The back-streets are lined with small houses now thought cute; 200 years ago they were not. Music halls opened in the backs of taverns for slum-dwellers. The rich were disgusted but needed servants and tradesmen to live nearby. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-lo...

Love takes different forms: a maid meets a Guard from the barracks; a courtesan meets rich men on horseback; a demi-rep blackmails the Duke of Wellington. Walk in back streets looking upstairs for toffs, downstairs for servants. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-lo...

Ruth Chapman was a maid who fell for a red-coated Horse Guard. With little money or time all they could do was hang about in the cheap streets behind the barracks. See a Knightsbridge you didn't know existed, one where poor people lived. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/love-in-hy...

Celebrate #WorldBookDay with our Literary Festival: the annual walking book club! Great London walks for book lovers all month. Book at footprintsoflondon.com @robssmith.bsky.social @nakedanthropolo.bsky.social @walkingtalkinglon.bsky.social @stephensldn.bsky.social

To those who said I'd not be able to sell tickets to a walk called Monica Ali's Brick Lane - Bengali History in the East End: I sold 13, 4 to Bengalis, so I made some money but better was knowing I'd not judged wrong, that folks do want non-always-white-people history-walks.

Disorderly: Classist word for poor women who sold old clothes and sex. Rag Fair stretched from Tower Hill down Cable St, bawdy houses everywhere along the walls of the 1805 London Dock. JMW Turner had a pub there. Walk Mon 9 March. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/disorderly...

Throughout March we're running our unique London-centric literary festival - a walking book club of in person and virtual tours. Join us at footprintsoflondon.com @robssmith.bsky.social @capitalwalks.bsky.social @nakedanthropolo.bsky.social @stephensldn.bsky.social @walkingtalkinglon.bsky.social

A walk on Bengali history via the story of a young migrant woman makes @londonist.com. Great. Most Londoners don't know the back-streets of Whitechapel at all, and they are super-mixed heritage/nationality/ethnicity + old and new + farm animals and murals galore. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Monica Ali's Brick Lane is a universal feminist story. Nazneen migrates from Bangladesh to Whitechapel in 1985 via an arranged marriage. At 1st shut-in and dominated by her husband by 2002 she is empowered and living her own life. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

New walk: Stealing the Common from the Goose: Kennington Enclosed. Powers-that-be were so scared by the Chartist 1848 Monster Rally on Kennington Common that they immediately put up fences and made it a 'park'. Open spaces aren't all the same. 10 May. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/stealing-t...

Thanks @londonist.com for listing the Navvies! All credit shouldn't go to engineers, who conferred with diggers on technical problems and not just for railways but also canals. In Primrose Hill it's the Regent's Canal and Camden Goods Yard and more. 20 Feb. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/primrose-h...

@londonist.com has listed a favourite walk, running next Friday. Scratching Out a Living has 2 guides: @robssmith.bsky.social for the Big 14century Picture and me for 6 characters I created to fill the gap in historical accounts. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/scratching...

@londonist.com has listed a favourite walk, running next Friday. Scratching Out a Living has 2 guides: @robssmith.bsky.social for the Big 14century Picture and me for 6 characters I created to fill the gap in historical accounts. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/scratching...

The Medieval Female Proletariat is finally happening in the daylight on a weekday. Meet six 14C women working near the Thames: scullery maid, victualler, laundress, alewife, sex worker, huckster. Co-guide @robssmith.bsky.social @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

The Medieval Female Proletariat is finally happening in the daylight on a weekday. Meet six 14C women working near the Thames: scullery maid, victualler, laundress, alewife, sex worker, huckster. Co-guide @robssmith.bsky.social @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

The World's End walk is also about WWII as bombers targeted the Lots Road Power Station over and over and missed. Donald James's memoir A Blitz Childhood describes the night the Guinness tenement he lived in was obliterated - he happened to be away. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/worlds-end...

Focussing on folks omitted from historical accounts and walks has led me to: World's End, the 'Wrong End of Chelsea'. Power station, pleasure gardens sexwork, riverside, JMW Turner, World's End pub/estate & the Blitz. Next Saturday @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Walk the route taken by 2 London teens convicted of stealing and condemned to hang in 1825. Instead they were transported to Australia where convicts are now saluted as founders. 2 million Brits have convict ancestors - do you? @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Come on a walk in the backstreets of Holborn this Saturday to find traces of poorer folk's migrations to London. It will be cold, crisp and quiet. Pub at the end. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

From 1821 English courts began transporting convicted criminals to Australia, for crimes mostly considered trivial today. In Australia having a convict-ancestor is now a source of pride. Two million Brits have convict-ancestors, but how many are proud of it? www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-way-to...

he last time I did the walk, English walkers were shocked that Australians now celebrate convict-ancestors and Australian walkers didn't get why the English were shocked. In the day, no matter what convicts had done they were called drunks and prostitutes. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Before the war in North America Britain transported convicts there. After losing that war it decided on Terra Australis as new penal colony, converting convicts into settlers whether they liked it or not. This Sunday 1300 Angel to Blackfriars. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing this walk to follow folks mostly considered Nobodies: 2 girls nicked for stealing a piece of cloth in 1825, jailed in Newgate, sentenced to death but later transported for life to Botany Bay. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing this walk to follow folks mostly considered Nobodies: 2 girls nicked for stealing a piece of cloth in 1825, jailed in Newgate, sentenced to death but later transported for life to Botany Bay. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Doré came to London to work on a book The London Pilgrimage. He drew all sorts, depicting the poor as diverse and busy, whereas his rich look bland and dull. Odd commentary for a tourist? He spent a lot of time looking and his point of view shines through. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gin-lane-t...

