Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London

by Tim Hitchcock

London in the eighteenth century was the greatest city in the world. It was a magnet that drew men and women from the rest of England in huge numbers. For a few the streets were paved with gold, but for the majority it was a harsh world with little guarantee of money or food. For the poor and destitute, London's streets offered little more than the barest living. Yet men, women and children found a great variety of ways to eke out their existence, sweeping roads, selling matches, singing ballads and performing all sorts of menial labor. Many of these activities, apart from the direct begging of the disabled, depended on an appeal to charity, but one often mixed with threats and promises. Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London provides a remarkable insight into the lives of Londoners, for all of whom the demands of charity and begging were part of their everyday world.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2004

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Tim Hitchcock has degrees from the University of California at Berkeley (1980) and the University of Oxford (1985). He began his academic career at the then Polytechnic of North London, where he taught early modern social history and humanities computing from 1989 onwards, searving as Head of the History group from 1992. In 1997 he took up a Readership at the University of Hertfordshire, where he served as Dean of Research for Humanities and Education, and from 2003, as founding director of the Social Science Arts and Humanities Research Institute. He was awarded a Professorship in Eighteenth-Century History in 2001; and was appointed Professor of Digital History at the University of Sussex in 2013; and co-director of the Sussex Humanities Lab in 2015.

Hitchcock has published twelve books on the histories of gender, sexuality and poverty focussed primarily on eighteenth-century London. With Professor Robert Shoemaker and others he has also created a series of websites helping to give direct public access to 37 billion words of primary sources evidencing the history of Britain. Designed to underpin the writing of a new 'history from below', these sites include: The Old Bailey Online, 1674 to 1913 (www.oldbaileyonline.org); London Lives, 1690-1800 (www.londonlives.org); Locating London's Past (www.locatinglondon.org); and Connected Histories (www.connectedhistories.org). Jointly with Robert Shoemaker, in 2011 he was given the History Today, Trustees' Award for his contribution to historical research. Hitchcock was a founding member of the AHRC Advisory Board and Peer Review College, and is currently a member and past chair of the AHRC's Digital Transformations Advisory Group. He also sits on the British Library's Advisory Council. From 2012, he has been Co-Investigator on the AHRC funded project: The Digital Panopticon: The Global Impact of London Punishments, 1780-1925.

-- from http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/336034