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Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker , London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690-1800 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2015. 461pp. 47 figs. Bibliography. £55.00 hbk, £21.99 pbk.
Review of Books
This is truly a history from below, arguing that the 'lowest' plebeian Londoners - the poor and the criminal - took an active role in shaping welfare and criminal justice policy in western Europe's first million-person city by 1801. Despite being 'the most vulnerable of Londoners', argue Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker, by 'acting both together and alone, [the poor and criminals] determined which policies and institutions would survive (and in what form) and which would collapse in chaos' (p. 4). Poverty and crime were 'clearly interrelated social phenomena' (p. 12). This research is a culmination of many years' work for Hitchcock and Shoemaker, drawing as it does upon their monumental London Lives and Old Bailey websites, both of which have made thousands of original documents available online and key word searchable. It also draws upon their respective expertise - Hitchcock on the history of urban poverty and Shoemaker on the history of metropolitan crime - and their continued collaboration provides new insights into the experience of being a 'pauper' and a 'criminal' in eighteenth-century London.
The eighteenth century was a period of transformation in criminal justice as the system creaked under the weight of the 'Bloody Code' and new forms of punishment had to be found, while there was a tripling of poor relief expenditure in the city. London was also the site of innovative philanthropic endeavours, including the...