London County Research Articles

'The Lights of the Electric Octopus Have Been Switched Off': Visual and Political Culture in Edwardian London.

This article reconstructs the visual culture of politics in Edwardian London through a study of the 1907 London County Council election. It moves beyond the memorable account given in Graham Wallas's Human Nature in Politics to examine the actors, especially associations and newspapers, that participated in the election. Drawing upon newspapers, election addresses, cartoon, leaflets, and posters, the article argues that Edwardian London was a prime site in the application of new media for political communication. It shows, however, that new modes of communication could co-exist with, and intensify, established forms of public politics. It reveals a highly knowing visual culture of politics through which issues of authenticity and identity were contested, and recasts understanding of a controversial and critical election.

A Musician and Teacher in Nineteenth-Century New England: Irving Emerson, 1843–1903

Book Review| October 01 2017 A Musician and Teacher in Nineteenth-Century New England: Irving Emerson, 1843–1903 A Musician and Teacher in Nineteenth-Century New England: Irving Emerson, 1843–1903. By Therese Volk Tuohey. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. 121 pp. ISBN 978-1-4985-0040-1 (hardcover $75.00). Rick E. Spencer Rick E. Spencer New London County Historical Society Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Connecticut History Review (2017) 56 (2): 224–226. https://doi.org/10.5406/connhistrevi.56.2.0224 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Rick E. Spencer; A Musician and Teacher in Nineteenth-Century New England: Irving Emerson, 1843–1903. Connecticut History Review 1 January 2017; 56 (2): 224–226. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/connhistrevi.56.2.0224 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressConnecticut History Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women's Work in the Civil Service and London County Council. By Helen Glew. Manchester University Press. 2016. xv + 265pp. £70.00.

HistoryVolume 102, Issue 351 p. 523-525 Reviews and Short Notices Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women's Work in the Civil Service and London County Council. By Helen Glew. Manchester University Press. 2016. xv + 265pp. £70.00. MARK J. CROWLEY, MARK J. CROWLEY Wuhan UniversitySearch for more papers by this author MARK J. CROWLEY, MARK J. CROWLEY Wuhan UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 June 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.12448Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume102, Issue351July 2017Pages 523-525 RelatedInformation

Municipalization of Memorials: Progressive Politics and the Commemoration Schemes of the London County Council, 1889–1907

The London County Council played a key role in celebrating the historical inheritance of the metropolis under the Progressive leadership between 1889 and 1907. It notably invested in commemoration schemes and claimed control of historic monuments by the agency of local government. Such institutional efforts should be situated in the context of metropolitan politics where, confronted by the Conservative claim for municipal devolution, Progressive intellectuals such as George Laurence Gomme drew upon historical and topographical sources in order to defend their collectivist vision of community and government and give grounds for the progress of the local institution and the urban fabric of London.

The laboratory and the asylum: Francis Walker Mott and the pathological laboratory at London County Council Lunatic Asylum, Claybury, Essex (1895-1916).

London County Council's pathological laboratory in the LCC asylum at Claybury, Essex, was established in 1895 to study the pathology of mental illness. Historians of psychiatry have understood the Claybury laboratory as a predecessor of the Maudsley Hospital in London: not only was this laboratory closed when the Maudsley was opened in 1916, but its director, Frederick Walker Mott, a champion of the 'German' model in psychiatry, was instrumental in the establishment of this institution. Yet, as I argue in this essay, for all the continuities with the Maudsley, the Claybury laboratory should not be seen solely as its predecessor - or as a British answer to continental laboratories such as Theodor Meynert's in Vienna. Rather, as I show using the examples of general paralysis of the insane and 'asylum colitis', the Claybury laboratory is best understood as an attempt to prevent mental illness using a microbiological model.

