Charles Booth’s London: Poverty Maps and Policy Notebooks https://booth.lse.ac.uk/
This resource enables researchers to search through the notebooks from Inquiry into Life and Labour in London (1886-1903) by providing visitors to the site to search through 41 digitised notebooks and access interactive London poverty maps. The website gives a biography of Charles Booth, including his business and social interests which led to his survey of London at the end of the 19th century, and a description about the poverty maps.
Digital Panopticon https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/
This resource enables researchers to search through an online database of millions of records relating to the lives of 90,000 London convicts who were transported to Australia, 1780-1925, after being sentenced at the Old Bailey. The database is accessible to public researchers, although some of the data can only be viewed via online subscriptions. Researchers are provided with historical backgrounds concerning convicts in Britain and Australia and thematic articles, such as policing and judges’ reports. Additionally, there are downloadable school resources for different GCSE and A Level exam boards, as well as university seminar resources.
Early Modern London Theatres (EMLoT) https://emlot.library.utoronto.ca/
This online resource enables researchers to search through an online database relating to the history early modern theatres in London (including Whitefriars, Salisbury Court, the Globe, and the Red Bull), as well as bearbaiting arenas in the same proximities as the theatres. On EMLoT, researchers can search by keyword, record, or browse by events, venues, troupes, and people, and there are learning activities examples for teachers to view to plan classroom exercises based on material in the database.
The Great Fire of London http://www.fireoflondon.org.uk/
This resource was created to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London and is designed to be interactive for school pupils and teachers. The website provides interactive digital maps of seventeenth-century London and there is a “Minecraft Experience” game about the Great Fire, which requires players to put out the fire and find early modern items and artefacts.
John Strype’s A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster https://www.dhi.ac.uk/strype/
This resource provides researchers with free access to the full-text electronic version of John Strype’s Survey, which was published in 1720 in two volumes, expanding from the original survey published by John Stowe, entitled A Survey of London, in 1603. Researchers can see how the early modern London landscape radically changed after the Great Fire of London and can view maps and plates which depict prominent buildings, street plans, and ward boundaries of the late Stuart capital.
Layers of London https://www.layersoflondon.org/
The project is a map-based website in which researchers can access digitised and interactive historical maps of London, and on the histories of the local communities across the city. The website includes historic maps, photographs, and crowd-sourced histories of London.
Locating London’s Past https://www.locatinglondon.org/
This resource enables researchers to search through a wide body of digital resources relating to early modern and eighteenth-century London. Researchers can map and visualise textual and artefactual data relating to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London against John Rocque’s 1746 map of London, as well as search through material on social matters, including poor relief, crime, local administration, taxation, elections, plague deaths, and archaeological finds.
London Lives 1690-1800: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis https://www.londonlives.org/
This resource provides researchers with access to fully digitised and searchable primary resources about eighteenth-century London, particularly of the lower classes. The website includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages from eight London archives (as well as datasets from fifteen datasets other history projects), and the material includes ordinary’s accounts, sessions papers, criminal registers, and coroners’ inquests.
London’s Pulse: Medical Officers of Health Reports 1848-1972 https://wellcomelibrary.org/moh/
This resource provides researchers with free online access to over 5,500 Medical Officer of Health (MOH) reports from the Greater London area. Researchers can search through a database by borough, illness, and time period, and they can download over 275,000 tables which have been extracted from the MOH reports. The website provides guidance to online visitors about the different time periods and public health, as well as how to analyse the medical reports.
Old Bailey Online: London’s Central Criminal Court, 1674-1913 https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/
Researchers can search through digitised collections of surviving editions of Old Bailey Proceedings, 1674-1913, and the Ordinary of Newgate’s Accounts, 1676-1772. Researchers can freely access – for non-commercial use – over 197,000 trials and the biographical details of around 2,500 men and women executed at Tyburn. The website contains digitised images of all 190,000 original pages of the Proceedings, and 4,000 pages of Ordinary accounts, and there are primary sources for school children at different key stage levels.
Records of London’s Livery Companies Online: Apprentices and Freemen 1400-1900 (ROLLCO) https://www.londonroll.org/
This resource provides researchers with free online access to records of apprentices and freemen in the City of London Livery Companies between 1400 and 1900. The records contain material from several guild companies, including the Drapers’ Company, the Mercers’ Company, the Salters’ Company, the Goldsmiths’ Company, the Girdlers’ Company, and the Stationers’ Company. The database allows researchers to search by apprentice and freeman and a graph is provided which depicts the historic trends from the different livery companies.
St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster: Visual and Political Culture, 1292-1941 https://www.virtualststephens.org.uk/
This resource allows researchers to virtually explore the art, history and architecture of the historic royal chapel of St Stephen’s as a monument to medieval kingship and a setting for parliamentary government. St Stephen’s chapel originally functioned as the king’s chapel in the Palace of Westminster until it was dissolved by Edward VI, in which it became the meeting-place of the House of Commons. After the new Palace of Westminster was built after 1834, it was restored as a place of worship. The website provides visitors with access to 3D visualisations of the chapel during different historical periods, which are also accessible through audio and interactive settings.
The Virtual St Paul’s Cathedral Project https://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu/
This online resource enables researchers to virtually experience how worship and preaching was performed and conducted in seventeenth-century St Paul’s Cathedral and in Paul’s Churchyard. Researchers can view a visual model of St Paul’s Cathedral and the surrounding churchyard, which helps give an overview of the physical space of the cathedral and churchyard. The website has recreated the worship programme for Easter Sunday 1624, which includes that day’s liturgical events, the morning sermon by Bishop Lancelot Andrewes and the afternoon sermon of the Dean, John Donne. Acoustic models are available so that researchers can listen to how sermons would have been heard acoustically in St Paul’s Cathedral, the churchyard, and the Sermon House.