Edition of young men's magazines from just before the First World War, presenting a vivid and touching picture of life at the time.
The Angels' Voice was the title given to a magazine which circulated among a group of some 40 or so young men in Brixton between 1910 and 1913, all members of the Young Men's Bible Class of Trinity Congregational Church there. In its pages they teased each other, their sisters and girlfriends in poetry, drawings and witty, innocent articles. We see them playing football, going on country rambles, roller-skating, cycling, smoking (a lot), arguing about politics and women's rights, taking day trips to France and holidays in the Channel Islands, Belgium and Italy, and even working in Switzerland, India and the Canary Islands. This magazine offers an unique insight into life in London in general, and the lives and attitudes of lower middle-class young men in one suburb in particular, on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War, during which many of them were to serve and several of them were to die; its pages depict the world lost in the trenches of France and Flanders. The magazines are presented here with an introduction and full notes, with an appendix providing biographical information on many of those connected with them.
ALAN ARGENT grew up in south London. He is minister of Trinity Congregational Church, Brixton, and Research Fellow at Dr Williams's Library, London. He has written a biography of Elsie Chamberlain, and a history of Congregationalism in the twentieth century.
Patricia Malcolmson
A Free-Spirited Woman
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Intimate insights into the life of a woman in 1930s London, both private and public.
Gladys Langford (born in 1890) was a free spirit, an aspiring writer (though not published in her lifetime), an inveterate attender of plays, concerts, and films, and an astute and sometimes acerbic observer of everyday life in 1930s London. Married in 1913 (the marriage was later annulled), and chained as she saw it to schoolteaching for most of her adult life, Gladys's days were sometimes unhappy but also full of incident, and featured a relationship with a longstanding but married lover, who was often on her mind. Gladys's writing is crisp, colourful, and often biting. Her diary, from 1936 to 1940, while frequently introspective and full of self-doubts, is also a vivid portrait of social life. She writes of her quirky friends, her family and straightened family background, her schoolboys in Hoxton, and her numerous Jewish acquaintances. She also has much to say about London's public world - the behaviour of theatre audiences, street entertainers, anti-Semitic outbursts, the roller-coaster moods of people living through 1939, and fears of evacuation with the outbreak of war.
Patricia and Robert Malcolmson are social historians with a special interest in Mass Observation, women in World War Two, and English diaries written between the 1930s and the 1950s.
Derek J Keene
A Survey of Documentary Sources for Property Holding in London Before The Great Fire
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Patricia Malcolmson, Robert Malcolmson
A Woman in Wartime London
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Kathleen Tipper's diary, kept for Mass-Observation from July 1941 till peace in 1945 and beyond, offers a unique personal insight into one young woman's war.
Kathleen Tipper was just twenty years old in September 1939. Her parents had met while making munitions in the Woolwich Arsenal during the Great War and Kathleen lived with them and her younger brother and sister at the family'scouncil house in Appleton Road. Eltham. Grammar-school educated, she worked as a clerk for a shipping company near the Strand. Like so many of the young women around her she was poised to take advantage of the new opportunities for work and leisure that London in the thirties offered as never before.
But Kathleen's life - indeed, the lives of all Londoners - would change for ever in the six years after declaration of war on 3 September. This was a moment of quite extraordinary drama. And Kathleen's diary, kept for Mass-Observation from July 1941 till peace in 1945 and beyond, offers a unique personal insight into one young woman's war. We keep her company through the daily comings and goings of family, friends, work and relaxation - all played out against a backdrop of cataclysmic events brought home through cinema, radio and the daily press. We travel on buses and trains and listen tothe conversations going on about her. We hear the opinions of 'blonde glamour girls', of disgruntled civil servants, of the men and women working the barrage balloons that sway like tipsy bluebottles in the London sky. We witness the effect on her of newsreels and Information Ministry films. We hear her wishing she'd been born a boy so that she could share more fully in the risks and excitements of warfare at the front. We see her disillusionment with people in 'positions of authority', especially those there by virtue of class inheritance, and she helps us understand better some of the forces that shaped Labour's victory in 1945.
It is, perhaps, the ordinariness of this extraordinary time in London's history that comes through most strongly from this fascinating document. Keeping hold of ordinary things was the best way to make sense of a world gone mad. Kathleen Tipper lays bare thesefibres of endurance in the greatest crisis to face London and the Londoner in modern times.
