'It Buys Me Freedom': Genteel Lodging in Late-Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century London

Lodging, or else taking in lodgers, was a common way of life for many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Londoners, both rich and poor. While demographic historians have been attempting to gauge the extent of lodging in the metropolis for some time, the circumstance and experience of both lodgers and those who took them in has been subject to little detailed examination. Evidence drawn from sources such as diaries, newspaper advertisements, and court cases can give some specificity to our understanding of lodging arrangements. Concentrating on the middling orders and above, such sources highlight the importance of reputation and social credit for both those seeking lodgings and those offering rooms. It is apparent that for those who were not forced into lodging negotiations by financial necessity, other considerations linked with choice, such as networking and sociability, influenced decisions about when, where, and indeed whether to lodge.