SEEN AND NOT HEARDThe struggle to control

London’s street sounds, 1800-1950

IAN RAWESThe London Sound Survey

soundsurvey.org.uk

THE TAMING OF LONDON

Chairing the Member, Hogarth 1755

From Life in London, Cruikshank 1820

Lincoln’s Inn

Abbey Orchard Street, Westminster

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

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).

STREET NOISE OR STREET LIFE? CELEBRATING LONDON’S VIGOUR

1803: SATIRISING SENSITIVITY TO NOISE

The Lady’s Monthly Museum; Or, Polite Repository of Amusement and Instruction

19th CENTURY NOISE COMPLAINTS IN THE TIMES NEWSPAPER

URBAN NOISE AS A HEALTH PROBLEM, 1848-1909

URBAN NOISE AS A HEALTH PROBLEM, 1848-1909

LIVESTOCK IN THE CITYComplaints 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 MACHINERYGrowth 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 RAILWAYSThe ‘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 SURFACESEarly 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.

BARTHOLOMEW’S ROAD SURFACE MAP, 1909KEY

Blue: Cobbles, granite setts

Yellow: Wooden blocks

Green: Asphalt

Pink: Macadam

Thanks to Patricia Pye, Royal Holloway

THE DAILY MAIL’S CAMPAIGN ON NOISE NUISANCES, 1928

The oldest-known surviving examples of location recording in central London.

AUDIO

MIKE STERN AND THE WAR OF SOUNDIN 1930s PETTICOAT LANE

AUDIO

Recorded November 1937

Extract from general market atmosphere recording

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