UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY
INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH

CENTRE
FOR
METROPOLITAN
HISTORY

Annual Report 1997-8
(1 August 1997-30 November 1998)

1. Director's Report

2. Project Reports

 

i

Metropolitan Market Networks, c.1300-1600

 

ii

Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to AD 1540

 

iii

English Merchant Culture: the Overseas Trader in State and Society 1660-1720

  iv Mortality in the Metropolis 1860-1920
 

v

Bibliographical and Information Services:

   

a) Bibliography of Printed Works on London History to 1939: Supplement

    b) Sources for the History of London, 1939-45: A Guide and Bibliography
    c) Checklist of Unpublished Diaries about London
    d) Research in Progress on the History of London

3. Tenth Anniversary Conference Papers

Appendices:

I Patrons
  II

Advisory Committee

  III Staff of the Centre
  IV Visiting Research Fellows
 

V

Postgraduate Students
  VI Conference and Seminar Papers
  VII Publications
  VIII Seminar on Metropolitan History
  IX Sources of Funding

1. DIRECTOR'S REPORT

September 1998 marked the tenth anniversary of the Centre, celebrated in a conference held on 15 October. This very enjoyable day focused on the themes in metropolitan history pursued by the Centre, presented by those who had undertaken the research. It provided an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the metropolis as an idea and as a place, and on the distinctive features and turning points in London's long history which we have investigated from several disciplinary and methodological points of view. Whatever aspirations we might have for a wide-ranging, balanced and coherent research programme, the outcome is conditioned by the facts of life, among which the most important for an organisation such as the Centre are the availability of skills and the unpredictable outcomes of research grant applications. Nevertheless, the Centre has managed to explore a wide variety of topics and at the same time to address major themes through successive projects. An especially interesting feature of the conference was to experience the juxtaposition of findings made at different stages of the Centre's work and to see unanticipated connections. It was also abundantly clear that metropolitan history is a fertile and ever widening field of enquiry, and offers new ways of understanding social, political, economic and cu ltural phenomena which extend far beyond the boundaries of the metropolis itself. Most of the papers given at the conference are printed below. The day ended with a good party.

The other major event of the year was the rearrangement of the access to the Centre's rooms in Senate House. The Centre is now approached from within the Institute of Historical Research, and visitors to the Centre should enquire for us at the Institute's reception desk on the ground floor in the north block of Senate House.

Research this year concentrated on four major projects, three of which continued from the previous year. An important area of investigation concerned the role of London as a national market and its interaction with other towns and markets elsewhere in the kingdom, paying particular attention to the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period and to establishing the degree of economic integration which had been achieved by 1300, in comparison with the state of affairs in 1 600. This process of integration, which has had a strong influence on the formation of national and regional identities and on the structure of the state, is currently of great interest to social scientists and policy makers in the context of world market s and globalisation. Most of the work so far on the project, which is at the half-way stage, has been concerned with the collection and preparation of data, but it is already clear that it will be possible to demonstrate and explain several significant tr ends in national markets over three centuries.

A related project began in March 1998, and the Centre has been delighted to welcome Samantha Letters, who is working on it. The aim is to compile, analyse, and publish a comprehensive survey of the markets and fairs of England and Wales up to the sixteenth century. The incidence of these institutions is an important indicator of social and political, as well as economic, developments, as a number of local studies have shown, but so far no attempt had been made to delineate a national picture. The project should give us a new understanding of the phenomenon and provide a research tool and work of reference of lasting value.

The 'Mortality in the Metropolis' team is now hard at work writing the book which will provide an account of the dramatic changes in causes of death in London between 1860 and 1920, relating them to living conditions in the many distric ts of London, and to local sanitary policies and expenditure. Having cracked one major methodological problem (concerning the distorting effect on statistics of those who died in hospitals and other institutions) the team has now solved another, by devising a robust and straightforward way of characterising districts according to their environmental conditions, which were changing continuously throughout the period. In recognition of these and other achievements the Wellcome Trust provided a supplementary grant for the project, enabling the team to continue its work until May 1999, by which date the book should be completed. After that Graham Mooney will take up a Fellowship at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, where he will pursue issue s, in part arising from the project and including considerable focus on London, concerning the notification of infectious diseases and its political context in the nineteenth century. Another topic arising from the project concerns the relationship between London hospitals and their 'constituencies'. Great Ormond Street Hospital has records which are especially informative on this theme, and in the summer of 1999 Andrea Tanner will undertake a pilot investigation of whether it will be possible effectively to explore, on a prosopographical basis, the experience of patients and their families of being treated by the hospital during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

In September we said farewell to Perry Gauci, who completed his study of English mercantile culture between 1660 and 1720, and moved on to Lincoln College, Oxford. The study explored the ways in which merchants developed a distinctive a nd effective political culture within a state where the landed interest was dominant. It focused on London, where mercantile life was strongest, but included studies of the merchant communities in Liverpool and York. Six chapters of a book on the theme have been drafted, and we look forward to its completion.

During the year Heather Creaton's pioneering bibliography and guide to sources for London during the Second World War was completed, edited and published. Heather has now moved on to a new source-related project on unpublished diaries c oncerning London.

Much thought and effort during the year was devoted to identifying and developing new areas of study. The proposal to promote a programme of activities on London's interaction with the Americas, in the first instance up to the eighteent h century, was taken further, with a plan to hold an international conference on the theme, as a result of which specific activities would be defined. The programme would involve partnerships with transatlantic institutions, one of which was consolidated during a recent brief visit to the United States. Funding possibilities for the conference are now being explored. We also made a bid for funds for an interdisciplinary research programme on the theme of 'London, regions and the nation'. The bid was unsuccessful, but the process of bringing together twenty-one scholars in seven universities and at least six disciplines proved to be a tremendous stimulus to thought, out of which several individual projects are likely to emerge. One at present being pl anned, and involving architectural and socio-linguistic as well as historical approaches, concerns culture and identity in London suburbs between 1890 and the Second World War.

The theme of London's relationship with the nation and the regions grew out of the Centre's earlier research, which focused attention on the positive force of the metropolis, over more than a thousand years, in shaping both regional and national identities. At a time when devolution has become a political mantra, and when government caution about allowing any significant degree of self-determination to the capital becomes daily more apparent, those long historical processes, still in tr ain today, deserve careful consideration from the point of view of assessing policy and its likely political outcome. Increasingly, therefore, metropolitan history has a practical application for its contribution towards finding solutions to the problems of the day. But whether politicians perceive the value of understanding the past in that light is another matter entirely.

