The London Journal

Volume 27 No.1 2002

ABSTRACTS

From the early eighteenth century, large numbers of paupers in London who were incapable of work through modest degrees of insanity, imbecility or feckless personality, or who were simply unpopular and difficult to manage in ordinary parish workhouses, were placed in so-called ‘pauper farms’. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth ceturies, these pauper farms formed an important part of public welfare provision for London. By the beginning of the nineteenth century these neglected but socially important urban institutions had grown into large repositories of the poor. After the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and the Lunatics Acts of 1845, their role was largely subsumed by union workhouses, private licensed houses and the county lunatic asylums.

The Adelphi, which was built in 1768 and only demolished in the 1930s, was a highly symbolic site in London’s urban landscape. Situated between the City and Westminster, and built on arches over the Thames, it was associated both with London’s underworld and its respectable population and occupied an equivocal place in contemporary imagination. This paper explores the history of construction as well as the topographical metaphors associated with the Adelphi. Its role as a cultural icon of a vertically stratified city is explored through the works of writers such as Dickens and artists such as Géricault. Popular culture also celebrated the Adelphi’s subterranean status. In popular theatre and literature as in illustration, the Adelphi epitomised the genre of low life and urban mystery. Finally, the way in which the Adelphi symbolised a set of underground spaces is explored against the background of its demolition.

During the inter-war period, voluntary housing associations built relatively few houses compared to the state. However, their efforts were directed less towards construction and more towards influencing debates and policies through research, education and propaganda. Through detailed case studies of the St Pancras Housing Improvement Society and the Kensington Housing Association, this paper argues that during the 1920s activists sought to influence debate and local housing policy in London. During the 1930s, when central government became more directly involved in housing provision, voluntary groups sought to promote the sector as a potential agent of state housing policy. In particular, voluntary associations promoted exhibitions as a way of drawing attention to the problems of poor housing and the need for new solutions. Through publicity seeking stunts and displays, notably associated with the New Homes for Old exhibitions, these associations continued to play a significant role in housing policy during the period.

Focusing on London’s Metropolitan Police Force (the Met), this article examines women’s location within the social and cultural geography of the city in terms of covert and overt policing practices. The role of women police officers – as figures of authority and agents of surveillance – is considered in relation to the dynamics of street-life, notions of performativity, and the gendering of space and identity. Whilst some studies of women’s police work have stressed notions of confinement and restriction, this article considers the potential that both policing and the performance of femininity created for women to traverse city space, contesting and sometimes subverting assumptions about gender and respectability. Concentrating on the forty years between the initial appointment of women to the Met and the Street Offences Act of 1959 (which is often seen as taking prostitution ‘off the streets’), the article also considers the ways in which women officers negotiated the sexual cultures of the West End. Uniform and undercover/plain-clothes duties relied on differing but related technologies of surveillance. As attested uniformed officers, women became part of the urban spectacle and a highly visible form of ‘feminine’ authority; the uniform gave women confidence and security as they moved into new environments. In addition to ‘beat’ duty, women were increasingly used for plain-clothes and undercover observations on suspected brothels, gambling joints and unlicenses drinking clubs. Women officers were taught to interpret the dress and physiognomy of others in relation to sets of cultural codes regarding class and status as well as gender. They also used this knowledge to adapt their own appearance.