Betty R. Masters
Chamber Accounts of the Sixteenth Century
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Professor Emeritus Tim Hitchcock
Chelsea Settlement and Bastardy Examinations 1733 - 1766
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Thomas W. Davis
Committees for Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts
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Jacob M. Price
Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774
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Ruth Paley
Justice in Eighteenth-Century Hackney: The Justicing Notebook of Henry Norris and the Hackney Petty Sessions Book
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C. J. Kitching
London and Middlesex Chantry Certificate 1548
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Henry Horwitz
London and Middlesex Exchequer Equity Pleadings, 1685-6 and 1784-5: A Calendar
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Helena M. Chew
London Assize of Nuisance 1301 - 1431
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Vanessa Harding, Laura Wright
London Bridge: Selected Accounts and Rentals, 1381-1538
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The rulers of London in the late middle ages sought to safeguard the future of their important river crossing by placing its administration in the hands of a specially created institution. By the mid-fourteenth century the "BridgeHouse", as it became known, had been endowed with a large portfolio of properties which provided the bulk of the revenue needed for the frequent, and often urgent, repairs to London Bridge's structure: as many as 130 shops stoodon the bridge itself. As well as providing information on the technicalities of bridge-building or wider issues concerning urban crafts and productive processes, the accounts and rentals from the institution's archive provide useful snapshots of the bridge at various points in its often turbulent history.
Loreen L. Giese
London Consistory Court Depositions, 1586 - 1611: List and Indexes
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Ida Darlington
London Consistory Court Wills 1492 - 1547
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Donna T. Andrew
London Debating Societies 1776 - 1799
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Patrick Wallis
London Inhabitants Outside the Walls, 1695
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The imposition in 1695 of a new tax on births, marriages and deaths, in support of England's contribution to the Nine Years' War, led to the creation of a full register of the population of London [as of other counties]. The surviving records offer an unequalled level of information on social, family and household structures. In particular, they enumerate entire households by name and status, including children, servants and lodgers.
This volume provides an index ro the surviving manuscript assessments for London's thirteen extramural parishes, and complements David Glass's index of inhabitants within the walls, published by the London Record Society in 1966.
D. V. Glass
London Inhabitants within the Walls 1695
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H. Horwitz
London Politics 1713 - 1717
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Helena M. Chew
London Possessory Assizes A Calendar
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D. J. Rowe
London Radicalism 1830 - 1843
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Edited by Anna Vaninskaya; Translated by Anna Vaninskaya and Maria Artamonova
London Through Russian Eyes, 1896-1914
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Translated anthology of 'London Letters' written by Russian foreign correspondents which makes available for the first time in English the Russian perspective on early twentieth-century London life.
This anthology provides a unique window onto Britain's capital city as it existed more than a century ago in the minds of the Russian reading public. Russian foreign correspondents produced a substantial body of writing documenting London life in all its infinite variety, but their articles, published in Russian journals and newspapers, have not been accessible to English speakers until today. These articles, instrumental in forging Russian perceptions of London before the First World War, have now acquired a new interest as monuments of a vanished era and as records of the city's history in their own right.
The selections in this anthology from Isaak Shklovsky, Korney Chukovsky, Samuil Marshak and Semyon Rapoport give just a taste of the riches that still lie hidden in the pages of old periodicals. The anthology is divided into four sections: 'Foreigners in London', focusing on the plight of immigrants in the city; 'London Labour and the London Poor', documenting the experiences of working-class Londoners; 'London at Home and at Leisure', depicting the domestic life and amusements of Londoners of all classes and ages; and 'London Streets and Public Life', covering elections, religious meetings, famous trials, jingoist celebrations and the funeral of Queen Victoria. The articles are accompanied by an in-depth introduction, illustrations and extensive annotations.
This anthology will appeal to anyone interested in London history or in Anglo-Russian relations, as well as to scholars of Russian literature. Chukovsky and Marshak both became famous writers later in life, and many of Shklovsky's sketches have a distinct literary as well as historical value.