Over the year the Centre has effectively collaborated with the Museum of London, especially in connection with the Museum's development of an archaeogical research strategy for London and in contributing towards the interpretation of th e archaeological material for the early history of London. There are plans for further collaborative work.

A further plan being developed concerns the production of a second volume on London in the now revived British Atlas of Historic Towns. This would cover Westminster and Southwark up to the Reformation, complementing the first volume whi ch dealt with the City of London over the same period. The principal theme would be an interpretation of the physical character of these important suburbs from the Roman period onwards, drawing on recent detailed historical and archaeological research.

The director has also been active as general editor in planning a new history of St Paul's Cathedral. This will be a major work, sponsored by the Dean and Chapter, to be published on the fourteen-hundredth anniversary of the cathedral in 2004.

The director's research and writing over the year has concentrated on chapters concerning London and the south-east of England for the forthcoming Cambridge Urban History of Britain, a chapter on towns and trade in the eleventh- and twelfth-century Europe for the New Cambridge Medieval History, a chapter on the medieval urban landscape, and interpretive essays on factors influencing the emergence of standard English, on the cultural and practical significance of water in m edieval London, and on early medieval industrial organisation. During the year the director also spoke at eight seminars or conferences held in England, Ireland and Italy, and contributed to an extended seminar for Italian urban historians.

In addition to the tenth-anniversary conference, a study day was held on the uses of information technology in metropolitan history. The papers, edited by Jim Galloway, will be published in a forthcoming issue of History and Computin g. During the year the papers from the international conference on 'Archives and the Metropolis' were published jointly by the Centre and the Corporation of London. The Anglo-French working group on medieval Paris and medieval London met at the Archiv es Nationales, where a range of documents for the history of medieval Paris was presented and discussed. Visits behind the scenes at the Archives and to the fine exhibition on the reign of Philip the Fair added to the interest and pleasure of the occasion . In two years' time the group plans to hold a more extended conference on forms of power in the two capitals.

The Metropolitan History seminar had 'Merchants, markets and city spaces' as its theme, with papers ranging from thirteenth-century London to Milan in the 1990s, via Central Park.

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 English Heritage London Advisory Committee, of the International Commission f or 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 t he London Journal.

During the year the nine staff of the Centre were joined by four Visiting Fellows. Bill Luckin, of Bolton Insitute, continued as team leader of the 'Mortality in the Metropolis' project. Graham Twigg, of Royal Holloway, worked on epidem ics in London between 1540 and 1720. Michael Davis, of the University of Queensland, investigated the London Corresponding Society, 1792-9. Angel Alloza, of the Autonomous University of Madrid, who was with us for two years completed a comparative study o f crime in European capital cities. Visitors were welcomed from Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, the USA, and Uzbekistan.

[1988-9 Report] [1989-90 Report] [1990-1 Report] [1991-2 Report] [1992-3 Report] [1993-4 Report] [1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1996-7 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Back to Contents]


2. PROJECT REPORTS

i METROPOLITAN MARKET NETWORKS c.1300-1600

This three-year project examines changes in London's interaction with its region, and with the wider economy of England, over the course of three centuries. It aims to delineate change from c.1300, when London achieved a peak in size and wealth which was perhaps not to be surpassed until 1550, through the demographic contractions, redistribution of wealth, commercial development and economic cycles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to 1600, when the metropolis dominated the realm as never before. In particular, the study focuses upon changes in the extent and structure of London's economic hinterland, its centrality within the English economy, the degree of market integration within that economy and the role of London in the process of integration.

The evidence of debt litigation in the central courts, covering both London's immediate hinterland and more distant regions of England, is being used to construct pictures of commercial networks c.1300, c.1400 and in the l ater sixteenth century. In this, the project builds upon work undertaken during its predecessor, 'Market networks in the London region c.1400', during the course of which a substantial database was compiled from Court of Common Plea records of debt s 'laid' in ten counties around London in three sample Michalemas Term plea rolls. In the early stages of the current project the data collected from the plea roll for 1424, for which the best-quality data was available, was extended to include debt cases laid in the counties of Devon, Staffordshire and Yorkshire. This exercise produced a database of over 4,000 debts. During the past year a major objective of the project has been to assemble broadly comparable samples of data from the early fourteenth and later sixteenth centuries, to permit study of long-term changes in London's economic hinterland and more generally in the spatial organisation of the regional and national economies.

The collection strategy has been modified to take into account changes in the quality of data recorded in the plea rolls during the period under study. In particular, it was found that quality declined significantly after c.1570, with the recording of the residence of plaintiffs in debt cases _ a key piece of information for reconstructing spatial patterns of interaction - virtually ceasing by c.1580. Rather than selecting a roll from c.1600, as had been hoped, it was therefore decided to use the Michaelmas 1570 plea roll for study, as being broadly comparable to that from 1424. A database of just over 3,000 debts has been compiled from this roll. In the time available approximately four-fifths of the term's roll was used. To give an impression of change during the course of the sixteenth century, and in part to compensate for the lack of a substantial data collection from c.1600, ninety-five detailed cases were collected from five additional rolls from c.1500 and 106 from the Michaelmas Term roll for 1602. Some 170 parallel cases were included in the primary data collection from the 1570 roll. Such cases provide valuable information on the transaction leading to a debt, including the nature of commodities bought and the terms for payment, and on occasion specify detailed arrangements for delivery of goods. Much incidental information occurs in such cases, providing vivid insights into consumption patterns and the organisation of provisioning a nd distributive networks. The residence of plaintiffs can often be inferred from these detailed cases, even where it is not explicitly stated.

The rolls from c.1300 are less bulky and contain much less detailed information on residences and occupations than do those of later periods. It was found, however, that by the third decade of the fourteenth century more such details were being included in the rolls, sufficient to permit at least some comparative analysis. The roll from Michalemas Term 1329 was selected for study, and a database of some 600 debt and account pleas compiled. It seems evident that Londoners made less use of the Court of Common Pleas in the early fourteenth century than at later periods, and so this data has been supplemented by a sample drawn from two 'London' sources: firstly, some 300 debt recognizances from the period 1276-1304 contained in the Lon don Letter Books and secondly, over 150 recognizances made before the Mayor of London under the statute of Acton Burnel in the years 1313-15, held in the Corporation of London Letter Books. Taken together these sources should provide the basis for at least a partial reconstruction of London's economic hinterland at an early peak in its demographic history.

The second major group of sources collected during the course of the year concern grain price series for various parts of England, which are to be used to test for market integration at different periods. Using the Beveridge Prices and Wages collection at the London School of Economics and copies obtained from the papers of the late David Farmer deposited in the University of Saskatchewan Library, together with various other manuscript and printed collections, several dozen price series covering longer or shorter parts of the period 1300-1600 have been assembled, and collection is continuing. A priority is to locate more material for northern England where, with the notable exception of Durham, few price series are known to survive.

