Department of History

Memorial University History doctoral candidate Stewart Lawrence conducts research on the social history of Stockholm in the nineteenth century. He investigates what police protocols might reveal about the lives of vagrants and prostitutes.

He traveled to Sweden in February and describes his experience:

"In late February and early March of this year, I travelled to Sweden to meet with my PhD supervisor and conduct research in Stockholm’s City Archive (Stockholms Stadsarkiv). I began my tour of southern Sweden in Gothenburg on the west coast where I met Dr. Maria Sjöberg of the University of Gothenburg to discuss the gender component of my comprehensive examination. Dr. Sjöberg introduced me to many historians and graduate students in her department and I left Gothenburg with several valuable connections and a plan to return next year to present on the progress of my research.

After taking the train to Stockholm on the east coast, I began my research in Stockholms Stadsarkiv with the primary objective of photographing documents called förhörsprotokoler, or interrogation protocols. Stockholm’s police issued these protocols to vagrants and to prostitutes at the end of the nineteenth century. They contain a very large amount of information including the place of birth, previous occupational history, and a description of the encounter between the offender and the police. The archive contains thousands of these protocols and allow for a qualitative and quantitative analysis of both vagrancy and prostitution among members of the working class. I plan on using prostitution protocols to analyse female influence in the traditionally male space of the tavern, as taverns in Stockholm at the end of the nineteenth century often doubled as brothels. On the second day in the City Archives, I was approached by the archive’s communications department and asked to interview as their Visiting Researcher of the Month. This was an excellent opportunity to discuss my research goals and explain how an American student ended up studying Swedish history at a Canadian university like Memorial.

I finished my tour in the city of Malmö before returning to Copenhagen to fly back to Canada. This trip inspired both personal and professional growth as I became more familiar with my colleagues in Swedish academia and the staff of Stockholm’s City Archive. This trip would not have been possible without the generous financial contribution of the Scholarship in the Arts and the support of my supervisors."

Stewart Lawrence M.A., doctoral candidate, Department of History