HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

READING VICTORIAN LONDON:
HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND
LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR (1861-62)
Nancy Catherine Grout
B .A.Ap.Sc., Simon Fraser University, I986
THESIS SUBMITIED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Under Special Arrangements
O Nancy Catherine Grout 1999
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
December I999
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HENRY MAYHEW.
CIk., 4-llr by mural

ABSTRACT
London Labour und the London Poor (186 1-62) is one of England's most remarkable
nineteenth-century urban documents. Henry Mayhew, journalist, playwright and novelist, paured
the best of his life's work into London Labour, and the earlier Morning Clvonicle newspaper
articles (1849-51) on which it was largely based London Labour encapsulates his mature thought
and energy, and public attention, and at its most concentrated, it encapsulates a single intellectual
pattern, the examination of Victorian badon's labouring pax seen through the communication
and cultural prism of vernacular languages. And yet London Labour remains strangely
unrecognized even though there is a substantial body of scholarship focused on Mayfiew's work,
which I have examined. The challenge is to establish once again the theoretical power of
Mayhew's vision of a Victorian society focused on urban relationships in the city.
Reading Victorian London: Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) and London Labour and the
London Poor (1861-62) considers how Victorian London was shapeb; Lonbon's spatial
organization within the limit ations imposed by these structural determinations; and the patterning
of group and class formations within this spatial domain. The communication issues of language
- the increasingly secondary roles of the vernacular, the rise of modern reading communities,
and the destruction or censorship of certain genres - are also examined The pivotal issues of
folk culture, the labouring poor described as wandering tribes in the midst of Victorian
civilization, are also examined as well as the significance of nimeenth-century travel literature
for understanding these impartant issues. Lastly, the literary issues surrounding London Labour
itself are also examined through the Menippean satire, which accounts for Mayhew's perplexing
and sometimes violent juxtapositions of topics, genres, and attitudes. Fa Mayhew combined his
philosophical and practical inquiries into the study of the street-folk's life, their entertainment,
humour, and vernacular languages, Victotian socio-cultural history, adventure stories and travel
literature, are combined in one literary genre, called the Menippean satire. I conclude that there is

the need for a more adequate theory of modern cities such as Victorian London, its history and
cultures, which could be widened if scholars and journalists seriously included M am's Lon&n
Labour and the London Poor in their discussions.

DEDICATION
To Dr. Jack G dy and Father Walter Ong for their important support along life's way.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To Dr. Jerry ZasIove fa his unstinting support and good humour.

"It surely may be considered curious as being the first attempt to publish
the history of a people, fiom the lips of the people themselves - giving
a literal description of their labour, their earnings, their trials, and their
sufferings, in their own "unvarnished" language; and to pourtray the condition
of their homes and their faes by personal observation of the
places, and direct communion with the individuals."
Henry Mayhew
Preface. I: xv
London Labour and !he London Poor
1%8[1861-621

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE / i
APPROVAL I ii
ABSTRACT I iii - iv
DEDICATION / v
QUOTATION / vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 viii - ix
PREFACE I x- xv
CHAPTER 1:
Readiag Victorian London: Aenty Mayhew and London fdonr and the London Poor
(1) The Thecuetical Robiem / 1 - 14
(2) Mayhew's London: The Rotoypical, Modern Capitalist City 1 15-22
(3) The Post-War Period: Six Decades of Scholarship 1 22-39
CHAITER 2:
R~cmstructiag the Coastnrted: Space, Culture, and Expldtatian
in Uenry Mayhew's London LPbour. Seeking the World of Henry Mayhew / 40-71
CFiArnR 3:
The Case for the Menlppean Satire: Henry Maybew's London fubour I 72-90
CHAPTER 4:
Space-Wars and Exploitation in Mayhew's London
(1) lntroducti~a 1 91-92
(2) The Historical Setting of Victorian London 1 92-104
(3) Mayhew's Metropolitan London 1 105- 107
(4) The Public and Rivate Spaces of Mayhew's London 1 107- 114
(5) Home Spaces of Loadon / 1 15-119
(6) S meet Spaces of London 1 119- 126
(7) Policing the Street Spaces of London I 126- 130
(8) Conclusion 1 130- 134
CHAPTER 5:
'Conversation Pieces": Vernacular Form of Representation in Mayhew's Londan
(1) Introduction 1 135-136
(2) Historical Background to the "OraVLiterate Debate" / 137- 143
(3) Literacy and the Rise of the Victorian Reading Public 1 144- 157
(4) Carnivatesque Street Literature / 157- 163
(5) The Street Languages of Londoo / 163- 168
(6) The Vmacular Voices of London:
(a) The "Patterers" 1 169-177
0) Standing Patterers, Chaunters, or Ballad-Singers I 177- 182
(c) Reciters of Dialogues 1 183- 184
(7) Other Vernacular Voices of Ladm I 184- 187
(8) In Cooclusicm: ''Wads Haunted His Wak and their History
Gave Clues to the Hidden History of the Crowd"/ 188- 198
viii

