UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY
INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH

CENTRE
FOR
METROPOLITAN
HISTORY

Annual Report 1996-7
(1 August 1996-30 November 1997)

1. Director's Report

2. Project Reports

1. DIRECTOR'S REPORT

During 1996-7 the Centre was active in four main research areas concerning the history of London and elsewhere, established new research projects, explored new themes for investigation, organised conferences, meetings and training courses, and supervis ed graduate students. Eight research staff were employed throughout the year and several former research staff continued to work at the Centre from time to time. In addition, four Visiting Fellows of the Institute of Historical Research, three graduate stude nts and eight project advisers were closely associated with the work of the Centre.

A substantial part of the Centre's work has focused on London in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Editing of the text of the 'Social Atlas of London in the 1690s', based on a massive data-set derived from tax assessments of that perio d n ears completion. That material has also been used in the project 'English merchant culture, 1660-1720', which during this, its second, year has focused on an analysis of merchant petitions to parliament and other bodies. The 'merchant interest' was predom inantly a London one, although it was often articulated through individuals with provincial connections. The next stage in the research, therefore, will be to examine a representative sample of provincial merchants, reconstructing their careers, trading i nterests, and spheres of social and political interaction, as has already been done for a large sample of London merchants.

Another focus of activity in this period has concerned skill and material culture in London. The members of the team formerly employed on the 'Skilled Workforce' project make steady progress in their own time on a book concerning the rise of the skille d w orkforce in London, 1500-1750. Michael Berlin has spent some time on the final editorial stages of the image database on skill in early modern London compiled using technology provided by the 'Virtual Teaching Collection' project. We hope to be able soon to make this database available on CD-Rom, for use in teaching. Lien Bich Luu's doctoral thesis on skill, innovations, and the stranger community in sixteenth-century London was successfully examined in February 1997. During this year too the Director spe nt some time on editorial contributions to the forthcoming volume on 'Cities in their Golden Ages' which concerns the creative aspects of Antwerp, Amsterdam, and London during the sixteenth century, and to the English contributions to 'Les �trangers dans la Ville', the volume arising from the conference on the spaces occupied by strangers in European and Mediterranean cities.

A major area of research has concerned patterns of health and mortality in the metropolis. Graham Twigg, Visiting Fellow, has nearly completed his analysis of crisis mortality and plague in a large sample of London parishes between 1540 and 1720. The l arg e-scale project 'Mortality in the metropolis, 1860-1920' has also made great strides, focusing on social and material conditions in the neighbourhoods selected for detailed study, on the characteristics of a group of diseases chosen as key signifiers of e pidemiological change, and on the ways of systematically relating patterns of mortality and local condition across the entire metropolis. Attention is already being given to further themes in the medical history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century London which might be pursued after the end of the project.

The year we welcomed Angel Alloza, from the Autonomous University of Madrid, who will be at the Centre for two years pursuing postdoctoral research into crime in eighteenth-century London, Paris and Amsterdam, for comparison with his earlier work on M adr id in the same period. As he describes below, there appear to have been striking similarities and contrasts between the cities which should provide food for thought for those who argue that crime statistics primarily reflect administrative preoccupations.

On the bibliographical side of our work, Heather Creaton's survey of London during the Second World War nears completion, and we are giving thought to possible future projects on London sources.

The Centre is also considering other themes for future investigation. The proposal concerning 'London and the Americas' described in last year's report has been enthusiastically received and redefined so as to focus in the first instance on the period up to 1776. It has not yet proved possible, however, to set up a suitable framework within which to promote the programme. Visits to China and Japan have focused attention on distinctive types of metropolis which prompt comparison with London as centres of p ower or trade, or as gateways in relation in relation to empires. Some possibilities for collaborative projects are emerging in this area.

Several successful conferences and other meetings were held during the year. The main conference, organised in association with the Construction History Society, was on 'Metropolitan River Crossings: Bridges and Tunnels'. This ranged from recent archae olo gical discoveries concerning London Bridge to a forward-looking presentation on the new footbridge which will connect Bankside to St Paul's, along with papers on bridges in Venice, Rome and the industrial cities of Northern England. It dealt with issues o f design and construction, finance, and the often unexpected reconfigurations of cities which follow the construction of river crossings. Postgraduate student study days were held on the themes of 'Markets, consumers and traders in medieval London and its region' and 'Business space in the City of London, 1680-1870', and further days of this type are planned. The Anglo-French Working Group on medieval Paris and medieval London met at the Guildhall Library, where with the generous assistance and hospitalit y of the archivists of the Library and of the Corporation of London Records Office presentations were given on the ways in which the city's records have been used in historical research. The manuscripts themselves were on display, and the emphasis of seve ral of the papers was on the way in which their physical characteristics can be used as evidence for otherwise unrecorded practices, for past ideologies, and for the excitement and significance of particular events. The success of the meeting suggested th at it could be a model for postgraduate training. In 1998 the group will meet in Paris for a similar session on the records of that city.

The Centre also established a close connection with the Institute of Urban History in the University of Stockholm. In particular, we held a joint seminar in Stockholm on the theme of health and environment in the two cities during the nineteenth and tw ent ieth centuries, and on some longer-range issues in their development. The occasion led to a valuable exchange of views and information, and also provided an opportunity to learn of the impressive historical database maintained by the archives department o f the city of Stockholm. During the Director's visit to Tokyo later in the year he was able to make a similar visit to the city archives and gain some understanding of the nature of record keeping and government in Edo from the seventeenth century onwards .

During the year the papers from the 'Archives and the Metropolis' conference, held in 1995, were assembled and edited. They will be published shortly by the Centre in association with the Corporation of London.

The Metropolitan History Seminar had 'Metropolitan Attractions' as its theme, although imagination and ingenuity were sometimes necessary in order to grasp how some of the very interesting and attractive papers came under that heading. They ranged from th e sixteenth to the twentieth century, and covered Chicago, Paris, and a selection of Belgian and Italian cities, as well as London.

As well as his research writing, lectures and teaching, 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 Pau l'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, with French and Italian colleagues, a m ember of a small group, which is promoting long-running seminars in international urban history.

