Summary of the impact

The research has vastly extended the range and improved the quality of evidence pertaining to pauper lives in Britain the early modern era. Through conserving, contextualising and presenting this cultural heritage in an accessible form, vast amounts of information on pauper's lives are widely and quickly available to interested users, some of whom previously had little or no access to this data. Beneficiaries include the general public, professionals and academics worldwide.

Underpinning research

Research conducted by Jeremy Boulton (Professor of Urban History, 1990-present) on the lived experiences of paupers in the past has happened in three phases:

The Lives of the Poor in the West End of London, 1725-1824 (2004-2007) — in this research Boulton, in conjunction with Leonard Schwarz (Birmingham), studied the relationship between life-cycles, poor relief and survival strategies of the labouring poor in the parish of St Martin's-in-the-Fields, Westminster, with the aim of reconstructing the lives of the London poor. Records collected as part of the project include over 100,000 workhouse entries and exits, over 12,000 settlement examinations, and nearly 15,000 payments to parish pensioners. These records were used to construct seven substantial datasets, which reconstructed the life histories of over 50,000 individuals (1-3, 6).

Death, disease and the environment: contextualising individual causes of death in London, 1747-1825 (2007-2010) — the same research team was joined by Romola Davenport (Cambridge) and the research was expanded to incorporate demographic studies of mortality and causes of death in the same parish. This involved the collection and analysis of very large datasets (containing over 300,000 records) which record information (workhouse careers, poor law payments, migration and employment histories, births, deaths, marriages) about named individuals. By linking these with the datasets created in the first phase of the project and applying a mapping exercise, it was possible to link the welfare and migration histories of many thousands of parish paupers with their ultimate cause of death. Ultimately, this produced a more in-depth examination of mortality by social class than has hitherto been possible (4, 5).

The origins of the modern demographic regime: infant mortality by social status in Georgian London 2011-2013 — the research addressed two key questions in population history: how were cities transformed from demographic sinks into self-sustaining populations; and when and why did class differences in mortality emerge? Through transcribing the novel sources of evidence (baptism and burial fee records) into digital form for analysis, extraordinarily rich datasets were produced. Using GIS (Geographical Information Systems) technology, the research mapped the spatial context of historical urban mortality. This enabled the researchers to generate improved estimates of infant mortality in London c.1750-1825, and the first estimates of infant mortality rates by social status for this period.

The underpinning research is significant in that it reconstructed the lives of paupers in the past. These people left no written testimonial, no autobiography or personal papers, and in this respect, they are typical of most of those who lived hundreds of years ago. However, via the records generated by the poor law and the parish the research uncovered a large amount of detail about their lives. More generally, the research also uncovered that:

• the parish workhouse had a very significant impact on the experience of death and dying;
• the parish workhouse had a much more important local medical role than previously realised which has important implications for our understanding of the development of health care in the past;
• cases of adult smallpox declined dramatically in the eighteenth century with important implications for our understanding of the historical epidemiology of the disease;
• the elderly formed a growing proportion of those in the parish workhouse;
• social status distorted the reporting of particular causes of death (such as lunacy and venereal disease);
• there was a very considerable — and measurable — post mortem movement of corpses across parish boundaries.

The other named Newcastle researcher was John Black (Research Associate, 2004-2012). Details of each strand are included on the Project website: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/pauperlives/.

References to the research

Table of relevant grants:

Investigator	Grant Title	Sponsor	Period of Grant	Total Grant
Jeremy Boulton (Co-I)	The Lives of the Poor in the West End of London, 1725-1824(RES-000-23-0250) *Final report rated as ‘outstanding'	ESRC	2004-2007	£294,000
Jeremy Boulton (Co-I)	Death, disease and the environment: contextualising individual causes of death in London, 1747-1825 (Trust 081508)	Wellcome Trust	2007-2010	£194,000
Jeremy Boulton (PI)	The origins of the modern demographic regime: infant mortality by social status in Georgian London (RES-062-23-3221)	ESRC	2011-2013	£196,000

Details of the impact

The impact deriving from this research derives from the widespread public use of the data collected, collated and contextualised by the researcher. The research informs the data selected, and the public use impact deriving from this is only available as a consequence of the research that underpins it. This represents a significant extension of the evidence available regarding the lives of the London poor in the early modern era.

A major ESRC-funded project London Lives, managed by researchers at Sheffield and Hertfordshire Universities, has benefited from the datasets produced via the underpinning research, namely the `Settlement Examinations' and `Workhouse Admissions Register' which encompass over 100,000 records. London Lives is a "not-for-profit project whose sole objective is to make the documents and data it contains available for private use to all internet users free of charge", which it does through providing the data in a fully digitised and searchable form. As a result of the London Lives project utilising these research datasets, both are now available on the project's public website, http://www.londonlives.org, which was launched in June 2010 (IMP1, IMP2).

Any user of the London Lives site therefore will get results that might include records produced by the underpinning research. The site has been described as being "a significant addition to research capacity for scholars researching the social history of eighteenth-century London", whilst also being of practical value to many individuals outside academia tracing their family history or otherwise researching their own projects. As of 2011, the London Lives site had received around 450,000 visits from 118 countries (of which it is estimated that approx. 90% are from non-academics), viewing around 4.5 million pages (IMP3). A good proportion of searches result in hits on the St Martin's data. Users who register with the site also have access to additional resources and functions. As of July 2011, out of 3883 registered users, 313 self-identified as being affiliated to universities. Academic users originate from 54 HE institutions in the UK and 59 in the US, as well as from 14 other countries worldwide, such as Australia, Canada, China, New Zealand and Sweden. In addition, 181 users self-report being affiliated to an organisation, such as family or history societies, public bodies (e.g. British Library, English Heritage), the media (e.g. the BBC, CNN, the Guardian), and government (e.g. Ministry of Justice, Arizona Supreme Court) (IMP3).

