London Suburb Research Articles

The Crystal Palace Concerts: Canon Formation and the English Musical Renaissance

Abstract This article examines the role of London's Crystal Palace in the popularization of “classical music” in Victorian Britain, and in the creation of the orchestral canon in the nineteenth century. The Crystal Palace was originally built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and was reconstructed in the London suburb of Sydenham in 1854. This popular attraction assumed a musical prominence in British culture when the ambitious conductor Augustus Manns established an orchestra there in 1855, and presented a series of Saturday Concerts until 1900. Central to this discussion of the significance of the Crystal Palace concerts are two audience plebiscites that Manns conducted, in 1880 and 1887, which shed much light on Victorian popular taste and musical values. As well, particular attention is given to his involvement in the “English Musical Renaissance” in both of its aspects: as a campaign to raise British composers to canonic stature (to construct a “British Beethoven”); and as an effort to securely embed classical music within British culture.

Molecular Typing of Pneumococci for Investigation of Linked Cases of Invasive Pneumococcal Disease

In winter 2007-2008, an outbreak of pediatric pneumonia caused by serotype 5 pneumococci was identified in a northeast London suburb. Variable number of tandem repeat analyses clustered these pneumococci from the other serotype 5 pneumococci in the United Kingdom, highlighting the importance of this discriminative typing method in supporting epidemiological investigations.

The Mobile Museum: Collecting and Circulating Indian Textiles in Victorian Britain

textiles, together with details of the length, width, weight, and cost of the fabrics, as well as photographs indicating how they were actually worn. Twenty sets of the sample series were made for distribution to chambers of commerce and art schools in Britain and india. A second series, with smaller-sized and more elegantly mounted samples, was produced from 1873. The director of this laborious undertaking was John Forbes Watson, the reporter on the products of india at the india Office, who was responsible for a diverse collection of botanical, zoological, archaeological, antiquarian, ethnographic, and industrial objects at the museum inherited from the East india Company. These ever-expanding collections, reflecting the history and breadth of British involvement in ndia, were supplied in part by the indian courts of international exhibitions of the period. Forbes Watson patiently selected his specimens from museum stores in the London suburbs, eventually producing around 30,000 hand-cut and mounted samples. But his efforts to extract the essential characteristics of indian textile design and manufacturing have not been treated kindly by posterity. Considered something of an embarrassment by successive officials at the india Office and by later curators at the South Kensington Museum

Putting the Circle back into Circle of Friends: A grounded theory study

Circle of Friends (CoF) was originally developed in Canada as a social tool for including vulnerable children and adults within their mainstream schools or communities (Pearpoint et al., 1992). It has subsequently been adopted by schools in the UK as a strategy for including pupils, with a range of challenging needs or behaviours, who have become rejected by or isolated from their peers.This paper examines the contribution of CoF towards achieving positive outcomes for socially isolated children in schools. It reviews evidence from current qualitative and quantitative studies and a Grounded Theory (GT) research study undertaken by the lead author. The design involved interviews with 25 facilitators of CoF within mainstream schools in a large Shire County and an outer London suburb. The children comprising the CoF groups ranged in age from 7 to 12 years.The psycho-social processes emerging from the analysis provide theoretical insights into the part played by the Circle group in providing social feedback and support for the focus child and promoting more positive relationships with the wider class group.At its highest level of conceptualisation the final theory describes how a CoF is perceived to facilitate the movement of a pupil from a ‘closed’ or isolated, social field towards more ‘open’, peer based networks of social support.Implications for future research are discussed. It is argued that complex humanist interventions need to be evaluated and developed using ecologically sensitive methods.