Poor wages didn't reach to renting rooms, so dosshouses were essential. You could cook if you had ingredients and you could drink and smoke. It was close social life. Later you slept on a rope or sitting up unless you had extra pence to lie on the floor. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gin-lane-t...

Living in cellars appalled Victorian reformers who saw them as fit for worms, not humans. Gustave Doré drew cellar-entries to shoe-shops (Doré wasn't appalled). You can see entries to cellars on surviving 18c facades in Tower Court. This Saturday 11 Oct. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gin-lane-t...

Thief and escape-artist Jack Sheppard spars with corrupt thief-taker Jonathan Wild in poor streets and night-cellars thronged with whores, spies and slum-tourists in a Beggar's Opera of a walk. 11 Oct. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gin-lane-t...

Thief and escape-artist Jack Sheppard spars with corrupt thief-taker Jonathan Wild in poor streets and night-cellars thronged with whores, spies and slum-tourists in a Beggar's Opera of a walk. 11 Oct. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gin-lane-t...

In celebrations of the invention of the modern railway, engineers get the credit. What about the navvies who not only dug but helped find solutions to problems and obstacles? At Primrose Hill you see what they did up close, including the Regent's Canal. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/primrose-h...

Thanks @londonist.com for listing a walk in a part of the East End few Londoners know, from Tower Hill SE to the river to hear about poor working women selling old clothes, tools, food and sex to sailors and dockworkers. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tumult-of-...

Thanks @londonist.com for listing a walk in a part of the East End few Londoners know, from Tower Hill SE to the river to hear about poor working women selling old clothes, tools, food and sex to sailors and dockworkers. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tumult-of-...

Two Years Ago Today: @nakedanthropolo.bsky.social introduces her new project: maggiemcneill.com/2023/09/04/g...

Thanks @londonist.com for listing next Saturday's migration walk in the backstreets of Holborn. You've heard about the Italians but what about the Irish and freedom-seeking slaves? Not to mention the Jewish diaspora. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/historic-w...

The always sold-out sex-industry walk is scheduled for a weekday in August: Friday the 15th. One stop is seen here in William Hogarth's picture of the Rose Tavern, showing Tom Rakewell, a lot of hookers and a woman undressing for a dance. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/londons-se...

The always sold-out sex-industry walk is scheduled for a weekday in August: Friday the 15th. One stop is seen here in William Hogarth's picture of the Rose Tavern, showing Tom Rakewell, a lot of hookers and a woman undressing for a dance. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/londons-se...

Thanks @Londonist for listing Wind in the Willows, a riverside walk that can't be bettered for beautiful houses, women's history, dreamy views and habitat for creatures of the river. Sat 19 July. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing a walk that centres the workers: navvies who solved problems on the ground as they dug canals and railways. 14 June. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/primrose-h...

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing a walk that centres the workers: navvies who solved problems on the ground as they dug canals and railways. 14 June. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/primrose-h...

WH Hunt's painting shows a man who's fitted a mistress up in a garish flat in St John's Wood. Symbols include a left hand with no wedding band, a cat toying with a bird and an unraveling carpet. The moment is when her conscience of wrongdoing is awakened. Unless you think she knows what she's doing.

In St John's Wood adventurous unmarried women like George Eliot were called Disgraceful by Respectable Society. Nearby WT Stead created the 1st mediatic sex-trafficking scandal when he 'bought' Eliza Armstrong. Why were some females victims and others whores? www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/disgracefu...

Saturday's walk in Rochford and along the River Roach reveals the history of folks who didn't accept the still hierarchical C of E after the Dissolution. This was a 'hotbed of dissent' in a landscape of mud and stark fields. @robssmith.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/essex-estu...

Thank you to the Londonist for the big vote of confidence. This time the popular walk on medieval working women is in the evening - this Thursday 1800/6pm in perfect weather, it looks like. @robssmith.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/scratching...

Views from this Saturday's walk. Book at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Excellent weather forecast for the Colne Valley this Saturday. Walk from once-industrial Hythe to once-shipbuilding Wivenhoe via now-quiet riverside, marsh and village. @robssmith.bsky.social @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Excellent weather forecast for the Colne Valley this Saturday. Walk from once-industrial Hythe to once-shipbuilding Wivenhoe via now-quiet riverside, marsh and village. @robssmith.bsky.social @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Small town, rich culture - Wivenhoe. Close to London. River and estuary, big skies. A good walk. @robssmith.bsky.social

Cultural highlights: Early civil partnership of 2 artists, Denis Wirth-Miller & Dicky Chopping; Martin Newell's Cleaners from Venus, James Dodds artist-boatbuilder, the Black Dog, the Essex Serpent, a great whale, Francis Bacon. Me & @robssmith.bsky.social 10 May www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/essex-estu...

Cultural highlights: Early civil partnership of 2 artists, Denis Wirth-Miller & Dicky Chopping; Martin Newell's Cleaners from Venus, James Dodds artist-boatbuilder, the Black Dog, the Essex Serpent, a great whale, Francis Bacon. Me & @robssmith.bsky.social 10 May www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/essex-estu...

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing Saturday's anti-slavery walk. Those centred are not the usual parliamentary men but all the folks black and white who tried to change a culture that considered slavery essential to life and slaves less than human. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/abolition-...