The London County Council's Approach to Town Planning: 1909–1945

The problems and issues which have arisen in respect of the present planning system in England have led to calls for a fundamental review of its scope, objectives and outcomes. In view of the growing importance of planning history this article reviews the LCC's approach to town planning between 1909 and 1945. Doubts were expressed about the relevance of town planning schemes bearing in mind that most of the land in the county lay outside the scope of the Housing, Town Planning, etc., Act, 1909. It was not until 1924 that the Council approved the preparation of town planning scheme (TPS) No. 1 (Streatham) and TPS No. 2 (South-East). By 1934 it had approved the preparation of a further sixteen planning schemes which covered some 24,000 acres of the 76,000 acres of the county. Following the election of the Labour Party the Council authorised the preparation of TPS No. 19 (County of London) which covered a further 51,507 acres and brought the whole of the county under interim planning control. It was approved by the Minister in 1935 following a three week public inquiry. These schemes ensured that new buildings observed reasonable standards of light, air and density which most landowners accepted. In 1941 Lord Reith, the Minister of Works and Buildings, encouraged the Council to prepare a plan for the future physical development of the county. The Council authorised the preparation of a plan by Professor Patrick Abercrombie and Mr John Henry Forshaw, the Council's architect. The County of London Plan 1943 was formally approved by the Council in 1945 and underpinned the 1951 Development Plan prepared by the Council in accordance with the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947.

London: Water and the Making of the Modern City by John Broich

Reviewed by: London: Water and the Making of the Modern City by John Broich Leslie Tomory (bio) London: Water and the Making of the Modern City. By John Broich. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013. Pp. 232. $32. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, private water companies supplied most cities in Britain. Municipal provision was rare. This would change profoundly, however, as municipalities acquired private companies in almost all major cities throughout the country. By 1900, urban water supply was largely in public hands. The glaring exception to this pattern was the capital city, London. It is this anomaly that John Broich sets out to explain. From the outset he makes clear that the issue was fundamentally one of politics, and so poses the question in a novel way: how did London water supply become so politically charged that rival factions battled over the nature of its governance for years? The first chapter describes how water supply became a symbol and a crucial component of the modernization of British cities. The reform of municipal governance that began in the 1830s eliminated the old local corporations and replaced them with elected town councils, with the exception of London. At the same time, a sense of crisis was dawning as cholera epidemics swept the country and Edwin Chadwick and his fellow reformers pressed for public action to improve the environmental health of towns. Reformers repeatedly condemned for-profit water companies for their failure to provide adequate clean water, and a royal commission in the 1840s recommended that towns seize control of water supply. Over the next couple of decades, the momentum for municipal water supply grew. Governments generally eschewed regulation in favor of public ownership because water supply became a centerpiece of the municipal reform movement. It served as an example of “moral government” in transforming the urban environment. Once in control, towns set about increasing supply. Tory politicians often opposed these schemes largely by complaining of their enormous costs. [End Page 264] London faced the same pressure for the reform as other cities. Indeed, the reform movement often was centered in London. It was, however, different in many ways. Many parliamentary acts did not apply to the metropolis as local political pressure created exceptions, often filled by special London-only laws. In addition, many new water companies had been founded after 1800, leading to a period of intense competition and allowing some to argue that commercial self-interest would ensure the best supply. The movement for “moral government,” however, led to the creation of the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) in 1855 to deal with the more pressing sewerage problem that had turned the Thames into a vast open gutter. Lacking the power and legitimacy of a town council, the MBW failed to move on to water supply. When the London County Council (LCC) replaced the MBW in 1889, it turned to the goal of municipalizing water supply with vigor. As the council was filled with members of the Fabian socialist movement, water supply was to be a vehicle for launching a revolution in local government toward a communitarian society, too long delayed by the central government’s unwillingness to reform London’s political structures. The Fabians’ desires soon collided with the Parliament’s, as it was then controlled by the Tories. Proposals to draw water from Welsh valleys were repeatedly defeated. Drought in the 1890s finally prompted the long-sought change to municipal ownership, but the national Conservatives parried the LCC’s moves by creating supra-municipal regional boards to run water, gas, and other services, diluting the LCC voting power by giving the less politically radical surrounding areas and towns disproportionate voting rights. Given its relative brevity and the chronological focus, this book is really the history of the LCC’s struggle with Parliament from the 1880s to the creation of the Metropolitan Water Board in 1903. For this period, the book is an effective history. Its date range, however, means that some of its claims about the deficiencies of private water companies are overstated. They certainly had very serious failures in the early nineteenth century, but Broich too readily accepts contemporary complaints about the companies. Some...

Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County Council, 1900–55. By Helen Glew (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2016) 265 pp. $105.00

<i>Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County Council, 1900–55</i>. By Helen Glew (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2016) 265 pp. $105.00

Users key locations in online social networks: identification and applications

Ubiquitous Internet connectivity enables users to update their Online Social Network profile from any location and at any point in time. These, often geo-tagged, data can be used to provide valuable information to closely located users, both in real time and in aggregated form. However, despite the fact that users publish geo-tagged information, only a small number implicitly reports their base location in their Online Social Network profile. In this paper, we present a simple yet effective methodology for identifying a user’s Key locations, namely her Home and Work places. We evaluate our methodology with Twitter datasets collected from the country of Netherlands, city of London and Los Angeles county. Furthermore, we combine Twitter and LinkedIn information to construct a Work location dataset and evaluate our methodology. Results show that our proposed methodology not only outperforms state-of-the-art methods by at least 30 % in terms of accuracy, but also cuts the detection radius at least at half the distance from other methods. To illustrate the applicability of our methodology and motivate further research in location-based social network analysis, we provide an initial evaluation of three such approaches, namely (1) Twitter user mobility patterns, (2) Ego network formulation, and (3) Key location tweet sentiment analysis.

'Smashed by the National Health'? A Closer Look at the Demise of the Pioneer Health Centre, Peckham.

The Pioneer Health Centre, based in South London before and after the Second World War, remains a source of interest for advocates of a positive approach to health promotion in contrast with the treatment of those already ill. Its closure in 1950 for lack of funds has been blamed on the then recently established National Health Service, but this article argues that such an explanation is over-simplified and ignores a number of other factors. The Centre had struggled financially during the 1930s and tried to gain support from the Medical Research Council. The Council appeared interested in the Centre before the war, but was less sympathetic in the 1940s. Around the time of its closure and afterwards, the Centre was also involved in negotiations with London County Council; these failed because the Centre’s directors would not accept the changes which the Council would have needed to make. Unpublished documents reveal that the Centre’s directors were uncompromising and that their approach to the situation antagonised their colleagues. Changes in medical science also worked against the Centre. The success of sulphonamide drugs appeared to render preventive medicine less significant, while the development of statistical techniques cast doubt on the Centre’s experimental methods. The Centre was at the heart of the nascent organic farming movement, which opposed the rapid growth of chemical cultivation. But what might be termed ‘chemical triumphalism’ was on the march in both medicine and agriculture, and the Centre was out of tune with the mood of the times.

Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890–1914 by Louise Hide (review)