Body and Mind. Historical Essays in Honour of F.B. Smith by Graeme Davison

126 Health & History, 20. 12/1 Book Reviews Graeme Davison, Pat Jalland, and Wilfrid Prest, eds, Body and Mind. Historical Essays in Honour of F.B. Smith (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2009). ISBN 978-0-522-85687-3 (PB). ix + 243 pp. This collection of essays celebrates the achievements of F.B. (Barry) Smith, Australia’s leading historian of the social history of medicine. Colleagues and past students write on various aspects of health, mind, and medical professionalism in nineteenth– and twentieth– century Britain and Australia. Many engage with themes and issues Smith has investigated in the course of his many years of research and supervision of postgraduate students at the Australian National University. Wilf Prest introduces the book, briefly sketching Smith’s early life, education in various government and Catholic schools, and studies at the University of Melbourne in the early 1950s. He suggests how they contributed to the blend of scepticism and compassion for the victims of prejudice and power that has been the hallmark of Smith’s history making. Ken Inglis also reflects on Smith’s virtues as a colleague and legendary dedication to his numerous postgraduate students. Graeme Davison pays tribute to Smith’s long-standing interest in the connections between the inner life and public activism of nineteenth-century social reformers. He explores the spiritual and emotional turmoil of the young Manchester physician James Phillip Kay, destined to become a significant figure in mid-nineteenthcentury British liberal reformism. Through a sensitive reading of surviving correspondence relating to the middle-class Kay’s doomed love for Helen Kennedy—the daughter of one of Manchester’s wealthiest industrialists—Davison suggests how Kay’s failure in love and psychic ills shaped his understanding of the moral and physical condition of contemporary industrial society. Michael Roberts’ essay focuses on the politics of public health reform in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, taking issue with the engrained tendency to see Russell and Palmerston’s premierships as marked by government apathy in respect of public health. He convincingly argues for greater appreciation of the complexities and challengesofgovernancebymidcentury,andthatbothadministrations Health & History ● 12/1 ● 2010 127 sought to achieve health reform as best they could, allowing for the political realities they confronted. Alex Tyrrell offers an intriguing account of mid-nineteenthcentury British enthusiasts for hydropathy and their critics. He draws attention to how cold-water bathing cures were entangled in mysticism, dietary fads, and sexual adventure; but Tyrrell is concerned that hydropathy not be dismissed as the quackery its critics claimed it was. Rather, it should be seen as exemplifying how porous the boundaries between medical orthodoxy and innovation were in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, and moreover, how inseparable the causes of medical, social, and political reform often were in the early Victorian imagination. With Joanna Bourke’s essay we move into the twentieth century and enter the bleak world of men branded military and industrial malingerers. Like Smith, Bourke had sought to write medical history from the patient’s point of view, focusing in this instance on the individual experiences of those who sought to escape brutal and pointless death in battle, or evade the dangers inherent in unskilled industrial work. Also sharing Smith’s concern to document how medical professionals bent on strengthening their power and social influence exploited the plight of ordinary people, she draws unsettling yet persuasive connections between what men did to escape or subvert military or work-place discipline, and how psychologists fed on their desperation. Geoffrey Best is well known for his contributions to modern British and European history; but here he writes about growing up in outer suburban London in the 1930s, sensitive to how wider economic and social forces then shaped everyday experience. Pat Jalland’s essay on death in the Blitz follows, offering vivid insights into how everyday life for many Britons was brutally and forever shattered by the hell of aerial bombing between 1940–45. The last four essays in this collection will greatly interest historians of Australia and New Zealand. Philippa Mein Smith reflects on the aims and assumptions underpinning her influential work on patterns of interaction between settler societies in Australia and New Zealand. Janet McCalman reports on ongoing large-scale...

The relationship between pain intensity and severity and depression in older people: exploratory study

BackgroundPain and depression are known to be associated in later life, and both have a negative effect on physical performance both separately and in combination. The nature of the relationships between pain intensity and depression in elderly persons experiencing pain is less clear. The objectives of this study were to explore which factors are associated with depressed mood in older people experiencing pain, and to test the hypothesis that older people experiencing pain are at risk of depressed mood according to the severity or frequency of their pain. In addition we explored whether other potentially modifiable factors might increase the risk of depressed mood in these persons.MethodsThe study is a secondary analysis of baseline data for four hundred and six community-dwelling non-disabled people aged 65 and over registered with three group practices in suburban London who had experienced pain in the past 4 weeks. Intensity and frequency of pain was measured using 24 item Geriatric Pain Measure (GPM) and the presence of depressive symptoms using the 5 item Mental Health Inventory. Risk for social isolation was measured using the 6 item Lubben Social Network scale and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) were also measured.ResultsOverall 76 (19%) had depressed mood. Pain frequency and severity were not statistically significantly associated with depressed mood in this population. In multivariate analyses, significant predictors of the presence of depressive symptoms were difficulties with basic ADLs (OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.1.7.8), risk for social isolation (OR 4.1, 95% CI 1.8–9.3), and basic education only (OR 2.2, 95% CI 1.1–4.4).ConclusionOlder people experiencing pain are also likely to experience depression. Among those experiencing pain, social network and functional status seem to be more important predictors of depressive symptoms than the severity of pain. Further studies should evaluate whether improvement of social network and functional status might reduce depressive symptoms in older patients.