Janet Senderowitz Loengard
London Viewers and Their Certificates 1508-1558
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Patricia Basing
Parish Fraternity Register
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Deirdre Palk
Prisoners' Letters to the Bank of England, 1781 - 1827
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In British gaols and on hulks, awaiting transportation to New South Wales, prisoners convicted of forged paper currency offences wrote to their influential prosecutor, the Bank of England. This volume comprises several hundred ofsuch letters held in the Bank's archives. Many, mainly those wirtten by or for women, came from the depths of abject misery and poverty, begging help to cope with prison conditions and with the journey to Australia. Others offeredinformation to the Bank about forged note traffickers in the hope of gaining some benefit for themselves. The collection reveals an extraordinary story of a surprising relationship between convicted prisoners and a mighty financial institution.
Edited by Elizabeth A. New
Records of the Jesus Guild in St Paul's Cathedral, c.1450-1550
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First printed edition of crucial material for our understanding of the pre-Reformation church.
Meeting in the crypt of Old St Paul's in the decades before the Reformation, the Jesus Guild, an expression of "cutting-edge" orthodox devotion, not only attracted members from the top ranks of London society but also derived support from men and women of all degrees across the whole country. As well as shedding welcome light on aspects of the devotional life shared by some of London's most influential citizens, its records illustrate many facets of the City's economy, of its citizens' inter-personal relationships and can, indeed, assist in determining linguistic developments at a critical juncture.
This volume reproduces for the first time all the extant records surviving for the Guild in the early sixteenth century, giving pride of place to the twenty consecutive years of its surviving accounts. Alongside the records for the guild, the volume presents the 1552 inventory of goods in St Faith's church and the expenses incurred by that parish when it moved into the space previously occupied by the Guild. These records reveal the influences of the religious changes of the 1550s on the crypt chapel and some of the Guild's possessions. The documents are edited with accompanying notes and glossary, complemented by an introduction that places them in a broad context and by biographies of the Guild wardens identified in the text.
Timothy V. Hitchcock
Richard Hutton's Complaints Book
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F.W. Steer
Scriveners' Company Common Paper, 1357-1628, with a continuation to 1678
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Greg T. Smith
Summary Justice in the City
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Records from London's Guildhall reveal the workings of the law in the eighteenth century.
For centuries, the City of London's Lord Mayor and Aldermen have headed various courts and tribunals as part of their official obligations. In the City's Guildhall, Londoners from all walks of life could appear before an aldermansitting as a magistrate in the "justice room" and initiate a criminal complaint when they were the victims of crime. But what actually happened in those initial hearings between the accuser, the accused and the magistrate has remained largely obscured to history. These records shed light on the earliest phases of a criminal prosecution and reveal the routines of criminal justice administration in the eighteenth-century metropolis. From the fragmentaryminutes of the proceedings conducted before London's aldermen, who sat for a part of every working day as Justices of the Peace, we learn of the petty squabbles of the City's poor with parish officials, the ready resort to physical violence in public and private spheres, the steady campaign against prostitution, and the growing professionalism of the parish constables who policed London before the arrival of the Metropolitan Police.The records will be ofinterest to historians of London, social historians of crime, genealogists and scholars interested in summary or pre-trial procedures in early modern England; they are presented here with introduction and explanatory notes.
Greg T. Smith is Associate Professor of History at the University of Manitoba.
Edward Whymper
The Apprenticeship of a Mountaineer
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In 1865, when just twenty-five years of age, Edward Whymper achieved the fame of which he had dreamt as a teenager by making the first ascent of the Matterhorn, the last great unclimbed summit in the Alps. With renown came notoriety and lasting sorrow, though, due to the catastrophic accident on the descent, which cost the lives of four of his party.
Whymper's life was marked by the conquest of the Matterhorn, but his mountaineering achievements have overshadowed his distinction as a wood engraver and book illustrator. Before he had ever thought about the Alps, while a teenager fulfilling his apprenticeship in the family engraving studio, Whymper kept a diary for six years, detailing his daily life in Lambeth. Showing frequent glimpses of the dry and sardonic humour so characteristic of the older Whymper, the diary is written with a developing style which looks forward to his classic works on mountaineering, Scrambles amongst the Alps and Travels amongst the the great Andes of the Equator.
Providing a rare picture of the workings of a wood engraving studio during the heyday of this reproductive medium, the diary also reveals the world of his father, Josiah, and those London-based artists seeking to make a living from their water-colour painting. An avid reader of The Times, the young Whymper's diary follows the events of the day - the Crimean War, trhe Indian Mutiny, the affairs of Parliament, notorious trials, business scandals - and also the many fires and daily catastrophes so prevalent in Victorian London.
