Determining upon which area or setting I wanted to reconnoiter in London was not difficult due to the fact that the Covent Gardens located in London have always been of curiosity to me. The Covent Gardens is a picturesque and wholehearted place that contains a numerous amount of bazaars and markets to pour one’s heart into. It is a setting where tourists can look around and take in the atmosphere of London. The constituency is allocated by the main road of Long Acre, while the south comprises of the central square with its street entertainers and graceful structures, auditoriums and performing facilities, including the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the London Transport Museum. In the stories of Sherlock Holmes, The Covent Gardens was depicted in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was represented during the incident when Mr. Henry Baker gives Holmes information that brings him to the Covent Gardens. Here is what Covent Gardens looks like of Victorian Google Maps:

After a sufficient and adequate amount of searching, I found the British History online archive to be the most accommodating in facilitating me find out a big amount of information. After typing in “Covent Gardens” in the search bar, a numerous amount of information had risen where I had contracted an advantageous amount of knowledge. During the epoch of 1926, the Town Clerk of Westminster presented a sixty-page report to the City Council upon the subject of Covent Garden Market, the owners of which were then proposing to remove it to a more suitable site.  The antiquity of the market was described as, “bristles with illegality, fraud and oppression’. The powers by which the market was regulated had been ‘obtained by none too creditable means’, and the owners had ‘thereby established a stranglehold on a large proportion of the fruit and vegetable trade of London”. (Covent Garden Market)

We also learn about the Covent Garden Theatre, where many performances were held in London. There is an advertisement for the first play that was performed at The Covent Theatre. It starts out like, “In 1926 the Town Clerk of Westminster presented a sixty-page report to the City Council upon the subject of Covent Garden Market, the owners of which were then proposing to remove it to a more suitable site.” (Covent Garden Theatre)

 The Charles Booth Online archive was also extremely beneficial and effective as it helps the viewers visualize various poverty classifications. Here is a visual map with a key:

 

Works Cited

“Booth Poverty Map (Charles Booth Online Archive).” Booth Poverty Map (Charles Booth Online Archive). Web. 10 Nov. 2014.

Covent Garden Market’, Survey of London: volume 36: Covent Garden (1970), pp. 129-150. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=46106&strquery=covent garden Date accessed: 10 November 2014.

‘Covent Garden Theatre’, Old and New London: Volume 3 (1878), pp. 227-237. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45149&strquery=covent gardenDate accessed: 10 November 2014.

In A Case of Identity, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle mentions Fenchurch Street in terms of the location of Westhouse & Marbank, the great claret importing company Miss Sutherland’s stepfather worked for. While it’s mention was brief, I found that the street was incredible close to Leadenhall Street, the street the supposed fiancé worked on. Given the fact that the stepfather was in fact the fiancé, the close location of the street potentially explains why the stepfather chose the street.

I first decided to look at Charles Booth’s survey work to see what type of poverty classifications existed on the street. The area seemed to be populated by the poor, 18s. to 21s. a week, as per Booth’s classification system (Charles Booth Online Archive). Large portions of the street appear without a classification, which could suggest that it was largely office space, shops, or some other types of non-residences.

Looking at Old Bailey court records, there were 91 hits with crime locations on Fenchurch Street from 1700 to 1819, only 4 of which were not theft or violent theft (Locating London: Old Bailey Proceedings). While the street had a problem with crime, 91 reports in 119 years is not all that indicative of a crime issue. It seems to suggest that theft was an nearly regular occurrence, but poverty has been known to increase stress and that can lead to increased cases of theft and crime.

From British Histories, I learned that Fenchurch Street got its name from the marshy ground on the banks of Langbourne. It once held Denmark House, the residence of the first Russian ambassador in England, and also the residence of the Earls of Northumberland. In the Middle Ages, it was home to the Ironmongers’ Hall that supposed iron to a vast area of England (“Cornhill, Gracechurch Street and Fenchurch Street”).

Works Cited

‘Cornhill, Gracechurch Street, and Fenchurch Street’, Old and New London: Volume 2 (1878), pp. 170-183. Web. 8 November 2014.

“Fenchurch Street.” Charles Booth Online Archive: Booth Poverty Map. London School of Economics and Political Science. Web. 9 November 2014.

“Fenchurch Street.” Locating London. Locating London’s Past. Web. 9 November 2014.

London – OS Town Plan 1893-6. National Library of Scotland. Web. 8 November 2014.

For this assignment I researched Hyde Park in London which features in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor”.

 

The location is near Kensington Park and the Marble Arch. The Marble Arch and the Park serve as something of a landmark for the area. Even though this particular park is known for crime it is near streets lined with mansions.

The park has been host to a number of incidents. At several times in history it has been used as an encampment for soldiers. There have even been reports of small, unofficial battles breaking out on the area, although these skirmishes were just a handful of deaths at a time. It also has held a world’s fair and other types of events. It was proposed in 1840 that it should be the site of an annual fair, but that was shot down in the planning stages.

The area is known for some crime. In earlier centuries the level of crime was more dangerous; there were a number of murders that were linked to this location. However as time went on it is more common to see simple pickpocketings and thefts with violence involved.

Here is one particular murder where one man shot his victim in the chest and killed him, in part of a conspiracy to commit the murder with another man who was at the scene. The language of the old time indictment is complicated but it’s interesting that both the person who committed the murder and his accomplice are charged with the same crime.

