Digital History seminar 18 March 2014 Seen and not heard: the struggle for control over London's street sounds

1. SEEN AND NOT HEARD
The struggle to control
London’s street sounds, 1800-1950
IAN RAWES
The London Sound Survey
soundsurvey.org.uk

2. THE TAMING OF LONDON
Chairing the Member, Hogarth 1755
From Life in London, Cruikshank 1820
Lincoln’s Inn
Abbey Orchard Street, Westminster

3. Harley Street and environs in the 1880s
Recalled by Sir Harold Morris for John Betjeman’s
Scenes that are Brightest: London before the Motor Car
EARLY VICTORIES IN THE CENTRE OF TOWN
AUDIO

4. THEMES IN THE STRUGGLE TO CONTROL STREET NOISE
• Aspects of the struggle to control street noise were part of the wider effort to
control the behaviour of London’s poor (Jerry White, 2008).
• Attitudes to street noise change as the means to control it become possible.
• Early complaints tend to be framed in moral terms, later ones in technical terms.
• Sensitivity to noise becomes a status marker.
• The uneven successes of 19th
-century noise control legislation.
• Helpful digital resources: Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online, Project Gutenberg,
British Newspaper Archive (British Library and Brightsolid), London’s Pulse
(Wellcome Library).

5. STREET NOISE OR STREET LIFE?
CELEBRATING LONDON’S VIGOUR

6. 1803: SATIRISING SENSITIVITY TO NOISE
The Lady’s Monthly Museum; Or, Polite Repository of
Amusement and Instruction

7. 19th
CENTURY NOISE COMPLAINTS IN
THE TIMES NEWSPAPER

8. URBAN NOISE AS A HEALTH PROBLEM, 1848-1909

9. URBAN NOISE AS A HEALTH PROBLEM, 1848-1909
LIVESTOCK IN THE CITY
Complaints at the noises of pigs in Wandsworth and at a
slaughter-house near Hanover Square. Widespread
problems with dogs barking and the keeping of chickens
and pigeons.
FACTORIES AND MACHINERY
Growth of small- and large-scale industrial processes as
century progresses. Noise from blast furnaces, breweries, a
flock mill, factory steam-whistles, grain elevators, and a
stationary steam engine in Oxford Street.
TRAMS AND RAILWAYS
The ‘objectionable noise’ of trams in Camden, train
companies requested to dampen noise on railway bridges,
horses made to bolt by trains in Lewisham, complaints in
St Pancras and Wembley over train whistles.
TRAFFIC AND ROAD SURFACES
Early enthusiasm for asphalt and macadam to replace
cobbles and granite setts. Later adoption of wooden
blocks, judged quieter still. First complaints over motor
vehicle noise in Marylebone, 1904.

10. BARTHOLOMEW’S ROAD SURFACE MAP, 1909
KEY
Blue: Cobbles, granite setts
Yellow: Wooden blocks
Green: Asphalt
Pink: Macadam
Thanks to Patricia Pye,
Royal Holloway

11. THE DAILY MAIL’S CAMPAIGN ON NOISE NUISANCES, 1928
The oldest-known surviving examples of location recording in central London.
AUDIO

12. MIKE STERN AND THE WAR OF SOUND
IN 1930s PETTICOAT LANE
AUDIO
Recorded November 1937
Extract from general market
atmosphere recording

13. THE LAST OF THE LAVENDER SELLERS
Frieze by Newton Abbot Trent,
St James’s Square
AUDIO
Recorded November 1938
Traditional cry sung by
Robert Penfold of Culvert Road,
Battersea, S.W.11