This edition reproduces the complete text of Whymper's first diary for the first time.
Ian Smith is a librarian, who is writing a biography of Edward Whymper. He is a member of the Alpine Club and has climbed many of Whymper's first ascents. He is from south London and lives in Kennington.
N.W. James
The Bede Roll of the Fraternity of St Nicholas
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This edition of the Bede roll of this London fraternity has been published in two volumes: the first volume contains the text of the roll and the second volume provides an index to the nearly 7000 names of those who were members of the fraternity between 1449 and 1521. These included not only the clerks themselves and their wives, but also members of the nobility and high-ranking clergy. The bulk of the membership consisted of middle-ranking Londoners whodecided the extra prayers and funeral ceremony which the parish clerks could provide. The editors have also supplied an account of the immensely popular Parish Clerks fraternity and of the ways in which it was governed and administered.
Caroline Anne Metcalfe
The Brewers’ Book, Part 1, 1418-25
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The Brewers' Book was compiled by their clerk from 1418-40. This rare survival shines a light upon the craft and fraternity of Brewers of London at a time of change, when ale production faced competition from beer brewers. The clerk declared his intention to use English, as King Henry V did in letters from France, rather than Latin and French, which gives the book a linguistic significance. By 1418, the company had its own hall, in St Mary Aldermanbury parish. The clerk recorded entries to the freedom and the fraternity, annual payments, the men and women who bought livery cloth, and preparations for the annual feast. In 1423 the Brewers created an almshouse for their poor members and listed the building works and costs involved. The Brewers faced criticism and hostility from mayor Richard Whittington, which are documented vividly. The Brewers supplied ale to the household of Queen Katherine and for her coronation. The clerk wrote an account of the funeral processions for King Henry V in 1422 in London and Westminster, noting the role played by the London crafts.
Gerald A.J. Hodgett
The Cartulary of Holy Trinity Aldgate
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A.K. McHardy
The Church in London, 1375-1392
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The purpose of this work is to make available sources for the study of the church in London during the last quarter of the fourteenth century. It contains three distinct groups of material. The first consists of six documents concerned with the clerical taxes of the years 1379-81. The second is an assessment of ecclesiastical property in the city of London in 1392. The third consists of the acta of William Courtenay, bishop of London 1375-81, collected from the registers of contemporary bishops, the cartularies of religious houses in the diocese and certain classes of Public Records.
Clive Burgess
The Church Records of St Andrew Hubbard Eastcheap c1450 - c1570
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St Andrew was a small and comparatively obscure parish situated in the south-east of the medieval city of London, but its churchwardens' accounts survive in a virtually unbroken series starting in 1454 and continuing into the 1620s. Such complete sets of churchwardens' accounts are rare and particularly so for the period before the Reformation. These accounts reveal much about the practices and priorities of ordinary Londoners and demonstrate how they responded to the often conflicting demands of royal government in the sixteenth century. In addition to the accounts, the editor has also provided the texts of nearly a hundred wills of men and women who lived and died in this smallparish during these years. There is a full index provided to both the accounts and the wills.
M. H. Port
The Commissions for Building Fifty New Churches
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Robin Eagles
The Diaries of John Wilkes, 1770-1797
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The diaries of an MP and Lord Mayor in the eighteenth century shed light on contemporary political life.
John Wilkes (1725-1797) was one of the most intriguing characters in the eighteenth-century political world - if one with a mixed and colourful reputation. From relatively obscure beginnings, he rose to be a significant force forchange in journalism and politics, first as a Whig MP for Aylesbury, later for Middlesex. Having gained attention as proprietor of the opposition paper, the North Briton, he underwent a remarkable fall from grace, eventually being imprisoned for libel. After his release he was the focus of various reform movements. He cultivated the City of London to further his ends and in 1774 was elected Lord Mayor. Towards the end of his life he co-operated withthe Pitt administration and by the close was considered almost "respectable". His diaries chart his daily activities from his release from prison in 1770 to a few weeks before his death. They reveal a busy public figure andhis habitual haunts in London, Bath and the Isle of Wight; but also, although he was on close terms with some of the most celebrated figures of his day, such as Boswell, Garrick, Reynolds and the cross-dressing Chevalier d'Eon, they show a private man, never happier than in the company of his beloved daughter, Polly. The diaries themselves are presented here with introduction and full explanatory notes.
