach making and stocking knitting. This increased from around 25 per cent in 1571, to 37 per cent in 1593. The largest group within the luxury trades was the silk workers. In 1571, for example, 72 per cent of those employed in the luxury trades were silk workers.

Table 1: Occupational structure of aliens in London in 1571 and 1593

The Returns of 1571 and 1593 also suggest a decline in the proportion of strangers working in established trades such as tailoring, shoemaking and shoe repairing. This fell from 23 per cent in 1571, to 15 per cent in 1593. A survey of the economic activities of strangers in London between 1571 and 1593, then, suggests the growing importance of the new and luxury trades, and the decreasing significance of the old trades. This may reflect the changing places of origin of strangers in London; traditional migrants from areas such as the Rhineland and northern Netherlands were increasingly displaced by new waves of refugees fom the industrial belt of Europe such as Flanders and Brabant during the 1560s and 1570s (Table 2).

A second issue concerns the question of where the skills were transferred from. The case studies show that this is related to the type of skill in question. Migrants with skills in luxury trades such as silk weaving, and goldsmithing tended to originate from the Low Countries, especially Antwerp, an important European centre of production, consumption, and exchange in the sixteenth century. For example, of the 181 silk workers surveyed in 1571, 63 per cent originated from Brabant and Flanders; and nearly 82 per cent had arrived in the city between 1560 and 1571, a period of escalating religious and political tension in the Low Countries. The contribution of these immigrants to the silk industry was significant, and by 1600, there was talk of the 'abundance which the strangers make of tuff taffetas, wrought velvets, figured satins and other sorts of silk mingled with thread and wool'. Migrants with skills in ubiquituous, non-luxury trades such as beer brewing, coopering, and botchering (a form of tailoring), on the other hand, were transferred mainly from the Rhineland, and the northern Netherlands.

Table 2: Origins of strangers in the City of London 1571 and 1593

A third issue is how and where the skills were acquired. The case studies show that while some immigrants transferred their skill directly, others learned the skill in London, or changed or adapted previous ones to those which were in demand after they had settled in the capital. The goldsmiths, for example, transferred their skill directly. Apprenticeship was an essential way to acquire the skill, and alien journeyman goldsmiths usually had completed their apprenticeship or had worked as a journeyman or master before they came to London. However, many journeymen goldsmiths, especially those from Antwerp, did not stay in London but returned to Antwerp where the opportunities were much better. This process can be described as circular migration. The brewers and coopers, on the other hand, came to London when they were young, and learned the skill through informal service. Many came to London through the process of chain migration. The silk weavers also differed from the goldsmiths. Many had come to London as refugees from the Low Countries. In the process of adjustment to a new life in exile, many had to change, or adapt their previous skill to make a living.

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iii NETWORKS FOR THE OPTICAL TRADE IN LONDON, 1500-1800

This project continues as outlined in the CMH Annual Report 1993-4 (pp. 27-28. Contacts with researchers and archivists overseas continue to suggest new lines of enquiry. A set of telescope lenses dating from c.1704, found amongst some correspondence, were sent for analysis to the British Musem Research Laboratory. The working time has been extended to admit information from the researcher's other overlapping project and to await the publication of the Hartlib Papers on CD-ROM (issued in early summer of 1995 but not yet available in London). The outcome of this project does not form a continuous history, and is therefore being written up as a set of ten essays, likely to contain some 30,000-35,000 words in all.

This six-month project, spread over the years 1994 and 1995, was funded by the Renaissance Trust.

Fig. 4 Lens grinding and machines for lens grinding and polishing (Diderot and d'Alembert, L'Encyclopédie; 'Lunetier', Pl. 1 and IV)

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iv ENGLISH MERCHANT CULTURE: THE OVERSEAS TRADER IN STATE AND SOCIETY 1660-1720

