Nineteenth-century London Research Articles

The Corpse in the Garden: Burial, Health, and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century London

The Corpse in the Garden: Burial, Health, and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century London

Addictive Architecture: The Crystal Palace, Gin Palaces and Women’s Desire

This article critically examines the Crystal Palace, which was originally built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition in London, and public drinking spaces such as gin palaces from the perspective of visual culture studies informed by feminist theory. Many nineteenth-century commentators concerned with alcohol consumption argued that the Crystal Palace would function as an alternative to the public house for working-class people. However, some Victorians believed that the Crystal Palace was an example of “addictive architecture” just like any public drinking space, because the structure seemed to encourage people to seek immediate gratification through consumption. Both the Crystal Palace and gin palaces are considered here in light of anxieties about desire in general and women’s desire in particular. Graphic representations of both architectural sites are discussed in order to support the argument that women were often perceived as powerful, even dangerous consumers, whether of alcohol or material culture. It is proposed that not only did women’s desire for alcohol (among other things) motivate them to enter ostensibly “masculine” spaces, but also that this desire, which sometimes evolved into addiction, was a powerful motivator for women’s mobility through the streets and architectural spaces of nineteenth-century London.

Addictive Architecture: The Crystal Palace, Gin Palaces and Women’s Desire

This article critically examines the Crystal Palace, which was originally built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition in London, and public drinking spaces such as gin palaces from the perspective of visual culture studies informed by feminist theory. Many nineteenth-century commentators concerned with alcohol consumption argued that the Crystal Palace would function as an alternative to the public house for working-class people. However, some Victorians believed that the Crystal Palace was an example of “addictive architecture” just like any public drinking space, because the structure seemed to encourage people to seek immediate gratification through consumption. Both the Crystal Palace and gin palaces are considered here in light of anxieties about desire in general and women’s desire in particular. Graphic representations of both architectural sites are discussed in order to support the argument that women were often perceived as powerful, even dangerous consumers, whether of alcohol or material culture. It is proposed that not only did women’s desire for alcohol (among other things) motivate them to enter ostensibly “masculine” spaces, but also that this desire, which sometimes evolved into addiction, was a powerful motivator for women’s mobility through the streets and architectural spaces of nineteenth-century London.

Herald waves of cholera in nineteenth century London.

Deaths from cholera in London, UK, were recorded weekly from 1824 to 1901. Three features of the time series stand out: (i) cholera deaths were strongly seasonal, with peak mortality almost always in the summer, (ii) the only non-summer outbreaks occurred in the spring of 1832, the autumn of 1848 and the winter of 1853, and (iii) extraordinarily severe summer outbreaks occurred in 1832, 1849, 1854 and 1866 (the four 'great' cholera years). The non-summer outbreaks of 1832, 1848 and 1853 appear to have been herald waves of newly invading cholera strains. In addition, a simple mathematical model confirms that a non-summer introduction of a new cholera strain can result in an initial herald wave, followed by a severe outbreak the following summer. Through the analysis of the genomes of nineteenth-century specimens, it may be possible to identify the strains that caused these herald waves and the well-known cholera epidemics that followed.

After an imaginary slumber: visual and verbal imagery of ‘awakening’ Africa

After an imaginary slumber: visual and verbal imagery of ‘awakening’ Africa

Rookeries and no-go estates: St. Giles and Broadwater Farm, or middle-class fear of ‘non-street’ housing

This essay offers an historical analysis of two kinds of housing. It proposes a connection between the densely packed housing of the poor in nineteenth-century London, the so-called rookeries, and post-war local authority built modernist housing estates. It argues that there are similarities in the spatial character of the two forms, particularly in the complexity of the relationship between the private and public realms, and that this, together with the close identification of both forms with their inhabitants, provoked similar responses in representation and action. The main body of the dissertation is based on historical analysis of two examples, the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, London and, in greater detail, the local authority housing estate called Broadwater Farm, Tottenham, in the London Borough of Haringey. Alternating with historical accounts are descriptions and analyses of form and spatial character, and discussion of the ideologies underlying the responses (that is, the ideas that shaped the housing and urban forms, particularly those offered as alternatives to our case studies). Parallels are drawn between responses to the two forms studied in terms of the ‘fear’ in the title of the work, with an attempt to clarify where this fear lay and the nature of the responses.

