A database of several hundred historical descriptions and references to London's sounds. They're 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 |
| Hue-and-cry | 1 | 4 | 2 | |||||
| Laws, curfews and control of crowds | 2 | 1 | 2 | |||||
| Sentries and nightwatchmen | 1 | 2 | 1 | |||||
| Public executions | 2 | 2 | 1 | |||||
| Courts of law | 2 | |||||||
| Prison regimes | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Other legal proceedings | 1 | |||||||
| Sounds of crime | 1 |
Period referred to: 1720s
Sound category: Authority > Hue and cry
Title of work: The Fortunes and Misfortunes pf the Famous Moll Flanders
Type of publication: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe
Year of publication: 1722
Page/volume number: n/a
A crowd hunts down a pickpocket in Moll Flanders
The next thing of moment was an attempt at a gentlewoman's good watch. It happened in a crowd, at a meeting-house, where I was in very great danger of being taken. I had full hold of her watch, but giving a great jostle, as if somebody had thrust me against her, and in the juncture giving the watch a fair pull, I found it would not come, so I let it go that moment, and cried out as if I had been killed, that somebody had trod upon my foot, and that there were certainly pickpockets there, for somebody or other had given a pull at my watch; for you are to observe that on these adventures we always went very well dressed, and I had very good clothes on, and a gold watch by my side, as like a lady as other fold.
I had no sooner said so, but the other gentlewoman cried out 'A pickpocket' too, for somebody, she said, had tried to pull her watch away.
When I touched her watch I was close to her, but when I cried out I stopped as it were short, and the crowd bearing her forward a little, she made a noise too, but it was at some distance from me, so that she did not in the least suspect me; but when she cried out 'A pickpocket,' somebody cried, 'Ay, and here has been another! this gentlewoman has been attempted too.'
At that very instance, a little farther in the crowd, and very luckily too, they cried out 'A pickpocket,' again, and really seized a young fellow in the very act.
Period referred to: 1720s
Sound category: Authority > Hue and cry
Title of work: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders
Type of publication: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe
Year of publication: 1722
Page/volume number: n/a
Moll Flanders is stopped by a hue-and-cry in Covent Garden
It happened that while I was going along the street in Covent Garden, there was a great cry of 'Stop thief! Stop thief!' some artists had, it seems, put a trick upon a shopkeeper, and being pursued, some of them fled one way, and some another; and one of them was, they said, dressed up in widow's weeds, upon which the mob gathered about me, and some said I was the person, others said no.
Period referred to: 1720s
Sound category: Authority > Hue and cry
Title of work: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
Type of publication: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe
Year of publication: 1722
Page/volume number: n/a
A thief is chased in Defoe’s Moll Flanders
I was going through Lombard Street in the dusk of the evening, just by the end of Three King court, when on a sudden comes a fellow running by me as swift as lightning, and throws a bundle that was in his hand, just behind me, as I stood up against the corner of the house at the turning into the alley. Just as he threw it in he said, 'God bless you, mistress, let it lie there a little,' and away he runs swift as the wind. After him comes two more, and immediately a young fellow without his hat, crying 'Stop thief!' and after him two or three more.
Period referred to: 1720s
Sound category: Authority > Hue and cry
Title of work: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
Type of publication: Novel
Author: Daniel Defoe
Year of publication: 1722
Page/volume number: n/a
A Hue-and-cry described in Defoe’s Moll Flanders
We resolved to be going the next day, but about six o'clock at night we were alarmed with a great uproar in the street, and people riding as if they had been out of their wits; and what was it but a hue-and-cry after three highwaymen that had robbed two coaches and some other travellers near Dunstable Hill, and notice had, it seems, been given that they had been seen at Brickhill at such a house, meaning the house where those gentlemen had been.