Reviewed by: Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890–1914 by Louise Hide David Wright Louise Hide. Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890–1914. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. xii + 240 pp. Ill. $95.00 (978-1-137-32142-8). Thirty years ago, Anne Digby and Nancy Tomes published, within months of each other, two landmark studies of lunatic asylums in the Anglo-American world. Their detailed examinations of the Quaker York Retreat and the Pennsylvania Asylum, respectively, marked a turning point in our understanding of the history of the Victorian mental hospital. They examined these controversial institutions from multiple perspectives, analyzing medical treatment, patient populations, asylum attendants, financing, architecture, and the relationship between the asylum and surrounding community. In doing so, they nuanced these often-caricatured institutions, revealing the multidimensionality, ambiguities, and contradictions of asylum life. Those of us who self-identify as experts on the history of the asylum have shelves of subsequent case studies by those who sought to replicate their impressive scholarly achievement. Louise Hide, in her recent publication on two London County Council asylums—those of Bexley and Claybury—rightly pays tribute to Tomes and Digby in the introduction to Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890–1914. Hide analyzes these institutions over a quarter of a century, with a particular interest in the social history of the asylum. After a brief survey of the rise of the asylum system in England and Wales, the book explores the roles and responsibilities of asylum medical officers, the life and labor of attendants and nurses, followed by three chapters on various aspects of asylum life, including the evolution of moral treatment, violence, sexuality, and leisure, as well as the attempts to replicate domesticity within these massive institutions. Unsurprisingly, given the title, gender and class loom large in the theoretical approach. One might suspect that yet another case study of a late Victorian lunatic asylum would be an exercise in what economists refer to as “diminishing marginal utility.” And indeed the chapters on the history of English lunatic asylum system, the survey of patient characteristics, and asylum nurses and attendants, though competently constructed, yield little that is not already captured in other books on the subject. However, this book should not be dismissed as just another asylum case study. Hide reveals unexpected findings in her investigation of the lives of the asylum medical officers, particularly the precarious position of young medical officers who had to spend years in personal and professional (and often geographical) isolation, waiting for a plum position as medical superintendent. This created an unusual social situation, where institutional rules (and social convention) prevented these young men from being married, relegating them to a strange social-sexual limbo. They toiled endless days in what one contemporary vividly referred to as the “deadly dulness [sic]” of asylum life, waiting a good part of their adulthood for the most senior position (p. 55). Due to the context of the multiple London County Council asylums (rather than simply one county institution), Hide is able to illuminate effectively the occupation mobility (or lack thereof) of the group of asylum medical officers at a formative time in the development of institutional psychiatry. In addition, she [End Page 166] also casts light on the lesser known phenomenon of female medical assistants in turn-of-the-century mental institutions, many of whom, strongly discouraged from moving up the ranks toward a superintendent’s position, moved on to charitable or missionary work overseas. In this way, the book contributes a novel perspective to the social dimensions of a medical institution whose appeal to historians of medicine never seems to diminish. David Wright McGill University Copyright © 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press

Past Management of Energy Demand: Promotion and Adoption of Electric Heating in Britain 1945-1964

Abstract Changes in energy use have been a key part of many dramatic social, economic and environmental changes during the twentieth century and before, making energy interesting to environmental historians. Today, policy makers seek reductions in energy use and carbon emissions to mitigate climate change through demand management policies that attempt to reduce usage or shift it in time away from peak demand. To understand the impact of such policies it is necessary to understand both how they were promoted and received. This article discusses electric heating in early post-war Britain, which was seen as a particularly problematic energy use, as electric fires were used at peak times. The Electricity Development Association (EDA) tried simultaneously to reduce undesirable peak demand while encouraging increased demand more generally. In the late 1940s it advertised against peak use of electric fires, whereas in the 1950s and 1960s it instead concentrated on promoting off-peak heating appliances, first under-floor heating and then block storage heaters. I will analyse how the London County Council and its tenants adopted and adapted electric underfloor heating, illustrating the complicated way demand is made and unmade. The paper concludes that, while demand management has been attempted by the electricity industry since well before the 1970s, these attempts only had a limited effect on the overall trend towards increasing demand, in part to do with how these promotions were adopted.

Using GPS and activity tracking to reveal the influence of adolescents' food environment exposure on junk food purchasing.

This study examines the influence of adolescents' exposure to unhealthy food outlets on junk food purchasing during trips between home and school, with particular attention to how exposure and purchasing differ according to child's biological sex, mode of transportation, and direction to or from school. Between 2010 and 2013, students (n = 654) aged 9-13 years from 25 schools in London and Middlesex County, ON, completed a socio-demographic survey and an activity diary (to identify food purchases), and were observed via a global positioning system for 2 weeks (to track routes for trips to/from school). Spatial data on routes and purchase data were integrated with a validated food outlet database in a geographic information system, and exposure was measured as the minutes a child spent within 50 m of an unhealthy food outlet (i.e., fast food restaurants, variety stores). For trips involving junk food exposure (n = 4588), multilevel logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between exposure and purchasing. Multilevel analyses indicated that adolescents' duration of exposure to unhealthy food outlets between home and school had a significant effect on the likelihood of junk food purchasing. This relationship remained significant when the data were stratified by sex (female/male), trip direction (to/from school) and travel mode (active/car), with the exception of adolescents who travelled by bus. Policies and programs that mitigate the concentration of unhealthy food outlets close to schools are critical for encouraging healthy eating behaviours among children and reducing diet-related health issues such as obesity.

