''London Labour and the London Poor'' is a work of Victorian journalism by

Henry Mayhew Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine '' Punch'' in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in ...

. In the 1840s, he observed, documented and described the state of working people in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major s ...

for a series of articles in a newspaper, the ''

Morning Chronicle ''The Morning Chronicle'' was a newspaper founded in 1769 in London. It was notable for having been the first steady employer of essayist William Hazlitt as a political reporter and the first steady employer of Charles Dickens as a journalist. It ...

'', which were later compiled into book form. Mayhew went into deep, almost pedantic detail concerning the trades, habits, religion and domestic arrangements of the thousands of people working the streets of the city. Much of the material comprises detailed interviews in which people candidly describe their lives and work. For instance,

Jack Black Thomas Jacob Black (born August 28, 1969) is an American actor, comedian, and musician. He is known for his acting roles in the films '' High Fidelity'' (2000), '' Shallow Hal'' (2001), '' Orange County'' (2002), ''School of Rock'' (2003), '' ...

talks about his job as "rat and mole destroyer to Her Majesty" and remains in good humour despite his experience of a succession of near-fatal infections from bites.

, WikiSource Beyond that anecdotal material, Mayhew's articles are particularly notable for attempting to justify numerical estimates with other information, such as census data and police statistics. Thus, if the assertion is made that 8,000 of a particular type of trader operate in the streets, Mayhew compares that to the total number of miles of street in the city, with an estimate of how many traders operate per mile. The articles were collected and published in three volumes in 1851. A fourth "Extra Volume", published in 1861, was co-written with Bracebridge Hemyng, John Binny and Andrew Halliday and covered the lives of

streetwalker Street prostitution is a form of sex work in which a sex worker solicits customers from a public place, most commonly a street, while waiting at street corners or walking alongside a street, but also other public places such as parks, benches, e ...

thieves Theft is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word ''theft'' is also used as a synonym or informal shorthand term for some ...

and beggars, but it departed from the interview format to take a more general and statistical approach to its subject.

Mayhew's London

London in the 1840s was more like a 21st-century

Third World The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the "First W ...

megalopolis A megalopolis () or a supercity, also called a megaregion, is a group of metropolitan areas which are perceived as a continuous urban area through common systems of transport, economy, resources, ecology, and so on. They are integrated enoug ...

than a typical 19th-century city. A significant portion of the population had no fixed place of work, and indeed, many had no fixed abode. In classic fashion, the city teemed with outsiders and migrants from other parts of Britain, and with the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...

's continued growth, people from all over the world gradually began arriving in the city, as well, to seek their fortune. Items of commerce, such as food, drink, textiles and household goods were distributed by an army of carts and wagons. While goods were sold from storefronts, also thousands upon thousands of street-traders were generally lumped together as costermongers. Alongside these relatively familiar forms of trade in consumer goods and services, Mayhew's work describes lesser-known trades driven by now-obsolete markets and by sheer poverty, such as gathering of snails for food, and the extreme forms of recycling practised b
pure finders
(who collected dog dung for

tanneries Tanning may refer to: *Tanning (leather), treating animal skins to produce leather *Sun tanning, using the sun to darken pale skin ** Indoor tanning, the use of artificial light in place of the sun **Sunless tanning, application of a stain or dye ...

), the mudlarks (who spent their days combing the shores of the Thames for valuables hidden in the sand and silt) and ' toshers' (who searched the sewers for scrap metal and other valuables). Mayhew's perception as an observer is unsurpassed in early descriptions of London's street scenes. His richly detailed descriptions are able to give an impression of what the street markets of his day were like. Here is a typical description by Mayhew:

Composition

The articles comprising ''London Labour and the London Poor'' were initially collected into three volumes in 1851. The 1861 edition included a fourth volume, co-written with Bracebridge Hemyng, John Binny and Andrew Halliday, on the lives of prostitutes, thieves and beggars; this extra volume took a more general and statistical approach to its subject than the earlier works. He wrote in volume one: 'I shall consider the whole of the metropolitan poor under three separate phases, according as they ''will'' work, they ''can't'' work, and they ''won't'' work'. Mayhew interviewed everyone — beggars, street-entertainers (such as

