Newcastle University

Office hours: Tuesdays: 9-11am, Wednesdays: 12 noon - 1pm

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).

Research interests

My main area of research is 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.

Funded projects

‘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 date

‘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.

Undergraduate Teaching

I have run the following undergraduate courses in the last five years:
HIS2114 Death, dying and the dead in early modern England
HIS2081 A Protestant Nation in Crisis: British History 1560-1688
HIS3119 The Wages of Sin? Venereal Disease in Early Modern England (1500-1800)
HIS3118 Hogarth! The artist and his life in Georgian London, 1697-1764

I also contribute to HIS3008 Reading History and supervising undergraduate dissertations. 

Postgraduate Teaching

I used to run HIS8028 'Death cultures in early modern England' for the MA British History. I now lead the module 'HIS8105 Reform and resistance in England 1700-1939'.

I currently supervise four graduate students: Graham Butler, studying medical and welfare history in Newcastle 1780-1850; Caroline Nielsen studying disability and the Chelsea Hospital in the eighteenth century; John Mabbitt on the archaeology of Civil War towns; Cara Middlemass, who is studying memorial jewellery in early modern England.

• 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: Smith, R., King, S, ed. Poverty, Poor Relief and Welfare, 1650-1929. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2013. In Press.
• Boulton J, Black J. Paupers and their Experience of a Georgian Workhouse: St. Martin in the Fields, Westminster, 1725–1830. In: Hamlett, J., Hoskins, L., Preston, R, ed. Residential Institutions in Britain, 1725-1950: Inmates and Environments. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013. In Press.
• Boulton J, Schwarz L. The parish workhouse, the parish and parochial medical provision in eighteenth-century London. In: Gestrich, A., Hurren, E., King, S, ed. Poverty and Sickness in Modern Europe: Narratives of the Sick Poor, 1780-1938. Continuum Publishing Company, 2013. In Press.
• 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. 2013. In Press.
• 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.
• Boulton J, Schwarz L. Double deterrence: settlement and practice in London’s West End, 1725-1824. In: Steve King and Anne Winter, ed. Migrants, Entitlements and Welfare, 1500-2000: Comparative Perspectives. 2012. Submitted.
• 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 Households of the Poor in England, c.1650-1850.Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan,2011, pp. 221-245.
• 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.
• Boulton J. Microhistory in early modern London: John Bedford (1601-1667). Continuity and Change 2007, 22(1), 113-141.
• Boulton J. Welfare Systems and the Parish Nurse in Early Modern London, 1650-1725. Family and Community History 2007, 10(2), 127-151.
• Boulton J. Material London, ca.1600. Journal of Economic History 2001, 61(4), 1114-1115.
• Boulton J. The economy of obligation: The culture of credit and social relations in early modern England. Seventeenth Century 2001, 16(2), 306-308.