Nineteenth-Century London in William Godwin's Diary

The Leverhulme-funded editing of William Godwin's diary aims to ‘to construct a picture of London's literary and extra-parliamentary political life’, following the diary's ‘remarkably detailed map of radical intellectual and political life in the turbulent period of the 1790s’ . However, this map also extends far beyond the 1790s, with the diary's total span reaching from 1788 until Godwin's death in 1836. Critics and biographers have long assumed that Godwin's radical phase was over by 1800, and London to him was only ever a meeting point for free-floating, alienated intellectuals. By contrast, this paper presents new evidence showing his immersion in the material conditions and popular politics of nineteenth-century London. Following Godwin's movements in 1810 from his home and shop in Skinner Street, his perambulations around the city, and visits to dine with fellow radicals and publishers the article examines his immersion in the material c...

The Paradox of a Periodical: Temple Bar Magazine under the Editorship of George Augustus Sala (1860–1863)

The success of William Thackeray's shilling monthly periodical, The Cornhill Magazine, which first appeared in 1859, spawned a series of imitators in the 1860s with titles drawn from London landmarks. Temple Bar, St Paul's, Belgravia and St James's all attempted to court the same metropolitan middle-class family readership that Thackeray had enjoyed with his inclusion of apolitical and non-controversial articles, serialized novels, and poetry. The editor of Temple Bar, George Augustus Sala — one of Dickens's 'Young Men' — promised in the prospectus that his periodical would be 'full of solid yet entertaining matter, that shall be interesting to Englishmen and Englishwomen…and that Filia-familias may read with as much gratification as Pater or Mater-familias'. But, paradoxically, Sala decided to surround himself with a team of contributors hand-picked from his own bohemian circle, London journalists whose political and social outlook were at odds with those of a family readership. This article will argue that Sala, along with sub-editor Edmund Yates and publisher John Maxwell, deliberately and cynically packed the first edition of Temple Bar with material designed to ensnare a 'respectable' middle-class family readership. With selective anonymity and a serialized novel later described by Yates as 'Trollope-and-milk', along with articles of a conservative and London-centric nature, 30,000 copies of the first edition were sold. Once this readership had been established, the editorial team began to introduce content of a more liberal nature. Serialized sensation novels, such as Sala's Seven Sons Of Mammon and Mary Braddon's Aurora Floyd, attacked the dominance of the domestic realist novel, while hard-hitting articles and poems alerted readers to the misery and poverty to be found on the streets of London. Sala slowly created a periodical that, for a time at least, was the most unconventional of the shilling monthlies. This article will reveal the difficulties and subtleties involved in creating a brand personality for a monthly periodical, and by doing so will highlight the complex relationships that existed between nineteenth-century London journalists.

Triumph of Order: Democracy & Public Space in New York and London (review)