The Centre welcomed many visitors during the year, as well as the visiting fellows. Visitors from outside the British Isles included those from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Italy, and the USA.

[1988-9 Report] [1989-90 Report] [1990-1 Report] [1991-2 Report] [1992-3 Report] [1993-4 Report] [1994-5 Report] [1996-7 Report] [1997-8 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Back to Contents]

2. PROJECT REPORTS

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

The funding for this 30-month project ended on 31 July 1997, but work continues on a book which will encapsulate the principal results of the research. While the primary focus of the project was upon London's role within the market networks of southern En gland in the decades around 1400, including the issue of provisioning, the city's position within national and inter-national networks of exchange has also been addressed. Databases compiled from samples of debt litigation in local and national courts hav e permitted the reconstruction of overall flows of trade and credit and, supplemented by other sources, have formed the basis for the detailed reconstruction of particular distributive systems.

During the final period of funding, analysis of the databases was completed, and an extensive programme of mapping carried out. The 7,800 records of debt collected from the national court of Common Pleas have, as reported last year, permitted a pioneer ing analysis of London's role within national and regional networks of exchange. Maps have been drawn (using the MapInfo package) illustrating the debt connections of Londoners and inhabitants of other towns, and plotting the residence of individuals followi ng particular occupations, ranging from goldsmiths to maltmen and from cutlers to 'ripiers' (inland distributors of fish).

Fig. 1. Residence of defendants to debt pleas brought by Londoners c.1400
Source: Common Pleas database
Note: The data is plotted on a base-map representing the boundaries of England's historic counties. These boundaries are approximate only, and should not be taken as definitive. They constitute a modified version of a map fir st produced by Professor Marjorie K. McIntosh of the University of Colorado. We are grateful to Professor McIntosh for permission to use and modify her map.

Thirty-eight per cent of the sample debts were laid (or contracted) in London and as a group they provide a valuable overview both of the trading activities of Londoners and the capital's function as a conduit through which its hinterland established trading relationships with the outside world. In Figure 1 the residences of parties to debts involving Londoners have been mapped. The map highlights an area of fairly intense, direct interaction with the capital, stretching from Kent through Middlesex, Essex, Herts and Bucks and into the south midlands. By contrast, relatively little contact is indicated north-west of a line running very roughly from the Severn to the Humber. South-central and south-west England (particularly the Atlantic coast) show up rel atively weakly, with the exception perhaps of Somerset, and the important towns of Salisbury and Bristol. The areas which appear to have had the greatest commercial interaction with London are very similar to the areas from which the late thirteenth and e arly fourteenth century capital drew its population, suggesting at least some degree of overlap between commercial and migratory hinterlands.

Twenty-three individual places of residences occur more than ten times in connection with London (Table 1). Most prominent are a number of important towns lying beyond the study region - Salisbury, York, Coventry and Bristol - which each have over 25 app earances, reflecting London's interaction with the 'major players' in later medieval England's urban system, trading and manufacturing centres of international renown. Towns occurring between 10 and 25 times include some of the largest centres within the study region - Colchester, Canterbury, Northampton (but not Oxford) - as well as more important provincial centres and ports, such as Norwich, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Ipswich, which lay beyond it. Among the smaller towns occurring in this group are Br idgwater, a marketing centre for the Somerset textile industry, and Maidstone which, located at the effective head of navigation of the river Medway, acted as a focus for the trade of central Kent. Occasionally a large number of debts for a particular pla ce may reflect the activities of a small number of litigious individuals. However the entries for most major towns are not particularly skewed towards single individuals.

More detail can be added to the spatial picture by examining the debt patterns of particular occupational groups. The debt connections of London drapers, vintners, grocers, skinners and others point to widespread commercial linkages, extending through out England (and beyond) but with distinctive patterns of regional specialisation. Supply of imported fine textiles, spices, wines and dyestuffs by London merchants to customers throughout England, either directly or via traders based in provincial towns, un doubtedly form the basis of many of the debt cases. They point to a widespread involvement of Londoners in the commercial life of virtually all parts of England c.1400, although the density of contacts is greatest in the south and the midlands. 'Chapmen' from both large and small towns throughout this zone, including some merchants of substance, provided one important form of commercial linkage, travelling to London to collect goods, and probably often bringing with them domestically manufactured cloth, h ides and other commodities required in London or for export.

Linked to this study of overall patterns, and of metropolitan market networks, has been a reconstruction of local circuits of exchange centring upon a range of sample market settlements, ranging from important regional centres such as Canterbury to sma ll market towns like Ashwell in Herts. and Dorking in Surrey, and including one village with no known chartered market _ Lamberhurst in Kent _ which nonetheless acted as a focus for local trade. Data collected from sampled local court series for 34 places ha s been analysed and mapped in ways parallel to the Common Pleas material. It forms a more diverse body of data than the latter, however, as more detail is available on the content of debt and credit relations, some court series regularly specifying the na ture of commodities sold, and varies greatly in both quantity and quality from place to place.

The best series permit a detailed analysis of the components of local trade and, through mapping the residences of outsiders involved in debt and related cases, of the size and shape of the hinterlands within which it took place. The 'local trade areas ', the zone surrounding each town within which the most intensive interaction took place, has been found to display a high degree of uniformity, despite the fact that the towns studied ranged in population from a few hundreds to 6,000 or more. The median dis tance between the town and the residence of outsiders involved in debt and credit relations falls between 8 and 15 km for the bulk of places sampled, the principal exceptions being ports whose hinterlands tended to be more extended. Beyond this zone, howe ver, the larger towns tended to have a greater proportion of longer-distance linkages, reflecting their greater involvement in extra-local trade and their role in providing 'higher-order' goods and services to more extensive hinterlands. Links between the se local circuits of exchange and inter-regional and metropolitan trade networks can be observed both in the substance of debt litigation (including the activities of individual traders) and in the tendency for some towns' hinterlands to be elongated alon g the line of major traffic arteries.