Dr Robin Eagles is a Senior ResearchFellow at the History of Parliament.
Sarah A. Milne
The Dinner Book of the London Drapers' Company, 1564-1602
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Accounts of ceremonial dinners given by the Drapers' Company shed extraordinary light on the menus served, the numbers of guests, and the employees.
The Dinner Book is a rare account of a series of 36 dinners hosted by the London Drapers' Company between 1564 and 1602. At these events, new Company leaders symbolically received corporate endorsement by participating in investiture ceremonies in front of an elite group of Company members and their selected guests. Though all in attendance enjoyed lavish spreads of food and drink, each table received varying, carefully apportioned dishes designed to ensure honour and city hierarchies were upheld. As a compilation of incredibly detailed accounts for many consecutive years of corporate dining, the Drapers' Company Dinner Book is extraordinary. It records the organisation of the Company's dinners and the supply of items of food and drink, as well as the names of guests in the hall and employees in the kitchen. Food gifts sent out after the dinner are recalled comprehensively (which on one occasion consisted of 162 venison pasties). During the period covered by the Dinner Book, new trading corporations and accelerated city growth began to undermine the economic powerbase of London guilds such as the Drapers. Dinner records indicate that the City companies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries recognised the potential of their annual Election Dinners to reinforce the antiquity of corporate authority, inferring a mythical past as a means of legitimizing their stake in the future. This edition is presented with introduction and notes to the text.
SARAH A. MILNE is a Research Associate at the Survey of London, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. She is also a Lecturer in the History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Westminster.
Dr Hannes Kleineke
The Estate and Household Accounts of William Worsley Dean of St Paul's Cathedral 1479-1497
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The unique manorial and household accounts of William Worsley, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral.
William Worsley, Dean of London's St. Paul's Cathedral from 1479 to his death in 1499, is unique among late medieval cathedral deans in having left a substantial run of manorial and household accounts dating from the time of his deanery. These documents, edited in this volume in a modern English translation, shed light not only on the dean's estate administration, but also on the daily life of Worsley and his household. Worsley's time as dean of St. Paul'scoincided with some of the important political upheavals of the final phase of the Wars of the Roses, and political events such as Edward IV's Scottish wars of 1480-83, and the conspiracy against Henry VII in the name of the Flemish pretender Perkin Warbeck, find their reflection in the accounts.
The volume includes a map, genealogy of the Worsley family, six black and white plates, and a comprehensive index, as well as a full biographical appendix of individuals mentioned in the accounts.
Maria Hayward
The Great Wardrobe Accounts of Henry VII and Henry VIII
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Accounts providing details of the quantities and cost of clothing and other items manufactured for the first Tudor kings.
By the late fifteenth century the Great Wardrobe, the section of the royal household that supplied the king and his household with clothing and furnishings, was well established in the London parish of St Andrew by the Wardrobe (many of the suppliers of fabric to the Great Wardrobe and many of the individuals who worked for it lived and worked in the city). This volume provides an edition and calendar of the accounts for 1498-99 and 1510-11, as wellas the section of the 1544 account relating to Henry VIII's campaign in France. In addition there are two appendices listing the recipients of livery in the extant Great Wardrobe accounts and warrants and an extensive glossary. The Introduction to the edited texts discusses the patterns of supply to the Great Wardrobe and assesses the significance of a small but influential group of Italian merchants who traded alongside the Londoners.
Professor Maria Hayward teaches in the Department of History, University of Southampton.
Henry Sharpe
The Journals of Henry Sharpe
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Henry Sharpe's journals are an early-Victorian treasure-trove, rich with observations about the great political and social concerns of the time, as well as the ups and downs of family life and raising children.
Henry Sharpe's journals are an early-Victorian treasure-trove. This remarkable document is rich with observations about the great political and social concerns of the time, with an extraordinary range of ideas and depth of discussion on literary, artistic and philosophical matters. He reveals detail about historic events not mentioned elsewhere, expanding our knowledge of Hampstead and of wider London history.