This project began on 1 October 1995. The role of the merchant classes in influencing the politics and society of late-Stuart England remains an area of surprising neglect. Much work has been completed on the economic transitions of this age of commercial and financial revolution, which saw such landmarks as the foundation of the Bank of England, the establishment of the national debt, and a massive rise in overseas trade, developments crucial to the nation's rise as a major international power. Historians have increasingly acknowledged the contribution of businessmen to these important changes, but relatively little is known of mercantile opinion and its political cultural impact in this key period. Recent work on the London middle classes has highlighted the significance of the trader in a rapidly changing society, and there is evidently a great deal of material which could be used to further our knowledge of mercantile activity within social and political spheres. Further stimulus for such research comes from recent studies which emphasise the polite and commercial character of mid-eighteenth-century English society, but beg the question of how such a confident and important social group evolved. Although several excellent merchant biographies have been published, there has yet to appear a general overview of the political significance of this occupational group. Such a work would have an immediate impact on current perceptions of late Stuart state and society, the historiography of which has been dominated by analyses of the aristocracy and gentry to the exclusion of the merchant classes.

In an effort to build upon recent research, and to fill a notable historiographic gap, the basic objective of the project is to produce a book-length study of the social and political world of the English merchant class, which was largely focused on London, between 1660 and 1720. In order to achieve a fully-rounded assessment of the role of the merchant, the project will examine not only the activity of traders in the public sphere, but also their wider social associations, which fixed their place within state and society, and remain the key to an understanding of their distinctive culture. By analysing these relationships, and the interaction of merchants with other social groups, the project will underline their importance as a dynamic force within English society, and illuminate the mechanisms for change within the English state.

The project aims to advance current understanding of English political and social development in a key era of transition, most directly by assessing the impact made by merchants on English society, and their influence in public life. It would reassert the importance of mercantile attitudes towards social and political change, especially the response of traders to the country's aggrandisement as a commercial and military power. Moreover, it would demonstrate the importance of the merchant as a conduit for foreign influences, and for shaping perceptions of Englishmen abroad.

The originality of this project, however, does not solely rest with the questions it seeks to answer. The areas to be covered will demand an innovative use of a wide selection of sources, many of which have yet to be exploited systematically. Of more general significance, this study will demonstrate the value of bridging the current divide between political and economic research, both of which are embraced by its conception of cultural activity.

Initial research has been directed to establish the broad parameters of merchant life, delineating its distinctive character by analysis of education, travel, material culture, and both personal and professional associations. A wide range of printed sources can be consulted to recreate these experiences, such as social commentaries, economic tracts and newspapers, and there are rich resources of private journals and letterbooks to be mined. To give sharper focus to this overview, a prosopographic analysis of a hundred London merchants will be undertaken to act as a sample of commercial 'public' life in the capital, the form of which will reflect the variety of investment, residence, and wealth to be found among the merchant classes. Collections of business and personal papers at the Corporation of London Records Office, the Guildhall Library and the Public Record Office will provide the bulk of sources for this phase of the project. It should be stressed that the project does not aim to study only the merchant elite of London, and due attention will be paid to merchants of modest income. Subsequent research would concentrate on the principal arenas of merchant activity: the household, the workplace, leisure-time, religious observance, and public service (from parish to Parliament). Fortunately, the social and political structure of the capital would facilitate analysis of mercantile group activity from a variety of perspectives, namely the parish, ward, livery company and nonconformist congregation, the records of such institutions having yet to be extensively used for this kind of investigation.

Comparative study with the merchants of provincial towns will also be an important element of the project, in order to assess the influence of London merchant culture on the nation. Therefore, the aforesaid themes will also be explored by analysis of Liverpool, Newcastle, Norwich and York, towns of contrasting character for which rich archives survive. Furthermore, comparisons with the development of the merchant sector in other European countries will also be made, taking advantage of current international interest in the social impact of the early modern merchant.

This three-year project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

[1995-6 Report] [1996-7 Report] [1997-8 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Publications arising from project] [Back to Contents]

v MORTALITY IN THE METROPOLIS 1860-1920

Beginning in July 1995, this project is co-ordinated by Bill Luckin, Senior Lecturer in Urban and Cultural Studies at Bolton Institute. The other members of the team are Dr Graham Mooney, who completed a PhD at the University of Liverpool on the 'Geography of Mortality Decline in Nineteenth Century London' and, from January 1996, Dr Andrea Tanner, whose recent London doctoral thesis was concerned with 'The City of London Poor Law Union, 1837-1869'.