The analysis of Common Plea and local court data, supplemented by a range of London sources (principally the published Calendars of Letter Books and Plea and Memoranda Rolls) and other ancillary material, form the basis for the book, writing of which i s w ell advanced. Beginning with a consideration of the regional context, the study proceeds to an analysis of the structure of the urban and market system in the metropolitan region and in England as a whole, drawing on the evidence of the 1377 poll tax as w ell as the project databases to construct a hierarchy of market settlements. The 'urban potential' of towns is also measured and mapped, an exercise inspired by the work of Jan de Vries on early modern Europe.

Later chapters of the book explore the overall patterns of interaction which took place within this urban and market hierarchy, the conduct and geography of trade at the local level, and will include detailed case-studies of distributive systems. The l att er will include the malt, grain and livestock trades, the trade in textiles and the distribution of luxury imported goods including spices, dyestuffs and wine. The book will address a number of particular questions concerning the role of London. What mec hanisms and channels of exchange were employed to bring necessary supplies to and distribute manufactures and imported goods from the later medieval city? To what degree did market linkages - particularly linkages with London - underlie known patterns of local and regional economic specialisation within the England of c.1400, and to what extent can the balance of trade in local markets and the activities of groups of specialised traders be seen to reflect those linkages? Were England's commercial networks already London-focused by c.1400, and if so what are the implications for the longer-term processes of economic development? Did London serve truly national markets for some commodities and services at this date, and if so, how were they articulated? How can London's relations with the smaller towns of its immediate region and with the provincial cities of England best be characterised? Is it appropriate to see medieval London as the highest-order centre in a settlement hierarchy within which 'central pl ace' factors were predominant, or did the capital's role in inter-metropolitan networks of exchange place it in an entirely different league? Indeed, how generally applicable are geographical theories of location and interaction to the later medieval eco nomy? In tackling these questions, the study adopts an inter-disciplinary approach, making the conclusions of relevance to historical geographers, economic historians and all those concerned with the culture, development and spatial articulation of market and urban systems.

Regular contacts have been maintained with the project's advisers, through meetings and via email, and also with a group of scholars engaged in research on related topics. The experience gained and the methodology and sources used during the course of th is project will feed into the 'Metropolitan market networks c.1300-1600' project described below.

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

[1993-4 Report] [1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Back to Contents]

ii METROPOLITAN MARKET NETWORKS, c. 1300-1600

This 3-year project, which began in August 1997, forms a new stage in the Centre's programme of research into London's interaction with its hinterland, and with the wider economy and society of England, in the pre-industrial period. It builds directly on the work of the recently-completed project 'Market networks in the London region c.1400' project, but takes a longer temporal perspective in attempting to chart developments between 1300 and 1600.

London has long been known to have exerted a powerful influence upon the economy of England by 1600, during the period of its rapid early modern growth, promoting specialised forms of agriculture and trade. The CMH-based 'Feeding the City' and 'Market Net works' projects, and related research, have shown that medieval London, which was much larger than previously thought, played a similar role. This new project aims to extend our understanding of the parallels between the two periods, and to trace the deve lopment of trade networks over the course of three centuries. Changes and continuities in the supply of foodstuffs to the capital will be investigated, and London's role assessed as a centre for the distribution of manufactured and imported goods and for the provision of credit.

Computerised analysis and mapping of data from the central Court of Common Pleas will be employed to provide snapshots of this interaction for the periods c.1300 and c.1600 to set alongside that already available for c.1400. In the first few months of the project the database drawn from the Common Plea Roll for 1424 has been extended to include debt cases laid in the counties of Devon, Staffordshire and Yorkshire. This exercise has resulted in the addition of some 1,300 debts to the existing total of 3,00 0+ debts for London and the surrounding ten counties. It is hoped that the data from these outlying counties will shed light on the relationship between London and these areas and how it changed over time.

In addition, information on contacts with London and on prices for all or part of the period 1300-1600 will be collected from local sources for a sample of market towns and provincial centres to measure the degree to which different parts of the countr ywe re united in a single economy and participated in regular trade with London at different dates. This programme of research should make a valuable contribution to our understanding of changes and continuities between the medieval and early modern periods, of the role of major cities as catalysts to economic development, and of the operation of markets as institutions within a changing urban system.

This 36-month project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

[1997-8 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Back to Contents]

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

Commencing in October 1995, this 36-month project has been examining the political and social impact of the overseas trader during an era of significant growth in English commerce. In the first year, concentration on the activities of a sample of 856 C ity merchants had raised significant questions concerning the internal workings of commercial life, and the aspirations of overseas traders within a gentry-dominated society. During this second year these important issues have been further probed by examinat ion of the relationship of the merchant with the state, and by studying his provincial brethren.

Analysis of the methods of merchant lobbying has remained a priority. The surviving records of five overseas trading companies (Levant, East India, Royal Africa, Russia and Hudson's Bay) have left a rich mine of information concerning the interaction o f t he overseas trader with national authorities, particularly in the form of minute books, accounts and correspondence. These archives reveal that the overseas trader maintained close communication with a variety of governmental institutions, especially the Admiralty and the Customs, and the successful maintenance of these channels of influence could have a crucial influence on the success of their businesses. State papers, especially Treasury and diplomatic records, also reveal the heavy reliance of governm ent on the merchant for information and contacts, and in the last year of the project more research will be undertaken on these sources in the Public Record Office. Such close relations were even further intensified in wartime, and the conflicts of 1689-1 713 undoubtedly had an important impact on the development of merchant 'politics' on a longer-term basis.

Company records also illuminate the potential of the merchant body to act as a cohesive political force. For certain, the companies could prove brilliantly organized in their own cause, and their aggressive defence of rights and privileges can to a gre at extent account for gentry fears for the might of City interests. However, while the efficacy of mercantile lobbying has to be acknowledged, contemporaries and historians have been too swift to assume cohesion within the merchant world, and the companies must not be regarded as having complete control over their membership. In general, the companies were designed as very loose forms of association, and merchants retained great independence while benefiting from the political clout of these commercial orga nizations. Examination of company affiliations demonstrates the fallacy of simply dragooning overseas traders into distinct geographical spheres, and it is clear that some of the City's leaders owed their prominence to their direct connections with severa l leading trades.

