BRST 173 : Yale in London, Spring Society and Culture in London from Stow to Hogarth c

Transcription

1 1 BRST 173 : Yale in London, Spring 2015 Keith Wrightson Society and Culture in London from Stow to Hogarth c Between 1560 and 1760 London grew from a modest city of c. 50,000 inhabitants to a metropolis of over 700,000 people - the largest city in Europe, the hub of an expanding British world, and one of the centers of world trade. This course will examine a range of aspects of this transformation, focusing upon the development of a distinctive urban society and culture. Selected readings from the secondary literature (a) will introduce each topic. Extracts from primary sources (b) will illustrate the types of source available for its exploration. In addition, the course will include original research exercises. The first paper (5 pp.) will be an exercise in the close analysis a body of primary source material specially transcribed for this course and provided in the course packet. The final paper (c.10 pp.) will be on a topic of the student s choice, decided in consultation, and making some use of primary sources. (Some possible themes for personal research topics are illustrated below, but I am open to suggestions). Assesment: Participation 15% First paper 25% - due session 6 Second paper 50% - due week 13 N.B. All the readings and primary source material for each session are in the course packet available from Tyco, Broadway. A. Syllabus Week 1 Jan 15 General introduction to the course [Afternoon visit St Paul s & walk up Fleet St./Strand weather permitting] Week 2 Jan 22 Swarming London : the growth and impact of the city (a) P. Clark ed. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Vol II (2000) Ch.10 Jeremy Boulton, "London " (pp ) Ch.19 Leonard Schwarz, "London " (pp ) R. Finlay & B. Shearer, "Population growth & urban expansion", in A.L. Beier &

2 2 Roger Finlay eds. The making of the metropolis. London (1986), (pp.37-57). (b) John Stow, A Survey of London (1597). Everyman edition, pp , 376, 483-6, John Graunt, Naturall & Politicall Observations on the Bills of Mortality (1662), pp. 3-10, Week 3 Jan 29 Birth and Death in London (a) Roger Finlay, Population and Metropolis. The demography of London, (1981), chs 6-7 (pp ) Paul Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor & Stuart England (1985) ch. 6 (pp ) Paul Slack, "Metropolitan government in crisis: the response to plague", in Beier & Finlay eds., Making of the metropolis, pp (b) Ralph Houlbrooke ed., English Family Life, An anthology from diaries (1989), pp , John Graunt, Naturall & Politicall Observations, pp , R. Latham ed., The Illustrated Pepys, (1979), pp , , Week 4 Feb 5 London s Households (a) Vivien Brodsky Elliott, "Single women in the London marriage market: age, status and Mobility", in R.B. Outhwaite ed. Marriage and Society (1981) pp Paul Seaver, Wallington's World. A Puritan artisan in 17 th century London (1985 ch.4 (pp ) Laura Gowing, "Language, power & the law: women's slander litigation in early modern London", in J.Kermode & G. Walker eds. Women, crime & the law in early modern England (1994) pp Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class. Business, society and family life in London, (1989) pp (b) Houlbrooke ed. English Family Life, pp , 34, 47-51, 72-8.

3 3 London Church Court Depositions: Meade vs Sorrell (1633) Week 5 Feb 12 London s Villages [First paper due end week 5] (a Jeremy Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society. A London suburb in the 17 th century (1987), chs (pp ). Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability. Social relations in Elizabethan London (1991) pp (b) London Church Court Depositions: White vs Person (1589) Graves vs Lee (1614) Wilkinson vs Wilkinson (1636/7) Badger vs Overy (1669) Week 6 Feb 19 Royal London (a) Penry Williams, "Court & Polity under Elizabeth I", in John Guy ed. The Tudor Monarchy (1997) pp R. M. Smuts, Public ceremony and royal charisma: the English royal entry in London, , in A.L. Beier, D. Cannadine, & J.M. Rosenheim eds., The First Modern Society (1989), pp J.F. Merritt, The Social World of Early Modern Westminster (2005) ch. 5, pp (b) The royall passage of her Maiesty from the Tower of London to her palace of Whitehall [originally This is the 1604 edition from EEBO] 29pp. Latham ed., The Illustrated Pepys, pp , 32-34, 37-41, , 201-2, The Diary of John Evelyn ed. G. de la Bedoyere (1995), pp [Afternoon visit to National Portrait Gallery 2pm]

4 4 Week 7 Feb 26 London Spaces (a) Roy Porter, London. A Social History (1994), pp V. Harding, City, capital and metropolis: the changing shape of seventeenthcentury London, in Merritt ed. Imagining Early Modern London, pp R. Shoemaker, Gendered spaces: patterns of mobility and perceptions of London s geography, , in Merritt ed., Imagining Early Modern London, pp (b) Latham ed. The Illustrated Pepys, pp (c) Display of Hogarth engravings which depict specific places. Week 8 Mar 5 London s Books and Readers (a) David Cressy, Literacy & the Social Order. Reading & writing in Tudor & Stuart England (1980) pp , and tables comparing London and rural areas on pp , 132-5, 144, 146. David Scott Kastan, Print, Literary Culture, and the Book Trade, Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature, ed. David Loewenstein and Janel Mueller (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), James Raven, The Business of Books. Booksellers & the English Book Trade (2007), ch. 4, pp Helen Berry, An early coffee-house periodical & its readers, London Journal, 25 (2000), pp (b) E. Mackie ed. The Commerce of Everyday Life. Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator (1998), pp Example of an early newspaper: Evening Post July 1724 Week 9 Mar 12 Polite London: The Town (a) Roy Porter, London. A Social History (1994) pp L. Klein, The Polite Town. Shifting possibilities of urbanness,