Sharpe's great passion was for education. He spent much of his spare time teaching in local schools and setting up Reading Rooms and evening classes for working men. His accounts of the ups and downs of family life and raising children are both touching and amusing, putting Victorian fatherhood into a new light. His trenchant views, especially on political and religious matters, are often startling, contradicting the usual stereotype of the Victorian middle classes.
George F. Steckley
The Letters of John Paige, London Merchant, 1648-1658
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David Hancock
The Letters of William Freeman, London Merchant, 1678-1685
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Robin Woolven
The London Diary of Anthony Heap, 1931-1945
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Diaries from the 1930s and 1940s reveal the reality of living in London during wartime.
Anthony Heap (1910-1985) kept a daily diary, recording his life in St Pancras, his work, loves and experiences from the age of 17 until shortly before his death. This volume provides selected extracts from the 1930s and the SecondWorld War, an eventful period during which his father committed suicide, Heap joined Mosley's Fascists, and then stood for the local Conservatives in 1937; the author vividly recounts what it was like to live through the Blitz, sleeping in air-raid shelters, and viewing the nightly raids on London. The diary also recounts more personal details, his fondness for weekly drinking in pubs in Fitzrovia and Hampstead, a series of girlfriends before marrying in1941, and his love of the theatre: it is predictably opinionated, often infuriating and cutting, but never dull. The extracts are presented here with notes, introduction, and an outline of the principal people involved.
Robin Woolven researched wartime London for his PhD, gained from King's College, London. His primary research interest concerns the twentieth-century history of Camden (Hampstead, Holborn and St Pancras).
Helena M. Chew, Martin Weinbaum
The London Eyre of 1244
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Caroline M. Barron
The London Jubilee Book, 1376-1387
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Edition and translation of a copy of a vastly significant document for our understanding of fourteenth-century England, long believed lost.
In the summer of 1376 a spirit of reform was abroad in the city of London. A number of measures were taken to make those who were elected to govern the city more responsible to its citizens as a whole. A committee was set up to examine the ordinances at the Guildhall and present to the Commonalty those that were "profitables" and those that were not. Two years later, the committee produced a volume known officially as the Liber de Ordinancionibus, but popularly as "The Jubilee book", because it had been initiated in the jubilee year of Edward III's reign. But the reforming measures introduced in the book caused so many controversies and disputes that eventually, in a bid to restore order in the city, in March 1387 the "Jubilee Book" was taken outside the Guildhall and publicly burnt. Historians have long debated the possible contents of this contentious but hugely significant volume, widely believed to be lost. However, recently a fifteenth-century copy of the "Jubilee Book", possibly of an earlier draft put together in the course of the two years, but superseded by the final version, was discovered in a manuscript held at Trinity College Cambridge (Ms O.3.11).
H.S. Cobb
The Overseas Trade of London Exchequer Customs Accounts 1480-1
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The documents calendared in this volume consist of Petty Custom recordings of general imports and exports (other than wine, wool and hides) by alien merchants, and of cloth exports by alien and denizen merchants, in the port of London from Michaelmas 1480 to Michaelmas 1481; together with less detailed accounts for wool, wine and other commodities. Petty Custom accounts were kept by royal officials in each customs port, who recorded each ship entering or leaving, the merchant in whose name goods were shipped and each item of customable cargo.
dr Sarah Clarke
The Periodicals of Ferdinand Pelzer (1833-1857)
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Give unique insights into Pelzer's career with the guitar and the singing class movement from the 1830s through to the 1850s.
The German musician, Ferdinand Pelzer (1801-1864), arrived in England in around 1829 with his wife and daughter and settled in London. He became one of the most important guitarists in the capital in the 1830s at a time when the instrument was enjoying great popularity. In the 1840s his attention turned to choral teaching and he played a role in the singing class movement which was then sweeping the country. In the 1850s he continued to teach the guitar in London.
This edition reproduces the text of three periodicals that trace his career through three decades. They are all bound together into one volume in the hugely important Appleby Collection of Guitar Music. The Giulianiad (1833-c.1835) was the first niche magazine devoted to the guitar that included both text and music sections and it is widely accepted that Pelzer had an editorial role. In the early 1840s he outlined his philosophy and aims for the singing class movement in his Musical Herald and his Guitarist's Companion of 1857 demonstrated his continued enthusiasm for the guitar.