Research has also been directed towards the petitioning of merchant groups in trades which lacked a controlling company interest. Some 250 merchant petitions (with over 2,000 individuals represented) have been entered into a database, and this sample h as highlighted the political sophistication of overseas traders who lacked any co-ordinating institutionalized framework. Comparison between these petitioners and the database of London merchants has again indicated the pivotal political role played by certa in key 'brokers' in marshalling the political efforts of London overseas traders, whose claims to leadership were bolstered by connections centred on the livery companies, nonconformist groups , or ethnic congregations. Successive governments were keen to take advantage of the connections of these mercantile leaders, using them to garner support within the City's fiscal and commercial elite.

Work has also begun to analyse the merchant's relationship with Parliament through surviving debates, petitions, House Journals, and legislation. All these records suggest that the 1660-1720 period was indeed a most significant era for the development of the mercantile 'voice' in Westminster. In particular, the advent of annual sessions after 1689 saw much greater sophistication in the lobbying of overseas traders, and a wider discussion of trade issues in the political press, most notably in 1713 when c ontroversy over the French commerce treaty brought about a major Commons' defeat for the incumbent ministry. Such important changes more than compensated for the relatively limited numbers of merchants who actually sat in the Commons, which historians hav e interpreted as a sign of political indifference on the part of the overseas trader.

Fig. 2. The Custom House, 1668.
Rebuilt 'in a much more magnificent, uniform and commodious manner' as befitting the increased importance of London trade

Analysis of politicking at Westminster has also brought attention to the important contribution of provincial traders to debate of commercial issues, their influence often facilitated by the mediation of London mercantile brokers. In order to investiga te the structures of provincial commercial politics, three boroughs have been chosen for analysis: the declining port of York, a rapidly expanding Liverpool, and Great Yarmouth, whose economy underwent significant change during the period. Research into York and Yarmouth has almost been completed, each of them providing a sample of some 300 merchants with which to examine the reaction of provincial businessmen to a changing economy and polity. Much information has been gathered concerning the status of local merchants, their role within local society, and their political activity. Most interestingly, this new data has revealed patterns observable in the larger London sample, such as the commitment of overseas traders to their urban base, and the vitality of formal and informal mercantile organizations. It is hoped that work on Liverpool in the final year will provide even more dramatic evidence of the widespread impact which overseas commerce could have on provincial life.

Many of the themes outlined above have been tested in three papers given at seminars in London and Oxford. Further direction was provided at a meeting with the project advisers in June 1997, and another is planned for January 1998. The writing-up proce ss has begun, with particular focus on three chapters dealing with the structure of London merchant politics.

This 36-month project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

[1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1997-8 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Back to Contents]

iv URBANIZATION, SOCIAL CHANGE AND CRIME: A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF PARIS, MADRID, LONDON AND AMSTERDAM DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Having joined the Centre as Visiting Research Fellow for two years from January 1997, Angel Alloza (Autonomous University of Madrid) is extending the research undertaken for his Ph.D. thesis on crime in 18th century Madrid to other European capitals.

Comparative history looks for general explanations of social phenomena which do not occur in isolation. Contrasts and comparisons of the object of study let the historian appreciate certain details that otherwise would be missed. The interest for what hap pened in some capitals of early modern Europe responds also to the wish of checking the validity of the current modes of explanation within the history of crime and criminal justice in the period. The study of urban crime is not only directed towards the comprehension of the criminal phenomenon in society; it also contributes to the historical knowledge of the cities, which are no other thing but the history of their inhabitants.

Based on existing bibliographical evidence for the cases of London, Paris and Amsterdam, and on archival material for that of Madrid, the pattern of crime in each of these four capitals has been examined, integrating also the judicial institutions and pol ice forces responsible for punishing and preventing it during the period. The quantity, nature and evolution of recorded offences in these cities have been analysed, along with the conclusions at which the authors of the studies used for this project have arrived. In order to observe possible connections between crime and economic circumstances, social and economic structures of these metropolis have been studied.

In this research, for reasons already discussed in several studies, registered crime has been used as a valid indicator of criminal behaviour in society. The study verifies that crime rates in the capitals were higher than those registered in their sta tes ; and that in the majority of cases they increased during the eighteenth century. It suggests that the cause of the increase of crime in the cities did not lie in the urbanization and industralization processes, but in the deep inequality in the distribu tion of the social wealth inherent in those processes, especially in periods of rapid economic expansion. In fact, in the expanding cities of London, Paris, and Madrid, crime rates shot up during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while in the declining Amsterdam of the eighteenth century the crime rate diminished in comparison to the previous century.

The comparison of registered criminality in some European capitals during the eighteenth century offers certain results that, considering them with due caution, provide very interesting findings for the history of crime and criminal justice in early mo der n Europe. The most outstanding one is the fact that, with different institutions for the prevention of crime and different judicial systems, the crime rates of these cities fluctuated in surprisingly narrow bands. In London, in the period 1715-1755, betwe en 250 and 350 defendants per 100,000 inhabitants were indicted. In Madrid, during the first half of the century, the rate fluctuated between 250 and 350, while during the second it rose to between 400 and 600. In Paris, summing up the cases of the Petit and Grand Criminel, 400 defendants per 100,000 inhabitants were registered in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the expanding Amsterdam of the second half of the seventeenth century, 230 defendants per 100,000 inhabitants were registered; then , during its decline in the following century, these rates went down to 100 in the first half, and to 70 during the second.

Over the next year, the findings of this research will be presented at a seminar at the Institute of Historical Research and at the European Social Science History Conference in Amsterdam in Spring 1998. It will also be written up for publication.

[Back to Contents]

v MORTALITY IN THE METROPOLIS 1860-1920

The 'Mortality in the Metropolis' project, which is concerned with annual patterns of death at district level in London between 1860 and 1920, has now shifted decisively from a descriptive to explanatory mode. Research has not yet been completed into e xce ptionally rich epidemiological data collected by the medical officers of health for Hackney and Kensington between 1870 and 1920, or into William Farr's astonishingly assiduous house-to-house information on all individuals dying during the terrible outbre ak of cholera in the East End in the summer and autumn of 1866. In addition, the team will soon be directing its collective attention to newspaper sources at Colindale to test hypotheses about the ways in which local ‚lites responded, politically and fisc ally, to perceived public health problems during the period under review. But the major conclusions of the project _ centring on processes underlying changes in cause-specific mortality in the different districts of the capital during the key transitional period between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century - are now being prepared for publication in book form.