Much helpful information on the location of price material is being offered by colleagues, for which we are most grateful. Amongst the most valuable series are the precisely dated wheat prices for Exeter, which extend in almost unbroken sequence from 1316 onwards. This will form one of the bench-mark series in the analysis, and it will be possible to measure the extent of co-variation, and by implication of market integration, between London and Exeter at various periods between the early fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Early indications are that integration levels were high before the Black Death and in the sixteenth century, but were significantly lower in the decades after 1349. Provisional analysis of manorial price material suggests that even core grain-supply routes such as the London-Henley axis may have experienced significant disruption in the 1350s and 1360s.

Detailed analysis of this debt and price material, supplemented by a limited range of local sources, will form the next stage of the research. Already, however, it promises to yield important insights into changes and continuities in London's role within the economic life of England over the course of three centuries.

This 36-month project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Ref. No.: R000237253).

[1996-7 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Market Networks c.1400 project] [Publications arising from project] [Back to Contents]


ii MARKETS AND FAIRS IN ENGLAND AND WALES TO AD 1540

This report was presented at the CMH Conference 'Exploring the Metropolis' on 15 October 1998.

This two-year ESRC-funded project commenced in March 1998. It has, however, been substantially delayed due to illness. It is hoped that the project can be extended commensurably and will therefore end in May 2000.

The project aims to produce a gazetteer of markets and fairs in England and Wales down to 1540. The network of markets and fairs in medieval England was one of the densest and most highly developed in Europe. The growth and development of this network is linked to trends in population and settlement, in commercialisation and economic specialisation. The history of markets and fairs also sheds light on the exercise of royal power and reflects the development of the laws affec ting trade. Studying this network sheds light on our regional and national history.

Fig. 1. picture of Henry I's charter to Ramsey Abbey granting the right to hold a fair at St Ives (Huntingdonshire) dated 1110
.

Despite the importance of medieval markets and fairs, at present lists of these have only been published for twelve English counties. These lists have been generated as part of valuable local studies and have prompted much interest in the subject. The indications are that many markets and fairs were well established by 1100. The number of markets and fairs rose rapidly in the thirteenth century, particularly in the 1250s. After around 1350 numbers declined, and this decline continued throughout the fifteenth century.

When completed, the gazetteer will comprise detailed lists of the markets and fairs in every English county and also in Wales. The gazetteer will be in two forms: firstly published as a book and secondly as a database held at the Centre . It is hoped that the database may also be available on-line. This comprehensive national study will be of use both to those interested in markets and fairs per se and to others concerned with wider economic and social investigations. The project does not include Scotland and Ireland, due to the lack of comparable source material.

In order to set up the databases used to record the information, a pilot project has been undertaken using Essex as a test county. Essex was chosen as it was large and fairly densely populated, and as a pilot project was likely to raise many of the problems which would be encountered at a later date. Professor Richard Britnell had studied the numerous markets and fairs of Essex extensively and made his lists available for the project. A second list has been published by the Essex Record Office. Details of the markets and fairs were compiled beginning with the information from these lists and checked with the principal primary source material (discussed in detail below).

Useful evidence for the survival of markets and fairs beyond the medieval period was taken from Professor Everitt's list of market towns in 1500-1640, published in the Agrarian History of England and Wales, and the list of fairs drawn up by W. Harrison in 1587. Standard information was given for each place in the database, to provide context and a basis for comparison. The value of the place in the lay subsidy of 1334, a good indicator of relative wealth and size, was taken from a database recently compiled under the supervision of Professor Campbell of the Queen's University, Belfast. A six figure grid reference was also provided for each place. References were given to fuller accounts of the history of each location, particularly to those in the Victoria County History of Essex.

When the pilot project was successfully completed, a total of 88 places in Essex were found to have either a market or a fair, or both. Overall, there were 97 markets and 76 fairs. Comparison with the other county lists that have been drawn up suggests that this is a large number for both markets and fairs. This probably reflects the wealth and population of Essex.

Fig. 2. picture of a list of the outline structure of the Idealist database.
Fig. 2. picture of a list of the outline structure of the Idealist database.
Fig. 2. Outline structure of the Idealist database.

The Idealist database package was used to collect, compile and record the information. Idealist meets the project's requirements as it is very flexible and accepts the wide range of information that has to be entered. A separate database was set up for each English county and another for Wales. Within each database is a record for each place. Each record has 135 fields, comprising nineteen fields for each of three markets and twenty fields for each of three fairs. There are also eighteen fields for general information (see Fig. 2). The provision for three markets and fairs in each record is sufficient for most places, except for large towns. Any extra markets or fairs will have to be typed into the gazetteer. Building the databas e took up a considerable amount of time. It was important to have the structure set up correctly from the beginning, in order to prevent alterations later in the project.

The Idealist database for Essex was completed as far as possible in the time allowed for the pilot project (evidence from the Close and Patent Rolls, Inquisitions Post Mortem, Quo Warranto, the Hundred Rolls and miscellaneous other printed sources, such as cartularies, will be entered at a later stage). The information the database contains was transferred into a word processing package (Microsoft Word) to produce a sample gazetteer (see Fig. 3). A complex merge file was set up to transfer the information, which should reduce the amount of editing necessary in future.

Fig. 3. picture of a sample page for Essex from the <i>Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1540
Fig. 3. A sample page for Essex from the Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1540

The size of the Idealist databases makes them too large and complex to allow much analysis other than very basic sorts. In order to perform more detailed analysis and produce statistics, the Idealist files were converted into dBase. This is a much simplified database with the paragraphs of descriptive text removed, leaving core data of only seventeen fields giving the name and grid reference of the place, whether or not it was a borough, its value in the 1334 lay subsidy and details of its market(s) and/or fair(s). Most of the fields were exported from Idealist, although some had to be typed in manually. The dBase database allows calculations of, for example, the survival rate of markets into the early modern period, dependant on the means of foundation, or the failure rate of fairs, dependant on the period in which they were granted.

Further analysis of the information is possible using the mapping program, MapInfo, to reveal chronological and spatial developments. Using the Essex material, a basic set of maps was produced showing the geographical spread of markets and fairs at intervals of one hundred years. It is also possible to measure the distance between markets and fairs, to determine to what extent local markets were arranged into circuits and to analyse the seasonality of fairs. It is intended that the Introduction to the Gazetteer will include a series of maps illustrating these points for England and Wales as a whole. It will also be possible to produce regional comparisons and to focus on individual counties as case studies.