CHAPIER 6:
The Tqgkd Net: Critical Anthropolagy, Cultural Hegemony, and
the *Tr~tive/CivUizcd Debate" In MaybewTs London
( 1) Inuoducticm / 199-201
(2) Cultural Hegemmy in Mayhew's London / 201-22 1
(3) "Searching fa the Primitive": Mayhew's London Labour
as Documam Travel Adventure / 221-235
(4) Ethnographic Practices - Mayhew's Idea of "the Rimi tive" / 235-245
CHArnR 7:
'%eatling" beyond Eenry Mayhew and London &bow and the London Poor / 246-256
BIBLIOGRAPHY I 257-272
APPEMlIX I Selection of Illustratioas From London Labour and rhe LDndon Poor
Volume. L II and IlI / 273-302
Credit: London Labour and the London Poor. Dover edition. first published in 1968. is an unabridged
republication of the work as published by Griffin, Bobn. and Company in 186 1-1 862. to which has been
added a new Introduction by John D. Rasenberg.

Preface
On the verge of tbe twenty-first century, we live in a predominantly urban world obsessed
with the media, with upto-the minute news and the larger-than-We reporters that bring us that
news. The grotesque, the honific, and the banal - these newspaper narratives about wars, rapes,
murders, executions, loveaffairs, and wide-spread epidemics - still capture our collective
imaginations. Who were the earlier reporters of the nineteenth-century befae Edward R.
Murrow, Peter Kent, and Barbra Frum glued us to our radios and television sets Mae
specifically, who were Victorian London's long-lost reporters Where did they come from and
what mark did they make Who did they write about Who. in fact, were their readers and what
were their newspapers in a wald where many people still did not read, or even own a book
Rending Victorian bndon: Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) and London Labour and the London
Poor (1 86 1-62) is an interdisciplinary examination of the Life and times of the Victorian
newspaper reporter, novelist, and playwright, Henry Mayhew. Researching Hemy Mayhew has
bcen a daunting and fascinating scholarly journey. Mayhew came into my life by accident. I was
not searching for him directly, although I have been fascinated with the adwritten tradition ever
since my undergraduate days, and even befae that, with human cultures, travel stories, and
biographies, so that when I first came across E.P. Thompson's article on "The Political Education
of Henry Mayhew" (1967)- I was very intrigued, and perplexed. I discovered that Mayhew's
London Labor~r has suffered from long-term neglect in spite of the fact that Mayhew is the great-
grandfather of today's aal historians like the American writers Studs Take1 and Alex Hailey.
Mayhew, in fact, invented "oral history" a hundred years before it was coined Furthermore, I
discovaed that London Labour, which has often been quoted by scholars such as Thompson, is
still one of the least understood documents in tk canon of Victorian history and literature to re-
emerge afta World War II.

Who is Hemy Mayhew What is his four-volume encyclopedia all about, with its small print
in two columns running to over 1600 pages, and its pages interspersed with Richard Beard's
images of London's street people, now long fagotten How does one read Mayfiew - in effect,
get into Mayhew's life and times In fact, what has Mayhew to say to our generation While
Thompson's article gave me some possible clues about Mayhew, it was reading London Labour
itself that captured my imagination. And it still does. even more so today with its raucous quips,
hilarious characters, and riveting settings; but it is impatant to qualify here that I was trained
primarily in the visual arts in Taonto, Ontario, then I comp1eted an umkgraduate degree in
communication in the mid-80's at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia. Crossing
boundaries, creating new ways of looking at existing scholarly matmal, and translating
educational material fa popular audiences has always been important to me. Furthermore.
because this dissertation is neitkr a traditional cultural-historical, communication nor literary
examination with all the intdlectual problems and tensions between fact and fiction that this
brings, this immanent reading of Mayhew can hopefully make an interdisciplinary contribution to
a major resurgence of interest in Mayhew's place in Victorian history.
Victorian London was to Mayhew a paradigmatic place: something that was both elusive and
clear. Victorians needed to construct a picture of their city, and in an age when film did not yet
exist the only genre open to this kind of urban representation was the newspaper. Big-city
newspapers like The Times and the Morning Chronicle wanted to give their readers - both the
working-class and the middle-class - a picture of the big city. They also wanted to give the
middleclasses a sense of community and adventure, even though most of them lived out their
lives within the fluid boundaries of London This was the nineteenth-century fiamewak of a
burgeoning print-oriented wald that is now so familiar to us, the beginning of the modern
newspaper with its own vanacular in architecture and language. In order to create a dynamic
sense of a living, breathing world, it was important for Mayhew to reconstruct the constructed,