The methodological scene has been set via a detailed survey of differing approaches adopted by social, economic and demographic historians to the urban mortality decline during these years. This will be complemented by a background account of the histo ric al epidemiology of the capital during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries _ a period dominated by the London Bills of Mortality and the efforts of successive generations of medical men, statisticians and historians to rework and wring meaning fr om this fascinating and treacherous body of evidence. Aware of the need to locate specialised demographic findings within the context of the overall development of the capital during these years, the team has also been working on an account of social, eco nomic and local governmental structures in London from the 1830s to the 1920s. This will serve as preface to a detailed overview of the social construction and generation of metropolitan registration data _ a subject already explored and partially clarifi ed by Graham Mooney in earlier publications.

Fig. 3. 'Buying a mourning hat-band' (1864)

The team has decided to organise and analyse specific diseases within the context of the human life-cycle. Thus, among conditions of infancy and childhood, the spotlight will be turned on summer diarrhoea, scarlet fever, whooping-cough and measles. Amo ng adult conditions, consumption, typhus, typhoid, heart disease and cancer will occupy centre stage. Cohort analysis suggests that, with the exception of heart disease and cancer, this cluster of conditions played a crucial role in the aggregate reduction i n mortality that occurred in London between 1860 and 1920, thereby transforming Cobbett's 'great wen' into one of the healthiest cities in the world. In terms of the mix of factors that underlay their decline in the capital and in provincial towns and cit ies, these infections have long intrigued and puzzled urban and epidemiological historians. Changes in the Registrar-General's official system of categorization have militated against comparison of like with like over time, with diarrhoea and consumption proving particularly recalcitrant. In addition, as Robert Fogel and Jeffrey Williamson have emphasized, complex interactions between morbidity and mortality, as well as between improvements in per capita income and social infrastructure, have undermined t he conclusions of the broadly McKeownite paradigm that has long dominated research in this field. In devising models to match the epidemiological realities and complexities of selected causes of death, the 'Mortality' team has attended carefully to a wide range of post-McKeownite positions. But in relation to the viral infections of childhood - and pre-eminently scarlet fever - McKeown's (and Anne Hardy's) hunch that rapid and autonomous change in the aggressiveness of relevant microorganisms may have be en highly influential is being subjected to rigorous scrutiny. The richness, robustness and spatial heterogeneity of the central dataset will allow such hypotheses to be more comprehensively tested than at any time in the past.

Epidemiological interpretation will be complemented by in-depth analysis of the manner in which epidemic crises, associated with cholera, smallpox and influenza in 1866, 1860-85 and 1918-19 were differentially experienced and confronted. Not only will suc h case-studies build on and contrast with John Landers's identification of years of crisis during the long eighteenth century. They will also clarify changing conceptions of the 'epidemic' and 'endemic' themselves, during a period in which public health s pecialists were finally beginning to claim that 'plague-like' calamities might never again afflict the largest and most affluent city in the world. In this respect, the project is fortunate to have computerised access to material on the cholera outbreak o f 1866 which reaches down to the level of the district, subdistrict, street and individual house. This will allow the water-disseminated epidemic of that year to be compared and contrasted with similar events in 1831-2, 1848-9 and 1853-4. 'Crisis' in rela tion to cholera, smallpox and influenza in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will also throw light on the scale, efficiency and outreach of local public health bureaucracies and processes shaping social constructions of disease among speci alists and the lay public.

In last year's report, we highlighted a 'middle tier' of districts - Greenwich, St George in the East and St George Hanover Square - that is intermediate between the capital as a whole and two districts _ Hackney and Kensington _ that had earlier been sel ected for area study investigation. Research at intermediate level has continued apace in 1997, generating valuable material on street cleaning, the collection of domestic rubbish, the extent and role of parks and open spaces, housing and overcrowding, th e frequency and thoroughness of inspection of factories and workshops, the role of charity and the availability and quality of public water supplies. Such data is, in turn, in the process of being fed into explanatory models specifically designed for sele cted infections and conditions.

Fig. 4. Extract from the Weekly Returns of the Registrar-General during the height of the cholera epidemic, 1866

The team has continued to disseminate its results in a wide range of forums. Bill Luckin and Graham Mooney have published a paper in Urban History on the interactions between historical epidemiology and the development of towns and cities. Bill Luckin has also surveyed perspectives on the metropolitan mortality decline in an article for the London Journal. In April, the three members of the project team together with the Director, participated in a comparative workshop at the University of Stockhol m. In M ay, the team visited the University of Manchester for a round table session with Professor Robert Millward and Ms Frances Bell, who are continuing their research on the relationship between municipal expenditure and the late nineteenth-century mortality d ecline. In September a presentation of findings was given at the annual meeting of the Society of the Social History of Medicine a Liverpool. Professor Luckin also delivered papers on the environmental history of London during the nineteenth century at th e Centre for National Scientific Research, Paris and at the Twentieth International Congress for the History of Science at Liège. In collaboration with Professor Garside, Professor Luckin and Dr Mooney are organising a session on 'Hospitals and Chari table Agencies' for the Fourth International Conference on Urban History at Venice in September, 1998: a synoptic account of the findings of the project will be given at that meeting.

This 33-month project is funded by The Wellcome Trust,

[1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1997-8 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Back to Contents]

vi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND INFORMATION SERVICES

Heather Creaton, the Centre's Deputy Director, is responsible for this aspect of its activities.

a) BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRINTED WORKS ON LONDON HISTORY TO 1939: SUPPLEMENT

Further material was gradually added to the database that will form the core of the planned ten-year supplement to the published Bibliography of Printed Works on London History to 1939 (London: LAPL 1994). The database now contains 3,700 titles on man y a spects of London history, and thanks are again due to the staffs of Guildhall Library and the Bishopsgate Institute for supplying many of the references as they are added to their stock.