Located within the context of a number of controversial and interacting paradigms in urban, demographic and sociomedical history, which concern the major shift in patterns of disease and mortality experienced in many leading cities during the late nineteenth century, the project has three principal aims. The first is to construct and analyse an electronic database of annual cause-specific mortality for each of the metropolitan registration districts. This is the first time that such an exercise has been undertaken for any major European or North American city. The existing literature has been heavily dependent on decennial data, with the result that subtle and possibly decisive shifts in epidemiological processes have remained obscure and unexplained. In addition, comparable urban and demographic research has been heavily preoccupied with the experiences of towns and cities as wholes, rather than with their component parts. As a result, fine-grained differences in mortality, which can be made to yield up information on crucial environmental and socioeconomic variations, have been largely excluded. In addition, the small body of research published in the field has given scant attention to the problem of 'institutional deaths' occurring outside 'normal place of residence'. In relation to London, in particular, the failure to 'reallocate' those who died in hospitals and workhouses during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has involved lending credibility to cause-specific death rates that are in urgent need of revision. This is clearly a key problem for the team and considerable time has already been spent on reinterpreting the records of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, in particular, in order to 'move' victims of infectious disease back to their 'district of origin'. As a forthcoming paper by Luckin and Mooney will indicate, the problem has now been specified and demarcated and a number of routes towards a final and credible solution identified.

The second aim is to produce two detailed area studies which will amplify, at the micro-level, the larger metropolitan database and make a vital contribution to the task of explaining the epidemiological transition outlined above. Beginning in July 1995 Dr Mooney and Mr Luckin undertook a systematic sampling of the annual reports of the medical officers of health for each of the twenty-five to thirty districts of London between 1860 and 1920. The results were unusually exciting in that Hackney and Kensington were found to possess comprehensive records of age- and cause-specific mortality for the great bulk of the period. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this discovery. First, the annual and decennial Reports of the Registrar-General during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century published a 'selection' rather than a full range of causes of death. Secondly, these 'comprehensive mortality profiles' make it possible to undertake a more highly detailed examination of epidemiological change than has hitherto been undertaken for any urban area in Europe or north America during these years. Thirdly, the Hackney and Kensington material will enable the team to probe one of the most complex dilemmas in contemporary demographic and urban historiography _ the causation of the 'final', decisive decline in infant mortality recorded in the great majority of urban areas during the first decade of the twentieth century. As this work progresses, Dr Tanner will concentrate on Kensington and Mr Luckin on Hackney, while Dr Mooney will produce an electronic version of each of the 'comprehensive mortality profiles'. The Centre is particularly happy that Hackney Archives Department has expressed an interest in becoming actively involved in the area study component of the project.

The third aim is to construct explanatory models both in relation to the city-wide electronic database and each of the area studies. In terms of London as a whole, this will involve the identification of relevant environmental, socioeconomic and spatial variables in an attempt to explain crucial epidemiological turning-points between 1860 and 1920. At area study level, it will demand close scrutiny of social infrastructure, water supply and provision of medical and institutional care. In addition, all those forms of 'sanitary intervention' _ the cleansing of alleys, courts and streets, removal of nuisances, unblocking of drains _ which may have played a role in the reduction of mortality and morbidity from infectious disease will require evaluation. It will then be necessary to devise methodologies for co-ordinating aspects of each of these approaches in such a way as to illuminate the nature and timing of key mortality shifts both in London as a whole and within the districts selected for area study analysis.

This is an ambitious project and the team is keenly aware of the necessity of the need to draw upon relevant expertise within the fields of medicine, medical history, historical epidemiology and quantitative history. To that end, an Advisory Committee, which will meet twice a year, has been appointed. Its members are Professor George Davey-Smith, Dr Anne Hardy, Dr Peter Lunn, Dr Lara Marks, and Professor Richard Trainor.

In terms of interim and final dissemination, the team will publish individual and co-authored articles, to be followed by a report and a two-volume book. It is also possible that a shorter and more popular version of the findings will be published separately. The electronic databases will in due course be made available to interested institutions and scholars.

