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This paper examines the unusual opportunities for motoring leisure provided by the modernistic landscape of the Great West Road in the inter-war period. This suburban arterial road had become ribboned by new Americanized factories, which featured 'Californian' white elevations, floodlit at night. This modern roadscape, likened to the 'great white way of an exhibition' by John Betjeman, attracted leisure drivers who would cruise the new road, experiencing a sensation of displaced Americanization and modernity. Using David Nye's work on technological sublimity, this paper positions the Great West Road as a special space for driving as a new leisure experience, distancing this period from the exploration of the countryside that typified motoring in the previous decades. The paper uses material from motoring magazines, architectural sources and poetry to explain the nature of this sublimity through leisure driving. Not being California, the juxtaposition of wet British weather and this road could also provide a misty and mysterious driving experience. As the inter-war period drew to a close, some commentators saw this road as tawdry and vulgar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1908, London hosted the fourth Olympic Games. A centrepiece of the Olympics, still in a nascent form after their creation in 1896, was the marathon, a foot-race of approximately 40 km. The race was run from Windsor Castle to the Olympic Stadium at Shepherd's Bush in July 1908, and quickly became famous for its controversies, such as the judges' assistance that helped Dorando Pietri over the line, and the questionable amateur status of Canadian runner Tom Longboat. This paper will concentrate on the route of the race: on how it was planned by the Polytechnic Harriers, how it was managed on the day, how it contributed to the development of 'marathon fever' after the Olympics, and what it tells us about the growing suburban landscape of Edwardian London and its hinterlands. The paper will end with a survey of the route today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the development of road freight transport operations to, from, and within London, from medieval times to the present. Until the twentieth century, road transport was the dominant mode within London but was less important for goods moved between the rest of the country and the capital. However, since the mid-twentieth century, road transport has also dominated goods movements to and from London, mainly through technological developments in goods vehicle speed and size. Since the introduction of a Mayor of London in 2000, there has been much interest in the efficiency and sustainability of road freight transport measures at a London level. Analysis suggests that present day journeys from London generate approximately four times fewer vehicle miles per tonne lifted than in the 1830s and nine times fewer than in the 1690s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although we think of the Metropolitan Railway as the world's first Underground, its distinctiveness lay as much in its metropolitan character as in its subterranean setting. This paper examines early representations of the Metropolitan and District as more, or less, underground than contemporaries might have expected, especially in controversies over air quality and light; in discourses associated with controversies over smoking, speed and ventilation; and in the implications, real and imagined, of alternating open and closed, light and dark sections of line. With the substitution of electric for steam trains in the early twentieth century, attempts to make the Underground less underground by opening up additional ventilation shafts were replaced by a longer-term trend of making the Underground more underground, 'girdering' over cuttings and building over stations, with corresponding implications for how the Underground was experienced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If women in London in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries sought the perfect crime in which to participate, selecting receiving stolen goods provided excellent opportunities for profit and little chance of punishment. Low conviction rates, combined with the fact that no behaviour outside of gendered expectations was required in its commission, made dealing in stolen goods relatively easy for women in the metropolis. Although this particular offence has not been deeply analysed by historians of crime, its commission did alarm contemporaries, including members of the legal community and social commentators. This paper explores accusations against females in London for receiving, as well as the important roles that familial relationships and work played in their indictments for the crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses judicial records of the Sheriffs' Court of London and the royal Court of Common Pleas at Westminster to investigate whether the concept of a later medieval 'Golden Age' of female opportunity, as Caroline Barron has posited, is indicated by London's legal customs, as reflected in quantitative evidence of London women's court appearances and the types of cases in which they were litigants. It offers an introduction to economic and legal aspects of the 'Golden Age debate' and other quantitative investigations of women in later medieval courts; presents a comparative pre-plague to post-plague analysis of London women in the London Sheriffs' Court and royal Court of Common Pleas; and places trends regarding London women within a national context. It is concluded that women in London, as elsewhere in England, were less likely to act as litigants in the post-plague era, suggesting a general tightening up of patriarchal control over women's public activities that is inconsistent with a socially expressed 'Golden Age' of women in later medieval London. But, some evidence is presented that London women may nevertheless have enjoyed slightly enhanced economic opportunities in the fifteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London in the 1930s was an imperial city marked by overt and covert racial discrimination. However, within this context, some black Londoners attempted to challenge the racialization of London's urban space and to forge hospitable places in which they could dwell, dine, dance, and debate. This paper provides a detailed history of the involvement of the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP), and in particular its founder Dr Harold Moody, in a Colonial Office-funded project to establish a hostel for colonial students, particularly African and African diasporic students, in London. It asserts that