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

This book surveys the lives and experiences of hundreds of thousands of eighteenth-century non-elite Londoners in the evolution of the modern world.

Tim Hitchcock (Author), Robert Shoemaker (Author)

9781107639942, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 December 2015

475 pages, 47 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.75 kg

'Shocking in its depiction of survival and desperation … this book shows how the criminal underclass helped shape the English justice system.' Hallie Rubenhold, 'Books of the Year', BBC History Magazine

London Lives is a fascinating new study which exposes, for the first time, the lesser-known experiences of eighteenth-century thieves, paupers, prostitutes and highwaymen. It charts the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Londoners who found themselves submerged in poverty or prosecuted for crime, and surveys their responses to illustrate the extent to which plebeian Londoners influenced the pace and direction of social policy. Calling upon a new body of evidence, the book illuminates the lives of prison escapees, expert manipulators of the poor relief system, celebrity highwaymen, lone mothers and vagrants, revealing how they each played the system to the best of their ability in order to survive in their various circumstances of misfortune. In their acts of desperation, the authors argue that the poor and criminal exercised a profound and effective form of agency that changed the system itself, and shaped the evolution of the modern state.

1. Introduction
2. Beggarman, thief, 1690–1713
3. Protest and resistance, 1713–31
4. Vestries, justices and their opponents: 1731
5. Reformers and their discontents: 1748–63
6. Finding a voice: 1763–76
7. The State in chaos, 1776–89
8. Epilogue, the 1790s
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]