Lost in London

Breaking down brick walls in London research

Why is London such a problem?"Hell is a city much like London - A populous and smoky city." Shelley

• Size

• Scale

• Range of repositories

• Range of sources

• Difficult research period

Why are Londoners such a problem?

"There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear—the city

of London and the South Seas." Herman Melville

• Extreme poverty

• Extreme mobility

• Fragmented families

• Social breakdown

• Official anonymity

General strategies

• Keep an open mind

• Use all available sources

• Research related lines

• Use the Internet

• Share your research

London strategies

• Learn the geography

• Understand the society

• Remember the history

Learn the geography"Mr Weller's knowledge of London was extensive and peculiar". Dickens

• Administrative structure

• Administrative changes

• 19th century growth

• Street name changes

• Maps

• Migration routes

Understand the society

"London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are

irresistibly drained." Conan Doyle

• Read Ackroyd, Dickens, Engels, Mayhew

• Booth poverty maps and notebooks

Remember the history

"If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us!" Coleridge

• Missing from the 1901 census?

• Came to London in the 1840s?

Helpful Websites

• Access to Archives

• Black Sheep Index

• Docklands Ancestors

• Google

• London Gazette

• Proceedings of the Old Bailey

• Times Digital Archive

Julius Fritz's 1876

application for

naturalisation, listing

all his children with

dates of birth

Julius Fritz's 1876

application for the

Freedom of the City

of London,

complete with

signature and much

valuable family

information

• 17a Fetter Lane, London

• Home of John Dryden in the 17th

century

• Between 1871 and 1887, home of

Julius & Mary Ann Fritz and their 14

children

• Often sketched by Victorian artists

• Several pictures found on the

Internet through a Google search

An assult case

involving Mary Ann

Fritz, nee Bluett,

reported in the

Times.