Institute of Historical Research

11 Women and the city: investment, banking and the spread of women's financial activity in early eighteenth-century England

Anne Laurence

(Open University)

The tale of the financial revolution in early eighteenth-century England is usually told in terms of the development of financial institutions following the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694 and the expansion of the stock market, especially during the period of the South Sea Bubble of 1720. But much of this would have been impossible without changes – both through legislation and in the courts – that made the transfer of funds between individuals, banks and joint stock companies easier and more secure. These changes made it possible for private individuals, both men and women, to start to use banks and the stock market without being part of the commercial elite of the City of London. It is in this period that the ‘city’ ceased to be a geographical location where banking and stock market activity took place and became a virtual space in which the new financial markets operated.

In particular, this transformation affected women. For the most part they had been outside the commercial and mercantile networks that had characterised the limited financial markets that existed before 1694. Acts of Parliament of 1698 and 1704 and the development of the use of letters of attorney allowed money to be transferred more securely and stock to be bought and sold without the owner visiting the company offices in person. While newspapers during the South Sea Bubble wrote of the visibility of women in ’Change Alley, what was significant in reality was the participation in the market, often for the first time, of women living in the provinces or who visited London only occasionally.

This paper will explore the impact of the new ‘virtual City’ on women’s finances and consider the extent to which their experience differed from that of men.

Anglo-American Conference of Historians 2009: Cities

Institute of Historical Research

10 The rich becoming the poor: from riches to rags in Georgian workhouse

Jeremy Boulton

(University of Newcastle)

Contemporary men and women, as Michael Mascuch reminded us in a pioneering article in Social History more than a decade ago, were much more likely to fear downward social mobility than expect social advancement. The principal aim of his middling autobiographers was to make ‘the family secure in an unstable physical environment’. Fears that wives and children would not be provided for adequately after death were commonplace, many writers celebrated their efforts to get adult children suitable careers and situations. Even when material prosperity was achieved ‘fear of poverty mitigated the enjoyment of attained domestic comforts’. This ‘middle class’ sought and prized security over material acquisition or social advancement, and were always conscious of the possibility of failure and decline. To quote Mascuch ‘in the early modern view, where the abyss below was closer than the escape hatch above, a desire to avoid seeing the family’s impendent tumble into social disgrace defined the parameters of social mobility’.

This paper examines the reality of such downward social mobility as experienced by those who became paupers in St Martin in the Fields. It uncovers the life courses of paupers relieved in the parish workhouse between 1725 and 1824. It focuses on questions of inter- and intra-generational social mobility. How many of these ‘paupers’ had experience of better times, of renting substantial houses or living in fashionable streets? How many had been respectable, rate-paying ‘householders’ before age, death or sickness brought social ruin? Such questions are clearly important. Downward social mobility distorts attempts to measure the extent of material accumulation over the life-cycle (since outright losers will be omitted from calculations). Again, without such contextualisation, how can one comprehend claims for ‘pauper agency’? Paupers who had been former rate payers and householders would have been more skilled at negotiating with parish officers than those who had never risen beyond an unskilled trade and cheap lodgings.

Anglo-American Conference of Historians 2009: Cities

Institute of Historical Research

09 Poor man, sick man, beggarman, thief: plebeian lives and the making of modern London

Tim Hitchcock

(University of Hertfordshire)

Through the digitisation of some 40 million words of manuscript sources about the lives of plebeian Londoners between 1690 and 1800 and the creation of an integrated search facility to trace individuals through these and other electronic sources, the ESRC-funded Plebeian Lives project is creating biographies of hundreds of otherwise obscure individuals. These life stories document the experiences of poor Londoners as they navigated their way through the institutions which provided poor relief, medical care and justice in the metropolis. These stories demonstrate, this paper will argue, that through their use of these institutions, often playing them off against each other, plebeian Londoners shaped the development of social policy. Individual biographies will be combined with a synthetic and theoretical overview to argue that the creation of an individual, rather than institutional, centered approach to social history has the potential to transform our understanding, not only of the lives of the poor, but also the development of the modern state.

Anglo-American Conference of Historians 2009: Cities

Institute of Historical Research

Multicultural London: Past, Present and Future-A History & Policy discussion Part 3

Rob Berkeley

Institute of Historical Research

01 Welcome

Miles Taylor

(IHR)

The welcome to the 2009 Anglo-American conference by the Director of the Institute of Historical Research.

Anglo-American Conference of Historians 2009: Cities

Institute of Historical Research, Kate Gavron

Institute of Historical Research, Jerry White (Birkbeck)

Institute of Historical Research, Richard Dennis

Institute of Historical Research, Vic Gatrell

Institute of Historical Research, Swati Chattopadhyay