Barbara Megson
The Pinners' and Wiresellers' Book 1462-1511
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The Pinners' and Wiresellers' Book covers the accounts of the medieval craft of the Pinners between 1462 and 1511, prior to and following their meeger with the Wiremongers to form the Wiresellers Company in 1497. It is a most unusual volume since there are no other administrative records surviving from such a lowly craft in medieval London. It reveals how a small craft (some thirty members) struggled to maintain a hall, control working practices, license alien craftsmen and secure prayers for themselves and their families at the house of the Carmelite Friars in Fleet Street and St James's hospital in Westminster.
On occasion the Pinners joined forces with other crafts, such as the Girdlers in searching in the City to confiscate defective goods, or with the Cutlers to petition Parliament against the import of manufactured goods from abroad. However, in spite of their brave efforts, to which this slim volume bears witness, the Pinners were not able to remain an independent craft. They joined the Wiresellers in 1497, and this amalgamated craft itself went on to merge with the Girdlers in the sixteenth century.
This volume has never been in print before and has hitherto only rarely been used by historians. The London Record Society edition is enhanced by the inclusion of the wills of some thirty medieval pinners and wiresellers, most of which were registered in the Court of the Bishop of London's Commissary (whose records are now in Guildhall Library).
Barbara Megson read history at Girton College, Cambridge, and spent much of her professional life in the field of Education as a teacher, administrator and as H.M. Inspector of Schools. More recenlty she has focused her attention on the medieval city of London and in 1993 published Such Goodly Company: A Glimpse of theLife of Bowyers of London 1300-1600. She is currently working on a history of the Farriers of London.
Brian Dietz
The Port and Trade of Elizabethan London: Documents
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A calendar of the 1567/8 London Port Book, detailing imports in London, plus related documents.
Pauline Croft
The Spanish Company
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Helen Bradley
The Views of the Hosts of Alien Merchants, 1440-1444
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Edition of the returns made by English merchants, recording the transactions of foreign traders.
The "Views of Hosts" is the name given to the returns which merchant "hosts" in London, Southampton and Hull were required to provide for the Exchequer. They listed the imports and purchases made by their foreign merchant "guests", who came mostly from Italy, Spain and the Low Countries. The returns, printed here in full for the first time, provide details of the goods traded in and out of these ports, and also the names of the foreign merchants, and of the local men and women who bought their wares and sold English goods to them in return. The volume thus not only throws light on individual merchants and craftsmen living and working in these ports, but will also be of interest tothose concerned with the patterns and practices of English trade in the fifteenth century. The returns themselves are complemented with full apparatus and notes; introduction; biographies of more than 500 English people mentionedin the texts, as well almost 130 foreign merchants; and a glossary of commodities.
Colin J. Brett
Thomas Kytson's 'Boke of Remembraunce' (1529-1540)
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A wealthy merchant's memoranda of sales reveals a wealth of fascinating detail.
Over a period of eleven years from 1529 to his death, the wealthy London alderman, mercer and Merchant Adventurer Sir Thomas Kytson (1485-1540) recorded many of his commercial dealings in his 'Boke of Remembraunce'. This fascinating document, edited here for the first time, provides details not only of his purchases of cloth and the shipments of these to the annual marts held in the Low Countries, but also the sales of fabrics, spices, and other goods imported on the returning ships to Kytson's fellow merchants of London, members of the gentry, and others. Alongside these, there are memoranda of the delivery of materials to Kytson's wife and friends, and of some of his other personal concerns. The volume thus offers a colourful and detailed picture of the private and commercial life of a leading Londoner in the years around the English Reformation. Kytson's own 'Boke' is here collated with a separate record of exports to the Flemish marts in Antwerp and Bergen-op-Zoom kept by the mercer's clerks, and supplemented by an account of transactions at the 'Synxten Mart' at Antwerp in 1536, written by Sir Thomas's nephew, Thomas Washington. The material is complemented with extensive annotation and a comprehensive glossary, an introduction and substantial indices. COLIN J. BRETT'S published writings include volumes for the Somerset Record Society and paperson regional historical topics.
G. G. Harris
Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609-35
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Edwin Welch
Two Calvinistic Methodist Chapels, 1748-1811
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Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.
R.G. Lang
Two Tudor Subsidy Assessment Rolls for the City of London 1541 and 1582