This 33-month project is funded by the Wellcome Trust.

[1995-6 Report] [1996-7 Report] [1997-8 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Publications arising from project] [Back to Contents]

vi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND INFORMATION SERVICES

10th Anniversary Conference

a) BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRINTED WORKS ON LONDON HISTORY TO 1939

In June we received the good news that this bibliography, published in April 1994, had won the Library Association's Besterman Medal for the most outstanding bibliography of 1994. The medal was presented at a ceremony at the Arts Club attended by librarians from all over the country. Heather Creaton has continued to add new material to a database that will eventually form a ten-year supplement to the published volume. Books and articles on London history appear in ever greater quantities. The supplement already contains over two and a half thousand entries, and there are many more to be added.

b) BIBLIOGRAPHY AND GUIDE TO SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF LONDON IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Good progress has been made with this project, which falls into two sections.

1. The bibliography, which now contains over 600 references to books and articles, may be seen as a chronological continuation of the published volume which stopped at 1939. In some ways, however, it differs in its coverage. Dealing with such a brief, though eventful, period of London's history permits the inclusion of some categories of material for which the earlier, long-span volume lacked space. So as well as later historical assessments of the period, contemporary descriptions, reports, pamphlets and compilations are being added. For example, early in the war there appeared a crop of titles by journalists about their experiences reporting the Blitz, and about the general problems of living in London at that time. Another flourishing genre was books by writers and other professionals who had worked (sometimes only briefly) in factories or munitions works, or as nurses, air wardens and firefighters, describing their lives and the humorous stoicism of their workmates in dangerous situations. They were written as morale-boosters, often with an eye on American public opinion, but they are valuable sources on conditions, attitudes and expectations at that period. Some have become enduring classics, like Inez Holden's Night Shift (1941) and Ed Murrow's This is London (1941).

Books of photographs, and other illustrations are also being included this time, for the visual appearance of London during the war plays an important part in our perceptions of it. Thus contemporary compilations like London's hour as seen through the eyes of the fire-fighters (paintings by firemen, 1942) and Ourselves in war time (1944) are going in as well as later books like Shelters (1988) and Blitz over Westminster (1990). Reluctantly, the decision was taken to exclude fiction. There is an enormous amount of fiction set in wartime London, both contemporaneous and later. Some of it conveys a vivid and authentic flavour of the period, in particular novels like Graham Greene's Ministry of Fear (1943), or Elizabeth Bowen's Heat of the Day (1949). However, the danger would be that the sheer quantity of this category would overbalance the rest, so individual titles will be excluded, though relevant guides to fiction will, of course, be added.

When selecting for inclusion, the perennial problem arises of how much 'general' material to put in, for almost all books with national coverage contain something on London, often quite a sizeable section. Similarly, people who wrote about their experiences living outside London during the war almost always visited the capital at some stage and wrote about their impressions, or related the gossip and rumours told them by guests from London. A decision has to be made on each, judged by the extent and apparent usefulness to the London historian of the material contained.

The titles added so far deal with almost all imaginable aspects of London life. The Blitz still fascinates the reading public, and over 50 titles on the database concern it alone. There are diaries, memoirs, edited letters, much on how the Home Front coped, on evacuation, sport, leisure and education. Local history contributions are plentiful, with titles like Hackney at war, Bromley in the Front Line, or All Pulling Together: North Paddington, 1939-45, and many more.

Fig. 5. London 1939-45: some examples from the wide variety of sources.

There is, no doubt, much more to be tracked down, but the database is already proving useful to historians and librarians looking for material on wartime London. The second part of this project is not paralleled in the earlier published volume. It is:

2. The guide to sources. There has been a tendency among historians of London during the war to use and reuse a comparatively narrow range of sources. Philip Ziegler's excellent book London at war (1995) widened the familiar net most impressively, but there is still more valuable material waiting, almost untouched, to be properly exploited. The aim of this part of the project is to survey a cross-section of the surviving records and to draw historians' attention to them, suggesting potential uses. This does not mean that they are being listed individually, for this would be too large a task and rather repetitious. Local authorities, for example, tend to have very similar administrative records. The intention is rather to stress the surprising breadth of potentially useful material, such as Civil Defence committee minutes, coroners' records, theatrical programmes, war damage maps, film, sound recordings, uniforms, air raid shelter tickets and much more. Several more collections have been visited this year to look at examples of all these items. They include the Mass Observation Archive, Post Office Archives, Museum of London, National Portrait Gallery, Public Record Office, Midland Bank, National Sound Archive and the Theatre Museum, all of which yielded unexpected and interesting finds.

