London Labour and the London Poor - Henry Mayhew

'London Labour and the London Poor' is an incredible collection of factual accounts of those poor individuals living on the margins of nineteenth-century society. Put into writing by journalist Henry Mayhew, it was originally predicted to be a largely unbiased, unmediated representation of the lower-classes, yet nonetheless, Mayhew's sympathies shine through. **So who exactly does Mayhew write about?** Glancing over the contents page you could be forgiven for thinking Mayhew has included a representative of nearly every line of work pertaining to the nineteenth-century poor - we are given accounts of mud-larks, costermongers, 'pure'-finders (who ...  Read the complete review

I dont know about you guys, but I love a bit of social history; and being a bit of a genealogy fanatic, I really enjoy padding out my background knowledge of my ancestors by reading relevant materials. The Victorian period, in my family tree (maiden name), is quite colourful since my ancestor was a Cabmaster in Whitechapel at the time of Jack the Ripper! Other family members were based in Bloomsbury and Hackney in the mid 1800's, and so London features quite prominantly in my past. As a result, I was interested to stumble across 'London Labour and the London Poor' by Henry Mayhew, as it gives detailed accounts of not only the sites and sounds of London around the 1840s, ...  Read the complete review