Life Courses of Young Convicts Transported to Van Diemen’s Land

Abstract

experience, finding only minor change during Georgian period – a more formalised market and a richer variety of lodgers than the cultural stereotypes suggest. Lodging, it is suggested, was ultimately part of the new consumer society of eighteenth-century London–‘an unconstrained capitalist supply-and-demand marketplace’. There is much to enjoy here: the stories of notable landlords, landladies, and lodgers are vivid and told with humour and insight. The available sources have been mined skilfully and good use has been made of contemporary prints and engravings. In some ways, though, this lively survey leaves one wanting more: the avowed exclusion by the author of common lodging houses is to be regretted. Some readers might come away with the erroneous impression that metropolitan lodgers were mostly from the middling and upper stations. In fact, lodging was a common life-cycle experience of the poor. Any discussion of cheap lodgings, might also, arguably, include the eighteenth-century workhouse movement. Their construction presumably did considerable damage to the bottom end of the lodgings market – how many paupers preferred free short-term accommodation in a workhouse? In addition to wanting to hear more about downmarket lodging, one also wondered whether it might have been worth adding a further chapter on what lodgers were not. The focus in this book is on the impact of lodging on the household and family – on the domestic life of the landlord/landlady. Arguably just as important is the somewhat disconnected nature of lodging life: such people were not full parishioners, they did not pay parish taxes, could not vote, and could not serve as parish officers – they were not housekeepers. Lodgers and lodging were part of those urban forces that challenged the sociological urban ‘community’ and diluted a sense of local belonging in towns and cities. This excellent pioneering survey, then, is far from the last word on lodging – but it is a lively and perceptive start.