A collection of descriptions and references to sounds drawn mainly from primary sources such as autobiographies, diaries and statutes, as well as novels written around the times they depict.
| Sub-category | 1st to 10th |
11th to 15th |
16th to 17th |
18th | Early 19th |
Late 19th |
Early 20th |
Late 20th |
| Pub life, music and song | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 3 | |||
| City-wide celebrations | 3 | 2 | 3 | |||||
| Toasts, dinners and feasts | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Theatre and cinema audiences | 2 | 1 | ||||||
| Music and song in theatres | 2 | 2 | 2 | |||||
| Public music and song outdoors | 3 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| Education: Oratory and debate | 1 | |||||||
| Gambling | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Sporting events | 2 | 1 | ||||||
| Families at leisure | 1 | |||||||
| Dancing | 1 | |||||||
| Local celebrations | 1 |
Period referred to: 1840s
Sound category: Social > Theatre and cinema audiences
Title of work: London Labour and the London Poor
Type of publication: Social investigation
Author: Henry Mayhew
Year of publication: 1851
Page/volume number: Volume 1, Chapter 1
Youngsters gather at a Victorian ‘penny gaff’ theatre
The visitors, with a few exceptions, were all boys and girls, whose ages seemed to vary from eight to twenty years. Some of the girls – though their figures showed them to be mere children – were dressed in showy cotton-velvet polkas, and wore dowdy feathers in their crushed bonnets.They stood laughing and joking with the lads, in an unconcerned, impudent manner, that was almost appalling. Some of them, when tired of waiting, chose their partners, and commenced dancing grotesquely, to the admiration of the lookers-on, who expressed their approbation in obscene terms, that, far from disgusting the poor little women, were received as compliments, and acknowledged with smiles and coarse repartees. The boys clustered together, smoking their pipes, and laughing at each other's anecdotes, or else jingling halfpence in time with the tune, while they whistled an accompaniment to it.
Period referred to: 1660s
Sound category: Social > Theatre and cinema audiences
Title of work: The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Type of publication: Diary
Author: Samuel Pepys
Year of publication: 1663
Page/volume number: 1 June 1663
Crowd noises at a fencing match
[. . .] we walked away to White Hall and there took coach, and I with Sir J. Minnes to the Strand May-pole; and there 'light out of his coach, and walked to the New Theatre, which, since the King's players are gone to the Royal one, is this day begun to be employed by the fencers to play prizes at. [ . . .] But a woful rude rabble there was, and such noises, made my head ake all this evening.
Period referred to: 1660s
Sound category: Social > Theatre and cinema audiences
Title of work: The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Type of publication: Diary
Author: Samuel Pepys
Year of publication: 1661
Page/volume number: July 1661
‘The Eunuch, who was so much out that he was hissed off the stage’
To-day was acted the second part of "The Siege of Rhodes." [. . .] The King being come, the scene opened; which indeed is very fine and magnificent, and well acted, all but the Eunuch, who was so much out that he was hissed off the stage.