and to point out the contradictions in a city filled with sufferjng and the effects of the urge toward
moclemization. This was Mayhew's London.
Here was a mebopolis that was basically a city of commercial and residential sectas -
streets, squares, courtyards, and houses filled with an inexhaustible supply of people. The sense
of different races constantly on the move, shoulder-t~shoulder, crowded together in bazaars,
streets, and rooms scrambling to survive were completely reinforced in Mayhew's London
Lzbour, as well as the sense of rampant exploitation at the docks, and in the 'sweat strops' too.
Victorian London was also tk structure f a Maytrew. His newspaper articles explored how
London was histaically shaped in the mid-Victorian period, how its emaging spaces were
shaped by economic suuctures, 4 how its spatial domain, in turn, also shaped the cultural and
communication patterns of the laboring poor and rniddleclasses. My own view is that Mayhew
explored London through styles associated with the literary genre of the Menippean satire or,
1
more accurately, through the genre of the carnivaVgrotesque with its "patchwork" use of
bombastic vocabulary, flagrant digressions of different kinds of information juxtaposed side-by-
side, and the critique of fame, fortune, a d virtue, all at the same time. AIthough scholars have
neglected this genre in comparison to other genres, it has attracted such literary giants such as
Lucian, Varro, Bazthius, Burton, Sterne, Fielding, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Smollett . Joyce and
others. These writers were compelled by the intellectual ferment of their times and like Mayhew
used this genre with all its critical adaptability of form, effectiveness, and social commentary.
The main reason that Mayhew probably adapted this genre to his own uses was its capacity for
reaching a wide audience who were often less-educated, and certainly less intellectually
committed than he was. In dialogue with his readers, Mayhew probably realized instinctively that
its combination of humour, story-telling capabilities, and its capacity to turn the world-upside-
down would convey his message to his readers.
xii

London's street folk were mouthpieces of the public squares. Here was a carnivalesque folk
culture with a completely different nonofficial existence outside of the church and politics.
Mayhew was obsessed with recording their voices, memories, and experiences firsthand, so that
for the first time, his recordings became one of the most sensitive, comprehensive indicators of
Victorian communication practices. For Mayhew's Londm Labour was involved in a linguistic
project. it can be argued, to achieve political refa but it was not as politically explicit as Home
Tooke's 1790s discourse on language. "Surprisingiy, Mayhew chose to adopt the m t farreaching
theory of language," Karel Williams has argued 'Words haunted his work and their
history gave clues to the hidden history of the crowd" To Mayhew's credit, he attempted to do
this through the Herculean task of reconciling differing f m of literacy. And he attempted to do
this through documenting the most significant socializing event in the nineteenth-century; the rise
of the Victorian reading public with its popular aal, written, and visual forms of representation.
The growth of this diverse, new reading public - for novels, travel, and magazines - was
the most important socializing event of the nineteenth-century in westem culture. Time fa
reading and the money for shopping changed dramatically. In the midst of changing marketing
practices, books, especially novels, became indispensable to Victorian Life. The novel - saleable,
secular, and now, but a few pennies per installment - became a cultural commodity fa
the first
time, and central to the rise of this diverse reading public. Novels bound the generations and
sexes together, and comics did likewise. Experientially, the act of reading meant different things
to peoples with and without written history. Vast numbers of people lived out their lives without
writing within the social constructs of mimetic-performative cultures such as tondon's streetfolk
for example, whereas, literacy, fa people with written history in the nineteenth-century city,
became a transcendent marker of the transfixmation of national identity.
"Reading" the life and times of a nineteenth-century city such as London through several
"perceptual lenses" meant that Mayhew's readers were involved in a crisis of vast cultural, social,