5 5 In T. Hitchcock and H. Shore eds., The Streets of London. From the Great Fire To the Great Stnk (2003), pp Susan E. Whyman, Sociability & Power. The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys (1999) chs. 3-4 (pp ) (b) E. Mackie ed. The Commerce of Everyday Life. Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator (1998), pp , , , , , Boswell s London Journal, , ed. F.A. Pottle (1950), pp Week 10 Yale-in-London Spring Break: No Classes Week 11 Mar 26 Respectable London: the 'middle sort of people' (a) Peter Earle, "The Middling Sort in London", in J. Barry and C. Brooks eds., The Middling Sort of People. Culture, society & politics in England, (1994) pp Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour & Material Culture in Britain, pp and tables comparing London with other towns and rural areas, pp. 76 and 88. Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation (1998), ch. 6 The Cultural Currency Of Credit and the Construction of Reputation, pp (b) E. Mackie ed. The Commerce of Everyday Life. Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator (1998), pp , 196-9, 203-6, 206-9, , 220-2, , Week 12 Apr 2 London s Poor (a) T. Hitchcock, Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London (2005) pp J. Boulton, It is extreme necessity.. : survival strategies of pauper households in London s West End, International Review of Social History, 45 (2000), pp

6 6 J. Boulton, Going on the Parish: the Parish Pension and its meaning in the London suburbs, , in T. Hitchcock et.al., Chronicling Poverty (1998), pp (b) Chelsea Settlement and Bastardy Examinations, , ed. T. Hitchcock & J. Black, London Record Society vol. 33 (1999). Cases # 8, 12, 14, 15, 33, 40, 41, 42, 49 (see also linked 65, 82, 230, 243), 57, 85 (see also 244), 92, 98, 101, 107, 109, 124, 133, 163, 167, 193 (see also 196, 315), 195 (see also 266), 224, 238, 242, 269, 332, , 372, 396, 414. [Second paper due week 13] Week 13 Apr 9 Sex - and Drink - and the City (a) P. Griffiths, The structure of prostitution in Elizabethan London, Continuity & Change, 8 (1993), pp F. Dabhoiwala, The pattern of sexual immorality in 17 th & 18 th century London, in M. Jenner & P. Griffiths eds., Londinopolis (2000) pp P. Clark, The Mother Gin controversy in early eighteenth-century England, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 38 (1988) pp (b) E. Mackie ed. The Commerce of Everyday Life. Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator (1998), pp Latham ed. The Illustrated Pepys, pp. 54, 69, 69-70, 72, 75-6, 88, 92, , 103-4, 105, 106-7, 183. And for the Deb Willett affair, see , 245, , Week 14 Apr 16 London's Underworlds (a) J.M. Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, (2001) Ch 1 'The Crime Problem' pp (b) See suggested research exercises. I would like everyone to find something in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey to contribute to our discussion of crime. Further reading:

7 7 The secondary literature on London is vast. For a comprehensive bibliography of both the historiography and printed primary sources, searchable by topic and keyword, see London s Past Online: Online resources: In preparing for the second paper, students can also use a number of primary sources available on line: A London Provisioner s Chronicle, by Henry Machyn. Searchable. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Full text and supplementary material. Searchable. John Strype s Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster (1720). Searchable, with original maps etc. The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, : Full records of cases heard at The Old Bailey, the central criminal court of London: fully searchable on-line at This remarkable resource also contains several contemporary maps of London and the Ordinary of Newgate prison s brief biographies of executed criminals. See also the remarkable new site: which has combined the criminal justice records of the Old Bailey with records of poor relief and medical provision, and makes possible the reconstruction of brief biographies of ordinary Londoners between 1690 and Also worth a visit is the new Pauper Biographies Project, which similarly combines parish records (principally those Of St Martin in the Fields parish) to recreate the life histories of many individuals who received poor relief: Early English Books Online [EEBO]: contains full page images of every surviving book published in England (mostly in London) during this period. Searchable by name and title keywords. Access via Yale Library Home page click on Find Databases by Title, then on E. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online and Eighteenth-Century Journals: a wealth of material on the latter part of the period. Access as with EEBO. Wenceslaus Hollar s views & maps of London (and much more) online:

8 8 Take a flight through 17 th -century London at: \ B. Suggested research exercises These are suggestions. I have tried some of them and know that they yield interesting results. Others are more experimental. You may of course have ideas of your own just consult with me. All these suggestions are based on readily accessible material. Royal London Search Machyn or Pepys for Queen or King and test how conscious these Londoners were of the doings or royalty. Spaces/Places Use the Place and Map Search of the Proceedings of the Old Bailey to research the events recorded as taking place in a particular area. (The Rocque Map is particularly good for this). You can choose a parish known to you from the drop-down list (e.g. St Martin s in the Fields) and from there move in closer to the specific locations offered (e.g. 96 are offered within St Martin s) and then to the recorded events in that location (e.g. there are 95 references to events in Drury Lane between 1681 and 1760). Alternatively you can go immediately to a street, or group of streets via a known street name. Often the events described will reveal a good deal about the character of an area. In the more detailed cases a good deal of information is provided beyond the details of the actual crime. Strype s Survey also provides useful descriptions of particular areas. Use a Keyword Search for a particular kind of space or place e.g. coffee house, market, playhouse, conduit, alley. You can also use phrases like at the door or in the street. (When there are simply too many results you can limit by date). Similar searches for particular places (e.g. Fleet Street) or particular keywords can be done using the online Pepys Diary. Use the full version of Boswell s London Journal and the maps provided in Proceedings of the Old Bailey to reconstruct Boswell s movements around the city for a week or month. Books/Print/Reading

9 9 Choose a book from the Short Title Catalogue of Printed Books (a good way of doing this randomly is to use your birth date as your number. Use EEBO to follow up: identify the author, printer and bookseller (from the details given on title pages) and then search EEBO by the name to reconstruct the history of that person s activities the books produced, who he worked with, addresses from which he operated at different times, known partnerships etc. Quite often you can follow up further by using the appendix to the third volume of the Short Title Catalogue of Printed Books, or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (available online) both of which contains brief biographical information on a fair number of significant printers and booksellers. Use Proceedings of the Old Bailey or the online Pepys Diary to do a keyword or phrase search for e.g. bookseller, book, pamphlet, newspaper, reading. Use one or more of the Newspapers in Eighteenth-century Journals to see what books were advertised for sale in a particular period and whether any significant pattern emerges. Polite society Search in the databases using such keywords and phrases as ladies, gentleman, person of quality, coach. Or try using significant locations in the West End. Use the full versions of the diaries of Samuel Pepys or James Boswell to analyze e,g, such things as their patterns of association; recorded conversations; entertaining; social anxieties The middle sort Try a keyword search for such terms as master, merchant [or any other appropriate profession], credit, reputation, apprentice. Consumption/material culture Try a keyword search for shop, shopping, shoplifting, or for any particular type of goods (especially the significant new goods of the period). Examine the domestic interiors or clothing depicted in conversation pieces or portraits: Paul Mellon Centre Library. The Poor

10 10 The Chelsea settlement and Bastardy examinations provided in the course packet lend themselves to many forms of analysis of those petitioning for relief. Explore the social characteristics of the poor. Laboring people and street people frequently figure in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, either accused of crimes or as witnesses, and much incidental information emerges to illuminate the world of the poor. Try keywords like poor, pauper, vagrant, beggar, pawn etc. Compare the lives of a sample of poor people recorded in London Lives or Pauper Biography websites. Sex and Drink The Old Bailey did not police minor offences like prostitution or drunkenness (they were dealt with by lesser courts). However, some sexual offences were tried there notably rape and sodomy (on the latter, see the website guide to researching homosexuality). More generally, the sex and drink trades make their appearance incidentally, but often in an illuminating manner. Use keywords like alehouse, gin shop, prostitute, Bridewell, nightwalker, or woman of the town. As you get familiar with the language of the times, others may occur to you, e.g. pint of wine yields 492 references to ask for, or offer, a pint of wine was a common pick up line. London low life spawned a picaresque and voyeuristic literature: e.g. John Dunton s The Night Walker, or evening rambles in search after lewd women (1696). You could research one or more such publications. Crime The Proceedings of the Old Bailey is the obvious source for all aspects of crime, and it can be used in many ways: e.g. choose any crime from the list on the website and look at the cases. Often there are so many that you will need to limit yourself to a particular decade or to a particular area. (For instance there are 7,348 cases of pick-pocketing). You might want to choose a crime with particular associations which give it additional interest e.g. pick-pocketing associated with street children and women; shoplifting associated with women. choose a particular punishment from the lists e.g. transportation to the colonies; whipping; the pillory; execution, and explore its frequency, use, and sociology. the Ordinary s Account published the confessions and brief biographies of executed persons as a kind of moral lesson. This can be explored in many ways: e.g. how many were apprentices gone to the bad like Tom Idle in Hogarth s famous engraving series

11 11 Industry and Idleness? Or how far did London s many seamen figure in crime? Or what about particular ethnic groups French, Irish, Dutch etc (and see the website guide to researching other sub-communities in London) You can construct your own criminal biographies to some extent. A good key phrase to follow is old offender, the contemporary term for a recidivist. The disposal of stolen goods reveals a lot about the black economy see the keyword pawned. Alternatively, search Machyn s chronicle or Pepys for a keyword like hanged, or whipped, or pillory and examine the frequency of public punishment in Tudor London.