[1993-4 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1996-7 Report] [1997-8 Report] [Publications arising from project [Back to Contents]

c) RESEARCH IN PROGRESS ON THE HISTORY OF LONDON

Maintenance of this database has continued and a supplement will be published in the London Journal late in 1996. In the meantime, enquiries are welcome from researchers interested in finding out whether research relevant to their own is under way or from conference or seminar organisers seeking speakers or contributors.

[1992-3 Report] [1993-4 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1996-7 Report] [1997-8 Report] [Link to database] [Back to Contents]

APPENDICES

Chairman
SIR KIT MCMAHON

MR WILLIAM DAVIS

MR ROGER G. GIBBS

SIR BRIAN JENKINS, F.C.A.

MR STUART LIPTON

MR GERRY MARTIN

THE LORD PALUMBO

MR MICHAEL ROBBINS, C.B.E.

MR TED ROWLANDS, M.P.

THE RT. REV. J.L. THOMPSON

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II

Chairman
THE DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE (Professor P.K. O'Brien, B.Sc. (Econ.), M.A., D.Phil.)

M.J. DAUNTON, B.A., Ph.D., Astor Professor of British History, University College London

S.R. EPSTEIN, M.A., Ph.D., Lecturer in Economic History, London School of Economics (from 1 August 1995)

E. GREEN, B.A., Archivist, Midland Bank plc

V.A. HARDING, M.A., Ph.D., Lecturer in London History, Birkbeck College

A. HARDY, M.A., D.Phil., Lecturer, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London (from 1 August 1995)

N.B. HARTE, B.Sc. (Econ.), Senior Lecturer in Economic History, University College London (to 31 July 1995)

J.M. LANDERS, B.A., Ph.D., Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford (to 31 July 1995)

L.V. MARKS, B.A., D.Phil., Lecturer in the History of Medicine, Imperial College, London (from 1 August 1995)

N. MERRIMAN, M.A., Ph.D., Curator, Early Department, Museum of London

R. ORESKO, Ph.D. Research Fellow, Institute of Historical Research

S.R. PALMER, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary and Westfield College

H.G. ROSEVEARE, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of History, King's College London

A.L. SAUNDERS, Ph.D, FSA, London Topographical Society

H. SOUTHALL, B.A., Ph.D., Lecturer in Geography, Queen Mary and Westfield College

J.M. WINTER, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Fellow, Pembroke College, Cambridge

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III

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IV

VISITING RESEARCH FELLOWS

BERNARD P. ATTARD, B.A., M.A., D.Phil. (Lecturer, University of New England, Australia) 'The jobbing system of the London Stock Exchange'

IAIN S. BLACK, B.A., Ph.D. (Lecturer, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education) 'Financial headquarters/Textile marketing district'

WILLIAM E. LUCKIN, B.A., M.Sc. (Senior Lecturer, Bolton Institute) 'Mortality in the Metropolis'

GRAHAM I. TWIGG, B.Sc., Ph.D. 'Epidemics and the plague in London'

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POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS

LIEN BICH LUU, B.A. (Sussex), 'Skills and innovations: a study of the stranger working community in London, 1550-1600' (Ph.D.)

PAULA MARBER, B.A. (Middlesex), 'The impact of office development in late Victorian London on the growing band of office workers' (M.Phil.)

STEPHEN G. PRIESTLEY, B.A. (Cambridge), 'Piety and charity in early medieval London: a study of the foundation and endowment of religious houses and hospitals in London and its environs c. 1100-1230' (M.Phil./Ph.D.)