Whose River? London and the Thames Estuary, 1960–2014

This article investigates London's relationship with its neighbours downstream in the lower Thames estuary since 1960 as a problem of governance. It considers in detail tensions and rivalries amongst London-based authorities controlling pollution and waste transfer — especially the Port of London Authority, London County Council and Greater London Council — and authorities and civil society groups in the lower estuary during the 1960s and 1970s. In the light of connections between the river's management and its dominant functions at the start of this period (the port and sewerage), it explores changing forms of governance and wider political debates during three phases: an era of function-led management and environmental degradation of the tidal Thames up to the 1960s; political and environmental conflicts in the 1970s over metropolitan attempts to expand into riverside areas downstream; reform of river and water governance since the 1970s and 1980s with the emergence of river-basin management, privatization and EU regulatory environmentalism.

All of London's a stage: the 1943 County of London Plan Exhibition

ABSTRACT:The post-war reconstruction era was marked by numerous planning exhibitions which provide a window on the contemporary nature of communication and consultation in planning practice. The 1943 Exhibition of the County of London Plan prepared by J.H. Forshaw and Patrick Abercrombie was a major event with the king and queen making a high-profile visit. This article describes the making of the exhibition, considers its content, design and historical significance and reflects on its importance as a high water mark in the culture of twentieth-century town planning promotion generally and exhibition culture specifically. Archival research reveals how the London County Council (LCC) negotiated for resources from the central government and the local boroughs in hosting and organizing the event and how crucial these negotiations were in its eventual staging, marketing and impact.

What is the proper measure of the expenses of making good under Section 7(2) of the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996?

This short paper considers the judgment of Her Honour Judge Taylor in the Central London County Court on 11th February, 2014 in the case of Jack Breuer v Alba Leccacorvi [2014] PLSCS159. The learned judge concluded that compensation under s.11(8) of the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996 (ie, expenses paid in lieu of the carrying out of work to make good damage) were payable under ordinary common law principles on the basis of diminution in value. This paper challenges that judgment. It argues that the particular wording of s.11(8), which refers to ‘the expenses of such making good’, clearly indicates that compensation is payable on the basis of the cost of rectification. Earlier case law has made it clear that common law remedies are supplanted by the statutory regime of the Act.

The streets for the people: London's street markets 1850–1939

ABSTRACTThis article analyses London's street markets in the years between 1850 and 1939. It shows how this was a period of significant growth for street markets, with both steeply increasing numbers of markets and a steady increase in the number of stalls overall. These markets were informal and unauthorized for much of the period under discussion; the administrative/local government context was complex, and competing authorities (the City of London, London County Council, metropolitan boroughs and national government) hesitated in regulating the organic growth of street market trading, while also recognizing the contribution it made to bringing cheap food and commodities to the population of London. It will be argued that the street market, far from being merely the survival of a primitive form of retail, flourished in response to modernity in London. It should be analysed alongside other developing forms of retail, and considered for its contribution to the culture and material culture of the city.

PWE-348 Is it reasonable to investigate all patients presenting with rectal bleeding with flexible sigmoidoscopy alone?: Abstract PWE-348 Table 1

