Staff Profiles

I am a historian of early modern London. I have published widely on many aspects of the capital’s economy, society and demography between 1550 and 1825. I am currently working on welfare and demography in Georgian Westminster. Since 2004 I have been leading the Pauper Lives project (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/pauperlives), which is based on reconstructing the lives of those who inhabited the large parish workhouse of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London’s West End (1725-1824). This research has been twice funded by the ESRC and also by the Wellcome Trust.

I was educated at St Andrew’s University and received my PHD from Cambridge University in 1983. I was a Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge (1982-1990) and a Research Associate at the Cambridge Population Group (1985-1990). I moved to Newcastle in 1990. I was Head of School (2003-8) and Director of the Newcastle Branch of the Northern Centre for the History of Medicine (2009-10).

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I have been a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, and am currently a member of the ESRC Peer Review College. I was elected to the Academy of Social Sciences in 2009.

In retirement I am continuing work on poor relief, welfare and corruption in Georgian London.

Research interests

My main area of research continues to be based on the Pauper Lives Project. This on-going research aims to reconstruct the lives of those who inhabited the large parish workhouse of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London’s West End (1725-1824). The project is interdisciplinary. Outputs, to date, have included articles on the history of the elderly, the health and mortality of workhouse inmates, the treatment of lunatics, pauper life cycles, the impact of the law of settlement and the changing welfare priorities during the period. Recent funding has focused on analysing the demography of the parish. This research has been funded twice by the ESRC and once by the Wellcome Trust. A related Leverhulme-funded project started in January 2013 this looked at the mortality regime in Manchester 1750-1850.

Funded projects

 'Mortality and epidemiological change in Manchester, 1750-1850', Leverhulme Trust, with Romola Davenport, 2013-2015.

‘Infant Mortality by Social Status in London: The Baptism Fee Books of St Martin-in-the-Fields’, ESRC award with Romola Davenport (Cambridge). 2011 to September 2013.

‘Death, Disease and the Environment: contextualising individual causes of death in London, 1747-1825’, Wellcome Trust Award with Leonard Schwarz (Birmingham), 2007-2011.

‘The Lives of the Poor in the West End of London 1724-1824’, ESRC award with Leonard Schwarz (Birmingham), 2004-2007.

I have retired. I continue to play an advisory role in PGR supervision.

• Articles

  • Boulton J. The Painter's Daughter and the Poor Law: Elizabeth Laroon (b. 1689 –fl.1736). The London Journal 2017, 42(1), 13-33.
  • Boulton J, Davenport R. Few Deaths before Baptism: Clerical Policy, Private Baptism and the Registration of Births in Georgian Westminster: a Paradox Resolved. Local Population Studies 2015, 94(1), 28-47.
  • Boulton J. Traffic in corpses and the commodification of burial in Georgian London. Continuity and Change 2014, 29(2), 181-208.
  • Boulton J, Schwarz L. The Medicalization of a Parish Workhouse in Georgian Westminster: St Martin in the Fields, 1725-1824. Family & Community History 2014, 17(2), 122-140.
  • Boulton JP, Black J. 'Those, that die by reason of their madness': dying insane in London, 1629–1830. History of Psychiatry 2012, 23(1), 27-39.
  • Davenport R, Schwarz L, Boulton J. The decline of adult smallpox in eighteenth-century London. The Economic History Review 2011, 64(4), 1289-1314.
  • Boulton J, Schwarz L. Yet Another Inquiry into the Trustworthiness of Eighteenth-Century-London’s Bills of Mortality. Local Population Studies 2010, 85, 28-45.

• Book Chapters

  • Boulton J. The ‘meaner sort’: labouring people and the poor. In: Wrightson, K, ed. A Social History of England, c.1500-c.1750. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp.310-329.
  • Boulton J. "The Charity of our Life and Healthful Years"? Approaches to Inter-vivos Charitable Giving to the Poor in the Metropolis 1600-1720. In: Jones, P; King, S, ed. Obligation, Entitlement and Dispute under the English Poor Laws. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp.20-52.
  • Boulton J. Indoors or Outdoors? Welfare priorities and pauper choices in the Metropolis under the Old Poor Law, 1718-1824. In: Chris Briggs, P.M. Kitson and S.J. Thompson, ed. Population, Welfare and Economic Change in Britain 1290–1834. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press for the Economic History Society, 2014, pp.155-190.
  • Boulton J, Davenport R, Schwarz LD. 'These ANTE-CHAMBERS OF THE GRAVE': Mortality, medicine and the workhouse in Georgian London (1725-1824). In: Reinarz, J., Schwarz, L, ed. Medicine and the Workhouse. University of Rochester Press, 2013, pp.58-85.
  • Boulton J, Black J. Paupers and their Experience of a London Workhouse: St Martin-in-the-Fields, 1725–1824. In: Hamlett, J., Hoskins, L., Preston, R, ed. Residential Institutions in Britain, 1725-1950: Inmates and Environments. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013, pp.79-91.
  • Boulton J. Double deterrence: settlement and practice in London’s West End, 1725-1824. In: King, S.; Winter, A, ed. Migration, Settlement and Belonging in Europe, 1500–1930s: Comparative Perspectives. New York: Berghahn, 2013, pp.54-80.
  • Boulton J. 'Turned into the Street with My Children Destitute of Every Thing'; The Payment of Rent and the London Poor, 1600-1850. In: Joanne McEwan and Pamela Sharpe, ed. Accommodating Poverty: The Housing and Living Arrangements of the English Poor, c. 1600-1850. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp.25-49.
  • Boulton JP, Schwarz L. 'The comforts of a private fireside'? The workhouse, the elderly and the poor law in Georgian Westminster: St Martin-in-the-Fields, 1725-1824. In: Joanne McEwan and Pamela Sharpe, ed. Accommodating Poverty: The Housing and Living Arrangements of the English Poor, c. 1600-1850. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp.221-245.