With London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800, Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker challenge studies that claim that historical change was forged in committee rooms and council chambers, presided over by elites. They argue convincingly that plebeian Londoners’ behavior in the jails, streets, prisoners’ dock, and workhouses also shaped social policy during the eighteenth century. The strategic paupers whose lives they examine are familiar characters, and Hitchcock and Shoemaker build on a number of histories that illustrate how the poor exercised their agency through “everyday” actions or “tactics.” Paupers attempted to wheedle the best deal out of parish authorities, while criminals played the system, refusing conditional pardons or pleading pregnancy in bids to escape punishment. Hitchcock and Shoemaker's innovation of London Lives is that they consider the impact of plebeian tactics not just on poor individuals and their families but on extensive legal and social mechanisms. While some studies acknowledge the influence of elite anxieties about plebeian behaviors on social reform, Hitchcock and Shoemaker go a step further, explicitly attributing historical developments to the actions of the poor.

Beginning in the wake of the 1688 Revolution and concluding in the 1790s, Hitchcock and Shoemaker unfold their study chronologically, tracing the development of penal justice, parish relief, moral reform movements, and (to a lesser degree) charitable provision in the metropolis. This chronological structure produces some repetition, as a number of plebeian behaviors are examined in successive chapters. However, while a thematic approach might have avoided such repetition, it would have less success in showing the connections between the evolution of penal practice and relief. Indeed, a strength of the book is that it illustrates the overlapping boundaries of crime and poverty, not least in the elision of the two problems in the minds of elite commentators and governors. The chronological approach also highlights the adaptability of plebeian agency and, in many cases, the failure of official measures to control it over the long term. Concerns about the rocketing cost of poor relief, voiced in the 1690s, only grew throughout the following century (and beyond). Despite reformers’ attempts to limit access to material aid, the persistency and persuasiveness of plebeian demands ensured that such attempts were not wholly successful.

Hitchcock and Shoemaker argue that working-class people contributed to historical developments, yet their portrayal of plebeian agency is nuanced and does not inflate the power of the poor. They do not suggest that plebeians single-handedly revolutionized social governance, but that the interests and actions of multiple actors—including magistrates, philanthropists, and the press—interacted to produce results. Moreover, Hitchcock and Shoemaker show that “the poor” was not a homogeneous and united mass of people. Indeed, in some situations, plebeians acted out against one another, as when thief takers blackmailed or ratted out criminals. Nor do Hitchcock and Shoemaker conflate effecting change with directing change. They contend that plebeian actions frequently produced consequences that the poor did not anticipate or intend, let alone welcome. There was such demand among poor mothers for institutional care for their newborns that in 1756 the Foundling Hospital introduced a policy of admitting every baby that was left at its gates. The hospital struggled to cope with the influx of children, resulting in extraordinary infant mortality rates, even by the standards of the day. Felons who escaped from prison did not do so because they wished the authorities to consider alternative means of punishment, yet the authors claim that this was nonetheless the result of their actions.

Hitchcock and Shoemaker draw upon two large-scale digital projects that they spearheaded. Old Bailey Proceedings Online makes available trial proceedings from the Old Bailey, London's Central Criminal Court, and the London Lives website gathers together the proceedings and a host of digitized primary sources to elucidate aspects of plebeian experiences. Like the digital project that shares its name, London Lives seeks to tell the stories of individual Londoners. Their tales do not stand alone in the book, however, but are accompanied by extensive analysis of statistical trends and structural conditions that affected plebeian agency, complemented by maps, graphs, and illustrations. Those who read London Lives in traditional book format may find that, while some poor people have a strong foothold in the text, others are only a fleeting presence, overwhelmed by discussion of historical context. Yet, as Hitchcock and Shoemaker make clear in the preface, London Lives is best read onscreen in digital format. By following integrated links in the electronic text to primary and secondary sources, online readers can consult the evidence alongside the authors’ interpretation of it and delve deeply into the complex web of negotiations between plebeian actors and elites, making the most of material that is too weighty to include in a single volume. The digital aspect of London Lives is described as an ambitious experiment “to escape the intellectual dominance of the archives and published book, the very structures which imply a single (elite) reading, and to replace it with a history that … decenters the authority of the authors as the only arbiters of the evidence” (26). While the e-book version does not entirely live up to this promise, not quite enabling a seamless transition between text and sources, London Lives establishes a precedent upon which future publishers and authors may elaborate. London Lives is a significant contribution to our understanding of eighteenth-century London, a nuanced account that features plebeians as subjects in, as well as subject to, social policy.