The London Journal

Volume 27 No.2 2002

ABSTRACTS

This paper examines the role of lobbying and interest groups in Parliamentary activity in early Stuart London, focussing on a long-running dispute between the Carmen, Wharfingers and Woodmongers. It emphasises that whilst Parliament was the last resort for interest groups, it was one that neither side could ignore and illustrates how private disputes between City companies often had wider repercussions for the population as a whole. It explores the increasing sophistication of lobbying techiques and argues that as the business conducted by Parliament in this period increased, so lobbying became even more important.

This article explores the attitudes of mainly middle-class post-Fire Londoners towards domestic privacy, focussing on the visible and invisible thresholds setting private space apart. It presents a reconstruction of the complex interplay between material structures, patterns of behaviour and evolving mentalities, all of which were in a state of flux before they settled into new, widely received concepts of middle-class normality.
   It identifies key changes in London's domestic architecture which took place after the Great Fire. As the pre-modern nexus between spatial proximity and social cohesion was broken, new ideas about privacy arose which were translated into both bricks-and-mortar structures and patterns of behaviour. Domestic privacy was not only protected by means of material thresholds, but also by a new protocol of polite visiting. Visits became stage-managed performances: an edited version of private life was acted out before one's visitors while intimate nuclei of privacy remained securely hidden away. Interior domestic spaces were refashioned following a tripartite division (rooms used by servants, rooms inhabited by members of the family and rooms which were made accessible to visitors). This type of arrangement guaranteed an adequate protection of areas designated as private space. At the same time, notions of gender roles changed along with a clearer separation of domestic space into female and male areas. Domestic space became private in that intruders could be excluded from it at will. However, the system of multiple thresholds which protected the private home was by no means impenetrable; its most characteristic feature was its selective permeability.

London did not escape the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, but, unlike some other municipalities, the capital's response was dependent not on one city-wide administration, but on borough authorities, each of which was free to develop its own strategy. Londoners' resistance to infection was particularly low on account of massive social disruption, under-nourishment, food shortages and wartime stress. Unlike earlier epidemics, the vulnerable population were men and women between the ages of fifteen and forty.
   The prosecution of war took precedence over civilian health concerns, hence the authorities' response concentrated on advising on individual behaviour. In each of the three waves of the epidemic, it was assumed that influenza was beyond the scope of current medical knowledge and that the War's demands far outweighed those of the victims. London boroughs were themselves working under the peculiar difficulties attendant on the war, not least of which was a severely depleted public health workforce. The public health authorities had traditionally tackled epidemics by a well-tried system of identification, vaccination, isolation, and disinfection, but this did not work against influenza. Individual boroughs reacted to local circumstances, but few took radical steps to combat the epidemic.

This paper addresses changes at Exmouth Market during the 1990s and explores how the street, generally run-down at the start of the decade, became one of the trendiest in Clerkenwell. It focuses on the role of planning changes and the ways in which they added to the stock of cultural capital. This took the form of restaurants and a rejuvenated vision for the street that built both upon its history and its proximity to Sadler's Wells and the Barbican. However, within this new vision of Exmouth Market, more long term and poorer residents were often by-passed in decision-making processes. The paper argues that any conclusion about the 'success' at Exmouth Market therefore needs much qualification.