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b) SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF LONDON, 1939-45: A GUIDE AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Writing up this guide took longer than anticipated, largely due to the complexity and abundance of surviving documentary material found in record offices, libraries, museums and other collections all over London and beyond. By the end of the reporting year it was substantially complete and sections were passed to the general editor of the British Record Association's Archives and the User series for comment. The Association will publish the guide and bibliography in 1998. It attempts to point readers to t he enormous variety of primary sources available to the historian of this period, covering every conceivable aspect of London life. It also lists as many as possible of the printed works likely to be useful for information and analysis. Neither the guide not the bibliography can claim to be comprehensive, given the size of the subject, but they try to provide a starting point to stimulate others to further investigations.

After an introduction outlining its aims and coverage, the guide gives a brief resum‚ of the chief events of the war as they affected London and then discusses the main types of records relevant to this subject: those created by national and by local g ove rnment, by businesses and institutions of many sorts, and those recording personal experience in some form - diaries, letters, memoirs, sound recordings, paintings, film and photographs.

Fig. 5. Punch 29 January 1941

The next section looks at records documenting the ways in which London life was visibly changed by the war. Among the most obvious are evacuation, Air Raid Precautions, bomb damage and clearance, firefighting, sheltering, and post-raid welfare provisio n like rest centres and rehousing arrangements. The large military presence, British and Allied, and the Home Guard was another evident difference from peacetime, as was the arrival of large numbers of refugees and several governments in exile. All have l eft records of some sort.

'Business as usual' was a popular slogan in wartime London, and strenuous efforts were made to continue normal life. The guide next looks at records for this _ the economy and work, morale, social life, food, entertainment and sport, law and order, edu cat ion, health care, religion, and the arts. Lastly the guide examines sources about wartime planning for the future, and for the victory celebrations.

Extracts from the documents are quoted wherever possible, to give a flavour of their coverage and the use that might be made of them. They are enormously varied and can sometimes be entertaining. The document illustrated on the next page comes from The Warden's Post (1942), an annual Christmas magazine put together by Kensington ARP wardens of Group 17. ARP records are full of similar-looking typed official forms, this spoof version must have caused much amusement among those who regularly had to f ill the m in. The rest of the magazine is full of poems, ghost stories, parodies and jokes about ARP personnel.

Fig. 6. Extract from The Warden's Post (1942)
(reproduced with the kind permission of The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Libraries and Arts Service)

It became clear during the compilation of this guide that some wartime material survives in almost every repository, however unlikely it seems on first enquiry. This would gratify the wartime stalwarts of the British Record Association and the Historic al Association, who feared that much of it would be discarded once peace returned. 'It is for the present generation to see to it that records worthy of the great struggle of 1939-45 take their place alongside the Retinue Rolls for Agincourt and the lists an d plans for defence against the Spanish Armada and Napoleon Bonaparte', wrote the BRA in a memo of May 1945, worrying particularly about the fate of Home Guard, Civil Defence and War Emergency Committee records, but also those of voluntary societies like the WVS and the Red Cross.

Some necessary weeding took place, and undoubtedly some valuable material was scrapped, but a good cross-section was preserved for historians in the future, much of it still under-used. The national and local government records, and most of the institutional ones have remained within the Greater London area, though some important collections are elsewhere, such as the Mass Observation archive at the University of Sussex. London collections contain a great quantity of the personal records - diaries, letters, memoir s, photographs - but relevant material may crop up almost anywhere, especially if wartime London played only one part in the writer's long and varied life.

The accompanying bibliography runs to nearly 840 items and includes contemporary writings as well as historical assessments. It follows the same subject groupings as the guide, and has its own index. The titles have been found through the catalogues of many London libraries (notably Guildhall Library, the library at the London Metropolitan Archives, the Bishopsgate Institute and the local history libraries of the London boroughs), and through footnotes and other bibliographies. They vary widely in thei r a pproach and amount of detail. Some are serious academic studies, others take a more popular approach. Many are personal accounts of wartime domestic or working lives written much later than the events they describe. All have something to offer the histori an of London at this period. In compiling the list, the perennial problem facing the bibliographer of London has inevitably recurred. The capital is of such central importance in British life for so many reasons - social, political, economic - that most books about the country as a whole also contain material relevant to London specifically. This appears to be even more the case than usual for the years 1939-45 and explains the presence of what may seem rather general titles to be included in a bibliography concentrating on London. They do contain specific information about the city, sometimes in considerable quantity.

[1993-4 Report] [1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1997-8 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Back to Contents]

c) RESEARCH IN PROGRESS ON THE HISTORY OF LONDON

The Centre has continued to collect details of current work on all aspects of London history and a listing of researchers appeared in the London Journal XXII no.1 (1997) pp.91-100. A further supplement is planned and already contains nearly fifty name s. Additions are always welcome.

[1992-3 Report] [1993-4 Report] [1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1997-8 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Back to Contents]

APPENDICES

I

PATRONS

Chairman
SIR KIT MCMAHON

MR WILLIAM DAVIS

SIR 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

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

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

C.M. BARRON, M.A., Ph.D., Reader in History of London, Royal Holloway, University of London (from 1 August 1997)

I.S. BLACK, B.A., Ph.D., Lecturer in Human Geography, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Eucation (from 1 August 1997)

B. BRODT, M.A., Ph.D, Research Fellow, German Historical Institute, London

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

S. FREETH, B.A., D.A.A., Keeper of Manuscripts, Guildhall Library (from 1 August 1997)

E. GREEN, B.A., Archivist, Midland Bank plc (to 31 July 1997)

J. HANSON, B.A., Ph.D., Bartlett School of Architecture

V.A. HARDING, M.A., Ph.D., Lecturer in London History, Birkbeck College (to 31 July 1997)

A. HARDY, M.A., D.Phil., Lecturer, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London

L.V. MARKS, B.A., D.Phil., Lecturer in the History of Medicine, Imperial College, London

S.R. PALMER, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary and Westfield College (to 31 July 1997)

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

C. ROSS, B.A., Ph.D., Curator, Later Department, Museum of London

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

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

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III

STAFF OF THE CENTRE

Director: DEREK KEENE, M.A., D.Phil. (Oxford)

Deputy Director (and Editor of Bibliography): HEATHER CREATON, B.A., M.Phil. (London), A.L.A.

