A selection of inspiring reportage from pioneering London-based investigative journalist Henry Mayhew, a close friend and influential character in Charles Dickens’ life and works. The 200th anniversary of Henry Mayhew’s birth is overshadowed by that of his friend and collaborator Charles Dickens. But in fact Mayhew was a pioneering investigative journalist who wrote over a million words about the lives of poor working people in London, and whose writings and descriptions may have inspired some of Dickens’ characters. In some respects, Mayhew was his own worst enemy. He was disorganised - one of his books ended in mid-sentence - and cantankerous, and perhaps as a result his funeral was sparsely attended. But embedded in his fine reportage, which included long and moving interviews with Londoners, are passages descriptive of London, of people’s appearances and of their shabby homes, which stand alongside Dickens’ own writings for the quality and compassion of the prose.
This vintage book contains Henry Mayhew's account of the London Underworld during the Victorian period, constructed from authentic first-person accounts by beggars, thieves and prostitutes. Hailed as the first and perhaps greatest sociological studies of poverty in 19th-century London, this survey practiced the techniques of oral history - a hundred years before the term was first coined. It provides a vivid and authentic description of the labour, earnings, and problems of the lower classes in London, and will be of considerable utility to anyone with an interest in the day-to-day life of London's underbelly during this time. The chapters of this book include: Prostitution in London, The Dependents of Prostitutes, Clandestine Prostitutes, Cohabitant Prostitutes, Criminal Returns, Traffic in Foreign Women, The Sneaks, Pickpockets and Shoplifters, Horse and Dog Stealers, etcetera. We are republishing this vintage book now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
In the years 1849 and 1850, Henry Mayhew was the metropolitan correspondent of the Morning Chronicle in its national survey of labour and the poor. Only about a third of his Morning Chronicle material was included in his later and better known, publication, London Labour and the London Poor. First published in 1981, this series of six volumes constitutes Henry Mayhew’s complete Morning Chronicle survey, in the sequence in which it was originally written in 1849 and 1850. It addresses a wealth of topics from cholera in the Jacob’s Island area to the food markets of London. The publication of this complete survey represented the first time in which the whole of Mayhew’s pioneering work was available in one place. The set is introduced by Dr Peter Razzell, who was co-editor of the national Morning Chronicle survey. This sixth volume contains letters from September to December 1850. This series will be of interest to those studying the history of social welfare, poverty and urbanisation.
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