Reviewed by: Triumph of Order: Democracy & Public Space in New York and London Stanley Buder Triumph of Order: Democracy & Public Space in New York and London. By Lisa Keller. New York: Columbia University Press. (The Columbia History of Urban Life). 2009. This book is a comparative study of governmental efforts to control and regulate the uses of public space in nineteenth-century London and New York. Keller's account begins by stressing that the rise of democracy and the simultaneous great growth of cities in population and diversified economic activity in the nineteenth century necessitated the creation by mid-century of municipal police forces entrusted with great discretion to ensure public order as a prerequisite for urban growth and prosperity. "The new attitude was one of zero tolerance for anything that promoted disorder. . . . If hegemonic forces made the city prosperous, then their interests would be served" (51). Keller's most important and persistent theme in a study that ranges broadly and occasionally looses focus is in treating issues involved in public assemblages expressing political dissent. In this regard, she has made an interesting contribution to legal as well as urban history. Democratic societies require a trade-off between protecting civil liberties and the need to maintain the security of people, property and the public peace. This balancing act is a highly fluid process that of course alters with changing political and social circumstances. The moral and legal issues involved are complex, confusing, and disputatious. The essential need is determining what restrictions and police practices are necessary to ensure public safety. In this discussion, there is always great room for disagreements, rancor and injustices. The British emphasis on common law and the legacy of the American revolutionary era occasionally acted to mitigate many of the more extreme attitudes regarding the potential dangers involved in pubic assemblages and fiery speeches challenging the existing social order. In the course of the century both cities and thus their nations had to grapple with establishing a systematic legal view of "the accountability of authorities and the suitability of public places for group protests" (65). The trajectory in both cities pushed for limiting liberties. To Keller, the resulting discourse remains relevant to the present. Her final chapter, aside from a few imperceptive observations, largely leapfrogs the twentieth century to reflect on the 9/11 city where technology, especially the closed-circuit television, has extended government's ability to monitor individual action and surveil the streets. Her conclusion: "Viewed over the last 150 years, even with allowance for the growth of certain personal and civil liberties, the broader construct of liberty has contracted and that of order has increased" (219). There is certainly much to ponder and debate in this ambitious study of troubling and highly important issues. [End Page 161] Stanley Buder Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center Copyright © 2011 Mid-America American Studies Association

Agora: International Commercial Arbitration by Gary Born

This book is superb. It is truly comprehensive and beautifully written. It fears not to wade into the hardest issues in arbitration. It addresses them with undeniable clarity and makes bold judgements, even while acknowledging the strength of the opposing positions. In the end, anyone approaching any serious issue in international commercial arbitration will want to see what Born has to say and the authorities he has collected on the topic. As I am reviewing in particular the last 1,000 pages or so, I will start where most readers will: at the back, more specifically, the index. An index in a book like this is, of course, essential. An otherwise unknown nineteenth century London antiquary named Francis Douce has gone down in history for (aside from a museum bequest) observing that ‘the man who published a book without an index ought to be damned ten miles beyond Hell, where the Devil could not get for stinging nettles’.30 I agree. But there are indices, and there are indices. A well-done index is a marvellous thing. This one is very well done. It is aimed at the practitioner with a passing familiarity with the field. Thus, its entries correspond to the way a practitioner would put the question. You want to know about ‘conflicts of interest’? No problem. Would that be ‘arbitrators’ (see ‘impartiality and independence’) or ‘counsel’ (go straight to p. 2,313)? ‘Competence-Competence’? You'll find it under that term, and also under ‘jurisdiction, of arbitrators’ and cross-referenced as ‘Kompetenz-Kompetenz’. But you do need to have a passing familiarity with the field. You won't find an entry for ‘arbitration clauses’, the term my contract-writing partners will usually use. You need to remember that in the field they are more often called ‘arbitration agreements’. If there is any quibble here it is …

Magic under Glass (review)

Reviewed by: Magic under Glass Kate Quealy-Gainer Dolamore, Jaclyn. Magic under Glass. Bloomsbury, 2010 [320p]. ISBN 978-1-59990-430-6 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 6-9 Following her mother's death and her father's subsequent financial ruin, Nimira finds herself in an unfriendly foreign land, dancing in a music hall for mere pennies. When a mysterious magician offers her shelter at his lavish mansion and a hefty salary to accompany a musical automaton, she grabs at the chance, dismissing the rumors of ghosts and trickery that surround the magician's estate. Soon, however, she learns that the automaton is actually a fairy prince trapped and cursed, a state that the reigning sorcerer's council would prefer to maintain in order to keep their control over the fairy world. Readers drawn in by the evocative cover of a romantically lit corseted girl will not be disappointed by the story's echoes of Victorian romances, and although the setting is the imaginary land of Lorinar, references to cobblestoned streets, elegant ladies, lecherous old men, and plenty of lurking secrets give it all the atmospheric appeal of nineteenth-century London. Nimira is likable as the strong-willed heroine intent on making a better life for herself, but the story falls a bit flat when she discovers the automaton's secret. The love between her and the fairy prince is never quite explained, and thus her motivation for risking a secure future for the sake of their relationship seems rather implausible, given that Nimira is, above all else, a practical girl. The ending is also less than satisfying, punishing a character who, in light of the vast conspiracy Nimira uncovers, seems like small potatoes and giving no real conclusion to the fairy prince's ordeal although certainly making plenty of room for a sequel. Despite these flaws, however, the book offers plenty of romance and intrigue, and readers not quite ready for the weight of Libba Bray's Gemma Doyle trilogy (A Great and Terrible Beauty, BCCB 5/04, etc.) may do well to start here. Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Parish apprenticeship and the old poor law in London