Administrative and Research Assistant: OLWEN R. MYHILL, B.A. (Birmingham), Dip. R.S.A.

Market Networks in the London Region: The Trade in Agrarian Produce, c.1400 (to 31 July 1997)
Researchers: JAMES A. GALLOWAY, M.A., Ph.D. (Edinburgh); MARGARET MURPHY, B.A., Ph.D. (Trinity College, Dublin)

Metropolitan Market Networks, c. 1300-1600 (from 1 August 1997)
Researchers: JAMES A. GALLOWAY, M.A., Ph.D. (Edinburgh); MARGARET MURPHY, B.A., Ph.D. (Trinity College, Dublin)

The Skilled Workforce in Early Modern London: an Image Database (to 15 November 1996)
Researcher: MICHAEL BERLIN, B.A. (Kent)

English Merchant Culture: the Overseas Trader in State and Society 1660-1720
Researcher: PEREGRINE GAUCI, B.A., M.Phil., D.Phil. (Oxford)

Mortality in the Metropolis, 1860-1920
Team Leader: WILLIAM E. LUCKIN, B.A. (Oxford), M.Sc. (London)
Researchers: GRAHAM P. MOONEY, B.A., Ph.D. (Liverpool); ANDREA I. TANNER, B.A. (Strathclyde), M.A. (Warwick), Ph.D. (London)

MICHAEL BERLIN's main research interest is in the public rituals of early modern towns. He also teaches at Birkbeck College's Centre for Extra-mural Studies and at Middlesex University. HEATHER CREATON runs a regular introductory course for new postgra dua te students as well as doing her bibliographical and information work. She is Vice-Chairman of the British Records Association and helped to organise their 1996 and 1997 conferences on records for the performing arts and for the history of childhood, resp ectively. She is also Hon. Secretary of the London Record Society and serves on the Royal Society of Arts' History Panel. JIM GALLOWAY's main research interests lie within medieval historical geography and economic history, including migration, urban dev elopment and trade. His Ph.D. thesis examined the Colchester region 1310-1560. From 1988 to 1994 he was a researcher on the CMH 'Feeding the City' projects. PERRY GAUCI's current research interests are centred on the political development of the localiti es of early modern England. He also teaches at Wadham College, Oxford. DEREK KEENE has written extensively on the society, economy, topography and archaeology of medieval and early modern towns, and especially on Winchester and London; he is a Royal Commi ssioner on the Historical Monuments of England and is a member of the International Commission for the History of Towns and of the Fabric Committee of St Paul's Cathedral. He is also a trustee of the London Journal. GRAHAM MOONEY is interested in the de mographic history of London, but in particular the effects of public health intervention on mortality and illness. Following her work on the Feeding the City project, MARGARET MURPHY is engaged in research on urban provisioning and regional trade. She is also maintaining her interests in medieval Irish history through recent conference papers and teaching. Apart from grappling with the Centre's computers and administration, OLWEN MYHILL's main historical interest is the impact of religious nonconformity on rural society in the nineteenth century. ANDREA TANNER is a part-time tutor at Birkbeck College Extra-Mural Department, a member of the Advisory Council on Public Records, the Council of the British Records Association, and is Vice-president of the Fri ends of the Public Record Office.

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IV

VISITING RESEARCH FELLOWS

ANGEL ALLOZA, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid) 'Urbanization, social change and crime: a comparative view of Paris, Madrid, London and Amsterdam during the eighteenth century'

MICHAEL T. DAVIS, B.A., Ph.D. (University of Queensland) 'History of the London Correponding Society in the 1790s'

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

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

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V

POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS

CRAIG A. BAILEY, B.A. (Connecticut), M.A. (Maynooth), 'The Irish professional classes in London, 1780-1845' (M.Phil./Ph.D.)

LIEN BICH LUU, B.A. (Sussex), 'Skills and innovations: a study of the stranger working community in London, 1550-1600'. (Ph.D. awarded March 1997)

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

Jim Galloway:
'London and the market system of southern England', at the Markets, Consumers and Traders in Medieval London and its Region Study Day, CMH, London, December 1996;
'Archives: an historical researcher's perspective', at the Public Record Office archivists' workshop, Kew, June 1997;
'The Winchester Pipe Rolls as a source for agriculture and prices', at the Winchester Pipe Roll Project Study Day, Oxford, October 1997.

Perry Gauci:
'The merchant in public life, 1660-1720', at the Metropolitan History Seminar, IHR, December 1996;
'The state, the town and merchant culture', at the State and the Town Conference, St Peter's College, Oxford, April 1997;
'Merchants' space in the Augustan city', at the Business Space in the City of London, 1680-1870 Study Day, IHR, London, June 1997.

Derek Keene:
'Medieval London, Oxford, and Winchester: a triangle of power', public lecture at Kellogg College, Oxford, December 1996;
'Food markets of medieval London', at the 'Markets, consumers and traders in medieval London and its region' Study Day, CMH, London, December 1996;
'A metropolis and its state', at the University of Durham History Seminar, February 1997;
'Long-term considerations in the development of London, A.D. 600-1900', at the Symposium on Health, Mortality and Environment, Stockholm, March 1997;
'The work of the Centre for Metropolitan History', at the Early Modern History Seminar, Cambridge, April 1997;
'Business districts in the long-run, 1300-1870', at the 'Business space in the city of London' Study Day, CMH, June 1997;
'Thirteenth-century revolutions in civic record-keeping: lost and surviving series', at the Anglo-French Study group on medieval London and Paris, London, June 1997;
'Metropolitan values. Migration, mobility, and cultural norms: London, 1300-1700', at the International Conference on the Standardisation of English, University of Cambridge, July 1997;
'Introduction: the City of London and its Bridge', at the Metropolitan River Crossings Conference, London, July 1997;
'Guilds in English towns, A.D. 1000-1500', at the International Workshop on 'Guildhall and government: power, control and resistance in Britain and China' Tsinghua University, Beijing, July 1997;
'Wardrobes in the City: houses of consumption, finance, and power', at the Thirteenth-century England Conference, Durham, September 1997;
'The metropolitan phenomenon: England and Japan compared', Anglo-Japanese Conference of Historians, Keio University, Tokyo, September 1997;
'Reconstructing medieval London', at the Seminar on Comparative Urban History, Waseda University, Tokyo, September 1997.

