The existential there-construction typically features prominently in studies of non-canonical syntax (e.g., Birner & Ward 1998), both from a synchronic and from a diachronic perspective. Current approaches within the World Englishes paradigm are mostly concerned with (non‑)concord or default singulars in the existential clause, as in there’s bears back there (Walker 2007; Collins 2012), a phenomenon that is by no means absent from earlier stages of English. This chapter makes use of the rich data represented by the Old Bailey Corpus 2.0 (1720 to 1913) to zoom in on developments within the existential construction in Late Modern English, a period which combines relatively little syntactic change in comparison to earlier periods of English with extensive activities in the realm of codification (cf. Leonard 1962; Sundby et al. 1991; Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2008). Two case studies probe into the tension between language change from above and below with respect to the occurrence of default singulars in existential constructions, highlighting some of the many aspects of non-canonicity that intersect in the variable realisation of this particular construction.