two historical bits

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First of all, since everybody and their brother seems to be sending it to me right now: yes, I am aware of the online version of the 1898-99 Booth Poverty Map of London. (Apparently BoingBoing precipitated this flood?) My thanks to those of you who told me about it, but you can stop now.

(Not pissy; just a little bemused.)

Second: it’s buggy as hell, but Channel 4 in Britain has put up a flash game connected to their TV show, City of Vice. Both focus on the mid-eighteenth century Bow Street Runners, created by the magistrate Henry Fielding and his brother and successor John, who were arguably London’s first police force. I haven’t seen the show (since it isn’t out on DVD yet or anything, and I’m not the BitTorrent sort), but the first episode of the game is a fun little murder mystery. Unfortunately, the game is prone to hanging at odd points — I discovered a lot of complaints online, when I got frozen during a particular bit — so we’ll have to see if they fix those problems.

Don’t play it without a mouse, though; the bits that require coordination are apparently hell on a trackpad or any other such device.

0 Responses to “two historical bits”

  1. unforth

    I actually JUST read a book about the Bow Street Runners, a mystery about Bruce Alexander, the “detective” of which is John Fielding. It’s pretty interesting stuff. I didn’t know that there was a TV show about it – I’ll have to track it down when it comes out. 🙂 I’d check out the game, but hanging up games are noooo fun. 🙂

    • Marie Brennan

      You can give it a shot; I actually have a theory as to what I did that made the particular bit hang (clicked before it was done loading). It might work fine for you.

  2. tybalt_quin

    I can definitely recommend City of Vice if you can track it down on DVD. It’s a strange show made by Channel 4’s history department but with pretty sound dramatic values and the cast is excellent (Ian McDiarmad in particular is wonderful as Henry Fielding) and it’s one of those dramas that gives you a real feel for the time and concentrate on trying to be authentic. I’ve got a bit of a thing for 18th century history, so it was great to see the things I’ve read about brought to life.

    • Marie Brennan

      Whereas I’m planning on pitching a mid-18c Onyx Court novel, and this would count as research of a sort. <g> There’s a crap-ton of Victorian London-based fiction, TV, and movies, and a decent amount of Elizabethan, but Georgian? That’s harder to find.

  3. tak61

    Have you yet run into the book, “London: A Life In Maps” by Peter Whitfield?

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