The impact of educational level on oral health‐related quality of life in older people in London

There are socioeconomic inequalities in oral health, but the relationship between education and oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) among older adults has not been adequately studied. This study assessed whether there is an educational gradient in OHRQoL among older people in London. We employed secondary analysis of baseline data (n = 1,090) from a randomized controlled trial of health-risk appraisal on community-dwelling non-disabled people 65 yr of age and older, registered with three group medical practices in suburban London. Multiple linear regressions were used to analyze the association between OHRQoL [measured using the Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI)] and education, adjusted for age, gender, pension status, and denture wearing. Overall, 30.6% reported low levels of OHRQoL. Eating discomfort was the most frequent problem (24% reported 'often/always'), while concerns about appearance were also prevalent. Significant variations in OHRQoL existed between socioeconomic groups. In adjusted analyses, there was a clear education gradient in OHRQoL, with worse perceptions at each lower level of education. Low educational level has an independent negative impact on OHRQoL in older people, which is not explained by differences in income or in denture wearing between educational groups. Policies targeting lower educated groups should be complemented with whole-population strategies for the reduction of oral health inequalities.

Moving on From the Suburbs

This is an account of my development as a psychoanalyst beginning in a safe but very unquestioning culture of a London suburb. Some unusual features of my childhood, as well as a natural curiosity, made me need to question the apparent certainties of my surroundings. I describe how a number of events—the death of my father, my illness as an adolescent, and an unlikely encounter with psychoanalysis shortly after, set me onto a rather slow road toward becoming a psychoanalyst several years later. I describe the influences that were important to me. I have always been most inspired by those who could explain complex ideas in a simple and straightforward way, and this has become important objective for me.

Storm flooding, coastal defence and land use around the Thames estuary and tidal river c.1250–1450

Climatic deterioration in the later middle ages was associated with an increasing frequency of marine storm surges affecting the coasts of the southern North Sea. This paper investigates the impact of storm surges upon the lands bordering the Thames estuary and tidal river between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries. Land use in the coastal and riverine marshes is reviewed, and the means and costs of defence against marine flooding explored. The impact of flooding upon human use of the marshlands, upon the suburbs of medieval London and upon the Thames fisheries are all investigated. Stress is placed upon the complex interaction of economic and environmental factors in determining the response to the threat of marine flooding.

