London Labour and the London Poor
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''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 city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
for a series of articles in a newspaper, the '' Morning Chronicle'', 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 "Jack" Black (born August 28, 1969) is an American actor, comedian, and musician. He is known for roles in family and comedy films, in addition to his voice work in animated films. His awards include a Children's and Family Emmy ...
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.
Jack Black Thomas Jacob "Jack" Black (born August 28, 1969) is an American actor, comedian, and musician. He is known for roles in family and comedy films, in addition to his voice work in animated films. His awards include a Children's and Family Emmy ...
, 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 streetwalkers, thieves and
beggar Begging (also known in North America as panhandling) is the practice of imploring others to grant a favor, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation. A person doing such is called a beggar or panhandler. Beggars m ...
s, 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, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Southern Cone, NATO, Western European countries and oth ...
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 enough ...
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
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'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
costermonger A costermonger, coster, or costard is a street seller of fruit and vegetables in British towns. The term is derived from the words ''Costard (apple), costard'' (a medieval variety of apple) and ''monger'' (seller), and later came to be used to des ...
s. 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 Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This concept often includes the recovery of energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the propert ...
practised b
pure finders
(who collected dog dung for tanneries), the scavenging of 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 the anarchic Mr Punch and one other ...
men), market traders,
prostitute Prostitution is a type of sex work that involves 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-pe ...
s, labourers,
sweatshop A sweatshop or sweat factory is a cramped workplace with very poor and/or illegal working conditions, including little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting and ventilation, or uncomfortably or dangerously high or low temperat ...
workers, even down to the " mudlarks" who searched the stinking mud on the banks of the
River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, s ...
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 (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...
Philip Larkin 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 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'', 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'' 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, were published in a single volume under the title ''The Big City or the New Mayhew''.


See also

* '' Street Life in London'', 1877 book


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

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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