When the Essex pilot project was complete, work began on collecting the information relating to the remaining English counties and to Wales. It was decided that, rather than work from published county lists which did not follow consistent practice, data collection should begin with the original source material. The number and range of these potential sources for medieval markets and fairs is one of the main problems when compiling this gazetteer. In the two years available, it i s not possible to cover all of this material and therefore limits have been set from the very beginning. The main focus will be on the printed primary source material.

By the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the king had the exclusive right to license markets and fairs as a franchise. These royal grants are recorded in the charter rolls, which begin in 1199. Therefore the starting point was the Calendar of Charter Rolls, the single largest source. Five volumes of the Calendar cover the period from 1227 to 1516. All references to markets and fairs have been noted page by page. The sheer number of grants made this a very slow process, taki ng longer than expected. There are relevant charters on almost every page of the first two volumes of the Charter Rolls, which cover most of the thirteenth century. This underlines the fact that Henry III and Edward I granted an enormous number of charters for markets and fairs. In particular, there is a very large number of grants in the 1250s. Having progressed into the fourteenth century, and particularly after around 1360, the number of grants began to decline quite dramatically. Charters dating from the fifteenth century generally alter the terms of existing markets and fairs, rather than establish new ones. These alterations to the date or duration of markets and fairs reflect the changing economic and social circumstances of the period. They are in te resting, as they often provide detail as to why a market or fair was struggling (the hardship experienced by the area, the unwillingness of people to trade on a given date, the effects of war) and why it was thought another date would be more successful.< /P>

The end result was a total of 1,546 places recorded as receiving a charter in England between 1227 and 1516, with 1,417 markets and 1,874 fairs. Initially, the discrepancy between the number of fairs and of markets appeared surprising. However, it seems likely that more markets than fairs were prescriptive - set up by no known charter - long before the right to grant a market or fair became a royal franchise. There is no evidence of markets in the Calendar of Charter Rolls for many towns known to have had markets (Buckingham, for example). It seems likely that when the prescriptive markets are entered into the database, the number of markets will exceed that of fairs. Overall, the number of markets found from the charter roll eviden ce and those found by Richard Britnell in his study of markets down to 1349 are compatible.

The charter rolls provide evidence of 55 places in Wales with a market or fair and a total of 48 markets and 83 fairs. There are a few grants of markets and fairs from Henry III's reign to places such as Montgomery and Degannwy, which were under English influence. The vast majority of Welsh grants found in the Charter Rolls date from Edward I's reign. These fall into three distinct periods: 1279-81, 1284 and 1290-93. Obviously, this reflects Edward I's campaigns in Wales and the periods of English settlement afterwards. It seems that there are the most grants in the last period, 1290-93. Thereafter, the volume of grants falls off very slowly through Edward I's reign and into that of Edward II. The number of charters declines afte r 1350, but in the fifteenth century, there are still some grants and a surprising number of alterations to the terms of existing charters.

It is important to note that these are only provisional numbers from the charter roll evidence and that they will change as the project continues. It is possible that the number of chartered markets and fairs has been artificially inflated. During the compilation of the gazetteer, it has been assumed that all grants are new markets or fairs, unless there is specific mention of a re-grant, confirmation, move or change of date, or the grant reiterates the terms of an existing charter (i.e. the same market or fair is granted by the same grantor to the same grantee). However, there are numerous examples of comparatively small places which have several grants of markets and fairs. These places were almost certainly too small to sustain m ore than one market or fair. The difficulty in differentiating between several markets and fairs at one place is an ongoing problem. It seems likely that subsequent research and consultation of the secondary sources will demonstrate that there was actually only one market or one fair.

Moreover, whilst a charter granted the right to hold a market or fair, this did not necessarily mean that the market or fair was ever established. In fact, from 1200 onwards royal charters were conditional: they granted the right to hold a market or fair only if this was not to the detriment of neighbouring markets or fairs. It is therefore a necessary precaution to corroborate a charter with other material to be certain that a specific trading institution was ever set up. Therefore, in the later stages of the project, evidence for this will be sought in sources such as the Inquisitions Post Mortem and Hundred Rolls. Some of the grants in the Charter Rolls were inevitably not used, for a variety of reasons.

Even if a charter did result in a functioning market or fair, this was no guarantee that it would survive through and beyond the middle ages. It appears that the earlier a market or fair was established, the greater its chances of survival through the medieval period and into the sixteenth century. A great many of the markets and fairs established in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries did not survive into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Information regarding the survival and, if appropriate, the date of the decline of each market and fair will have to be collected. As there is no single source from which this information can be gathered, essentially this involves searching for passing references to markets and fairs that are functioning. Clearly, this is an enormous task and again limits have had to be set. Evidence will be taken from the Inquisitions Post Mortem and Inquisitions Miscellaneous, from the great inquiries such as Quo Warranto and the Hundred Rolls and from the Rolls of Parliament. This information has not yet been collected for the Essex pilot project.

Finally, the figures from the charter rolls do not represent the actual number of markets and fairs, as the charters do not contain information regarding the royal demesne. For example, there is no evidence for the market and fair at Great Baddow, Essex, on the charter rolls, as Great Baddow was a royal manor. Information for this market and fair and all the others on the royal demesne has to be taken from the Close and Patent Rolls. These will be examined later in the project.

It was originally the intention to note every inspeximus and confirmation of a charter which included the grant of a market or fair but once Edward I's reign had been reached it became clear that this was not going to be possible. The sheer number of these inspeximus charters, which increase during the fourteenth century, made noting and checking them for relevant grants far too time-consuming. It was decided that only those inspeximus that relate to charters from sources otherwise no t checked should be noted. This helped to speed up the process of going through the later volumes of the charter rolls.

In addition to the details of the grants, the process of securing a charter is being examined and it is hoped to incorporate a discussion about the stages involved, the means of ensuring that a market or fair was not to the detriment of its neighbours and the amount paid for a charter. There are at least five examples which suggest that charters were not valid indefinitely. For example, the first charter for a fair at King's Lynn was granted in 1283. This fair was not established. A second charter for a fair was granted in 1316, which stated that the fair could be held, regardless of the fact that it had not been held since the original grant in 1283. If the right to hold a fair was granted indefinitely, there would have been no need for this second charter. There are other similar examples, where the original charter had not been used and second charters or special dispensations were granted. A 'time limit' on such may well have been linked to the need to establish that a new market or fair was not to the detriment of neighbouring trading institutions. It is not clear how long this 'time limit' may have been: in the case of King's Lynn, the charter was 33 years old. In the other examples, the two charters are over 100 years apart.