Professor T J Chandler

Professor T J Chandler

Ronald Harry Ottewill

Ronald Harry Ottewill, who died from cancer on 4 June 2008 in Wickham, UK, was a colloid scientist with unusually broad vision and great energy. He played an important role in the development of soft condensed matter as a distinct subdiscipline of physics.Ron was born on 8 February 1927 in Southall, a suburb of London. He attended local schools and developed an interest in science; he also excelled at cricket and middle-distance running. In 1948 he received a BSc in chemistry, with subsidiary physics, from London University’s Queen Mary College, where he also earned a PhD, supervised by D. C. Jones, in 1952. His thesis was on the adsorption of hydrocarbon vapors on surfaces. In 1952 Ron joined the department of colloid science at Cambridge University. There, working on antigen-antibody reactions supervised by Paley Johnson, he completed a second PhD in 1955. That work initiated a lifelong interest in light scattering and electron microscopy. He stayed in Cambridge for 12 years and developed broad interests in colloid science. In 1964 Ron moved to the chemistry department at Bristol University; he became a professor in 1971 and remained at Bristol for the rest of his career. Ron’s initial task at Bristol was to set up a one-year MSc program in colloid science. He ran it successfully for many years; the program had some 250 graduates, many of whom rose to senior positions in academia and industry. Ron was an inspiring teacher who continued to give about 60 lectures a year even when he was heavily distracted by other activities.In 1964 physical chemistry research at Bristol was centered on surface science. Ron established a colloid group that quickly became world renowned. At that time a main focus of colloid science was understanding the principles underlying the stability of colloidal particles, particularly charged particles, in dilute suspension. For that purpose, Ron developed various well-characterized “model” systems, first basing them on silver iodide and later using colloidal polystyrene. In the 1970s he was one of the first colloid scientists to recognize the challenges posed by concentrated suspensions. Light-scattering experiments with one of us (Pusey) demonstrated the strong influence of interparticle interactions on both the structure and the dynamics of the suspension. In the late 1970s, Ron and John White, then director of the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, pioneered the use of neutron scattering in the study of colloid structure and interactions. That became one of Ron’s main interests for the rest of his career. He was very “hands on” and frequently traveled to Grenoble, where he could be found in the instrument halls late at night. The fact that soft matter now commands a large fraction of the beam time at the ILL and other neutron facilities owes much to Ron’s early insights.The synthesis of colloidal particles, particularly with a narrow distribution of size, is a skilled activity beyond the scope of many physicists. Ron and his group were generous in providing samples for others to use. His poly(methyl methacrylate) particles, developed with Imperial Chemical Industries’ (ICI) paints division, became the standard “hard sphere” model colloid, now used by many physicists. The particles were used by William Russel, Paul Chaikin, and David Weitz in their study of colloidal crystallization on the space shuttle and the International Space Station.Ron also was heavily involved in administration and the promotion of colloid science. At Bristol he served terms as chairman of the school of chemistry and dean of science. He was instrumental in setting up the UK Polymer Colloids Forum, which recently established a medal in his name, and the colloid and interface science group of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Ron chaired committees of the ILL and the UK Science and Engineering Research Council. He was also an active member of the “colloid mafia,” which for many years ran the Gordon Conference on Polymer Colloids. Throughout his career Ron was in demand as a consultant for industrial companies such as Procter & Gamble, Exxon Corp, ICI, and BP, whose scientists appreciated his remarkable ability to provide quick, practical solutions to almost any problem.Although he liked to be in charge, Ron was not particularly well organized. His office, with every surface piled high with books and papers, was a standing joke among colleagues and students. But once you got inside—frequently after waiting in line—and found a vantage point from which to see him through the piles, Ron appeared to have all the time in the world and could unerringly find obscure papers relating to experiments done years earlier.Ron will be sorely missed, especially for his open mind, his keenness to help, and his encyclopedic knowledge.Ronald Harry OttewillBRISTOL UNIVERSITYPPT|High resolution© 2009 American Institute of Physics.

Recetas para subir de peso (imitando a Sophie Calle)

In 1995, when he was flying over London suburbs, Hans-Ulrich Obrist thought to make a new interpretation of Do it —a project that previously had been televised and had involved museums—, making a domestic version. Now, somehow, the result of the instructions disclosed would become intimate, it would be exhibited quietly inside the home. Do It seeks for proposals that will be seen as permeated and transformed by the culture to where they arrive. Geography as creative element. After culminating her art studies, a woman decides never to abandon the world of artistic production. Sophie Calle and Do it help her to tolerate her life. Do it yourself.