Punch and Judy Punch and Judy is a traditional puppet show featuring Mr. Punch and his wife Judy. The performance consists of a sequence of short scenes, each depicting an interaction between two characters, most typically Mr. Punch and one other character w ...

men), market traders,

prostitute Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penet ...

s, labourers,

sweatshop A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, o ...

workers, even down to the "

mudlark A mudlark is someone who scavenges in river mud for items of value, a term used especially to describe those who scavenged this way in London during the late 18th and 19th centuries. The practice of searching the banks of rivers for items cont ...

s" who searched the stinking mud on the banks of the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the ...

for wood, metal, rope and coal from passing ships, and the "pure-finders" who gathered dog faeces to sell to tanners. He described their clothes, how and where they lived, their entertainments and customs, and made detailed estimates of the numbers and incomes of those practicing each trade. The book describes how marginal and precarious many people's lives were, in what was at that time perhaps the richest city in the world.

Use in culture

Poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

Philip Larkin Philip Arthur Larkin (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, '' The North Ship'', was published in 1945, followed by two novels, '' Jill'' (1946) and '' A Girl in Winter'' (1 ...

used an extract from ''London Labour and the London Poor'' as the epigraph for his poem "Deceptions". The extract details a rape: "Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain consciousness until the next morning. I was horrified to discover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable, and cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt." Writer Ben Gwalchmai was inspired to write his satirical novel ''Purefinder'' after reading about pure finders in the works of

Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

and Mayhew. ''London Labour and the London Poor'' was also a regular reference in the creation of the novel. Terry Pratchett's novel '' Dodger'' draws heavily from Mayhew's work. Michele Robert's novel ''The Walworth Beauty'' presents a fictional account of the composition of ''London Labour and the London Poor''. In the annotations to Alan Moore's graphic novel ''

From Hell ''From Hell'' is a graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell, originally published in serial form from 1989 to 1998. The full collection was published in 1999 by Top Shelf Productions. Set during the Whitechapel murders of ...

'', Moore cites ''London Labour and the London Poor'' as a source for the book's depictions of working-class Victorian life.

''The Big City or the New Mayhew''

In the early 1950s, ''

Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pun ...

'' published a series of articles based upon and to some extent parodying ''London Labour and the London Poor''. Although these articles were humorous, their purpose was still to document and describe the lives of working people in London. In 1953, the articles, which were written by Alex Atkinson and illustrated by

Ronald Searle Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI (3 March 1920 – 30 December 2011) was an English artist and satirical cartoonist, comics artist, sculptor, medal designer and illustrator. He is perhaps best remembered as the creator of St Trinian's ...

, were published in a single volume under the title ''The Big City or the New Mayhew''.

Notes

References

*''London Labour and the London Poor''; selections made and introduced by Victor Neuburg, Penguin Classics 1985, *''London Labour and the London Poor:'' Volume I, Dover Publications (1968), Paperback *''London Labour and the London Poor:'' Volume II, Dover Publications (1968), Paperback *''London Labour and the London Poor:'' Volume III, Dover Publications (1968), Paperback *''London Labour and the London Poor:'' Volume IV, Dover Publications (1983), Paperback, *''The Unknown Mayhew, Selections from the "Morning Chronicle" 1849-50'', E. P. Thompson, Eileen Yeo (editors), The Merlin Press, 1971. Repr.: Pelican Classics, 1973

External links

* ** *** ** *** ** *** ** ***
Gutenberg free edition of the London Labour and the London Poor volumes
* {{librivox book , title=London Labour and the London Poor English non-fiction literature 19th century in London 1851 non-fiction books 1861 non-fiction books Books about poverty Poverty in England