The streets of Victorian London became increasingly congested with vehicles, fast and furious drivers, pedestrians, costermongers, prostitutes, brass bands, homeless children and other obstacles to safe and rapid motion. Concerned citizens were alarmed by this unprecedented build-up of traffic and pollution. But how did this chaotic state come about - and why was more not done to prevent it? London's Teeming Streets brings an historical perspective to present-day concerns about the effects of continued urban expansion and shows that many current problems date back to the Victorian era. James Winter reveals that the issue of street reform was fraught with political intrigue. Many reformers were liberals; yet the question of attempting to limit or prohibit activity on the King's Highway which was, by definition, an open and democratic preserve, brought the very purpose of liberal reform into sharp focus.

Incidences of public disorder, and the manner in which they have been suppressed, have repeatedly ignited debate on the role of policing, the effectiveness of current legislation and the implications for human rights and civil liberties. These same issues have reverberated throughout British history, and have frequently resulted in the enactment of new legislation that reactively aimed to counter the specific concern of that era. This book offers a detailed analysis of the expansion of public order law in the context of the historical and political developments in British society. The correlation of key historical events and the enactment of consequent legislation is a key theme that resonates throughout the book, and demonstrates the expanding influence of the law on public assemblies and protest, which has continued to criminalise and prohibit certain social behaviours. Crucial movements in Britain’s social and political history who have all engaged in, or have provoked public disorder, are examined in the book. Other incidents of riot and disorder, such as the Featherstone Riot (1893), the Battle of Cable Street (1936), the Inner City Riots (1980s) and the UK riots (2011) are also covered. By positioning legal developments within their historical context, the book demonstrates the ebb and flow between the prominence of the competing demands of the liberties of free expression and assembly on the one hand and the protection of the general public and property on the other. This book is essential reading for academics and students in the fields of criminology, history and law.

This book examines the representation of English working-class children — the youthful inhabitants of the poor urban neighborhoods that a number of writers dubbed "darkest England" — in Victorian and Edwardian imperialist literature. In particular, Boone focuses on how the writings for and about youth undertook an ideological project to enlist working-class children into the British imperial enterprise, demonstrating convincingly that the British working-class youth resisted a nationalist identification process that tended to eradicate or obfuscate class differences.

Taking his title from the catch-phrase of the eponymous hero of the 1825 play 'Paul Pry', a huge success in London, New York, and around the English-speaking world, David Vincent explores the worlds of privacy and celebrity in 19th-century Britain, examining debates about mass communication and state surveillance that link to today's concerns.

Teaching Britain examines teachers as key agents in the production of social knowledge. Teachers in nineteenth century Britain claimed intimate knowledge of everyday life among the poor and working class at home, and non-white subjects abroad. They mobilized their knowledge in a wide range of media, from accounts of local happenings in their schools' official log books to travel narratives based on summer trips around Britain and the wider world. Teachers also obsessively narrated and reflected on their own careers. Through these stories and the work they did every day, teachers imagined and helped to enact new models of professionalism, attitudes towards poverty and social mobility, ways of thinking about race and empire, and roles for the state. As highly visible agents of the state and beneficiaries of new state-funded opportunities, teachers also represented the largesse and the reach of the liberal state - but also the limits of both.

Lurid, controversial, and vulnerable to accusations of titillation or rabble-rousing, the works of Victorian investigative journalism collected here nonetheless brought unseen suffering into the light of day. Even today their exposure has the power to shock. As one investigator promised, “The Report of our Secret Commission will be read to-day with a shuddering horror that will thrill throughout the world.” Secret Commissions brings together nineteen key documents of Victorian investigative journalism. Their authors range from well-known writers such as Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew, and W.T. Stead to now-forgotten names such as Hugh Shimmin, Elizabeth Banks, and Olive Malvery. Collectively, they show how unsparing descriptions of social injustice became regular features of English journalism long before the advent of American-style “muckraking.” The reports address topics as varied as child abuse, animal cruelty, juvenile prostitution, sweat-shops, slums, gypsies, abortion, infanticide, and other controversial social issues. The collection features detailed chapter introductions, original illustrations, a historical overview of investigative reporting in the nineteenth-century press, and suggestions for further reading.

