London's Underworld

More about the book

In 1862, eleven years after the publication of Henry Mayhew's gigantic survey of conditions among the London proletariat, London Labour and the London Poor, a fourth volume was added to the series. Previously Mayhew had concerned himself with those who were prepared to work, provided employment could be found, or whose means of livelihood, though often haphazard or bohemian, were not definitely outside the law. In this new volume, however, he and his collaborators described the lawless — thieves, beggars, prostitutes, swindlers—the outcasts of society, who supported themselves by preying upon the vice or credulity of their more prosperous neighbours. The result was a remarkably vivid picture of an aspect of Victorian life that few other writers of the age had dared to examine: the teeming underworld of 19th century London, whose headquarters were established a few yards from what is today Piccadilly Circus. As the Observer wrote when reviewing this selection: `Mayhew was a Victorian Defoe. He had Defoe's curiosity, his eye for detail, even, under the Victorian strait-jacket, the artists's fascinated interest in violence and horror.' Certainly the book is a mine of odd and intriguing information, throwing valuable sidelights on the feelings of guilt and state of moral tension that underlay the apparent sanctimoniousness of so much Victorian literature.