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 Research
objectives
The objectives of this research project were:
- To pilot, evaluate and develop an ‘ethnographies
of place’ methodology (formulated by historians
and historical archaeologists working on poor nineteenth-century
urban locations in Australia) in order to study the
material history of Victorian London.
- Combining archaeological and documentary evidence,
to investigate the variation in the material culture
of everyday domestic life across 3 socially and geographically
contrasting localities in the nineteenth-century metropolis.
- Through the study of this material culture, to
consider the organisation and use of domestic space
and the relationship between the home, economic activity
and the wider urban world.
- To consider the relationships between popular representations
of domestic London life and material histories of
everyday experience revealed by the study of archaeological
artefacts.
Ethnographies of place
Ponsonby (2003) argues that the material history of
domestic life in nineteenth-century cities has not been
widely studied because ‘the period is too distant
to utilize oral history or ethnographic studies’
– the central research techniques of material
culture studies. Historical ethnography would, by definition,
seem an impossibility. However, historians and historical
archaeologists working on poor urban neighbourhoods
in nineteenth-century Australia have proposed new ‘ethnographies
of place’ methodologies to study the everyday
material history of cities (Mayne and Lawrence, 1999;
Mayne and Murray 2001). Such an approach is considered
‘ethnographic’ because of the way that it
involves weaving the study of archaeological artefacts
with detailed investigations of documentary records
which cast light on the individuals, households, and
urban neighbourhoods within which the objects were located.
Integrating these different kinds of evidence promises
more ‘meaningful and fuller understandings of
the past’ (Wilkie, 2006). Alongside this commitment
to bringing into dialogue different kinds of historical
evidence, the ‘ethnographies of place’ approach
is also concerned with developing new methods for interpreting
such evidence and writing about the urban past. The
role of the ‘historical imagination’ and
of narrative approaches to making sense of diverse source
materials has been a key issue of debate, especially
in North American contexts (Praetzellis 1998). These
‘ethnographic’ approaches have been successfully
applied to a series of groundbreaking urban excavations
on nineteenth-century sites, predominantly in North
America (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001, Yamin 1998)
and Australia (Mayne and Murray 2001, Murray 2003).
The ethnographies of place approach therefore proceeds
through careful analysis and interpretation of archaeological
evidence alongside focused and detailed investigation
of family, household and other documentary sources relating
to the particular streets and neighbourhoods of the
three sites. Though the documentary research focuses
on the dense web of historical records directly associated
with specific archaeological assemblages - those that
cast light on the individuals, families and households
that owned the artefacts - archaeological artefacts
are not seen as reflecting broader social realities
and historical narratives of the urban past. By avoiding
what Johnson (1999) dismisses as the ‘social-history-plus
artefacts approach’, the ethnographies of place
approach focuses on the ‘stories’ of urban
life that emerge from the material culture itself (Hicks,
2005). This avoids ‘privileging present day constructions
of historical significance over the local actualities
of past lives and places’ (Mayne and Murray 2001).
The process of interpretation is thus an iterative one,
which involves shuttling between material artefacts
and documentary sources to build up an understanding
of the experience everyday of urban domestic life from
the ‘inside out’. For Mayne and Lawrence
(1999), this creative approach of tacking back and forth
from one kind of evidence to another allows historians
‘to tease out the dynamic complexities of vanished
social worlds’.
Although their potential value has been noted (Hicks
and Jeffries 2004), these methodologies have not been
utilised by scholars of nineteenth-century urban Britain.
This project pioneers an ‘ethnographies of place’
approach to research everyday domestic life in Victorian
London. It considers how far the methods and techniques
deployed by scholars in Australia and North America
can be replicated in a UK context. It also seeks to
develop the ‘ethnographies of place’ methodology,
which has generally been used to research poor urban
neighbourhoods, to study metropolitan people and places
from three different localities with very different
historical representations and historiographies.
 Archaeological
research and dealing with ‘orphan sites’
This project did not require a series of fresh excavations
to provide the resources to pilot the ethnographies
of place approach. Instead we used the archived finds
preserved from earlier-excavated sites kept at the London
Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC).
These sites were chosen to represent the social and
geographical diversity of the city. They comprise a
commercial-residential property in New Palace Yard,
Westminster (NPY73); a row of cottages in Lower Sydenham
(SYB92); and three tenements on Regent Street, Limehouse
(LHC93), a poor, dockside neighbourhood in the East
End (click here for further
details). These were just three of dozens of largely
forgotten, undisseminated and un-catalogued sites held
at the LAARC for this period, dug by the archaeologists
whom (though not always) had long since moved on. The
process of ‘excavating’ the LAARC and questioning
the limits to its collections demonstrated that despite
representing a vulnerable period in British archaeology,
the material remains of nineteenth-century London had
been more frequently excavated than archaeological memory
and folklore have perhaps suggested (Hicks and Jeffries
2004). These neatly termed ‘orphan sites’
(Mary Praetzellis pers.comm, 2008) despite being archived
in one place and properly curated, have been subject
to very little research.
Before the archival research was conducted, the archaeological
artefacts from these three sites were analysed by material
culture specialists at the Museum of London Archaeology
Service. Reports can be downloaded here.
 Archival
research
The documentary research was undertaken by the project’s
post doctoral research assistant (PDRA) Dr
Karen Wehner. It focused mainly on the period when
the archaeological assemblages were discarded: 1840s-50s.
The aim was to unpick the details of the lives of those
individuals who would have used the archaeological material
as well as to understand the wider social and cultural
meanings of the objects that had been recovered. Information
was compiled using a freeform relational database and
information management system application called AskSam
Version 6.1. In order to remain faithful to the ethnographies
of place approach, data collection was closely informed
by analysis of the archaeological evidence. Periodic
reassessment of both archaeological and documentary
sources, enabled us to refocus our lines of enquiry.
Data collection focused on four main organising features
and scales of enquiry:
1. Family and individual lives
This research focuses on reconstructing the details
of the individuals and families who used and threw away
the artefactual material. Where possible, families have
been traced chronologically backwards and forwards through
the records in order to understand their wider circumstances.
Most of this information has been derived from genealogical
sources including: decennial censuses (1841-1901), civil
registration records (1837 onwards), church records
(pre 1837), wills/probate documents, electoral rolls,
Old Bailey
Online records, local newspaper obituary, birth,
marriage sections, dissenter records. Where they exist,
family collections of personal papers, diaries and other
ephemera have been consulted.
2. Trade
The next level of data gathering focused on occupations
and economic activities of the household members. Sources
included: directories, ledgers, patent records, newspapers
(e.g. adverts, notices of bankruptcy etc.); and insurance
records (Sun Life, 1817-1834).
3. House and street
Here, details were derived from land and other tax records,
rate books, sewer records, title deeds, and lease documents.
Neighbours have been identified through the census.
Vestry and Metropolitan Board of Works archives provided
information on sanitation and rubbish collection, especially
as these assemblages were apparently rapidly deposited
as part of the backfilling of the backyard sanitary
features. Cartographic records have enabled us to detail
the development of the street and locality.
4. Object histories
In order to better understand the uses and meanings
of objects recovered from the sites, a range of sources
have been consulted, including trade catalogues, newspaper
reports, legal evidence, literature, visual imagery
and curated artefact collections.
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