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This article uses a new method to gauge eighteenth-century crime. It counts the crimes committed against metropolitan London's justices noted in newspapers and in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers, and finds crime more prevalent than current historiography acknowledges. The article contests current claims that the manner in which newspapers noted crime constructed their readers' perception of crime, making their readers believe crime was much more horrific, and the judicial system much more just, than readers would otherwise have thought they were. The article also argues that some crimes were attacks on the powerful because they were powerful. [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]

The increasingly diverse character of London's multicultural landscape has shaped how migrants interact with(in) the different spaces of the city. This process entails both settled and incoming migrants' participation in place-making; a mutual imbrication that might promote the long-settled migrants' evocation of a lost terrain. This article unpacks that process by looking at the Latin American social football scene of South London, specifically a space known asla cancha(the pitch). This was founded by Chilean political refugees during the 1970s and it has incorporated Latin American ‘economic’ migrants and ‘local’ Britons through time. Starting from the evocation of a lost ‘golden age’ ofla cancha, the paper unpacks this space's contested, complex and changing nature. It presents diaspora space, community and belonging as lived processes. Through this depiction, the assumptions of homogeneous and isolated migrant communities are challenged, as are the diaspora's nostalgic claims that also emerge from them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

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]

In the mid-19th century, the migration of people into London was at its height. Studies of gross and net migration patterns from other regions demonstrate the importance of London as a goal destination, but until now the underlying structure of migration movements was difficult to access due to the volume of material involved. This paper exploits the recent indexing of the currently available censuses to identify the individual migration behaviour of young men from Devon, Norfolk and Sussex to London. Findings relating to the size and locality of source places, occupational backgrounds, kinship and to residential and occupational choice upon reaching London are presented for each county. The importance of information as a spur to migration is underlined and differing responses in terms of occupation are attributed to distance depreciation of such information. [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]

This paper is both (a) an exercise in historical recovery in that it details some of the events surrounding the founding of the City and Guilds of London Institute and describes the way in which the Institute set about the building and running of two of its colleges, the City and Guilds Technical College, Finsbury, and the Central Institution in South Kensington (new archival detail is added to what is already known of this history) and (b) an attempt to interpret the above material in terms of various forms of association within the City Corporation and the guilds. Collectively the City and the guilds made an effort to come to terms with a modernizing world through the means of providing scientific and technical education. The guilds wanted to remain important even though traditional apprenticeship was dying out. In joining in a new venture to provide technical education for young people it was necessary to maintain an order in which the City's presence was clear and apparent. This paper will show how such an order was achieved and, in so doing, it shows something more generally of the relationship of tradition and rhetoric to institution building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data collected by the New Survey of London Life and Labour between 1928 and 1932 is one of the most significant resources of detailed household information for the interwar period, with data extracted for almost 30,000 households, providing detailed information including birthplaces, hours of work, and wages. This article assesses the process of the original data collection, highlighting issues that mean users of the extracted data must proceed with a measure of caution. In particular, it demonstrates that one investigator employed by the survey, who provided information for around a fifth of households, appears to have regularly submitted generic and estimated information that problematizes the dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Housing quality is an important component of the standard of living, touching on aspects usually ignored in efforts to measure it, in part because housing quality itself is difficult to measure—especially over time. There are choices over inputs versus outputs for quality, and over objectively versus subjectively determined evaluations of it. Historians must also cope with today's versus yesteryear's beliefs about housing quality and standards. Descriptions of London's housing quality over the seventeenth century and changes in rents show that housing improved across income groups. Housing poverty apparently declined in percentage but grew in absolute numbers. Higher incomes, better-built housing, and processes of the housing market all contributed, including housing/household “filtering”—a unique process of the housing market whose London aspects others have reported but never placed in a coherent account. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores how infant school reform took hold in London’s schools from the 1890s to the 1930s through examination of the work of two Froebelian head teachers, Elizabeth Mary Shaw and Frances Emily Roe. In contrast to teacher-led rote-learning methods and rigid discipline they implemented play-based activities drawing on children’s interests and introduced visits for nature study and projects. The research draws on logbooks, published accounts, reports of HMIs, local authority inspectors and school managers, and witness evidence submitted by Shaw and Roe for government reports. The data suggest that their work reflects developments in the educational experimentation which marked the period and demonstrates women’s agency in challenging conventional conceptions of infant teaching and expanding conceptions of educational spaces. The article illuminates how reform was disseminated and shows that as a result of their success both women achieved high professional status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the 1676-1677 map of London, England produced by Scottish cartographer John Ogilby, printed and sold by his successor and step-grandson William Morgan. It focuses particularly on a July 20, 1675 letter written by T. Fisher of Lincoln's Inn, London to engraver and printmaker William Lodge in York, England which details Ogilby's original intentions for the decoration of the map on a grander scale than was eventually produced. The identity of T. Fisher as a lawyer is based on the seventeenth-century admission records of Lincoln's Inn, one of the four London-based legal study institutions, and is presumed to be Thomas Fisher of Dublin, Ireland.

The article discusses the policing of nightclubs in London, England, and what the author terms the nightclub campaigns during the interwar period. It examines the roles of London nightclub owner Kate Evelyn Nason Meyrick, former London Metropolitan Police sergeant George Goddard, and London police commissioner Sir William Thomas Francis Horwood in the London nightclub scene and law enforcement. It also discusses the campaign against nightclubs led by former British Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks. The article also discusses scholarship concerning the nightclub campaigns, legislation concerning the licensing of nightclubs, and Meyrick's incarceration.