and political changes. What was so important about Queen Victoria's London (1 837-1901) in this
regard was that it was probably the mast prototypical city f a understanding the growth and
development of all
expanding, market-based, capitalist economies. Mayhew was
obsessed with the urban question aad the problems of London's casual labour within it. So in
October, 1849, Mayhew persuaded the Morning Chronicle editors to publish a full, threepart
series surveying poverty in England in six broad areas, and within these areas, Mayhew was
appointed London's metropolitan coc~espondent. The breadth and depth of Mayhew's three-man
series was a first for British newspapers, and this was Mayhew's particular task - to portray, for
the first time, through his own on-thespot reporting as well as fiom direct interviews with the
labouring pax, what their horns and families really looked like as well as what their work,
wages, trials, and sufferings were all about. Conscious of working within and often against larger
systems of representation, Mayhew was also fascinated with the 'nuts-and-bolts' of language. He
was a grammarian, working within the English Romantic tradition, who attempted to propagate
the ideas of comparative philology by examining languages fkom below. Mayhew used Loadon's
urban spatial structure and paradigm to develop his own sense of place and self-reflections and
self-consciousness as a journalist, urban explorer, reader, grammarian, and theorist of the city to
reveal to his readers what the border-crmsings and spaces of their city were a11 about.
Thus Mayhew became a themist of culture, of city-spaces, and capitahst exploitation, and
because he is, in this sense, a theorist, he must be taken seriously, and not cast aside as just
another impressionistic literary hack who wrote a substantive collection of now-irrelevant
newspaper articles. Mayhew's place in Victorian history was preeminently based on these very
newspaper articles that were collected together in Lon&
Labour and the London Poor. Amidst a
professional career that also brought the satirical Figaro in London and Punch magazine to life,
the background to Mayhew's life on the streets of Loadon is worth examining foc the light it
sheds on Hetlry Mayhew, the man. Although the lessons that Mayhew taught were, at best,
xiv

inadequate, Mayhew's street-people embodied Victorian city-life with its quest for fieeQm,
mobility, and authenticity - for in a very real and contemporary sense, tondon labour was
Victorian history "as it happens". Controversy will always swirl around Mayhew's dominant
political perspectives, whether he is a reformer or a radical thinker, but it is my belief that, as he
becomes mae and m e committed to the plight of London's labouring poor, he uses another,
almost prophetic genre, to lay open to his readers the contradictions of Life on the streets of mid-
Victorian London.

Chapter 1
Reading Victorian London: Henry Mayhew & London Labour
and the London Poor
(1) The Theomtical Problem
Somehow, in the middle of the nhmimth century, in Victman London, London's 'unknown'
streex-folk
a histaical and cultural subject worth four vdumzs and nxrghiy sixteen hundred
pages - not that Victorians weren't already fascinated reading about unhnwn places and 'the
dangerous classes'.' which they
Hemy Mayhew's emycllpedia - h don Labour and the
Labouring Poor ( 1 86 1 -62) collected together in these f m
v o l - ~ enjoyed a wick crms-section
of readers fiom a general Victorian readership large enough to support many editions, to collectors
of the street-cries of London, through to contempcxary historians aad critics in search of material.
For Mayhew collected together and published, fa the first time, "from the lips of the people
themselves," ' the Lives of London's street-folk He was obsased with folk culture. architecture,
languages. customs as well as everyday life that included a vast domain of second-hand objects. '
' Stedman Jones, Gareth. Outcast London: A Study in the Refasionship between Classes in Victorian
Socie~, Clarendon Press, 2971 argues that, pitted against the daninant climate of moral and material
improvement however was a minority of unregenerate poor - 'the dangerous class' - who turned against
the idea of progress, a had been rejected by society (Stedman Jones, 1 1).
' Maxwell. Richard, "Henry Mayhew and the Life of the Street," 7hc Journal of British Studies, 1973: 85-
105. Paraphrasing Maxwell. 87.
3
Following E.P. Thompson, 'The Political Education of Henry Mayhew", Victoriun Studies, 1%7,2, 1,
September (1967): 41-62.
Mayhew, Henry. London Lobour and the London Poor. 4 vds. LooQo: m. Roseberg; New Yak:
Dover Publicatiars. 1%8[1861-621. in the very first sentence of London LPbour. I. Mayhew stated:'The
present volume is the first of an intended series, which it is hoped will farm, when complete, a cyclopaedia
of the industry, the want and the vice of the great Metropolis" (Mayhew, I: xiv).
' Mayhew. II: 16. Dickens was probably familip with Mayhew's work refariog to kook spcifically with
his rag-and-bottle store in Bleak House. Didren's novel began its serial run in 1852; the first collected
volumes of h4ayhew's work appeared in 1851, but the articles 00 the LmQD poor began apparing in 1849
in the Morning Chronicle. Dickeos, who had earlier written f a the Chronicle and who was an avid

