Where does (the) law happen? Where does it take place—and also take space? During my LHub day, we began testing out a map of what we call “Law’s Places and Spaces,” an interactive online map of the various sites of law across London.
Members of the LHub team each selected a place or space within roughly a mile of IALS, and drafted a short (ca. 500-word) entry on that site, which will also become a part of the interactive map. Those sites are wildly diverse: from the arrest of Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park while in drag after leaving a London theatre in Bow Street in 1870 to the partially mummified remains of the philosopher and legal reformer Jeremy Bentham on public display at the UCL Student Centre today; from the raid of Gay’s the Word bookshop in 1984 for conspiracy to import "indecent or obscene” materials to the establishment of the General Register Office, which was responsible for documenting births, deaths and marriages, at Somerset House starting in 1836.
Eventually, the map and its entries will be publicly accessible, and visitors to (and residents of) London will be able to walk the tour (approximately 1.5 to 2 hours in total), which will also include recommendations for other relevant things to see and do at or near those same sites.