Many medieval royal documents, including the Charter Rolls, began to be systematically recorded in the late twelfth century. However, many of the most important and oldest markets and fairs were already well established by this time. Whilst some date from after the Norman Conquest, Domesday Book provides evidence for others in the Anglo-Saxon period. There is nothing in Anglo-Saxon law that corresponds to the Anglo-Norman idea of a market or fair as a specific franchise, subject to ro yal control. Given the absence of adequate sources, it is not possible to ascertain when these prescriptive markets and fairs originated, whether they where deliberately set up or if they developed informally.

For the second stage of the project, attention has turned to the most important sources for prescriptive markets and fairs. Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman places with borough status, or which possessed a mints, operated as centres of loca l trade and had markets. It is usually possible to provide an earliest known date of operation for a borough or mint. Information regarding boroughs has been taken from M.W. Beresford and H.P.R.Finberg, English Medieval Boroughs and for Anglo-Saxon mints from C. Challis, A New History of Royal Mint. Evidence for Domesday boroughs and markets was taken from H.C. Derby, Domesday England, and for grants of markets and fairs during William I's reign D. Bates ed., Regesta Regum Anglo-No rmannorum, The Acta of William I (1066-87). For Welsh information, I. Soulsby, The Towns of Medieval Wales and R.A. Griffiths, Boroughs of Medieval Wales have been consulted. The published Pipe Rolls, which are an invaluable sour ce of information for fines relating to grants of markets and fairs in the mid to late twelfth century, are also being checked.

The analysis of the numbers of prescriptive and granted markets and fairs and the respective survival rates of these into the late medieval period and beyond is one of the principal aims of the project. All markets and fairs are treated as prescriptive unless evidence of a grant is found. Every market and fair is given a code, based on whether it is prescriptive or granted. There is also a category for the small number of prescriptive markets or fairs that are known to have been formalised in a charter. It is, however, important to note that some markets or fairs which appear to have been established by a charter, were probably operating before the charter was granted.

Although the Introduction to the Gazetteer will not be written until late in 1999, an outline structure has been drawn up and ideas for the discussion and examples noted.

An extensive database has been set up using the Papyrus program to record books and articles relevant to the project. Another database of standard reference works which can be utilised in areas not covered by the Victoria County History has also been established.

This 24-month project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Ref No.: R000237395).

[Publications arising from project] [Back to Contents]


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

On 30 September 1998 the project came to a close after three years of stimulating research into the political and social role of the English overseas trader. In the final year work principally centred on the examination of provincial me rchants, and on the drafting of the book to be published on our findings.

The archives of York and Liverpool continued to supply excellent materials for the study of the Augustan merchant, and we were especially fortunate to be able to investigate themes reflecting developments in London, most notably mercantile settlement patterns, and the ways in which traders attempted to manipulate the political system to further their ends. Although dwarfed in scale by the capital, a declining York and a booming Liverpool demonstrated that provincial merchants cou ld be just as responsive to national change as their metropolitan brethren, and indeed acted in tandem with London traders to achieve their objectives. Although restricted in timescale, this work suggested that much further research is needed on the developm ent of provincial 'political economy', and on the connections between central and peripheral élites.

Most of the year, however, has been dedicated to the writing up of the project's results. In its final state, the book will consist of six chapters, broadly divided into two sections. The first section of three chapters will examine the merchant himself, outlining the distinctive character of his commercial society in terms of urban environment, life-cycle and association. Analysis of our sample of 850 London merchants will dominate each of these three chapters, but there will also be significant sections comparing metropolitan developments with the experience of some 300 York traders and 250 at Liverpool. These sections provide essential background studies for the second half of the book, which will consider the broad, 'public' impact of the merchant.

This structure is most deliberate, highlighting the overwhelming importance of family and profit to the individual, but in turn acknowledging the significance of social and political connections to the achievement of such personal ends. These links are the key to understanding the impact of the merchant in the wider environments of region and realm, and it can be shown that overseas traders were most sensitive to contemporary changes within the late Stuart state. Furthermore, the public profile of the merchant was itself changing, and examination of political institutions, media and events can illuminate many of the forces working to fashion the social and political character of a burgeoning imperial power.

A first draft of 95,000 words has been completed, and will hopefully go to press in 1999. In addition to the book, the databases produced by the project will remain available for public access at the CMH.

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

[1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1996-7 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Publications arising from project] [Back to Contents]


iv MORTALITY IN THE METROPOLIS 1860-1920

When the 'Mortality in the Metropolis 1860-1920' team began its work in the summer of 1995, its members were already aware of the probable 'uniqueness' of London's demographic and epidemiological structures. But they were uncertain abou t how best to chart and explain exceptionally complex intraurban differentials in cause-specific death-rates. Three and a half years later, as chapters of the large-scale study which was described in last years's Annual Report continue to be produced, there is a degree of confidence that a number of important issues relevant to that task have been clarified.

Firstly, building on H.J.Dyos's seminal insights of the late 1950s and 1960s, we are now convinced that the capital during this period is best and most meaningfully depicted as a collection of highly individualistic townships rather than as a single, spatially-coordinated and integrated metropolitan centre. In terms of comparative urban history, it can only be hoped that this conceptualization will make it more likely that historians will begin to juxtapose epidemiological processes in 'unfashionable' places like Wandsworth, Hackney and Marylebone against similar experiences in Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds. Thus far, however, the sheer scale of the capital - as well as its quite extraordinary degree of administrative complexity - see m to have militated against such work. The very terms 'vestry' and 'metropolitan borough' have, it would seem, dissuaded urban and medical historians from engaging with the grass-roots evolution of the different districts and regions of the capital.

Next, there is the issue of 'municipalism'. As we noted in our contribution to last year's Report, there can now be little doubt that, both in terms of the general death-rate as well as levels of mortality from specific conditions, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century London must be counted as one of the healthiest cities in Europe, if not the world. But this was emphatically not how large numbers of metropolitan and provincial public health reformers, appalled at the alleged corruption and torpidity of the metropolitan vestries between the 1870s and the 1890s, viewed things. Zealous advocates of the municipal gospel, they stridently contended that, only when local administration had been comprehensively reconstructed, as wel l as periodically investigated and disciplined by a centralized and modernizing city-wide authority, would the capital's environmental and health performance undergo significant improvement.

