ABSTRACT
The first half of the nineteenth century saw the transformation of England from an agrarian to an industrial, and from a rural to an urban society. During these fifty years, London's numbers grew from j ust over a million to nearly three million; in the 1820s alone, half a dozen large English cities increased their population by fifty per cent. This rapid and unprecedented change involved massive social dislocation: since cities were so unhealthy that the increase in the indigenous population was minimal, their growth was mainly the result of the migration of millions of persons from country to town. But also there was dislocation in another sense as society tried to understand the institutions, relations and places of the new England. The city was the locus principus of these changes, the centre of economic activity and of social development and also where the future shape of England was being determined and made manifest. If one were to come to understand the forces remaking England, one first must understand the city.