But he was also obsessed, as the title suggests, with Lorrdon's labour especially the casual labour of
the me~opolis.~ Ma-
thus poured the best of his life's wmk into London Labour, a d the earlier
Morning Chronicle aewspaper articles ( 1849-51 ) on which it is largely based, to such a degree that
it encapsulated his philosophical thoughts, practical emxgy as well as pubiic anention as none of his
other works ever really did What was at stake kre, at ooe level, was a new relationship between
Mayhew, the autha, and his wcxk
Mayhew, the Chronicle's mar0polita.n investigative reports, became, ova time, che
Chronicle's (and London Ldwur's) seeks of truth, attemping to bridge the gap between the street-
folk's everyday experiences and his own intellectual cancans. Fa M a w umbstood himself to
be, among aher things. a "standard-bearer of an expanding civiliution" ' with the result that
London Labour was one of England's most remarkable nhtamth-tury
urban documents. It was,
at its m t concentrated, a vision that contained a single intellectual pattern woven togetha with
several threads, the examination of London's labouring pom seen through the cultural prism of
vemcular languages, a d set amidst one of the world's rnost dramatic urban senings, that of
nineteenth-century Victorian London. And yet. despite its many 'firsts', ' London Lobour has
remained strangely "unestablished" according to E.P. Thompson. The challenge, therefae, for a
reading of Reading Victorion London: Henry Mayhew (1 8 12-1 887) and h don Labour and the
London Poor (1 86 1 -62). is to establish once again the power of Mayhew's vision, which is focused
on relationships in the city. This dissertation calls for a fiesh examination of the dimensions aad
newspaper reader, may have seen Maybew's two articles, 'Qf the Rag and Bonle". "Marine-Store Shops",
and "Of the Street-Buyers of Waste (Paper)" befae they appeared in 1851; See Maybew. 11: 108.
The "great object" of Maybew's investigation was We condition and characteristics" of waking people
and the "great evil of all casual labour" was 'rhe uncertainty of the incune*' (Mayhew, II: 216,224).
' Elias, Norbert, Power and Civility. New Yak: Pantheon Books, 1982.49.
* London Inbour was, following Mayhew, ''the first "blue book'' eva published in twojxmny numbers"
(Mayhew, I: xiv).
Thompson. 42.

significance of Mayhew's investigations into Loadoa's meet-fdk by historians, anthropologists.
and literary scholars alike. Within this coatext, hen, the dissertation sets out in this introductory
chapter to briefly evaluate the histmcal literature an Mayhew and will discuss c o w and
merhodological oppornrnities and problems, as well as the histmcal setting of Victcrian London
itself. Based on the wak of certain key historians, aottaopdogists, and Literary schdars, this
chapter also sets out to establish the therxetical problems, w, and Qmains of the
dissertation's interdisciplinary approach
Reading Victorian London: considers
intarefated questioas: firstly, how Victorian
London was shaped, that is its dexerrninations as seen through Maws London Labour; secondly,
it considers Lordon's spatial organization within the limitations inpod by these structural
determinations in the mid-Victcxian period; and thirdly the cultural pattaning of group and ciass
focmations within this spatial domain. Reading Vicrorian London uses an interdisciplinary approach
into the conaections between Victorian i.nteUectual and mataid life, without reducing oae to the
other, while also examining tk socidynamics of historical change. Mayhew, in short, struggled to
incorporate the city into his developing social theay of exploitation, and in doing so, accounted fa
the emergence of labouring and waking-class kinds of subjectivity. In pursuing his goals, he also
introduced concrete issues surrounding urban spaces, languages, and cultures. Regarding urban
spaces. he utilized the mganization and reorganization of built f m 'O (architecturaUengiIlsering)
to show how London's spaces defined a dynamic, constantly changing domain. Victaian London
appeared simultaneously to his readers as a given environment, as a relative space (in which the
street folk and their everyday activities were embedded in deeply cultural pattans), and as
- - . --
'O Following Gottdciner, it is important to realize that "built fmns" a the "built eavironment" can mean
"spatial organizatiao" and that the "city'' can also be defined as "the pdynucleated metropditan regioa"
(Gottdeiner, M.. TRe Social Production of Urban SF. 2'* Editim, Austin: Uninnity of Texas Ress,
1994).

