Houses of Parliament through fog, Claude Monet, 1904
Many cities have been known as the Big Smoke but, to my mind, the biggest of them all was London. This bustling metropolis was home to many, over 6 million by the 19th century. The well-to-do saw a more civilized side of London in their well-appointed homes than did the masses crammed into the East End. Although the fires that warmed the houses of the rich contributed to the smog, the air in their areas of the city was not so dense as that in the working parts of town. Industry and commerce added to the mix which made East End air more hazy. The same type of haze seems to gather over the records of the poorer members of society. Not for them the ownership of houses or listing in directories, more likely the midnight flit and sparse records.
It wasn't until the 20th century that some of my London family research dealt with better off city dwellers. Before then, my family members were firmly entrenched in the East End. I am hoping to use some of the research techniques taught in the webinars that I have been watching to prove my Cavanagh line back from Henry Cavanagh to the first of the line that came to London from Ireland. I hope there are sufficient records to fill out this family line that far.
I have had success in finding information about one of my other family lines in the East End. Many of them figure in records which contain details about their lives which were kept because they are records deemed important to the state. That was because some of them fell afoul of the law. Criminal records add depth to the usual birth, marriage, death and census information, providing a fuller picture of the life of the Arment family, a story with many chapters.
Sources:
Images:
By
Claude Monet - Musée d'OrsayFormer version: The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000
Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.
ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain,
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