There is now an extensive literature on the social and environmental consequences of living in the risk society. Studies of trauma are also increasingly prominent. But scant attention has been paid to perceptions of risk and danger in the past — in particular, to the history of accidents and the meanings of the accidental. This collection of interdisciplinary essays addresses this lacuna providing a theoretically informed historical sociology of the accident and risk. It explores the social and cultural contexts in which ‘acts of God', calamities, catastrophes, disasters, injuries, casualties, and other category of ‘mishaps' were experienced, conceptualized and responded to. Drawing on the skills of British, European and North American scholars, Accidents in History combines philosophical, sociological and ecological overviews with in-depth historical case-studies. It spans the period from the eighteenth century to the present, probing the epistemological, social and political roots of the accidental. The authors differentiate between industrial and other forms of injury; trace the origins of the normalization of accidents; and analyze the interactions and gendered discrepancies between domestic and non-domestic mishaps. They also investigate the medicalization of sudden injury, and discuss the emergence of new socio-medical and humanitarian discourses around the organization of relief for victims.

In Shopping for Pleasure, Erika Rappaport reconstructs London's Victorian and Edwardian West End as an entertainment and retail center. In this neighborhood of stately homes, royal palaces, and spacious parks and squares, a dramatic transformation unfolded that ultimately changed the meaning of femininity and the lives of women, shaping their experience of modernity. Rappaport illuminates the various forces of the period that encouraged and discouraged women's enjoyment of public life and particularly shows how shopping came to be seen as the quintessential leisure activity for middle- and upper-class women. Through extensive histories of department stores, women's magazines, clubs, teashops, restaurants, and the theater as interwoven sites of consumption, Shopping for Pleasure uncovers how a new female urban culture emerged before and after the turn of the twentieth century. Moving beyond the question of whether shopping promoted or limited women's freedom, the author draws on diverse sources to explore how business practices, legal decisions, and cultural changes affected women in the market. In particular, she focuses on how and why stores presented themselves as pleasurable, secure places for the urban woman, in some cases defining themselves as instrumental to civic improvement and women's emancipation. Rappaport also considers such influences as merchandizing strategies, credit policies, changes in public transportation, feminism, and the financial balance of power within the home. Shopping for Pleasure is thus both a social and cultural history of the West End, but on a broader scale it reveals the essential interplay between the rise of consumer society, the birth of modern femininity, and the making of contemporary London.

This collection uses the transnational activities of municipal urban governments to historicize the origins and development of the global city, focusing on how urban problems were addressed with concepts that emerged from the "world in between" nations and cities.

Commendation, the Colvin Prize 2023 (Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain) Reconstruction explores the impact of the First World War on the built environment – examining the immediate and longer term aftermath of the Great War on the architecture of Britain and the British Empire during the interwar years. While much attention has been paid by historians to post-war architectural reconstruction after 1945, the earlier developments of the interwar period (1919-1939) have been comparatively overlooked. This volume reveals how the architectural developments of this period not only provided important foundations for what happened after 1945 – they are also of real significance in their own right. Sixteen essays written by leading and emerging scholars bring together new and diverse approaches to the period – a period of reconstruction, fraught with the challenges of modernity and democratisation. The collection considers the complex effects of reconstruction on design, discourse, practice, and professionalism, and deals with the full spectrum of architectural styles and approaches, privileging neither Modernism nor traditional styles like the neo-Georgian. It brings to the fore social and political histories of the built environment, and makes important postcolonial interventions into the architectural history of British Imperialism at home and in its far reaches; in Cairo, South Africa, Australia, and India.