elational space, which interiorized spatial dinmuions in objects ami social processes. " In other
words, Mayhew's London has a certain shape within which the stra-people lived out their lives.
Their spaces on the streets, homes, and places of wak are in dynamic relationship with each ather.
and these self-same activities actually contain within tkm spatial elemmts as well." Funhermae.
for Mayhew, the attitudes and behaviour of middle-class Laxbrm-s were lived out within spatial
processes as well as they too jowneyed to wak. mved within tbe housing and labour markets, city
places, and public and private domains. These material spatial practices actually referred to physical
and material interactions that happen in and through Loadon's space in such a way that they assured
production and social reproduction. Furthermae, spatial representations such as Loodon's symbolic
spaces, particular built environments, bazaars, musauns, paintings and the like eaxmpassed all the
signs and significations, codes and forms of knowledge that allowed such material practices to be
talked about and undastood on the stre of London as well as in tk Morning Chronicle offices. l3
The issue of languages are also examined in relationship to the increasingly secoadary roles of
the vernacular that Mayhew documents: the rise of modern nhetamh-
audiences and
reading communities; the role of philology; and the destruction a ceasmship of certain genres that
1 describe through the "aaVliterate debate". The pivotal issues of folk culture, the wandering tribes
in the midst of Victman civilization, are also examirwl critically, as well as the significance of
nineteenth-century travel litaature examined through the ''primitive/civilized debate." Here was a
carnivalesque folk culture with a completely different, non-official existence outside of the church
'I These spatial distinctioas are elaborated by David Harvey. Social Justice and the City. London: Edward
Arnold 1973.
" Harvey's relational model of spacial language as well as Bakhtin's model of verbal language were both
rooted in Liebiu.
l3 See David Harvey. 7 7 ~ Condition of PostmOdcrnify. Cambridge. Mass.:Basil Blackwell, Inc.. 1989.21 8-
19, for Bordieu's (1977) concept of 'habitus'. 'Habitus' produced practices that reproduced the material
experiences of objective spatial structures, which produced the generative principle in the fust place.

axxi of politics. " Lastly, this dissertation also the issue of London Labour itself a
Literary genre. l5 Is it only an encyclopedia l6 as rhe subtitle suggests, only shea jamabsm, travel
Literature, picturesque emataimnem, a soddtural documentaticm as E.P.Tholapsoa :' Gatnrde
Himmelfarb. l8 Anne Humpkys. l9 H.J.Dym.
aad John Rosenbag discuss This dissatation
argues othawise - that it is. in fact, a Menippean satire cx gerne of the carnival/grotesque, which
accounts for Mayhew's perplexing and somtbs violeat juxtapositions of topics, genres, and
attitudes. Fa, however oae attempts to read London Labour, it still must be remembered that it is
not a novel, nor does it read like a novel although mvelistic aspects are embakkd within it, yet it IS
also more than just amther Victaian encyclopedia Fcr Mayhew cumbines his inteIlectua1 and
'' Bakhtin, Wail, Problems of Dostoevsky 's Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson.
Inuoductian by Wayne Booth. University of Minneapolis, 1984,6.
lS Todaov, Tzvetan. Introduction to Poetics, trans. by Richard Howard, The Harvester Ress: laadon,
1981. The broader area of study is poetics. Todcrov argued that the "name of Poetics seems appropriate to
such a study if we take the word in its etymological semse, that is, as a name f a everything that bears on the
creation a composition of wcxks having language at axe as their substance and as their instrument - and
not in the resviaed sense of a colleaim of aesthetic rules a precepts relating to poeuy" (Ibid., 7).
l6 Lucian's satires, far example, taken as a group. were "an entire encyclopedia of his times." according to
Bakhtin. (Bakhtin, 118).
I7 E.P. Thompsoo believed that Mayhew9s "satire perhaps was (simply] a cover for a general ambivalence
of political and social stance" (Thompscm, E.P.,The Politics of Education of Henry Mayhew," 42).
l8 Himmelfarb. Gertrude, "Mayhew's Poa: A Problem of Identity," Victorian Studies, 14, March (1971):
307-29. Himmelfarb argued that London Lobour was a bewildering array of facts, figures, images, and
impressions with Mayhew alternating between the satirist, journalist, moralist, and a tre.
l9 Humphays. Anne. Travefs into the Poor Man's Country: Thr Work of Henry Mayhew. Athens:
University of Geagia Ress, 1977. Humpberys believed that London Labour was only a seccmdary and
perhaps slightly embarrassing bodr, an assumptioa that ran throughout Trawls into the Poor Man 's
Country.
" Dyos, H.J., 'The Slums of Victorian England," Victorian Studies, 11, 1, September (1967): 5-40. Dyos
believed rhat Maybew's work was only a form of higher journalism unequal to Booth's great studies. see
Raymond Williams, Polirics andteners. Interviews with New teft Review, NLB, 1979. Williams compsred
Henry Maybew's and Charles Booth's work: "Mayhew's work is composed of a constant interaction
between the premises, observations, questions. He takes assumptions of how people are living back in the
streets and talks to people to find out if they are we: if somebody tells him that they do not earn that much
as a watercress seller, it modifies his view of the world." By comparison, Booth's mew was different,
"Before be speaks to anybody in the East End of Loadon. he bas Mtaily paged its structure by s e t s . In an
incredibly impressive job of work, he then takes his classification to the East End to prove tbat radical
propaganda about it was false" (Williams, 17 1).