<h3>Introduction</h3> NICE guidelines recommend that patients with rectal bleeding at risk of cancer should be referred for further investigation.¹The choice of investigation is at the discretion of the clinician. A retrospective study of patients who underwent curative resection of proximal colorectal malignancy reported a 3% chance of missing right-sided cancers if flexible sigmoidoscopy alone is performed.²The aim of our study was to evaluate the incidence of right-sided malignancy in patients undergoing colonoscopy for rectal bleeding, to stratify this risk by age, and to compare these rates in 2 different patient populations. <h3>Method</h3> The endoscopy databases at St George’s Hospital, London (SGH) and Royal Surrey County Hospital (RSCH) were interrogated to identify all colonoscopies performed for rectal bleeding. Data were available over 32 (SGH) and 26 (RSCH) years. Results were stratified according to age and location of pathology, and differences between the 2 populations were analysed using Z-test. <h3>Results</h3> A total of 10482 colonoscopies were performed for rectal bleeding. 849 (8.1%) identified lesions suspicious for cancer. Of all suspected cancers, 94 (11.2%) were right-sided. The overall incidence of right-sided cancer was 0.9%. Overall incidence of right-sided cancer found at endoscopy in patients investigated for rectal bleeding in both units and stratified by age: Sub-analysis of the SGH data revealed that 54.1% of patients with right-sided lesions would have been found to have an indication to undertake completion colonoscopy had a flexible sigmoidoscopy been undertaken in the first instance. <h3>Conclusion</h3> These data provide an estimate of the age-specific risk of right-sided CRC in patients presenting with rectal bleeding. No significant difference regarding cancer incidence between our 2 diverse patient populations could be demonstrated, suggesting that these results might be generalisable to a wider population. The overall yield of right-sided cancer across age ranges remains low. We propose that flexible sigmoidoscopy might reasonably be offered to all patients presenting with rectal bleeding, regardless of age, as a first line investigation. Adopting such a strategy will likely result in cost-savings and have beneficial waiting list implications, without engendering risk of missing significant pathology. <h3>Disclosure of interest</h3> None Declared. <h3>References</h3> BSG Clinical Commisioning Report for Rectal Bleeding [last accessed 11/2/15] Badiani S, Desai A and Chapman MAS. Is whole colonic imaging necessary for symptoms of change in bowel habit and/or rectal bleeding? Colorectal disease. 2012;14:1197–1200

Maternal, fetal, and placental conditions associated with medically indicated late preterm and early term delivery: a retrospective study.

Our objectives were: (1) to examine the association between maternal, fetal, and placental phenotypes of preterm delivery and medically indicated early delivery of singletons during the late preterm and early term periods; and (2) to identify the specific maternal, fetal, and placental conditions associated with these early deliveries. Retrospective study. City of London and Middlesex County, Ontario, Canada. Singleton live deliveries, at 34-41weeks of gestation to women in London and Middlesex. We obtained data from a city-wide perinatal database (2002-2011; n=25699). We used multinomial logistic regression for multivariable analyses. The outcome was the occurrence of medically indicated late preterm (34-36weeks of gestation) and early term (37-38weeks of gestation) delivery, versus delivery at full term (39-41weeks of gestation). After controlling for confounding factors, all phenotypes were associated with increased odds of medically indicated late preterm and early term delivery. Within the maternal phenotype, chronic maternal medical conditions were associated with increased odds of medically indicated early term delivery (e.g. for gastrointestinal disease, adjusted odds ratio, aOR1.72, 95%CI 1.47-2.00; for anaemia, aOR1.40, 95%CI 1.20-1.63), but not late preterm delivery. The aetiology of medically indicated early delivery close to full term is heterogeneous. Patterns of associations suggest slightly different conditions underlying the late preterm and early term phenotypes, with chronic maternal medical conditions being associated with early term delivery but not with late preterm delivery. These results have implications for the prevention of early delivery as well as the identification of high-risk groups among those born early. The aetiology of medically indicated late preterm and early term delivery is heterogeneous.

Staging the Democratic Deficit: Or, Three Uses of the Interview

This article attempts a partial archeology of the evolution of 'Counted', a verbatim play developed by the author with Look Left Look Right Theatre Company, which premiered at London's County Hall just before the 2010 UK General Election. A constituent part of the AHRC-funded 'Road to Voting' project, led by researchers at the University of Leeds, 'Counted' was assembled using the edited transcripts of interviews conducted with a cross-section of West Yorkshire voters about their affective relationships with electoral politics. The essay explores the dramaturgical challenges arising from this attempt to use social science 'data' as raw material for verbatim theatre, as well as considering broader questions around the stage representation of traditionally under-represented sections of the electorate.