Bill Luckin:
'Chronologies of Environmental Concern in Nineteenth Century London', at the Symposium on Health, Mortality and Environment, Stockholm, March 1997;
'Theorizing the Costs of Atmospheric Pollution in Nineteenth Century London', at the Centre for National Scientific Research, Paris, May 1997;
'Charting environmental change in nineteenth century London', at the Twentieth International Congress for the History of Science, LiŠge, July 1997;
'Perspectives on the late nineteenth century mortality decline in London', at the Annual Conference for the Society for the Social History of Medicine, Liverpool, September 1997.

Bill Luckin, Graham Mooney and Andrea Tanner:
'Mortality in the metropolis, 1860-1920', at the Metropolitan History Seminar, IHR, March 1997;
'Patient pathways: solving the problem of institutional mortality in late nineteenth-century London', at the Annual Conference of the British Society for Population Studies, Exeter, September 1997.

Graham Mooney:
'Mapping metropolitan mortality, London 1860-1920', at the Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society and Institute of British Geographers, Exeter, January 1997;
'The problem of institutional mortality in late nineteenth-century London', at the Symposium on Health, Mortality and Environment, Stockholm, March 1997;
'The development of infectious disease surveillance in nineteenth-century England and Wales', at Discussions in Historical Geography, Cambridge, October 1997.

Graham Mooney and Andrea Tanner:
'Infant mortality and maternal employment, 1890-1914', at the Annual Conference of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, Liverpool, September 1997.

Margaret Murphy:
'Producers and consumers: medieval London's food and fuel supply', at the 'Markets, Consumers and Traders in Medieval London and its Region' Study Day, CMH, London, December 1996.

Andrea Tanner:
'Housing conditions and mortality in Kensington', at the Symposium on Health, Mortality and Environment, Stockholm, March 1997;
'"Life and death in Laundryland": Notting Dale 1860-1920', at St Clement's Church, Notting Hill, July 1997;
'Unhappy marriages in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries', at the Cory Society Annual Meeting, London, August 1997;
'Sights and sounds of the Victorian workhouse and hospital', at the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States conference, California State University, Northridge, October 1997;
'Life and Death in Victorian London', at Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts, October 1997.

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VII

PUBLICATIONS

Michael BERLIN, '"Broken all in pieces": artisans and the regulation of workmanship in early modern London', in G. Cossick (ed.), The Artisan and the European Town, 1500-1900 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997), 75-91.

Derek KEENE, 'Landlords, the property market and urban development in medieval England', in F. Eliassen and G.A. Ersland (eds.), Power, Profit and Urban Land: Landownership in Medieval and Early Modern Northern European Towns (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), 93-119.

Derek KEENE, 'The setting of the Royal Exchange: continuity and change in the financial district of the city of London, 1300-1871', in A. Saunders (ed.), The Royal Exchange (London Topographical Society, 1997), 253-71.

Derek KEENE, 'Metalworking in medieval London: an historical survey', The Journal of the Historical Metallurgy Society 30.2 (1996), 95-102. (Published 1997)

Bill LUCKIN, 'Perspectives on the mortality decline in London, 1860-1920', London Journal, 22 (1977), 123-41.

Bill LUCKIN, 'Town, Country and Metropolis: the formation of an air pollution problem in London, 1800-1870' in D. Schott (ed.), Energie und Stadt in Europa: Von der Vorindustriellen, Hollznot' bis zur Olkrise der 1970er Jahre (Stuttgart, 1997), 78-92.< /p>

Bill LUCKIN and Graham MOONEY, 'Urban history and historical epidemiology: the case of London, 1860-1920', Urban History, 24 (1997) 37-54.

Graham MOONEY, 'Professionalization in public health and the measurement of sanitary progress in nineteenth-century England and Wales', Social History of Medicine, 10 (1997), 53-78.

Graham MOONEY, '"A tissue of the most flagrant anomalies": smallpox and the centralisation of sanitary administration in late nineteenth-century London', Medical History, 41 (1997), 261-90.

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VIII

SEMINAR ON METROPOLITAN HISTORY

October 1996-March 1997
(Wednesdays, fortnightly, 5.30 pm, at the Institute of Historical Research)
Theme: 'Metropolitan Attractions'

'Migrants in urban Britain, 1840-1950', David Feldman (Birkbeck College, London)

'British workers and Belgian peasants on the railways: a comparative perspective on Workmen's Trains in the urban housing crisis at the turn of the nineteenth century', Janet Polasky (University of New Hampshire/Catholic University, Leuven)

'Race and the residuum: the Irish origins of the English underclass', Jennifer Davis (Wolfson College, Cambridge)

'From the Jewish district to the ghetto in Venice, Florence and Rome: spatial architectural characteristics', Donatella Calabi (Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia)

'The political uses of history in the modern urban landscape: Chicago and the quincentenary of Columbus', Gerry Kearns (University of Cambridge)

'The London merchant and public life: 1660-1720', Perry Gauci (CMH)

'Money, architecture and identity: bank office building in the City of London, 1830-1870', Iain Black (Cheltenham and Gloucester College)

'Empire theatres and the Empire: images of race and class in London's music halls', Andrew Crowhurst (De Montfort University)

'Travellers' descriptions of Paris and London during the nineteenth century', Claire Hancock (Universit‚ de Paris-Sorbonne)

'Mortality in the metropolis, 1860-1920', Bill Luckin, Graham Mooney and Andrea Tanner (CMH)

'Fragments of London: selling the capital as a place to visit, 1919-1939', Patricia Garside (University of Salford)

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IX

SOURCES OF FUNDING

Projects:
Aurelius Trust
Economic and Social Research Council
Leverhulme Trust
Renaissance Trust
Wellcome Trust

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