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Caroline Playne (1857–1948) was a committed and influential pacifist and internationalist who published four idiosyncratic histories of the First World War in which she diagnosed the bellicosity of the peoples of Europe as a shared mental illness. Espousing many deeply conservative opinions, she frequently responded to modern society with heightened moral outrage. However, Playne was privately wholly absorbed in the charitable support of London's enemy aliens, including unmarried mothers and illegitimate children. Archival evidence of this work, along with much of the rest of her campaigning life, survives in fragments, but is suppressed from her published works and her papers. This article seeks to explore the motivations of what emerges as a sustained act of biographical erasure. The image ultimately presented is of a woman who secured a voice through the suppression not only of her sex, but also her limitless human compassion, and so arguably her very self. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

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]

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]

John Snow has become a legendary figure partly for his use of spatial data to support his once controversial theory that cholera is a water-borne disease. For his study of London south of the Thames, Snow used data compiled by William Farr for the Registrar General during the 1853-4 epidemic. Using a larger data set compiled by William Farr in 1868, we use geographical information system-based software ArcGIS to spatially illustrate the cholera mortality rate in London subdistricts during the Asiatic cholera epidemics of 1848-9, 1853-4, and 1866. We then map the waterfields of London's eight water companies allowing us to highlight the connection John Snow saw between the rate of cholera mortality within a subdistrict and which water company operated within that particular subdistrict. Our maps also show the connection between the rate of cholera mortality in each subdistrict and average subdistrict elevation, a variable which Farr initially believed was more significant than water source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A case study is presented on the role that the editor of the Notices to Correspondents section of the weekly newspaper "London Journal" played in concocting narratives for matrimonial advertisements printed in the London, England paper from 1850 through 1862. The role that editors played in acting as the narrative authority for matrimonials is discussed. An overview of "London Journal's" readership, including their responses to the editor's matchmaking services, is provided.

