Introduction to Gravity Models of Migration & Trade

This lesson introduces gravity models as a means for determining the probable distribution of entities across space in historical datasets. It does so through a case study of historical migration patterns.Peer reviewe

The Black Londoner Experience: Exploring Black Life through Records of the Court, 1720-1840

Black Londoners have lived in the city for centuries. This collection brings 10 Black London lives together in an accessible volume to share the diversity of their experiences in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with new readers. Drawing on the records of the Old Bailey criminal courthouse, these ten carefully selected trials have been chosen to show some of the breadth of Black experience in London during the age of enslavement (c. 1720-1840). The volume includes Black victims, witnesses, and defendants; men, women, and children; sailors, servants, and entertainers; locals, immigrants, and visitors. Some were treated well by the justice system, and others were met with cruelty. Each had their own experience. While the volume contains details of crime and conflict, crime is not the sole focus. The sources also give us glimpses into the daily lives of these Black individuals as they interacted with the city and its inhabitants. We learn where these Black people spent their time, with whom, doing what, and sometimes even what they had in their pockets. Each of the ten cases has been accessibly formatted for classroom use or personal study, and features illustrations by Manon Wright. The sources are arranged like plays, making them easy to read aloud as a means of better understanding the theatre of the courtroom and the power dynamics at play. Dr Crymble offers notes and reflections on tricky or foreign concepts in each case, as well as issues that he has noted through experience that students often misinterpret by making modern assumptions about the past

Whipped and deported: England's historic resistance to free movement of labour

Adam Crymble, Editorial, 'Whipped and deported: England’s historic resistance to free movement of labour', published in The Conversation, August 2016.Final Published versio

Digital library search preferences amongst historians and genealogists: British History Online user survey

This paper presents the results of a study of 1,439 users of British History Online (BHO). BHO is a digital library of key printed primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, with a principal focus on the period between 1300 and 1800. The collection currently contains 1,250 volumes, and 120,000 web pages of material. During a website rebuild in 2014, the project team asked its registered users about their preferences for searching and browsing the content in the collection. Respondents were asked about their current search and browsing behaviour, as well as their receptiveness to new navigation options, including fuzzy searching, proximity searching, limiting search to a subset of the collection, searching by publication metadata, and searching entities within the texts such as person names, place names, or footnotes. The study provides insight into the unique and often converging needs of the site’s academic and genealogical users, noting that the former tended to respond in favour of options that gave them greater control over the search process, whereas the latter generally opted for options to improve the efficacy of targeted keyword searching. Results and recommendations are offered for managers of similar digitally-driven repositories interested in understanding and improving user experience.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Loose, idle and disorderly: vagrant removal in late eighteenth-century Middlesex

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Social History on 2 October 2014, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2014.975943Peer reviewe

From Chartist Newspaper to Digital Map of Grassroots Meetings, 1841-1844: Documenting Workflows

This is a free access article published by Routledge in Journal of Victorian Culture, doi: 10.1080/13555502.2017.1301179.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

How Criminal were the Irish? Bias in the detection of London currency crime, 1797-1821

© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Currency-related crime was endemic in London during the Restriction Period (1797-1821). This article looks at 884 individuals suspected or charged by the Bank of England, and considers how changes in detection strategy affected the prevalence of ethnically Irish people within that list of suspects. It rejects an anti-Irish bias, and concludes that from 1812 a reduced reliance upon shopkeepers to catch people passing off false currency, and a subsequent rise in ‘sting operations’ initiated by paid officers and local informants, resulted in a significant increase in non-Irish culprits coming under suspicion and a proportionate decline of Irish accused. This change was the result of the Bank’s newfound ability to target local networks involved in the less public forms of currency crime (selling, counterfeiting, forging) for which the Irish were less well known. These findings challenge the Irish criminal reputation by highlighting the important role of detection strategies in accusations.Peer reviewe

Identifying and Removing Gender Barriers in Open Learning Communities: The Programming Historian

Open online learning communities are susceptible to gender barriers if not carefully constructed. Gender barriers were identified in The Programming Historian, through an open online discussion, which informed an anonymous user survey. The initial discussion pointed towards two barriers in particular: a technically challenging submission system and open peer review, as factors that needed consideration. Findings are put in context of the literature on gender and online communication, abuse, and online learning communities. The evidence suggests that open online learning communities such as The Programming Historian should work actively to promote a civil environment, and should listen to their communities about technical and social barriers to participation. Whenever possible, barriers should be removed entirely, but when that is not feasible due to financial or technical constraints, alternatives should be offered.Non peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Vagrant Lives: 14,789 Vagrants Processed by the County of Middlesex, 1777-1786

Date of Acceptance: 12/09/2015 © 2015 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedThis dataset makes accessible the uniquely comprehensive records of vagrant removal from, through, and back to Middlesex, encompassing the details of some 14,789 removals (either forcibly or voluntarily) of people as vagrants between 1777 and 1786. It includes people ejected from London as vagrants, and those sent back to London from counties beyond. Each record has been georeferenced (where possible). Significant background material is available on the ‘London Lives’ website, which provides additional context for these records. The authors also recommend the following article: Hitchcock, T, Crymble, A, Falcini, L 2014 Loose, Idle and Disorderly: Vagrant Removal in Late Eighteenth-Century Middlesex. Social History 39(4). DOI: 10.1080/03071022.2014.975943.Peer reviewe

Lessons for museums from the pandemic lockdown: exploring user engagement with art museums in London on Facebook

Due to the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic, many institutions, such as museums, had been required to close so as to reduce non-essential human mobility. The dilemma of maintaining a consistent relationship with museums’ users emerged. What are the digital initiatives that museums had developed? How did user engagement change during the lockdown? Most importantly, what can be learnt from these practices for developing more effective engagement strategies after the pandemic? With basic statistical analysis and content analysis as the main research methods, this study examines how London art museums used Facebook during lockdown and the changes of corresponding user engagement behaviours. Specifically, three London-based art museums are chosen for this study, which are the National Gallery, Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The results show that, during the period of lockdown, all three museums adjust their Facebook strategies in terms of both post type and content. The increase in the level of user engagement also suggests the effectiveness of some strategies, such as the frequency of museum posts and creation of different types of post content. These findings give reflections on art museums’ digital initiatives and contributed to the understanding of the museum online users