This article offers an examination of the patterns and motivations behind parish apprenticeship in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London. It stresses continuity in outlook from parish officials binding children, which involved placements in both the traditional and industrializing sectors of the economy. Evidence on the ages, employment types, and locations of 3,285 pauper apprentices bound from different parts of London between 1767 and 1833 indicates a variety of local patterns. The analysis reveals a pattern of youthful age at binding, a range of employment experiences, and parish-specific links to particular trades and manufactures.

The End of Gatekeeping: Underwriters and the Quality of Sovereign Bond Markets, 1815–2007

We provide a comparison of salient organizational features of primary markets for foreign government debt over the very long run. We focus on output, quality control, information provision, competition, pricing, charging and signaling. We find that the market set up experienced a radical transformation in the recent period and interpret this as resulting from the rise of liability insurance provided by rating agencies. Underwriters have given up their former role as gatekeepers of liquidity and certification agencies to become aggressive competitors in a new speculative grade market.

Bethlem's Irish: migration and distress in nineteenth-century London

Association between migration and mental illness is widely reported. This study aimed to gain insight into the mental health of Irish migrants into Britain in the years 1843-53. Casebooks from the period were examined for Irish ethnicity, and clinical profiles were compared with those of age-matched control samples. Irish-born patients were found to have a greater proportion of diagnoses of mania than controls (p < or = 0.01). They were more likely to be admitted for 12 months or longer (p < or = 0.001) and more likely to receive religious attributions for illnesses by the treating physician. The more common diagnosis of mania in the Irish group can be explained in terms of the effects of migration, differences in idioms of distress, or in terms of prejudice.

Singing in Yiddish about London: 1880-1940

Singing in Yiddish about London : 1880-1940 is the story of six Yiddish songs that tell of mainly East End people and places and experiences; these snippets of history give insights into what was happening in London at the time. They tell of poverty and work, of street life and of love. They tell of characters; an old fiddler, a bagel seller, a prostitute. They tell of places, the Pavilion Theatre, Victoria Park, Morgan Street. They sparkle with life, whether deeply moving or comic. This article explores Jewish history through the songs, as well as exploring the history of the songs themselves. The songs were collected in Denmark, Canada, Germany, Liverpool and London. The article describes some of the people who sung them, who collected them and who wrote them. There is a lot unknown about the songs and why they were written, so there is much to conjecture by London Yiddishists and folk collectors. These answers throw more light onto the politics and issues of the day. Today these songs are being performed by Vivi Lachs and Klezmer Klub, a London-based band who are seeking to revive them and imbue in them a sense of their meaning for today Tsu undzere shtetlekh men vet dikh Vaytshepl tsurekhenen [Amongst our stetls, Whitechapel will be counted] Avrom-Nokhem Stencl from the poem 'Vaytshepl' This is the story of six Yiddish songs about London. It is a story of the songs, the singers, the collectors and the thousands of Jews living in East London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century who inspired and populated these songs. The songs evoke the history and experience of ordinary folk. While the songs are about the past, versions of these experiences exist in London today among different cultural groups. In this way, although the songs are in Yiddish, they are about human experience. I am not a historian. I am a London-based scouser, some of whose family were immigrants from Poland to London in the 1900s. I have been a teacher in Hackney schools for over 20 years. I am a singer, a Yiddish student and a socialist. These songs speak to me. Five of them were probably written between 1890 and 1920 and one in around 1940. The songs tell the social history better than I can, but here is a brief introduction. * Vivi Lachs, born in Liverpool, has Polish ancestry via the East End. A Hackney teacher for 24 years, educational writer, Yiddish student and singer. European Judaism Volume 42, Number 2, Autumn 2009: 94-1 06 doi: 1 0.3 1 67/ej. 2009.4202 1 0 ISSN 0014-3006 (Print), ISSN 1752-2323 (Online) This content downloaded from 157.55.39.124 on Wed, 20 Jul 2016 06:06:46 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