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VI

CONFERENCE AND SEMINAR PAPERS GIVEN BY MEMBERS OF STAFF

Michael Berlin:
'Apprenticeship and skills acquisition in early modern England', colloquium on technology and the skills acquisition process, London School of Economics, April 1995;
'Guilds and corporations in early modern England', at the Conference on Corporations in Ancien Régime Europe, Halle-Wittenberg, July 1995.

Jim Galloway:
'Changes in the production, distribution and consumption of grains in London and its region 1300-1400', at the Economic History Society Conference, Edinburgh, April 1995;
'Driven by drink? Ale consumption and the agrarian economy' at the ACTA Conference, Stony Brook, USA, April 1995;
'Provisioning medieval London with grain' at the Medieval London and Paris Symposium, Paris, June 1995;
'The Winchester Pipe Rolls, an unparalleled souce for agrarian history' at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, July 1995.

Jim Galloway and Margaret Murphy:
'Provisioning medieval London', at the Southwark and Lambeth Archaeological Society, October 1995.

Perry Gauci:
'The Yarmouth business: the challenge of the Restoration for an urban community', at the University of East Anglia, October 1995.

Lien Luu:
'Strangers from the Low Countries in sixteenth-century London: assimilation and the transfer of skills', at the Low Countries Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, January 1995;
'Migration and economic development: London and its immigrant community in the early modern period,' at the Postgraduate Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, May 1995;
'Religion, exile and economic development: religious refugees from the Low Countries and the London economy, 1550-1600', at the European Reformation Research Group Annual Conference, Warwick, August 1995.

Derek Keene:
'London in 1245: a metropolis, but not yet a capital?', at the conference, Die europäische Stadt um 1250, Regensburg, February 1995;
'Material London in time and space', at the conference on Material London c. 1600, Folger Institute, Washington, March 1995;
'Les étrangers et la ville: reflections from an English point of view' at the Table-ronde Les étrangers et la ville: les modalités d'implantation dans l'espace physique urbain, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, May 1995;
'The analysis of urban plot patterns, the historian's approach', at the conference Städteatlanten - Theorie und Praktische Anwendung, Institut für veregleichende Städtegeschichte, Münster, May 1995;
'Interpreting medieval London: prospects and possibilities', at the Museum of London Archaeology Seminar, November 1995;
'The environment of Hanseatic trade in London', at the seminar Les étrangers dans l'espace physique urbain, Paris, November 1995.

David Mitchell:
'Table linen and the setting of tables', at the Dining at the Hanoverian Court 1727-60 conference, Hampton Court, January 1995;
'Linen', Henry VIII Inventory Project/Costume Society Study Day, Society of Antiquaries, February 1995;
'Innovation and the transfer of skill in the London goldsmiths' trade, 1650-1750', Association of Art Historians 21st Annual Conference, Victoria & Albert Museum, April 1995;
'The linen damask trade in Haarlem: its products and its markets', Textiel aan het Spaarne conference, Haarlem, June 1995;
'The ceremonies of dining', Henry VIII Inventory Project Study Day IV, Society of Antiquaries, September 1995;
'London's industrial history: dyeing and cloth finishing', Life in the early-modern town conference, Leicester University, November 1995.

Graham Mooney:
'Mortality league tables: informing prevention or professional dogma? England in the late nineteenth century', at the Department of Public Heath, University of Liverpool, October 1994;
'The New Public Health: the Liverpool experience', seminar on Public Health in Britain 1850-1990: the local dimension, Leicester, October 1994;
(with G. Kearns) 'Comparative urban mortality in England and Wales, 1850-1910', at the International Conference on Population Geography, Dundee, September 1995;
'Brief overview of demography', at the Demography Symposium, North West Public Health Association, Liverpool, November 1995.

Margaret Murphy:
'The production and marketing of fuel in the London region, 1300-1400', at the Economic History Society Conference, Edinburgh, April 1995;
'Feeding medieval cities: some historical approaches' at the ACTA Conference, Stony Brook, USA, April 1995;
'The London woodmongers and the city's fuel supply in the fourteenth century', at the Medieval and Tudor London History seminar, IHR, June 1995;
'The fuel supply of medieval London 1300-1400' at the Medieval London and Paris symposium, Paris, June 1995.

