We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
Active archives
We count crime endlessly, unpicking patterns on neat graphs, but hardly ever ask what the people who produced these records did with them four centuries ago. They did not build archives for us. What is now our raw data was an active archive back then. Records were retrieved, consulted, and put to use again and again to help make policy or to gather evidence for court cases. Archives were working places, one reason why London's leaders liked to keep records safe and close at hand. When he was bringing Stow's Survey up to date, John Strype found it ‘very difficult to obtain’ access to the City's archives, and it was only with the help of ‘friends of quality and good account’ that he was able to sit down one day in the bookhouse with a clerk hovering close by to copy ‘very considerable notes’ from them. Not just anyone could drop in to read records, and magistrates were very concerned that Strype might ‘alter or prejudice the custom’ of the city. Then as now records were political, conveying policy explanations that were open to dispute or twisting in the wrong hands.
Records were brought along to the City courts if guidance was needed on a prickly matter, or if it was necessary to trace the development of a particular policy over time. Aldermen liked to have them at their fingertips, or in ‘a place att hand for storage of them’.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
