Edward Lovett Collected Lucky Charms in Modern London
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
Folklorist Edward Lovett collected charms and amulets from working people in late Victorian and Edwardian London. His collections demonstrate that lucky and protective objects were not confined to an imagined isolated rural past.
Urbanisation and industrialisation changed popular belief without instantly erasing it. Lovett’s material also requires the usual caution applied to collector archives: what survives reflects both the people who used the objects and the collector’s own interests and categories.
Source trail: museum collections and scholarship concerning Edward Lovett’s London amulets and charms.
Related Journal record: Folk Magic in Britain.