Insight into 18th century London lives
The London Lives database contains 240,000 pages, or 40 million words, of handwritten documents from criminal justice and local government and is fully searchable.
It is hoped the site – which is available at www.londonlives.org – will allow people to see how "ordinary" Londoners lived their daily lives, and how their successes and failures shaped modern social policy.
Sheffield University historian Prof Robert Shoemaker directed the project. He said it provided "unique access to the lives of people normally neglected by historians".