London Low Life in the Nineteenth Century

(History 242J is an undergraduate course offered for 5 units; History 342J is a graduate course offered for 4-5 units.) London began the nineteenth century as a city of one million, but was home to over six million people by the century's end. How did Londoners in the nineteenth century respond to the challenges and temptations of life in a growing metropolis? How did government and reformers try to influence and control city dwellers' behavior? This class seeks to answer these questions by exploring life in Britain's capital in the nineteenth century, using the digital database ¿London Low Life¿ as a guide. Contemporary street literature, night-life guides, pamphlets, broadsides, images, reformer's tracts, and public-interest journalism are some of the sources that will give us a window into vice, virtue, and daily life in London during a period of great uncertainty and change.