Bridewell, bawdy courts and bastardy in early seventeenth-century London

Abstract

By the turn of the seventeenth century London was a phenomenon, a source of wonder to both English and foreign visitors. Already by far the largest urban centre in England — easily surpassing regional capitals like Norwich, Exeter and York — it was growing extremely fast. Around 1500 it is doubtful whether the city had more than 50,000 inhabitants. Yet counting as part of the metropolis not only the old city of London and its liberties, but also Westminster, the rapidly expanding northern and eastern suburbs such as Clerkenwell and Stepney, and Southwark and adjacent areas south of the river, its population around 1600 had reached 200,000. Sustained by immigration — a net rate of maybe 8000 a year, though there was also much temporary migration in and out of London — the number of inhabitants was almost to double to something over 375,000 by 1650.² Did births out of wedlock likewise increase exponentially in this teeming urban agglomeration, a settlement on a scale hitherto unknown in England and in an intricate demographic relationship with its hinterland? Historians have been surprised to find that parish register analysis suggests that it was less rather than more common than in the country, but such evidence raises many questions.³