The findings of the 'Mortality' project suggest that this barrage of reformist rhetoric probably had as much to do with the belated emergence of genuinely ideological conflicts over the 'future of the metropolis' as with the quality of life experienced by the great majority of Londoners. Our detailed epidemiological data also lends support to a small but increasingly influential body of literature which may one day finally save the much-maligned (and indisputably corrupt) Metropolitan Board of Works from the 'massive condescension of posterity.' When this predominantly institutional mode of analysis is extended into the later nineteenth and early twentieth century, it appears to reinforce the revisionist view that the Progressive ambitions of the London County Council were only briefly and imperfectly realized. At the same time, the 'backward' metropolitan boroughs - 'pseudo-municipalities that had not yet emerged from vestrydom' - probably confronted public health problems as assiduously and effectively as their provincial counterparts. Savagely attacked by reforming centralizers, they nevertheless invested in broadly relevant infrastructure, presided over the growth of larger scientific and environmental bureaucracies and be gan to make inroads into the seemingly insoluble problem of overcrowding. We shall not be presenting the epidemiological status of the capital at the very end of our period in unrealistically Panglossian terms _ the continued existence of quite exceptionally deprived 'black spots' in affluent districts in the years between Booth's great surveys of the 1890s and the immediate aftermath of the First World War will not support such a conclusion. Nevertheless, the narrowing health divide between the richest and poorest areas casts doubt on the still widely-held view that, because they were not regularly audited by an effective city-wide body, the early twentieth-century metropolitan boroughs were in some sense less competent and less committed to disease prevent ion than the longer-established municipalities.

As noted elsewhere in this Report (see Graham Mooney's 10th Anniversary Conference paper), the methodology employed by the team to describe and partially interpret the differing epidemiolog ical experiences of the capital during the period under review has involv ed a rejection of the crude compass-point approach employed by many nineteenth-century contemporaries and twentieth-century historians. Rather, the index of the rate of growth of inhabited buildings has been used to create four spatial and environmental ' sectors' - the contracting core, stable core, inner suburbs and outer suburbs. This has prepared the way for detailed analysis of cause-specific mortality within each of the metropolitan registration districts, organized on a 'life-cycle' basis and covering conditions predominantly associated with infancy, childhood and adulthood.

Although this summary has emphasized the remarkable degree of epidemiological progress achieved in the capital from the late eighteenth century onwards, and the light that this 'anomaly' may throw on seminal issues in comparative urban and medical history, the role of 'epidemic crisis' has not been ignored. Focusing on the final cholera epidemic of 1866, the large-scale outbreak of smallpox in 1871-2, and the terrible influenza pandemic in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, the team is drawing on data from a carefully selected 'middle tier' of districts in order to describe and interpret impact and response.

This 46-month project is funded by the Wellcome Trust.

[1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1996-7 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Publications arising from project] [Back to Contents]


v 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

Entries have continued to be added to this database, which will eventually form a ten-year supplement to the published Bibliography of Printed Works on London History to 1939 (LAPL, 1994), listin g publications appearing from 1991-2000. Once again, Guildhall Library and the Bishopsgate Institute Library have generously supplied references for new London titles added to their own collections, and the total number of items has now reached 4,200. Muc h searching remains to be done.

[1988-9 Report] [1989-90 Report] [1990-1 Report] [1991-2 Report] [1992-3 Report] [1993-4 Report] [1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1996-7 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Publications arising from project] [Back to Contents]


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

Much of Heather Creaton's time this year was taken up in completing the writing up and preparation of this guide for the printers, in consultation with Janet Foster, editor of the British Records Association's series 'Archives and t he User'. Staff at the Imperial War Museum were kind enough to read the finished text, and made many useful suggestions and corrections. The camera-ready copy was prepared with efficiency and skill by Olwen Myhill, and the finished product contains thirty-nine illustrations of documents and other sources. The guide was published by the British Records Associa tion in December 1998.

[1993-4 Report] [1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1996-7 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Publications arising from project] [Back to Contents]


c) CHECKLIST OF UNPUBLISHED DIARIES ABOUT LONDON

The Centre's newest bibliographical project, started in the course of 1998, aims to list unpublished diaries containing substantial information about London life at any period. The intention is to provide social historians and others with a key to a vast range of material, often underexploited because so diverse and scattered. Diaries, as readers of Pepys and Parson Woodforde will know, can provide a rich blend of factual information and personal insights usually unobtainable elsewher e. Many London diaries have been published, and can be identified through useful bibliographies like William Matthews' British Diaries (1950), Patricia Havlice's And So to Bed (1987) or C.S. Godley's Annotated Bibliography of Diaries Printed in English (1997). However, hundreds more exist in record offices and libraries as unpublished manuscripts, carefully listed in the repository's catalogues, but often unnoticed by the London historian. We hope that a checklist drawing attentio n to their London content will lead to their increased use.

picture of extract from the play The Importance of Being Earnest
A satirical view of diary-keeping.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1899)

Questions of definition inevitable arise. What is a diary? A personal account of the writer's activities and interests, written up day by day, or very shortly after the events concerned. Is a journal different? William Matthews abandoned his attempts to distinguish between the two, and this compiler is happy to follow his example. What is 'London' for this purpose? The answer is what is now thought of as 'Greater London', thus admitting Middlesex and parts of Essex, Surrey, Kent and Hertfordshire which might have been quite countrified in the diarist's day. Must the writer be a Londoner? Not necessarily. The diary of an extended visit might contain very interesting material, though a few notes on a quick tour of the obvious tourist sights might not.

What about overseas visitors? Clearly their comments on London, as outsiders, could be of great value. In principle we are willing to include them, whether in English or other languages, but they may be harder to trace than British-held material and coverage will almost certainly be patchier. Suggestions for items to include in this category will be particularly welcome. What will not be included? Parliamentary diaries, technical work diaries, commonplace books, chronicles a nd travel narratives that are not day to day records will be excluded.

Matthews, and other listings of unpublished diaries such as J.S. Batts' British Manuscript Diaries of the Nineteenth Century (1976), have been trawled for London material, and the National Register of Archives' Diaries and Papers indexes are being thoroughly searched for references, which are then checked in their lists and with the holding repository. Brief articles and announcements in the newsletters of the London Topographical Society, Society of Archivists, Greater London Archives Network, London Archive Users' F orum and museum journals have produced helpful advice and suggestions from several readers. The database already includes nearly 600 items, and there will be many more to come. Heather Creaton would be grateful to hear of any items, especially those that might otherwise elude the net.

Are most of the diaries kept in London? The majority, so far, but it is already clear that plenty of London examples lie much further afield, for example at the Bodleian, the National Library of Scotland, in Wigan Archives Service's Edward Hall Collection and, notably, among the wartime Mass-Observation material at the University of Sussex. As mentioned earlier, relevant diaries also survive abroad.

