Adam Crymble

Loose, idle and disorderly : vagrant removal in late eighteenth-century Middlesex

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Social History on 2 October 2014, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2014.975943

A Comparative Approach to Identifying the Irish in Long Eighteenth-Century London

Abstract Historians seeking to identify the Irish have overwhelmingly relied upon nominal record linkage, thus limiting studies to periods and contexts in which corroborating records exist. Surname analysis provides an alternative: a subset of 283 Irish surnames was able to correctly isolate 40 percent of known Irish individuals across thousands of entries, which is sufficient for sampling the Irish in demographic studies. This conclusion was based on an analysis of 278,949 names from the London area in the 1841 census, and was tested and refined against 42,248 historical records pertaining to the poor in London between 1777 and 1820.

Modelling regional imbalances in English plebeian migration to late eighteenth-century London

Using a substantial set of vagrancy removal records for Middlesex (1777–86) giving details of the place of origin of some 11,500 individuals, and analysing these records using a five-variable gravity model of migration, this article addresses a simple question: from which parts of England did London draw its lower-class migrants in the late eighteenth century? It concludes, first, that industrializing areas of the north emerged as a competitor for potential migrants—contributing relatively fewer migrants than predicted by the model. Rising wage rates in these areas appear to explain this phenomenon. Second, it argues that migration from urban centres in the west midlands and parts of the West Country, including Bristol, Birmingham, and Worcester, was substantially higher than predicted, and that this is largely explained by falling wage rates and the evolution of an increasingly efficient travel network. Third, for the counties within about 130 kilometres of the capital, this article suggests that migration followed the pattern described in the current literature, with London drawing large numbers of local women in particular. It also argues that these short-distance migrants came from a uniquely wide number of parishes, suggesting a direct rural-to-urban path.

How Criminal Were the Irish? Bias in the Detection of London Currency Crime, 1797–1821

Currency-related crime was endemic in London during the Restriction Period (1797–1821). This article looks at 884 individuals suspected or charged by the Bank of England, and considers how changes in detection strategy affected the prevalence of ethnically Irish people within that list of suspects. It rejects an anti-Irish bias, and concludes that from 1812 a reduced reliance upon shopkeepers to catch people passing off false currency, and a subsequent rise in ‘sting operations’ initiated by paid officers and local informants, resulted in a significant increase in non-Irish culprits coming under suspicion and a proportionate decline of Irish accused. This change was the result of the Banks newfound ability to target local networks involved in the less public forms of currency crime (selling, counterfeiting, forging) for which the Irish were less well known. These findings challenge the Irish criminal reputation by highlighting the important role of detection strategies in accusations.

Vagrancy in English Culture and Society, 1650–1750

What is vagrancy? David Hitchcock tackles this challenging question, drawing on a combination of literary and social history sources to provide a multidisciplinary view of early modern mobile paupe...

From Chartist Newspaper to Digital Map of Grassroots Meetings, 1841-1844: Documenting Workflows

This is a free access article published by Routledge in Journal of Victorian Culture, doi: 10.1080/13555502.2017.1301179.

London’s Criminal Underworlds, c. 1720–c. 1930: A Social and Cultural History

Towards the end of this fascinating study, Heather Shore reflects on the difficulty of ‘trying to uncover or reconstruct something that does not exist in a concrete form’ (p. 192). For Shore, the ‘underworld’ is a ‘cipher’, through which the press, the police, the government, and the wider society represents, and tries to understand, crime as a social problem. It is not that criminals themselves have no role to play in this process, but that their activities are interpreted through the distorting lens of a particular discourse. While historians have tended to see forms of criminal organisation as culturally constructed, and sensationalist popular ‘true crime’ histories depict gangs as entirely real, Shore follows the lead of modern criminologists and sociologists and approaches the topic from a combined socio-cultural perspective.