More recent statistics indicate that over 200,000 people visited the London Lives website between 1 July 2011 and 31 July 2013. In the same period, unique page views of St Martin's data were 12,378 (St Martin's settlement examinations) and 20,709 (St Martin's workhouse registers), with over 5,000 unique page views restricted solely to the St Martin's datasets (IMP4). Registered users are able to create Wikis [a web application developed collaboratively by a community of users, which allows any of them to add, modify or delete content] for their personal research purposes on the site using the datasets deposited, or, alternatively, they can integrate such data into their own private research (IMP5). Up to the end of July 2013, 80 users in total had created their own Wikis using St Martin's material, evidence of active use of the research data.

The research also achieves considerable impact via its own project website, Pauper Lives in Georgian London and Manchester, http://research.ncl.ac.uk/pauperlives/. Website traffic analysis has revealed that between 1 January 2011 and 31 July 2013 the Pauper Lives website received 2,953 visits consisting in a total of 8,402 page views, and with a new visits rating of 65%. Though most visitors are from the UK (77%), the reach of the impact is evident via visits from 43 other countries, including Australia, United States, Canada, New Zealand, France, Germany, Brazil, China and Denmark (IMP6). Impact on the public understanding has been extended by allowing free access to multiple research team seminar and conference presentations via the research website (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/pauperlives/esrcpresentations.htm).

The project website and resources are cited on genealogical or family history websites as a useful resource. For example, in a 2011 newsletter to members, the Founder of Lost Cousins, a genealogical site with over 90,000 registered members stated: "I often make unexpected discoveries when I'm researching articles for this newsletter. Another of these was Pauper Lives in Georgian London, a research project at Newcastle University, which includes some fascinating PowerPoint presentations and working papers. You'll also find potted biographies of two paupers, based primarily on workhouse register entries which record their numerous admissions and discharges — all in all it's a wonderful site" (IMP7). The newsletter also noted how the project website "brilliantly supplemented" another popular website, Peter Higginbotham's Workhouses. This site also provides a link to the research project website on its page on St-Martin-in-the-Fields (http://www.workhouses.org.uk/StMartins/).

Boulton is in regular communication with many of those who utilise the research to pursue their own genealogical enquiries. To take just one example, Madi Maclean (Australia) wrote: "I was trying to find out what had happened to a direct line ancestor of mine whose son and second wife were sentenced to transportation at the Old Bailey in 1789. Through your project's work on records in St Martins in the Field, I found a record of the father (Stephen Tucker) being examined as a pauper a year later. This confirmed his wife and two children had died by then (I think in Newgate Gaol). I also found the wife getting poor relief before she married...the information from your projects...really fleshes out how people got by" (IMP8).

The research was also the subject of a Museum of London (http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/) exhibition held in c. 2010. This exhibition incorporated pauper lives reconstructed through the research as part of `Life Chances,' an interactive virtual display of early-modern London street life. As the museum director confirmed, the research has "greatly enhanced the public understanding of the 18th century metropolis, especially the lives of the poor. The exhibit has been highly praised both for its design and interesting content. Since 2010, over 1,300,000 people have visited the Museum's Galleries of Modern London," and a great many of these visitors "have interacted with or observed the `Life Chances' exhibit." (IMP9).

The research informed the popular publication, `Yet Another Inquiry into the Trustworthiness of Eighteenth-Century-London's Bills of Mortality', (4) which appeared in Local Population Studies, a genealogical publication. The Local Population Studies Society (LPSS) which publishes the journal "is the United Kingdom's only charity solely devoted to the promotion of all aspects of historical demography in a local context" and one of its explicit aims is to "promote education in local historical demography and associated topics in universities, colleges of further education, other educational establishments and among the general public" (IMP10).

Sources to corroborate the impact

(IMP1) Settlement Examinations dataset, included in the London Lives website. Available at: http://www.londonlives.org/static/SMDSSET.jsp.

(IMP2) Workhouse Admission and Discharge Registers dataset, included in the London Lives website. Available at: http://www.londonlives.org/static/SMDSWHR.jsp.

(IMP3) Shoemaker, R and Hitchcock, T (2011) Plebian Lives and the Making of Modern London, 1690-1800. ESRC Impact Report, RES-000-23-1217. Swindon: ESRC. Available at: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/RES-000-23-1217/read/reports.

(IMP4) London Lives website analytics (supplied by Director of the London Lives site). Available on request.

(IMP5) London Lives Wiki site. Available at: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/londonliveswiki/tiki-index.php?page=Welcome.

(IMP6) Pauper Lives website analytics. Available on request.

(IMP7) Lost Cousins Newsletter. Available at: http://lostcousins.com/newsletters/oct11news.htm.

(IMP8) Unsolicited email feedback from Pauper Lives website users. Available on request.

(IMP9) Letter from Head of History Collections, Museum of London. Available on request.

(IMP10) Local Population Studies Society website. Available at:
http://www.localpopulationstudies.org.uk.