London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800

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The ever more disparate nature of poor relief provision in London ensured that few projectors or politicians could contemplate a single unified solution to the issue of housing and employing the poor of the metropolis. On a national scale politicians and projectors such as William Hay and Sir Richard Lloyd had long argued for "county" workhouses, as a means of overcoming the problems associated with amateurish parochial administration and the costs of policing pauper settlement. But the only substantial advocacy of this kind of solution for London, following the failure of the London Workhouse, was produced by Henry and John Fielding. Published in the form of three separate pamphlets, they developed a broad analysis of social problems and policing in London, depicting them as facets of a single issue: The first step of the projects was to locate and reshape relevant source material in London Lives and Old Bailey Online into new datasets that enable different kinds of exploration and analysis using digital tools. The new datasets are shared under Creative Commons licences for re-use by other researchers. Petitions St Clement Danes, Examinations Book, 1792-1798, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1191, LL ref: WCCDEP35825, Tagging Level: B St Botolph Aldgate, Pauper Examination Book, 1776-77, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 2676/11, LL ref: GLBAEP10317, Tagging Level: A From 1538, the parish clergy were legally required to keep registers recording all baptisms, marriages, and burials which occurred in their churches (or burial grounds).

St Botolph Aldgate, Pauper Examination Book, 1776-76, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 2676/10, LL ref: GLBAEP10316, Tagging Level: ASt Clement Danes, Examinations Book, 1787-1792, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1189, LL ref: WCCDEP35802, Tagging Level: Aa

In addition to the Old Bailey trial records, other London Lives records included in the Digital Panopticon Life Archives are the Old Bailey Associated Records; Criminal Registers; and the Minute Books of the Court of Governors of Bridewell. St Clement Danes, Examinations Book, 1747-1749, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1172, LL ref: WCCDEP35804, Tagging Level: B

The individuals whose experiences are recorded in these registers were paupers, and they are most likely also to appear in records associated with poor relief. Many will have been subject to a Settlement Examination, and their names are very likely to appear in the Settlement and Bastardy Examinations for Chelsea, 1733-1750, available online. A typical entry for a Related Person, in this case Rebecca Boucher's father, looks slightly different: St Botolph Aldgate, Pauper Examination Book, 1752-57, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 2676/2, LL ref: GLBAEP10307, Tagging Level: Aa Griffiths, Paul. Lost Londons: Change, Crime and Control in the Capital City 1550-1660. Cambridge, 2008.