An Interview with Graham Swift

An Interview with Graham Swift Stef Craps (bio) Graham Swift is one of the most successful and respected novelists writing in contemporary Britain. Since 1980 he has published eight novels, a collection of short stories, and a nonfiction book. His work has garnered critical acclaim and literary prizes, and it has won a large and appreciative audience throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. His most celebrated books are Waterland, from 1983, which is widely considered a modern classic, and Last Orders, which was awarded the prestigious Booker Prize in 1996. Both novels have also been made into films. His latest novel, Tomorrow, came out in 2007. Swift belongs to a generation of talented novelists born around the middle of the twentieth century—including Peter Ackroyd, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Salman Rushdie—who, as they came to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s, were seen to represent a new wave in British fiction. However, Swift has never allied himself with any literary school or movement, and his work defies easy categorization. For example, it seems too invested in the traditional concerns of the English novel (like exploration of character and storytelling) to warrant the label "postmodern," which can be more readily applied to many of his peers, yet too self-conscious and formally sophisticated to fit comfortably under the rubric of realism. With fellow novelists Pat Barker, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Caryl Phillips, though, Swift shares an evident and abiding preoccupation with issues of trauma, memory, and recovery. His protagonists—mostly first-person narrators—tend to be humble, unheroic, [End Page 637] vulnerable elderly men who are forced by a crisis situation in their personal lives to face up to an often traumatic individual and collective past. They feel the slipping away of the foundations upon which they, and the society to which they belong, have built their existence, and by means of which they have sought to keep the trauma at bay. The question that they now face is how to respond to this situation of unsettlement and perplexity—whether to hide or flee from it or to try and engage with it in a meaningful way. While denial is shown to have catastrophic consequences, Swift's work also raises the possibility that the process of working through trauma might create the conditions for a viable alternative modus vivendi based on openness to and respect for otherness. This interview was conducted in the dining room of a beautiful and delicately restored Victorian pub in the South London suburb of Wandsworth, near where the author lives, on January 31, 2008. I had first met Swift some two months earlier at a conference in Liège, Belgium, where he gave a keynote address that I had been asked to introduce. The text of this lecture, titled "I Do Like to Be beside the Seaside: The Place of Place in Fiction," was to find its way into Making an Elephant: Writing from Within, the nonfiction book published in 2009 which he was then working on. The writing of this new book, which involved revisiting and reworking several older pieces, put him in a retrospective mood, as did the introduction for a special anniversary edition of Waterland on which he was then about to start and which he had completed by the time we met again on the other side of the English Channel. The moment seemed right, therefore, for an interview that would focus not only on his most recent novel but also on recurrent concerns and evolutions across his work—an interview, in other words, that would take stock of where Swift stands as a writer twenty-five years on from Waterland. Q. At your publisher's request, you have written an introduction for the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Waterland that will be coming out later this year. Am I right to assume that you have mixed feelings about this project? After all, Waterland is a book that has obviously brought you fame and, I hope, fortune, but whose huge reputation has also, to some extent, come to overshadow all your later work, with the possible exception of Last Orders; and now [End Page 638] with...

Shock and awe

In a law court in Woolwich, London, last year, a 34- year-old man pleaded guilty to charges relating to a plot to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb. In the man's own words, the plot had been designed to “inflict mass damage and chaos”. Dhiren Barot was one of three men who plotted to attack targets not only in the north London suburb where they lived, but also across the Atlantic in New York and Washington. In this case, counter-terrorism officials uncovered the conspiracy before any attack could be carried out, but other incidents – including last November's deadly violence in Mumbai, India – illustrated all too clearly the danger of terrorist attacks.

George Goring (1608–1657): Caroline Courtier and Royalist General (review)

Reviewed by: George Goring (1608–1657): Caroline Courtier and Royalist General Mark Charles Fissel George Goring (1608–1657): Caroline Courtier and Royalist General. By Florene S. Memegalos. Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7546-5299-1. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. Pp. x, 392. $99.95. Florene Memegalos’s biography of Colonel George Goring is old-fashioned English military history at its most enjoyable. Employing the traditional narrative, she recites Goring’s adventures, particularly those during the reign of Charles I. The colonel fought on the Continent in the 1630s, in the English civil wars in the 1640s, and concluded a fairly distinguished career as a commissioned officer in the Spanish Army of Flanders in the 1650s. Although the events she recounts are familiar, Memegalos unearths new details (p. 225) in her treatment of a complicated and controversial warrior. Goring’s military reputation has been besmirched by allegations of debauchery and unprincipled behavior. Yet, his consistent [End Page 1277] employment, not to mention the trust placed in him by his king, queen, comrades, and several foreign governments, substantiates his dependability and talent. The author perused manuscripts in county record offices, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, and overseas archives. The main repository for evidence concerning English military history is the National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office), now located in the London suburb of Kew. Whilst the author’s investigation of auxiliary archives is superlative, she chose not to explore the National Archives, relying instead on the dated, incomplete, and occasionally inaccurate Calendar of State Papers, Domestic. A goodly amount of uncalendared material bearing directly on English warfare survives in the Exchequer class of documents (E 101, E 351, E 407, etc.), the War Office (WO 49, WO 50, etc.), and the Privy Council Registers (PC 2, available in printed facsimile in many cases). The veritable gold mine for the English civil war, however, is State Papers 28, comprised of scores of boxes of military documentation that lacks a published calendar. Goring’s name (and likely his signature) would doubtless turn up in these darker corners of the National Archives, and Memegalos possesses the skill to have a good trawl through this material. The colonel’s biography might have been described as definitive if she had perhaps another year or so to cull through these intriguing classifications. This book illuminates the royalist, rather than the parliamentary, officer corps. In the last decade a relatively complex historiography of the cavaliers has developed, and Goring’s royalism is a promising line of inquiry. His military identity and experiences may have been the determinants of those actions described by some as “deplorable”. As a veteran of the Low Countries’ Wars, Goring’s use of violence fits the continental model, and the latitude he granted his troops in plundering England’s West Country was more a matter of expediency than terror. His “unprincipled” political actions, such as divulging details of the Army Plot to Parliament, were based on a pragmatism and realpolitik that civilian royalists rarely fathomed, blinded as they were by ideology and family connection. Little wonder that some royalist courtiers, ministers, and politicians regarded Goring with disdain. In that sense, the book might appeal to a broader audience interested in how professional soldiers make their way through the political world. Mark Charles Fissel The Augusta Arsenal Augusta, Georgia Copyright © 2008 Society for Military History

