The London Journal

Volume 28 No.1 2003

ABSTRACTS

This paper explores the manner in which architectural and urban forms staged social performance. Drawing on architectural theory regarding the uses of space, it reveals the manner in which the urban environmet provided various spatial stages upon which to establish and promote social standing, political alliance and gender relationships. Evidence is drawn from the Grosvenor estate in Mayfair between 1720 and 1760. Demographic studies of the estate provided evidence of a rich and diverse society in residence, which included a significant number of single women and influential political persons. Utilizing diverse social variables, such as gender and class, this research seeks to expose the varied roles and dimensions played by the urbanite, specifically thos ewho utilized Grosvenor Square as their platform for social and spatial performance. Attention is drawn to the means by which eighteenth-century London society consumed and utilized specific spatial patterns in the urban landscape..

London private bankers trace their origins back to the communities of scriveners and goldsmiths active in the capital in the mid-seventeenth century. However, it was not until the early eighteenth century that private bankers began to emerge as a clearly defined group within London's financial community. By the later eighteenth century a clear differentiation in the focus and direction of their business had been established: on one hand were the West End banks who provided personal deposit banking services to the aristocracy and gentry resident in the capital on a seasonal or permanent basis; on the other were the City bankers, whose business was increasingly commercial in character, focusing on trade finance, bill discounting and the provision of inter-bank remittance facilities at home and abroad. This paper focuses on the development of the West End bankers in London between c.1750 and 1830, a group previously relatively little studied despite the fact they containe dsome of the most famouse names in English banking, including Child & Co., Hoare & Co. and Drummond & Co. The paper pays particular attention to the character and status of the London private bankers, their geographical distribution in the capital, the nature of their business and relationships with customers. Finally, it provides a detailed discussion of the design and building of some key West End banking houses in the later-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, linking the social and cultural characteristics of the bankers and their business with the changing financial landscape of the metropolis in the Georgian period.

This article examines the relationship between urban space, fashion and the changing forms of masculine identity presented by the figure of the dandy in the West End of early nineteenth-century London. It uses the evidence of biographical accounts, popular journalism and printed satire to demonstrate the ways in which the city provided both a supportive framework, a physical resource and a symbolic stage for the performance of a new version of fashionable masculinity. The article complements those accounts of dandyism which stress the symbolic associations of the dandy's stance by insisting on a reading of consumption practices which acknowledge their material co-ordinates, highlighting the role played by the physical context of the metropolis in defining the dandy's attitudes and appearance.

Middle-class women's experience of urban space has become the focus of a number of recent studies. Re-mapping the sexual geographies of the British capital, this essay shifts attention away from masculine strollers, feminine streetwalkers and leisured women, to focus on women artists who lived and worked in central London in the 1850s and 1860s. Wanting to succeed, or at least participate, in their chosen profession, women artists strategically positioned themselves at the centre of the nation's art world. And in pursuing this profession, they moved in and across central London, going to study and research, buy materials, visit exhibitions, and network with colleagues. The essay considers the re-organisation of domestic space and creation of a 'counter-tactics' of the habitat; the artistic neighbourhood of Fitzrovia; walking and wandering in the urban environment to sample its transitory delights and unexpected pleasures; a 'spatiality of dissent' with the founding of a women's centre; and a raft of images of middle-class women wlakers and travellers in relation to the visual mapping of London during a period of expansion, change and colliding representation. Drawing on the writings of Elizabeth Grosz and Beatriz Colomina, the essay concludes with a discussion of the relations between city space and corporeality, visuality and obscenity centred on an analysis of Emily Mary Osborn's painting, Nameless and Friendless, which portrays a woman artist in an art dealer's shop in London's West End.