La peur du prolétaire et les paradoxes du socialisme shavien dans Widowers’ Houses

As a socialist reformer and critic of revolutionary Marxism, the Fabian Bernard Shaw was intent on entrusting the middle-class bourgeoisie with the march to collectivism. His first dramatic work, Widowers’ Houses, is pervaded with the ambivalence underlying such a stance. Beyond the fear that is represented throughout and the dread of capitalism that it seeks to bring about among the Victorian public, the play builds up a dramaturgy of threat, breaking with the fashionable theatres of late nineteenth century London and paradoxically making the proletarian into both a victim and symptom of capitalist immorality.

The Parliament of Blood (review)

Reviewed by: The Parliament of Blood April Spisak Richards, Justin. The Parliament of Blood; Bloomsbury, 2008 [336p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-58234-721-9 $16.95 Paper ed. ISBN 978-1-59990-148-0 $7.95 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 6–9 Late nineteenth century London is the ideal Gothic, gritty setting for this ultimate showdown between increasingly power-hungry vampires ready to take over the world and a scrappy but woefully small group of intrepid humans hoping to thwart their plans. The lives of vampires over the centuries have been too easy, resulting in a surplus of vamps and not enough indigents and orphans to feed them all. An elaborate plan of rotating sleeping schedules has grown wearisome, and the un-dead are now ready, with the aid of their newly arisen mummy lord, to go public and intimidate and bloodsuck their way into full power and glory. Unfortunately, George, his crush Liz, and Eddie, the child whom he has taken in, three otherwise ordinary human Londoners, stand in the vampires’ way, and they (and a few other strategically important allies) are willing to risk their necks to quell this uprising. If it all seems a bit campy and overwrought, it is, but to good effect: the Victorian setting (all shadows and death carriages and underground tunnels dripping with mysterious fluids) is a nice complement to the dramatic showdown, the heroic trio are affable even if they are rather stereotyped (the gallant gentleman, theatric damsel, and plucky orphan), and the vampire/mummy alliance is both genuinely creepy and B-movie reminiscent all at once. The fact that the relatively happy conclusion (although there are still vampires, the world-conquering is certainly long delayed) comes down to a clever solution regarding the memorably described pipes jutting out of the mummy lord’s chest is both delightfully absurd and deliciously unexpected. Horror fans and Victorian buffs alike may find this a bit overdone on occasion but considerable fun to read anyway. Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Clean Water, Sanitation, and the Millennium Development Goals