Putting Moral Standards on the Map: The Construction of Unemployment and the Housing Problem in Turn‐of‐the‐Century London1

Abstract This article challenges the idea that the construction of unemployment in turn‐of‐the‐century Great Britain was an attempt simply to normalize employment relations by promoting regular work patterns. An analysis of the Booth survey in terms of the standard of life concept demonstrates the importance of the slum clearance problematic in bringing about the major rethink in policy thinking which ultimately led to the labour exchange project. The peculiar mobilisation patterns promoted by the labour exchange project reflect the difficulty or impossibility of delocalising industry or dock activity into the London suburbs.

HANDING OVER THE U.K. CHEMIST’S BATON

ON JUNE 1, Britain gets a new government chemist. Derek Craston, whose Ph.D. is in enzyme electrochemistry and who joined the Laboratory of the Government Chemist in 1991, takes over the post from John Marriott. Marriott is retiring after six years as government chemist and R&D director at LGC, as the organization is now known. As government appointments go, it’s pretty low profile. Housed in a neat block of offices and labs in the leafy London suburb of Teddington, LGC is an enigma to many local residents. Some, in fact, are convinced it’s a top-secret facility. Top secret, however, it is not, despite the security typical these days for a chemistry research lab. Instead, LGC is busy maintaining its expertise in cutting-edge chemical analysis serving both the British government and, increasingly, a global customer base. The appointment of Craston by the U.K.’s secretary of state for the Department of Innovation, Universities & Skills (DIUS) coincides ...

Peter Michael Roemmele

Peter was born in Osterley, in the London suburbs, on 28 July 1920, the youngest son of a former immigrant, a German speaking general practitioner, and a nurse from County...

Sydenham

Sydenham, a suburb of the Marrickville local government area, is located six kilometres south west of Sydney. The traditional owners of the land were Cadigal of the Eora nation.Sydenham was named after the London suburb of Sydenham, part of the inner London borough of Lewisham. Sydenham is only two kilometres from Kingsford-Smith Airport and lies directly under the flight path of the third runway, constructed 1992–94. A large segment of Sydenham no longer exists as it was deemed uninhabitable because of aircraft noise. One hundred and fifty two homes, covering an area of 4.5 hectares, were acquired and demolished by the Commonwealth Government. Demolition began on 27 September 1995 amid large protests which prevented the work from proceeding for several days. Significant heritage buildings were retained. The resulting vacant land was named Sydenham Green. It is replete with symbols of the loss of this old residential area.The history of Sydenham is tightly interwoven with the neighbouring suburbs of St Peters and Tempe. These triplet suburbs share common characteristics of development, which are not easily unravelled.

“What say you to a piece of beef and mustard?”: The Evolution of Public Dining in Medieval and Tudor London

By Shakespeare's day, dining out was commonplace in London, but it was a comparatively recent development in English towns. In the London suburb of Westminster, the home of the royal palace, law courts, and abbey, fast-food cookshops were beginning to serve restaurant-style meals to the general public by the mid-1370s, but it was not until about 1460 that this practice spread to the cookshops, inns, and taverns of the City itself. In the mid-sixteenth century there appeared a new form of public eating-house, the ordinary, which served set meals at a fixed price. In this article, Martha Carlin examines how and why these developments occurred in the capital.