The database, and the eventual publication, will be arranged in chronological order of the first diary entry date, and will give brief information about the writer, dates covered, subject matter and location of the manuscript. There will be indexes of writers, places and subject coverage when possible. The earliest entry on the database so far is for 1504, the latest 1962, and the writers include members of parliament, society ladies, artisans, actors, servants and schoolchildr en. No doubt the field, and the dates, will widen still further as the project advances.

[10th Anniversary Conference] [Projects arising from project] [Back to Contents]


d) RESEARCH IN PROGRESS ON THE HISTORY OF LONDON

The listing of work in progress on any aspect of the history of the Greater London area now contains nearly two hundred entries and was put up on the Centre's web site in December 1998. We are anxious to encourage the submission of additional entries or corrections by email, or any other method, to make the list as full as possible.

[1992-3 Report] [1993-4 Report] [1994-5 Report] [1995-6 Report] [1996-7 Report] [10th Anniversary Conference] [Publications arising from project] [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. to 30 April 1998; Professor D. Cannadine, M.A., D.Phil., Litt.D. from 1 May 1998)

I.W. ARCHER, M.A., D.Phil., Fellow and Tutor, Keble College Oxford (from 1 August 1998)
C.M. BARRON, M.A., Ph.D., Reader in History of London, Royal Holloway, University of London
I.S. BLACK, B.A., Ph.D., Lecturer in Geography, King's College London
B. BRODT, M.A., Ph.D, Research Fellow, German Historical Institute, London
M.J. DAUNTON, B.A., Ph.D., Professor of Economic History, University of Cambridge (to 31 July 1998)
S.R. EPSTEIN, M.A., Ph.D., Reader in Economic History, London School of Economics
S. FREETH, B.A., D.A.A., Keeper of Manuscripts, Guildhall Library
P. GARSIDE, B.A., Ph.D., F.R.H.S., Professor of Contemporary Social History, University of Salford (1 August 1998)
J. HANSON, B.A., Ph.D., Bartlett School of Architecture
A. HARDY, M.A., D.Phil., Lecturer in History of Modern Medicine, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
L.V. MARKS, B.A., Ph.D., Lecturer in History of Medicine, Imperial College, London
J.L. NELSON, M.A., Ph.D., F.B.A., Professor of History, King's College London (from 1 August 1998)
R.E. QUINAULT, M.A., D.Phil., Reader, University of North London
H.G. ROSEVEARE, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of History, King's College London (to 31 July 1998)
C. ROSS, B.A., Ph.D., Curator, Later Department, Museum of London
A.L. SAUNDERS, Ph.D, FSA, London Topographical Society (to 31 July 1998)
J.M. WINTER, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Fellow, Pembroke College, Cambridge (to 31 July 1998)

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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.

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

Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to AD1540 (from 1 March 1998)
Researcher: SAMANTHA LETTERS, B.A., Ph.D. (London)

English Merchant Culture: the Overseas Trader in State and Society 1660-1720 (to 30 September 1998)
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)

HEATHER CREATON runs a regular introductory course for new postgraduate students as well as doing her bibliographical and information work. She is Vice-Chairman of the British Records Association and helped to organise their 1997 and 1998 conferences on records for the history of childhood and for law and order, respectively. 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 with in medieval historical geography and economic history, including migration, urban development 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 localities of early modern England. In October 1998 he took up a lectureship at Lincoln 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 Commissioner 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. SAMANTHA LETTERS's main research interest is thirteenth-century England. Her Ph.D. thesis examined the Seagrave family and their archive, c.1180 to 1295. GRAHAM MOONEY is interested in the demographic 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 o n 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 Hon. Archivist at Fortnum & Mason and a part-time tutor at Birkbeck Co llege Extra-Mural Department. She is a member of the Advisory Council on Public Records, Council of the British Records Association; Council of the Kensington & Chelsea Community History Group, and Regular Readers' Group at the Public Record Office and is Vice-President of the Friends 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 Corresponding 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 middle classes in London, 1780-1840' (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' (Ph.D.)

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VI

CONFERENCE AND SEMINAR PAPERS

Heather Creaton:
'Signposts and milestones: ten years of bibliography and information work at the CMH', at the CMH conference, University of London, October 1998.

Jim Galloway:
'Metropolitan market networks 1300-1600: continuity or transformation?', Metropolitan History Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, February 1998;
'London and its economic hinterland in the later middle ages', at the CBA Mid-Anglia Conference on Medieval London, Museum of London, February 1998;
'Reconstructing London's hinterlands in the Middle Ages: the role of computer-assisted mapping', at the 'Reframing Metropolitan History: the impact of information technology' study day, IHR, June 1998;
'The trade in foodstuffs in town and country', at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 1998;
'Market networks: London, hinterland trade, and the economy of England', at the CMH conference, University of London, October 1998;
'One economy or many? Markets, regions and the impact of London 1300-1600', Economic History Seminar, London School of Economics, November 1998.

Perry Gauci:
'The City as Exchange: merchant culture 1660-1720', at the CMH Conference, University of London, October 1998.

Derek Keene:
'Medieval London: a broad view', at the Standing Conference on London Archaeology, 'Twenty-five years of London Archaeology', December 1997;
'The Dublin City Franchise Roll', Mansion House, Dublin, 22 April 1998;
'London's fabric: growth, modernization and control, late Middle Ages to 18th century', at conference on 'Capital cities: London and Dublin', Dublin 23 April 1998;
'Feeding medieval cities', Global History Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, February 1998;
'Metropolitan systems before 1800: England and Japan compared', World History seminar, University of Oxford, May 1998;
'Surveys, censuses and metropolitan history: London 1600-1871', Seminar on 'Cadastres et recensements dans les villes capitales (XVIIe-XXe siècle), École française de Rome, June 1998;
'Issues of water in medieval London, to 1300', International Conference on Urban History, Venice, September 1998;
'Ten years of metropolitan history', at the CMH conference, University of London, October 1998.

Samantha Letters:
'Nicholas de Seagrave and the period of reform and rebellion, 1258-67', at Reform and Rebellion conference, Cardiff, November 1997;
'Markets and Fairs in England and Wales', at the CMH Conference, University of London, October 1998.

Graham Mooney:
'Redistributing deaths: the institutional mortality problem in Victorian London', at the 'Reframing Metropolitan History: the impact of information technology' study day, IHR, June 1998;
'Life expectancy and causes of death: London, 1860-1910', at the British Society for Population Studies Annual Conference, Cambridge, September 1998;
'New patterns of mortality, 1860-1920', at the CMH Conference, October 1998;
'Epidemiologists and disease surveillance in Britain, 1890-1920', at the Wellcome Symposium on Biostatistics and Biomathematics, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, October 1998.