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VI

PUBLICATIONS

Michael BERLIN (with Alex Werner), 'Developing an interdisciplinary approach: the skilled workforce project', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, February 1995.

Robert ILIFFE, '"Is he like other men?" The meaning of the Principia Mathematica, and the author as idol' in G. Maclean (ed), Culture and society in the Stuart Restoration (Cambridge, 1995), pp.159-176.

Rob ILIFFE, '"That puzleing Problem": Isaac Newton and the Political Physiology of Self', Medical History, 39 (1995), pp.433-458.

Rob ILIFFE, 'Material doubts: Hooke, artisan culture and the exchange of information in 1670s London', British Journal of the History of Science, 28 (1995), pp.285-318.

Rob ILIFFE, 'Working bodies: Protestantism, the productive individual, and the politics of idleness' in P. Gouk (ed), Wellsprings of Achievement (Aldershot, 1995), pp.135-158.

Derek KEENE, 'Textile terms and occupations in medieval Winchester' in H. Diederiks and M. Balkstein (eds), Occupational Titles and their Classification: the Case of the Textile Trade in Past Times (Göttingen,Max-Planck Institut für Geschichte, Halbegraue Reihe zur Historischen Fachinformatik, Serie A (Historische Quellenkunden) Band 27, 1995), pp. 125-36.

Derek KEENE, 'London im Jahre 1245: eine Metropole, noch keine Haupstadt?', in W. Hartmann (Hrsg.), Europas Städte zwischen Zwang und Freiheit: Die europäische Stadt um die Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, Universitätsverlag, 1995), pp. 141-54.

Derek KEENE, 'Small towns and the metropolis: the experience of medieval England', in J.-M. Duvosquel and E. Thoen (eds), Peasants and Townsmen in medieval Europe: Studia in Honorem Adriaan Verhulst (Gent, Snoek-Ducaju, 1995).

Derek KEENE, 'London in the Early Middle Ages, 600-1300', London Journal 20 no.2 (1995), pp.9-21.

Lien Bich LUU, 'Aliens and their impact on the goldsmiths' craft in London in the sixteenth century' in D. Mitchell (ed), Goldsmiths, Silversmiths and Bankers: Innovation and the Transfer of Skill, 1550 to 1750 (Centre for Metropolitan History Working Papers Series no.2, 1995), pp.43-52.

Lien Bich LUU, 'Assimilation or segregation: colonies of alien craftsmen in Elizabeth London' in R. Vigne and G. Gibbs (eds), The strangers' progress: integration and disintegration of the Huguenot and Walloon refugee community, 1567-1889 Essays in memory of Irene Scouloudi (Proceedings of the Huguenot Society, 26 (2), 1995), pp.160-172.

David MITCHELL (ed), Goldsmiths, Silversmiths and Bankers: Innovation and the Transfer of Skill, 1550 to 1750 (Centre for Metropolitan History Working Papers Series, no. 2, 1995)

David MITCHELL, 'Innovation and the transfer of skill in the goldsmiths' trade in Restoration London' in D. Mitchell (ed), Goldsmiths, Silversmiths and Bankers, pp.5-22.

Graham MOONEY, 'Did London pass the "sanitary test"? Seasonal infant mortality in London, 1870-1914', Journal of Historical Geography, 20 no.2 (1994), pp.158-74.

Graham MOONEY (with N. Williams), 'Infant mortality in an "Age of Great Cities": London and the provincial cities compared, c.1840-1910', Continuity and Change, 9 no.2 (1994), pp.185-212.

Graham MOONEY, 'Still-births and the measurement of urban infant mortality in England, 1890-1930', Local Population Studies, 53 (1994), pp.42-52.

Graham MOONEY, Entries in J. Belchem and R. Price (eds) with R.J. Evans, A Dictionary of Nineteenth-century World History (London, 1994).

Margaret MURPHY, 'Balancing the concerns of Church and State, the archbishops of Dublin 1181-1228', in T.B. Barry, Robin Frame and Katharine Simms (eds), Colony and frontier in medieval Ireland. Essays presented to J.F. Lydon (London, 1995), pp.41-56.

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VII

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VIII

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