Abstract

REVIEWS 93 It is to his credit that Woodford is able to combine painstakingly detailed research, unpick- ing the dense layers of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paperwork and legal history (as he notes at one point, ‘parish law was enormously complex’ at the time (58)), with impressive storytelling ability, to create what is a very readable, yet intelligent and challenging, book that combines biography with social and economic history. It is both a history of one individ- ual who sought to make his fortune at the expense of others less fortunate, and a history of the local area, for Woodford never forgets to place Merceron’s activities within the context of wider East End poverty and political upheaval. The social history of the area provided is fas- cinating: from the bullock-running on a Sunday morning that so incensed the local vicar (147), to the brothels that caused locals in Shadwell concern, but were seen by the corrupt magistrates licensing the bars fronting them as providing an essential service to sailors who, they said, ‘must have their recreation’ (171). Woodford’s research shows that court papers and parish accounts can provide as much nar- rative about an individual’s life, and the stresses on