In nineteenth century London, four large cholera outbreaks killed some 37,000 people. Completion of the capital’s sewer system contributed significantly to later reductions in gastrointestinal infections and increased life expectancy. This achievement was a team effort, but one driving force was the physician John Snow, the 150th anniversary of whose death was marked by a small ceremony on June 16, 2008, in a London public house close to the site of Dr. Snow’s main study of cholera transmission. Despite the venue, the celebratory libation was with water, not just out of respect for Snow’s abhorrence of alcohol but also because one of the occasion’s cosponsors was the international charity WaterAid. Water remains a key factor in disease worldwide. In the last year of his life, Snow wrote: “If the general use of water-closets is to continue and increase, it will be desirable to have two supplies of water in large towns, one for the water-closets and another, of soft spring or well water from a distance.”1 This simple principle of separation is today taken for granted in the developed world, where cholera is largely of historical interest only while globally we still need a World Health Organization task force on Vibrio cholerae infection as the disease refuses to go away.2 Cholera is not the only waterborne infection, of course, and not all illnesses from unclean water are microbial in origin (e.g., contamination with arsenic or man-made chemicals). In the UK, 99.96% of routine water tests now meet national and European standards.3 Any sustained falling off in water quality would be met with public outrage, and a spot check revealing cryptosporidium in a reservoir is headline news. Recognizing the continuing problems for less fortunate parts of the world the World Health Organization now has pragmatic “guidelines” (rather than “standards”) for water quality. Poor sanitation and lack of access to safe drinking water are still contributing to significant and avoidable morbidity and mortality, especially in children. One billion people do not have clean water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.4,5 United Nations (UN) agencies (and other parties) have long been aware of this situation. Remember the International Decade for Clean Drinking Water? That was 1981–1990 and had the absurdly ambitious target of “safe water and sanitation for everybody by 1990.” That failed. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan then tried the human rights argument: “access to safe water is a fundamental need and therefore a basic human right,” he declared. Now, in 2008, we are roughly halfway through yet another ambitious project, the International Water Decade (2005–2015). This is linked to the 2008 International Year of Sanitation, mischievously referred to by some as the “year of the toilet.” The aim of the latest water decade is more modest than the one for 1981–1990—namely, “to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the world’s population without sustainable access to basic sanitation.” This roughly translates into a reduction from 40% to 20%, and the target is associated with the UN’s millennium development goals (MDGs). It is not, however, one of the primary eight goals. Perhaps, it ought to have been. It is difficult to see how the UN’s ambition of reducing mortality in the under-fives by two-thirds and halving and starting to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases can be achieved without dramatic improvements in the two linked water-related factors of access to safe drinking water and the disposal of human excrement. So, at half-time in the decade, how are we doing? Not brilliantly. Only one of the UN’s regions is on track to achieve all eight MDGs,6 and the latest monitoring exercise records results as “mixed” and “uneven” and notes a “lack of progress in child survival.” Failure in the earlier International Decade for Clean Drinking Water was in part ascribed to an inability to keep up with the rapid pace of urbanization. Unfortunately, two decades on the same argument is being used. Urbanization, together with a rural backlog, means that targets are going to be missed.7 Drinking water and sanitation have not been neglected by UN agencies, but those agencies must be frustrated by the slow progress, especially since the know-how has been around for more than 150 years and cheaper, low-technology solutions are also available.

A Victorian Study-Abroad Course for Undergraduates

Study-abroad opportunities are an important part of the undergradu ate experience at my university. Mor than half of our students take advan tage of one or more study-abroad programs before graduation. Almost all report that these experiences are among the most formative of their undergraduate years. In summer 2007, the English department launched a London program for English majors, and I was asked to take the first group. As I was conceiving the course I would teach, I knew I wanted to expose our majors to as many of London's Victorian resources as possible. My course plan called for each student to choose a particular decade in the nineteenth century, from which she must narrow down her research interests to a specific year and ultimately a specific literary text. (I ended up calling the course Literary London in the Long Nineteenth Century since I had eleven students enrolled and needed an extra decade!) I asked students to browse through two or three runs of periodicals for their chosen year and to follow up on their interests with other more traditional research sources. My goal was to instill a sense of?and hopefully a taste for? independent research by giving students the freedom to browse around, follow their instincts, and develop a project out of their own interests. Before the class began, I arranged for student access to the University of London's Senate House Library?chiefly for its open stacks ofVictorian periodi cals. The Senate House Library allows visitors to purchase short-term member ships at a reasonable price and was quite willing to negotiate an individual rate that allowed students reference access for the entire seven weeks of the course.

Life, Death and Furniture-Makers: Services for London Houses, c. 1810–1850

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century London furniture-makers offered a much wider variety of services than furniture-makers and interior decorators do nowadays. They were not limited to house decoration, cleaning, alteration, and repairing, but also included house-letting, advertising, making inventories, arranging removals, caretaking, and even arranging funerals. This article examines the relationships between furniture-makers and customers through these services, using Gillow's London showroom account book (1844–6), the letter book of Miles and Edwards (1836–44), and letters and ledgers of other London makers. The services suggest that furniture-makers maintained a relationship with their customers that went significantly beyond the provision of ready-made goods. Indeed, they indicate furniture-makers' active involvement in the private lives of their customers, and customers' reliance on the furniture-makers, who responded to changes and needs in the house.