This study identifies the ways in which the urban poor both experienced and engaged with
cleanliness during the long eighteenth century. It argues that the poor not only participated
in acts of cleanliness but they did so multiple ways, sometimes as a client, at others as a
service provider but more often than not as a strategist engaging in actions that enabled
them to acquire clean clothing, bodies or surroundings. By drawing on a wide range of
archival and printed sources it examines aspects of everyday plebeian life that have
hitherto remained uncharted.
It suggests that no single cleanliness regime – neither based on full-body
immersion, nor ‘clean linen’, existed in eighteenth-century London. Instead, it posits that
at least two regimes were present, and that, if anything, working men were most likely to
pursue bodily cleanliness through river bathing. It also argues that even among the
institutions of the capital, there were real disagreements about cleanliness, with most
institutions adopting a clean linen regime, while prisons and lock-ups preserved an older
regime. Overall, this thesis seeks to demonstrate that eighteenth-century cleanliness cannot
be understood, without locating it in the specific circumstances of class, community and
gender
