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This edition is the first full scale study of John Cannon and his chronicles. Known to some as 'the poor man's Pepys', Cannon wrote a remarkably candid autobiography, during a crucial period of change in British history. Part 1 includes Cannon's account of his service in the Country Excise.

The ship Two Sisters, captured in 1757 in the midst of the Seven Years War, was carrying letters from the Irish community in Bordeaux. Most of the 125 letters lay unopened until 2011. Now, translated and annotated, they communicate the everyday concerns of people separated in wartime and shed light on early modern trade and expatriate communities.

At the heart of this book are the stories, in their own words, of ordinary people who fell into need and required the help of the local state in the early nineteenth century. We read their hopes, fears, detailed experiences of illness, and aspects of material conditions across a spectrum from nakedness and starvation to homelessness and eviction.