ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the neglected topic of the spatial experience of young male servants and apprentices in eighteenth-century towns and cities. 1 Although a significant historiography exists on male youth, few historians have paid explicit attention to the way young men used urban space or how, during a period in which towns and cities were undergoing significant transformation, young men’s understanding and experience of space was changing. 2 The chapter uses a variety of sources, including court records, to explore how young male servants and apprentices imagined, perceived, negotiated and used the spaces in which they lived, worked and worshipped in eighteenth-century England. It argues that in a period frequently seen as pivotal in shaping modern gender roles for men, space functioned as a central category in the creation of young male identity. The strategies and tactics that young men used to navigate and occasionally to contest patterns of use and control of certain urban spaces were also crucial ingredients in the making of the eighteenth-century town and city.