Blog Post #6: London Map

For this weeks blog post, I examined the Locating London’s Past map project which allows us to “search a wide body of digital resources relating to early modern and eighteenth-century London, and to map the results on to a fully GIS compliant version of John Rocque’s 1746 map.” You can also compare this initial 1746 London map to a map that spans from 1869-1880 and also compare it to a modern map using Google Maps. From John Rocque’s map, I would assume that the map was created for the ruling class and the literate considering it is incredibly detailed and has certain markers like the ships on the River Thames which signify certain things.
The maps are interesting because you can compare and contrast the differences in London from say over a century ago to the present. On the site itself, beyond just the map, there is a gargantuan dataset of civilian records like the hospital and guild records. There is one page that’s titled “London Lives, 1680-1800: Crime, Poverty, and Social Policy in the Metropolis.” On this page, you can see the records of things like the “Four Shilling in the Pound Tax 1693-94” or the “Fire Insurance Policy Registers 1777-1786.” It’s really interesting to see that there are 162,973 records detailing fire insurance policies between 1777-1786, alerting me to think of how important that must have been during the timeframe. So largely, the datasets and the map obviously focus on civilian life in London.
What this map did not have, however, was businesses or markets that were operated during the time, which would be helpful in identifying certain neighborhoods and their demographics in terms of wealth or where the masses would congregate. The map also, I think, requires a certain amount of knowledge on the importance of London and its landmark places. Certainly, a local of the time could identify places, but I’m relatively confused still as whats where. This map is great for getting to examine London as a whole, but personally, if I were to imagine an alternate map, I would start by putting an emphasis on businesses. Things like performance theaters, shops, butchers, restaurants, lodging, etc would be really convenient and important, especially because you can see where the popular parts of town are and which wealth demographic would most likely fit in.

One comment

  1. It is great that you noticed the abundance of fire insurance policies, which was definitely a significant part of civilian life during that time period in London! It surprises me insurance was a common things back then. The little things can actually tell a lot about how people lived and what they thought about daily. Economics and commerce are definitely a part of the everyday experience that was left out, and it would be fascinating to see a map like that too! Great work!

Leave a Reply