We consider Scottish landscape gardener J.C. Loudon’s already well-documented 1829 plan for a system of successive green belts around London. Our perspective will be that of transport planning, given his recommendations on street layout and public transport provision. Our contention is that Loudon’s design for the Metropolis would have been theoretically inoperative if it had not been for its transport network. Beside other forward-thinking aspects already demonstrated by researchers, Loudon’s plan is remarkable for setting out a design for an integrated Metropolis based on road planning and the then barely nascent technology of railways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘The football season of 1914–15 has opened under the shadow of the greatest and most momentous war in the history of the world’, wrote the editor ofThe Chelsea F.C. Chronicle, in the programme for the first match after war was declared. So far, the story of football in England during the First World War has been addressed only briefly in academic research. This article, however, presents the public debate about the abandonment of professional football from the cultural perspective — and through the war story of the Chelsea Football Club. I discuss the phenomena which I identified in the club's programme — the use of war-euphemism in the discourse about football, and the fight against the calls for the cessation of the league — and argue that that was the way in which the urban community of Chelsea fought against the changes that the Great War had brought to the home-front. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The impact of the First World War on London has long been unduly overshadowed by the war that came after. In fact, the years 1914–1918 proved transformative for the future direction of both London and the Londoners. The unprecedented employment prospects of the war years revolutionized the working lives and living standards of the London poor. The metropolis expanded to accommodate new industrial areas that formed the nucleus of London's suburban development in the interwar years. As part of that, the war ensured that the economic fortunes of West London would be tied to the aeroplane, quickly adapted for civilian uses once hostilities ceased. This wartime capital, which depended so heavily on women's labour to oil the machinery of government and of munitions manufacture, would never lose its dependence on women in the new industries that emerged from the economy of total war. And the experience of London's workers during the war began a tendency that altered for generations their political alignment; the Labour Party in London continues to reap the harvest sown during the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The centenary of the outbreak of the First World War has refocused the attention of historians not just on the processes that led to war but also on the multitude of ethnicities who participated in the conflict. This coverage reflects not just the ‘global turn’ in the historiography of the war but also an acknowledgement that the contribution of African, Caribbean and Asian servicemen has not received sufficient attention in previous studies. Organizers of official commemorations of the war have taken great care to make ceremonials more inclusive. Despite the renewed efforts of historians and politicians, the memory of the service of Black troops from former British colonies remains marginalized, in particular, those from Africa and the Caribbean. In this article, using mostly government archives, I argue that the origins of present day marginalization lie in the decisions made by politicians, military and colonial officials charged with the cultural remembrance and commemoration of African and Caribbean servicemen in the aftermath of the war. I will argue that, in the landscape of the symbolic centre of the former imperial metropole, officials deliberately constructed a memory of the war as a ‘white man's war’, fought with the assistance of loyal Asians, with the service of Africans and Caribbeans expressly excluded. This cultural construction of whiteness presents an obstacle in the present day to a full understanding of the extent of Black colonial participation in the war. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For colonial troops from the British Empire, the military mobilizations of the First World War created the opportunity to visit the imperial metropolis – London – leaving the war behind. This article explores the experience and encounters of New Zealand's soldiers in London during the First World War and the ambiguity of their identity and belonging in a city that could be positioned as ‘home’. Using diaries, letters, newspapers and oral testimonies, the article builds on the work of Felicity Barnes to question the extent to which these colonial troops could feel at ‘home’ in the ‘Big City’, inside and outside the familiar space, to explore colonialism's tensions in a global war. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The churchwardens’ accounts for the London parish, St. Mary-at-Hill, are extensive for the period 1420–1558 and provide a wealth of evidence for the cultural life of the community. As a result, the parish and its church have received much attention from scholars; the parish has provided a case study for social history projects and the church is well-known as a staging post in the career of the sixteenth-century musician Thomas Tallis and for its connections with the larger musical institutions of London. This article provides an overview of the history of the choir school at the church. It offers an explanation for the particular success of the school and for the first time suggests that an educational establishment continued in some form at the church into the 1550s. Finally, it identifies a manuscript source containing pedagogical material which seems to represent a repertoire for the school in the 1550s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Around one-third of Methodist Central Halls were located in Greater London. They catered for religious worship as well as providing community spaces in a programme of activities that drew on both sacred and secular references. Yet they are entirely neglected in the academic literature. Archway Central Hall is one of the few remaining examples of the Methodist Central Halls built throughout the capital in the early twentieth century that also remains in use as a place of worship. Drawing upon approaches to the study of buildings that emphasize the fluid networks that comprise them, as well as recent scholarship into geographies of religion, this article presents a detailed case study of its genesis and evolution. In doing so, the study contributes to this scholarship by setting the building within its wider context and considers how the structure and its users have adapted to changing social, cultural, and environmental circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historiography of early Anzac Day in Britain has focused on the spectacular marches of troops through London streets while neglecting the more personal forms of Anzac observance. This article explores the early history of Anzac Day graveside pilgrimage in Britain as an example of how the Empire's bereaved sought to cope with their grief in the immediate postwar years. The later decline of the pilgrimage movement was the result of the growing role of the state in caring for war graves and the shifting character of Anzac Day in Britain, which increasingly centred on London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By looking at sports facilities for non-professional players in England, this article explores early commercialization tendencies in sports that proceeded the process driven by the professionalization of sports in the eighteenth century. A growing demand for purpose-built sporting facilities gave rise to commercialized tennis courts, bowling alleys and greens in London as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century which mainly addressed upper class ‘gentlemen’. These facilities were not mere sports venues but created semi-public leisure venues where particularly men could meet outside their homes and enjoy sports, gambling, drinking and other entertainments together. They were also strongly embedded in a wider network of similar semi-public facilities such as alehouses, taverns and inns that offered multi-functional services. Taking the examples of London and Bath, the article explores the growth and organization of tennis courts, bowling alleys and greens on a local level, and how these were interlinked with other contemporary leisure and entertainment businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the interface between national and local levels of UK government, narratives of place are made to fit particular tropes of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ at multiculturalism. Thinking through ‘community cohesion’ policy in England between 2001 and 2010, this article shows how (reputations of) relative success at ‘living together with difference’ become a medium through which local government practitioners negotiate the space between national and local priorities, needs and ambitions, by examining how practitioners in English local authorities negotiate narratives of ‘failed multiculturalism’ associated with the places they work and, in doing so, how they re-inscribe or subvert local reputations and their ‘elsewheres’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This documentary article provides an edited transcription of a previously unpublished memoir, written by Gladys Lilian King, describing the work of the Women Police Service in London's Strand during the last years of the First World War. Stationed at the Beaver Hut, which was opened by the Canadian Young Men's Christian Association in 1918, King offers valuable insights on the supervision of Commonwealth soldiers by women police. The article also has an introduction containing biographical information about King's life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The practices of multimedia lightshows adopted by the British counterculture in London during the 1960s are related to aesthetic practices involving the use and manipulation of light in kinetic and op art. Both reflect a new sense of matter and energy that emerged from the adoption of post-Newtonian understandings of nature and the cosmos in the mid-twentieth century. The stereotypical cosmic mysticism with which the counterculture is associated was more techno-scientific than it is painted. The London underground press is a good source with which to elaborate this more nuanced reading. The counterculture’s cosmic speculation was as much earnest reflection on new vistas of nature and the universe as glib reflections on a Technicolor acid trip. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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.

Tapestry imports were said by contemporaries to total more than £5000 in 1559, and 6 years later they rose still higher. Whether as large wall hangings or small cuffs to embellish gloves, tapestry was both decorative and demonstrated wealth. A commodity in steady demand, much of it was imported. The differential duties outlined in the Books of Rates and payments recorded in the Port Books make it possible to sketch the outlines of the trade. Wills, letters and tax lists reveal merchants, mostly alien, who were able to supply 'off-the-peg' pieces or help with special commissions. Purchases might also be made directly from foreign ateliers, by use of personal friends travelling abroad or from the émigré tapestry weavers, whose presence in London has only recently been discovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the experiences of British Pakistanis living in West Yorkshire after the 7 July bombings in London in 2005. Based on qualitative interviews conducted in the Beeston and Hyde Park areas of Leeds and the nearby town of Dewsbury in 2006, the article considers a number of important themes that have emerged since the bombings, including: locality and segregation, views about the London bombers, experiences of racism and Islamophobia, citizenship and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]