Research Themes
I will be exploring a number of themes.
Methodologies
- data re-mixing and re-use
- the application of digital humanities, corpus linguistics, ‘big data’, etc, methods to early modern administrative archival records
Petitions
- The uses and language of petitions
- Women in petitions/as petitioners
Often discussion of early modern petitions focuses on pauper petitions and letters (notwithstanding debate about how far they represent authentic “voices” of the poor) as sources for plebeian agency. But petitions could equally be used against the interests of the very poor. The largest single group of petitions is from parishes appealing against pauper removals under the settlement laws - and usually those petitions will be accompanied by copies of pauper examinations. And so I’m interested in exploring those connections and the many uses of petitions.
Paupers
- Marriages and irregular unions
- The welfare of poor children and young people
- Sickness and old age
Settlement, bastardy and vagrancy examinations contain biographical fragments of the lives of the 18th-century poor. They are fragments because the magistrates who conducted them were interested only in specific pieces of information that were legally relevant. But they are nonetheless often richly detailed fragments documenting important aspects of people’s lives and experiences: where they were born, work, marriage, family formation, deaths and desertions.
Coroners Inquests
- Sudden and violent death in 18th-century London
Old Bailey Voices
- Defendants’ voices in the Old Bailey 1750-1900
Work in Progress
Where can you find out what I’ve been doing? Alongside the release of open data, my aim is for all the outputs of the project to be as openly accessible as possible. This includes blogging, data visualisations, presentations and, eventually, more formal publications.
- In Her Mind’s Eye (my data blog)
- Early Modern Notes (some earlier posts, as well as writing that’s less data-driven)
Presentations
- Addressing Authority: What can you do with 10000 petitions?, London, March 2016 (slides)
- Remixing and Remaking Digital Histories, Sheffield, September 2016 (abstract)
- Settlement and Removal: Poor Relief and Exclusion in 18th-century London, Cultures of Exclusion, Warwick, May 2017 (slides)
- Defendants’ Voices and Silences in the Old Bailey Courtoom, 1781-1880, Digital Panopticon conference, Liverpool, September 2017 (notes, code).
- Gender, institutions and the changing uses of petitions in 18th-century London, Petitioning in Context: when and why do petitions matter?, London, April 2019 (notes, viz).