CENTRE FOR METROPOLITAN HISTORY
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECT

Housing Environments and Health in Early Modern London 1550-1750

Directors: Vanessa Harding, M.A., Ph.D., Matthew Davies, M.A., D.Phil., Professor Richard Smith, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., FBA
Researchers (CMH): Mark Merry, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.; Philip Baker, B.A., M.A.; (Cambridge): Gill Newton, B.A., M.A.
Funded by: The Wellcome Trust (Ref: 079574/Z/06/Z) (26 October 2006-25 April 2008)
Amount Awarded: £197,539

This project, undertaken in partnership with Birkbeck and the University of Cambridge, will build upon the work of the ‘People in Place: families, households and housing in early modern London’ project. Employing the People in Place research team, led by Dr Vanessa Harding (Birkbeck) and co-directed by Dr Matthew Davies (CMH) and Professor Richard Smith (Cambridge Group for the History of Population), it will examine the extent to which environmental factors and the social characteristics of individual, family and locality determined the disease and mortality profile of the pre-industrial city.

The project aims to test the supposition that variation in mortality experience (infant, seasonal, epidemic, etc) across the early modern city correlates broadly with geographical variations in social and environmental character. Although such comparisons have usually taken place at ward- or parish-level, by drawing upon and enhancing the large database already compiled by the People in Place project - which contains a wide range of information on families, households, properties and buildings in three contrasting areas of the city (Cheapside, St Botolph Aldgate and Clerkenwell) – it should be possible to identify a range of variations in mortality and social/environmental characteristics at the ‘micro-level’ of precinct, street and even clusters of houses. Utilising mapping techniques to illuminate and analyse health and mortality patterns within the populations of the selected areas, this ‘micro-geographical study’ should significantly sharpen and refine our understanding of the relationship between mortality and environment.

Information on this project is also available on the University of Cambridge's Housing, Environment and Health in Early Modern London webpages