Graham Mooney and Andrea Tanner:
'Life and death in Laundryland: infant mortality and maternal employment, 1890-1914', at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population, February 1998;
'Infant mortality in Kensington in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries', Student seminar, Department of Social Statistics, University of Southampton, May 1998;
'Patterns of mortality in metropolitan hospitals, 1860-1885', at the Fourth International Conference on Urban History, Venice, September 1998.

Margaret Murphy:
'Food, fuel and the agrarian hinterland in the fourteenth century: approaches and achievements of the Feeding the City projects 1988-94', at the CMH Conference, October 1998.

Andrea Tanner:
'One In All In? The experience of family groups in workhouses 1834-1870, the case of the City of London', at Social History Society Annual Conference, University of Nottingham, January 1998;
'The middle classes know best - charity in Notting Dale', Kensington and Chelsea Community History Group, August 1998;
'Scarlatina and sewer smells, metropolitan public health records, 1855-1920', at London Archives Users Forum Annual Conference, Institute of Historical Research, November 1998.

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VII

PUBLICATIONS

Angel ALLOZA, El Impacto de la Corte en Castilla. Madrid y su territorio en la época Moderna (Madrid, Siglo XXI, 1998)

Martha CARLIN, London and Southwark Inventories 1316-1650: A handlist of Extents for Debts (CMH/IHR, 1997)

Heather CREATON, Sources for the History of London, 1939-45: a Guide and Bibliography. (Archives and the User series, 9. British Records Association, 1998).

Heather CREATON, 'Sources for London History: an Introductory Guide', P. Garside (ed), Capital Histories: a Bibliographical Study of London (Aldershot, 1998), pp.1-4.

Heather CREATON, 'Checklist of unpublished London diaries', London Topographical Society Newsletter, No. 47 (1998) p.8.

James A. GALLOWAY, 'Driven by Drink? Ale consumption and the agrarian economy of the London Region, c.1300-1400', in M. Carlin and J. Rosenthal (eds.), Food and Eating in Medieval Europe (Hambledon, 1998), pp. 87-100.

Perry GAUCI, '"For want of smooth language": Parliament as a point of contact in the Augustan Age', Parliamentary History, XVII (1998), 12-22.

Derek KEENE, 'Guilds in English towns, A.D. 1000-1500', in B.H. Ranson (ed.), Guild-hall and Government: an Exploration of Power, Control and Resistance in Britain and China vol. II, Power, Resistance and Authorities: Aspects of Guild Organisation in England (Hong Kong, David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Occasional Paper, 1997), pp. 28-45.

Derek KEENE, 'Reconstructing medieval London', Comparative Urban History Review, XVI no. 2 (Tokyo, 1997), 12-15.

Derek KEENE, 'Introduction' in M.V. Roberts (ed.), Archives and the Metropolis (Papers delivered at the 'Archives and Metropolis' Conference 11-13 July 1996) (Guildhall Library Publications in association with CMH, 1998) pp. 1-3.

Derek KEENE, 'Hors d'oeuvres: archaeology and the history of English towns', Journal of Urban History, XXIV (1998), 743-754.

Derek KEENE, 'Ein Haus in London: Von der Guildhall zum Stalhof' and 'Die deutsche Guildhall und ihre Umgebung' in J. Bracker, V. Henn and R. Postel ed., Die Hanse: Lebenswirklichkeit und Mythos (Lübeck, 1998), pp. 57-62, 20 1-10.

Derek KEENE, 'London in the early Middle Ages, 600-1300', in P.L. Garside (ed.), Capital Histories: a bibliographical study of London (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 13-26.

Graham MOONEY (with Simon Szreter), 'Urbanization, mortality, and the standard of living debate: new estimates of the expectation of life at birth in nineteenth-century British cities', Economic History Review, LI (1998), 84-112.

Margaret MURPHY, 'Feeding medieval cities: some historical approaches', in M. Carlin and J. Rosenthal (eds.), Food and Eating in Medieval Europe (Hambledon, 1998), pp. 117-131.

Andrea TANNER, 'The model of a metropolitan Medical Officer of Health. Thomas Orme Dudfield of Kensington', Journal of Medical Biography, VI (1998), 79-85.

.Andrea TANNER, 'A troublesome priest. A Victorian Workhouse Chaplain in the City of London', London Journal, XXIII (1998), 15-31.

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VIII

SEMINAR ON METROPOLITAN HISTORY

October 1997-March 1998
(Wednesdays, fortnightly, 5.30 pm, at the Institute of Historical Research)

Merchants, markets and city spaces

'London and the rise of New York city, 1756-1860', Clifton Hood (Hobart and William Smith Colleges)

'Property versus commerce: conflicting interests in the mid eighteenth-century port of London', Henry Roseveare (King's College London)

'The merchant, the City and the Nation: Reputation and the Royal Exchange, 1660-1720', Natasha Glaisyer (Darwin College, Cambridge)

'"Commons stealers", "land grabbers" and "Jerry builders": space, popular radicalism and the politics of public access in London, 1848-1880', Antony Taylor (Manchester/Warwick)

'Symbolic order and the urban pastoral: the creation of Frederic Law Olmsted's Central Park', Matthew Gandy (University College London)

'Urbanization, social change and crime: a comparative view of Paris, Madrid, London and Amsterdam in the eighteenth century', Angel Alloza (CMH/Autonomous University of Madrid)

'The market systems of London's hinterland, 1300-1600: continuity or transformation?', Jim Galloway (CMH)

'The rise and fall of London's retail markets, 1660-1837', Colin Smith (University College London)

'The urban periphery, myth and reality: Milan, 1955-95', John Foot (University College London)

'The Grecian Coffee House and political debate in London, 1688-1714', Jonathan Harris (University College London)


October 1998-December 1998

Commercial and imperial metropolises

'Florence: the growth of a metropolis, 1200-1300', Bill Day (London School of Economics)

'John Summerson as an historian of London', Michela Rosso (Turin)

'The development of a commercial metropolis: trade and banks in Shanghai, 1870-1914, Shizuya Nishimura (Hosei University)

'Fountainhead of consumerism: wholesale and retail distribution in London in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries', David Barnett (University of Nottingham)

'Harvey Nichols and Harrods: two shopping cultures', Alan Cox (Survey of London)

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IX

SOURCES OF FUNDING

Projects:
The Economic and Social Research Council
The Leverhulme Trust
The Wellcome Trust

The CMH Accounts for the year 1 August 1997-31 July 1998 are published as part of the Accounts of the Institute of Historical Research in the Institute's Annual Report.

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