Travel back to the early-19th century (and your childhood) with Mary Poppins! Join us for a discussion of constables, bank runs, Dick van Dyke's accent, screevers and buskers, and more!

Sources:

Film Background: "Mary Poppins," IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058331/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv Robin Raven, "What the Mary Poppins Author Really Thought of the Original Movie," Readers Digest, available at https://www.rd.com/article/mary-poppins-p-l-travers/ Maane Khatchatourian, "Tom Hanks: PL Travers Would Hate 'Saving Mr Banks'" Variety, available at https://variety.com/2013/scene/news/tom-hanks-p-l-travers-would-hate-saving-mr-banks-1200940630/

Cockney Accent: New York Times, "Michael Caine: An Accent that Broke Through Class Barriers," available at https://youtu.be/XBjp1oEZcwU "Cockney Accent," British Library. Available at https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/cockney-accent-freddie-ridley-road-market "Cockney," Encyclopedia Britannica, available at https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cockney Derek B. Scott, "The Music-Hall Cockney: Flesh, Blood, or Replicant?" Music and Letters 83, 2 (2002) Dialects Archive: England. Available at https://www.dialectsarchive.com/england Melissa Hogenboom, "What Does Your Accent Say About You?" BBC. Available at https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180307-what-does-your-accent-say-about-you

Bank Runs: William Dalrymple, "The East India Company: The Original Corporate Raiders," The Guardian, available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders Richard B. Sheridan, "The British Credit Crisis of 1772 and the American Colonies," Journal of Economic History 20, 2 (1960) Henry Hamilton, "The Failure of Ayre Bank," Economic History Review 8, 3 (1956) Christopher Klein, "10 Things You Might Not Know About the Boston Tea Party," History.com, available at https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-boston-tea-party

Constables: Philip Rawlings, Policing: a short history (Willan, 2002). Joanne Klein, Invisible Men: The Secret Lives of Police Constables in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, 1900-1939 (Liverpool University Press, 2010). Clive Emsley, Hard men: the English and violence since 1750 (Hambledon and London, 2005).

Buskers and Screevers: Dr. Paul Simpson, "The History of Street Performance" Gresham College https://youtu.be/Ja9wnrusGdQ Dr. Paul Simpson, "The History of Street Performance: 'Music by handle' and the Silencing of Street Musicians in the Metropolis," Gresham College https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-history-of-street-performance Dale Chapman, "The 'one-man band' and entrepreneurial selfhood in neoliberal culture," Popular Music 32:3 (October 2013): 451-70. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24736784 John M. Picker, "The Soundproof Study: Victorian Professionals, Work Space, and Urban Noise," Victorian Studies 42:3 (Spring 1999- Spring 2000): 427-53. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3828975 Sam Wollaston, "Where the streets have no change: how buskers are surviving in cashless times," The Guardian (8 November 2018). https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/08/where-the-streets-have-no-change-how-buskers-are-surviving-in-cashless-times Leslie Gilbert Elman, "Where the sidewalk ends, chalk art begins," CNN Travel (10 September 2013). https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/chalk-art-festivals/index.html "I Madonnari: Italian street artists take over the chicest shopping streets in Europe" https://world.dolcegabbana.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-the-italian-street-artists-called-madonnari/ Daniel South, "David Zinn: Street art that washes away in the rain," BBC (6 June 2020). https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-52913521 Sarah Todd, "Sidewalk chalk drawings have a colorful 500-year history" Quartz (22 June 2019). https://qz.com/quartzy/1650194/the-history-of-sidewalk-chalk-drawings/