This book surveys the lives and experiences of hundreds of thousands of eighteenth-century non-elite Londoners in the evolution of the modern world.

Tim Hitchcock is Professor of Digital History at the University of Sussex. With Robert Shoemaker and others, he is responsible for a series of websites giving direct and searchable access to some 20 billion words of primary sources reflecting the social history of Britain, including: The Old Bailey Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org), London Lives (www.londonlives.org), Connected Histories (www.connectedhistories.org), and Locating London's Past (www.locatinglondon.org). With degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Oxford, he has published extensively on the histories of eighteenth-century poverty, street life, sexuality and masculinity. His most recent books include Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London (2004) and with Robert Shoemaker, Tales from the Hanging Court (2007). In 2011, with Shoemaker, he was given the Longman-History Today Trustees Award, for their substantial contributions to history as the 'directors of the groundbreaking digital projects The Old Bailey Proceedings Online and London Lives'.

1. Introduction; 2. Beggarman, thief, 1690-1713; 3. Protest and resistance, 1713-31; 4. Vestries, justices and their opponents: 1731; 5. Reformers and their discontents: 1748-63; 6. Finding a voice: 1763-76; 7. The State in chaos, 1776-89; 8. Epilogue, the 1790s; Bibliography.