I chose to interpret the project, Locating London’s Past, which features John Roque’s 1746 map of London combined with modern to 18th century history. The compliant map allows the user to search the interface based on the location of the map. It accounts for crime, poor relief, taxation, elections, local administration, plague deaths and archaeological finds. This map proves important because it is the first OS map of London to exist. Those who use the Roque’s map can add historical data to the map. Additionally any user who wishes to add data can, making it a user friendly tool in order to contextualize historical data from London. With the plethora of data sets readily available you can constitute a full election term within 1900, as well as the tax reforms during that particular time, all while charting it on one singular map. This multi-purpose platform opens the use and practice of this map to wide range of researchers, as well as the general public.
In order to create a version of Roque’s map, 24 separate maps were merged into a single map. Additionally, after the conversion and scanning onto one single map, the map itself needed to be geo-referranced in order to accurately depict London during that time. With the creation of this new map, came a creation of a larger data set which accompanied, 6000 streets, notable buildings, churches, and general areas. The street areas and the place polygons for this map were then digitized from first OS mapping.
These maps do obscure some of the contextualized data, in that they were taken form 24 different maps, therefore there is not 100% accuracy. Additionally, one must account for bias within the map, because of the creator of the map’s background. Additionally, the data set accompanied with the project show the person’s locations and crime locations, but does not classify the crime. It does however, show in which district the court proceedings took place. The map obscures whether there is any relevance between the person’s location in accordance with the crime’s location within the “Old Bailey’s Proceedings” dataset.
The video above demonstrates how the project was put together, and how to accurately analyze the data. This data is useful for historians, as well as city planners of today who can look at problem areas within London over time, as well as bring a sense of old architecture and history into a newer modern society. Historians, can also add there own data to the map, which can make it more diverse as well as add more of a story to the location mentioned.
I believe from a visual standpoint, that there could be an alternative map that reads almost like a timeline for the information. It can highlight by color, which data et for example crime in yellow and poverty in pink, as you highlight each point in gives a story or visual representation (a video or image) of what was occurring during that time. This map does a good job of tying multiple relations in London together, however it can be a bit confusing for the everyday user who may be utilizing this for a project or paper.