practical iaquiries into studymg tbe meet-fdk's everyday We,
emsrainmeat, satire a
vernacular (Chapter 5). socio-cdtural histay " (Chpers 4 and 5), adventUte stories and travel
literature (Chapter 6) - all in om literary genre. The name I give to this gme (as others such as
Bakhtin have also done) is the Menippean satire with some qualifications about its total relevance.
In conclusion, I believe that future analysis of the city a including its cultures ami languages.
and of Marxist critical analysis of the city in particular, could be widend if scholars read London
through Maykw's Ladon Lobour. Engels was the faremaa piara in analyzing what David
Carmadhe following Engels, has called the "links between shapes on tk ground - the physical
farm which the evolving city took - and the shapes in society - the nature of the social
relationships be~reen people who lived in tk towns." zs But Mayhew was important, too. as we
shall see in this detailed examination of London Labour and the h nhn Poor. The theoretical
grounding of most twentieth-century urban studies have unckaxed the concrexe and complex
development of modern industrial countries. Ye& following Katzaelson. the tbmy of
differentiation, on which they are based, is flawed in the assumptions that the basic units of social
analysis should be the individual and society, and that the ways society and the individual relate to
" Hobsbawm, Eric, "Histay and the Dark Satanic Milk" In lnbouring Men Studies in the Hislory of
Lobour. New Yak: Basic Books, 1964 19%)- 105- 1 19. Hobhwm described three periods of the
Industrial Revolution: (1) 1780-1840, the classical age; (2) 1840-1890, capitalism's rule; (3) 1890-1939,
the age of imperialisn and mmopoly capitalism (Hobsbawm, 272).
" The practice of cultural themy aims to understand the texture of social experiences and daily life
including the material foondatioas of the production and aganizatim of power in time and space.
'' Hobsbawm wrote: "Eagels' account of Britain in 1844 and Maor's descriptions of nineteenth-century
social conditions were substantially accepted as standard9* (Ibid, 106, 116); see Marcus, Steven, "Reading
the Illegible: Some Modern Representations of Urban Experience." In Visions of the Modern City. Essays
in History, An, ond titcrarure. Edited by William Sharpe and Leonard Wallock, Baltimore: The John
Hopkins University Ress, 1987,232.
zs Cannadine. David, "Residential Differentiation in Nineteenth Century Towns: Ran Shapes on the
Ground to Shapes in Society." In James H Johnson and Colin G. Mey (eds.), The Structure of Nimteeruh
Cenrury Cities. Lardon: Croom Helm. 1982,235; Katznelsm, Ira, MamfUsm and the City. Oxfad:
Clarendoa Press, 1992,154; see Wi's "Urbenism as a Way of Life*' (1938) and Roben Park's "The City
Suggestions for the Investigatioa of Human Behaviour in he City Environment** (1915).