**Certain sources spell Hyde as Hide, but they are one in the same.

For this project I decided to look at and do research on “Goodge Street”. This street was a main location in “The Blue Carbuncle” because this was where James Ryder dropped the goose after Peterson rushed towards him only to help Ryder from a beating. The screen shot above shows the location of where this happened. After searching for information through all of the other digital archives I found that the britsh-history website to be the most useful. This cite gave me lots of information on Goodge Street on what was on it and its location. The article I found useful was written by two men named J. R. Howard Roberts and Walter H. Godfrey and they claimed that Goodge Street was a shopping strip with a lot of stores on it as well as a residential area. This is relevant to the Blue Carbuncle story itself because in the story Ryder accidentally breaks a shop window while trying to defend him self. I found that connection to be rather interesting because now i know for a fact this was where the crime happened and its really cool to be able to get a visual of it.

 

The above image is from the website  Locating London. I found this website to be very useful in finding information on crimes and giving a good visual. What I found interesting was that around the area there are only a couple of crimes that occurred but two of them are on the corner of Bennet Street and Charlotte Street. This is only just around the corner from where the attack happened on Goodge street. If you think about it this could have been a bad area where robberies usually happen. Especially back then it was easier for people to get away with things since there was no security cameras. A shopping center area late at night would be  a great place for an attacker to wait for a victim. Theres more of a chance a person will be walking through there and since its at night time no one else will be there to see.

Another website I found useful was the “Old Bailey Online” site. This website gives information on crimes that happened in the area you are looking at, in my case Goodge Street. While the Locating London website gives you where exactly the crimes occurred, Old Bailey Online gives you more information in the crime itself. As in the description of the crime from the victims or witnesses. In one excerpt that talks about a theft case that happened on September 16th, 1801. A watchman in Goodge Street saw a robbery occur and the two prisoners were accused guilty and transported for seven years. Where they got transported too is unknown.

The two websites that i didnt find useful were Charles Booth online Archive and the Historical Eye. It was very confusing trying to navigate them and they both gave very little information on Goodge Street. Information that wasn’t worthy of posting. Locating London, Old Bailey Online, and British History were all very good websites to find information about Goodge Street. Easy to navigate and had very intriguing data.

 

Work Cited

 

“By Subject.” Goodge Street. Ed. J. R. Howard Roberts and Walter H.

Godfrey. English Heritage, n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2014.

 

“Home | LOCATING LONDON’S PAST.” Home | LOCATING LONDON’S

        PAST. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2014.

 

“JAMES JONES, JOHN SMITH, Theft Grand Larceny, 16th September

1801.” Old Bailey Online. N.p., n.d. Web.

 

“London – OS Town Plan 1893-6.” London – OS Town Plan 1893-6. N.p.,

n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2014.

When using the program Mallet, when you maximize or minimize the number of topics it affects the topics the tool gives you. This happens because when you change those settings it changes the varied outcomes with a larger variety of words. If you limit yourself too much or too little you can get too broad of an outcome to identify topics easily or on the flip side create a too detailed and specific topic. The number of iterations affects the topics the tool gives you because it limits the outcome depending on how large or small the number you input is. The same type of situation. It can create a topic that has too specific results when these topics are all combined and limited. The main settings that we would recommend are starting to use the program on the class settings. We set it at first to the number of topics to be 50, number of iterations 1000, number of topic words 20, and having the stop words removed. We believed it was a good way to start off using the Mallet program and get a basis before we began messing around with the program and seeing the different outcomes possible from infinite numbers of settings.

We decided to look at three of our topics that were similar and we labeled pretty much the same. We thought it was interesting that we had similar findings with our changes in settings but still thought of the same labels with small outliers.

Appearance– face eyes features looked dark tall pale thin expression figure lips glance sprang gray colour manner spoke clean angry handsome

 Murder -Found man dead body blood left head finally lay drawn knife sign fell round sight blow stick lying clothes thing

Bedroom- room window bed night sitting bedroom bell entered half looked floor heard morning dressing lawn finally remained sleep opened alarm

After looking at our favorite topics the program really let us down. We could not re-access the information. The list appeared but when trying to access by clicking on the topics an error page appeared. It did not work well going back to the program due to errors in saving. It also seemed like some others in the class were having the same issue. This made it difficult to research further with the use of the abbreviations list. Seems as though looking through the blog posts it seems like some of us had similar topics and that is what we discussed together even with minor deviations in settings. This program was helpful in helping us organize the topics but it became more difficult and frustrating trying to find where we went wrong when using this program. If the program worked for us the ways others did I feel like it would of been a very useful tool.

 

 

 

By: Erin & Paul

Death: found dead body lay man blood death blow knife unfortunate terrible person lying finally cut weapon evidence constable remained wound

Body Parts and Reactions: eyes face hands voice cried lips shoulders sat turned air amazement sprang companion stared sunk raised sank eager instant shrugged cheeks staring astonishment angry breast

Effeminate: lady wife woman maid left difficulty ferguson life girl mistress couple difficult forever nurse half devoted frances ill dear frightened coffin beautiful show longer notice

The number of topics affects the topics the tools give you because when you are trying to name a topic and there are more words, you have to analyze them more since the possibilities of a topic name are broader due to the different words. When working with this program, we recommend using more topic words when filling in the settings to get your results. The more words, the more options you have and the easier it is to come up with a common theme. With the increase of iterations, the results can be concise, even if you have a large number of topics.

Two Questions about the data:

1. What types of words are most important when attempting to name a topic? The results are always a noun, adjective, or verb, so which words are the most important when you are trying to figure out what the story is about?

2. How does the number of iterations affect the topics directly? Does it make it more concise? efficient? quicker?

Unfortunately, when trying to re-access the program, it would not allow us to reopen the files. Since we had finished the project in class, we were not prepared to double check the saving of the program onto our Google Drive account. When we tried to reopen it, the file led to the page with the list of words, but would not give us any further information such as the stories the words occurred most in.

– Melanie and Allyson