prior scholarship on Aggrey House has neglected the agency of the LCP in this project, and contributes to broader attempts to highlight the role of Africans and African diasporic subjects in altering the urban geography of London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with 17 firework loanwords that were advertised in the London newspapers in the eighteenth century. In the preceding century, fireworks were largely restricted to warfare. In the early eighteenth century, they were fired locally for entertainment, but the practice of the public firework display really took off after the Green Park display of 1749. Firework displays then became a staple attraction in certain pleasure-gardens. The predominant expertise at the time was Italian, and Italian vocabulary filtered down to local fireworkers and into their advertisements. It is suggested that this technical vocabulary is unlikely to have been understood by many readers. It could easily have been translated, but the display-promoters chose to keep the foreign terms, presumably in order to align fireworks with other fashionable, non-essential commodities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London's Tottenham Court Road has long been associated with the furniture business, but had its heyday between 1850 and 1950. This paper considers the furniture business in this street through a mix of retail business history and urban geography. It will attempt to show why this particular 'furniture street' developed as it did. Considerations of the networks or clusters of businesses associated with furniture-making assist in the analysis. The nature of the furniture industry and trade in the immediate area and the history of particular stores in the street as exemplars of the processes are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of new workhouses lay at the centre of poor law reform after 1834. In London, however, such prominent displays of the new system were relatively rare. This article explores why that was the case, arguing that the absence of new workhouses was not necessarily a reflection of the reluctance of London parishes to adopt the reforms but rather because adequate provision already existed or other forms of indoor relief were considered to be more appropriate. Prior to 1834, several London parishes embarked on extensive enlargement or rebuilding of workhouses, notably in rapidly growing districts surrounding the City. During the 1820s, in the wake of financial stringencies, relief practices were tightened. Therefore, when the Poor Law Amendment Act came into force in 1834, many London parishes had already embarked on reforms that pre-dated those recommended by the legislation. In the following years, rather than build new workhouses to accommodate the growing number of paupers, London vestries chose to cooperate and build specialist institutions: district schools for children and county asylums for the lunatic poor. Economies of scale arising from the spatial proximity of numerous large parishes and unions made this approach feasible. The lack of new workhouses, therefore, should not be taken as evidence that London parishes refused to implement the spirit of the new poor law. Far from it: early construction and tighter relief regimes prior to 1834 and the continuing dominance of indoor relief throughout the period suggest that London led rather than followed developments elsewhere in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food markets were a vital element in the economic life of Britain over many centuries, and the arrival of railways into urban spaces during the nineteenth century provided unprecedented opportunities for them to expand the range and volume of good that they sold. This article examines the impact of railways on these markets during the decades following the arrival of trains into London through a case study of Borough Market. This important London fruit and vegetable market is examined through the prism of its financial records. Detailed analysis of the Market's income produces a timeline for growth, while the records for the goods ported through the Market help to explain the change. The case study also highlights developments in trading techniques at Borough Market that enabled it to prosper during the second half of the nineteenth century, despite limitations placed on its expansion created by the impact of railways on the urban physical environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the workings of ghosts in Second World War London, particularly what they reveal about the experience, representation, and management of life under fire. It brings together urban-historical, psychological, and cultural/commemorative approaches in tracing how ghosts were used to articulate the turbulence of bombardment. Arguing that ghosts represent a useful tool for bridging the gap between different readings of wartime London, the article pays attention to the universal dimensions of air raids and particular local variations. The article suggests that the workings of ghosts—and the psychology of believing more broadly—represent an important, if neglected, aspect of the civilian experience of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing history has been part of the mix of articles in The London Journal from its inception in 1975. The housing articles cover a wide period of London's history from early modern times to the contemporary city, and they track the major changes in historical method and sources that have become available over the last forty years. As has been noted by others, the contemporary has fallen out of the coverage, which is a pity since the housing debate in the capital has become more insistent, and it would seem that housing history has much to offer, not in the way of answers, but with strategies from the past for dealing with a perennial and intransigent problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a contribution to the fortieth anniversary celebrations of The London Journal, this article provides an overview of the twenty-seven articles which it has published about crime and criminal justice since its inception. While few articles were published in its early years, there has been a big increase in articles published in the last decade, pushing the Journal into the forefront of the historiography on these topics. A survey of the recurring themes in articles about crime, policing, justice, and punishment leads to the conclusion that what is distinctive about London crime is not its severity or frequency, but the depth of evidence the records of its prosecution provide about the distinctive features of metropolitan life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]