each otkr should be the main focus of social science investigatioas But la us think of the city. as
Lewis Mumfnd does, as 'the point of rIlaximum conaxmation fa the powa and culture of a
community." '' Tkn, the study or reading of cities like Victorian Loadoa is, at om level. a
particular kind of study of human civilization in a particular time aad place. Given the far-reaching
scope of urban analysis, it is hardly surprising that there continues to be such a vast array of
definitions, specifications. and typologies of the city; yet Mumfud's summary amhues to provide
an imputant analytical beach-mark:
The essential physical means of a city's existence are the fixed site, the durable
shelter, the pamanent facilities fa assembly, imerchange, and storage; the essential
means are the social division of labour, which serves not merely the economic life
but the cultural processes. The city in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus,
an economic aganization, an institutional process, a theater of social action,
and an esthetic symbol of collective unity. On the orher hand it is a physical Erm
for the commonplace domestic and economic activities; on the other hand, it is a
consciously dramatic sening fa the more significant actions and the m e
sublimated urges of a human culture."
Rejecting the approach to urban studies develaped in the late ninereenth- and early twentiethcenturies
that was rooted in problems of differentiation, the resurgence of urban studies within
Mancism has owed a great deal to a series of baks published in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Hemi Lefebvre's pioaeaing work as well as other early landmark works by Manud Castells (1972)
and David Harvey (1972, 1973, 1982) were important in this development. Marxism. of course, was
26 Abrarns. Phillip. Towns and Economic hwth: Some Themria and Problems." In Pbilip Abrams and
E.A.Wrigley (eds.), Towns in Sociefies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology. Camhidge:
Cambridge University Press, 1978,9, 10; see also Gottdieaer, 1985, ch.2.
" Mumfad, Lewis The Culture of Cifies. New Yak: Harm Brace. 1938.3,

developed around the controversial historical relationship between the development of capitalism
and shifts in the maks of production on the olle hand, ard the growth of particular Ldnds of cities
on the other. According to Karl Marx, the development of capitalism as an economic system is om
of the central hallmarks of modernity in the west along with class relations. Regarding tk
relationship between the explosion of space and the development of capital, Lefebwe stated:
"Neitber capitalism nor the state can maintaia the chaotic, contradictory space they have prociuced.
We witness, at all levels, the explosion of space. At the level of the hmdiate and the lived, space
is exploding on all sides, whaher this be living space, personal space, scholastic space, prison
space, army space a hospitd space. Everywhere. people are realizing that space relations are also
social relations." 30 What is important about Casrells, Harvey, and Karmelson (1992) is that they
turned away &om mere documentation towards Gramsci's (1971) critical analysis of hegemony,
and metropolitan cultures within a global system. One maja contribution of this kind of Marxist
analysis, continued by this thesis, was an increasingly --grained
understanding of the structural
crisis of the capitalist system, and class conflicts over languages, architecture, and the face of the
city. Graxnsci elaborated on the most promising lines of inquiry embedded in Marx's historical
writings. He developd a series of sociological, cultural, and political concepts - the most
impartant being the concept of "hegemony" ard "historical bloc" (the specific historical situation in
which an 'essential class' exercises hegemony). He also created, according to Katnelson, a
sociology of conflict capable of dealing with the political complexities of the modem state and civil
" The city as an Wect of study was virtually ignored in the development of Marxist theory for mcxe than a
century after the publication of Engels's book. Perhaps it is true to say that Marx's The Eighfeenrh
Brumaire of Louis Bompune (1950) with its focus cm Parisian class relations placed Manr in the faefrcmt
of urban historians using detailed documentation to explain political events.
" Lefebvre, Hemi, Everyday Life in the Modern Worfd. 197 1,290. Lefebne analyzed space as a political
instrument of primary importance, ensuring its control of places, its strict hierarchy, hocnogeneity of the
whole, and segregatim of the parts: "It is, in other wads, an administratively controlled and even policed
space" (kfebvre, 288). Lefebvre was a pioneering thinker raising damant questions rather than a scholar
who put answers to questions Pmdantas, 1978,201; quoted in Ray Fmest, Jeff Henderson and Peter
Williams, Urban Polirical Economy and Social Theory, Tlre mory of Social Space in the Work of Henri
Lefebvre, Loodcm: Gower, 1982, 180).

society. In this elabaation, the base-superstructure was developed as a complex web of relations in
which the economic, political, and cultural elements of a situation are iatermmctd, and, which
the historicity of social structure is made central. In U k wards, wbat did actually occur must be
made the object of explanati~n.~' Thus the work of LefebVTe, Kaeaelso~ and Craig Calhoun " in
urban studies. Eric Hobsbawm 33 and Stem
Jo~es in British history, Raymond Williams (1958.
1961. 1977). Richard Hoggart (1957) (who read cultural fa~nations of working-class cultures as
ethnographic texts),Y aad E.P.Thornpson (1963, 1978);'
in British cultural studies have grappled
'' Gramsci, Antoaio. Selecsionsfiom the Prison Note6ooks. New Ydc Internatimal Pubtishers. 197 1 ;
Gramsd, Lenersfrom Prison. New Yak: Harper and Row, 1973; Gramsci, Selecrionsfrom Political
Writings, 1910-1920. New YorL: Intemacioaal Publishers, 1977.
32 Worn, Craig, "Class, Plaoe and Industrial Revolution." In Nigel Thrift and Peter Williams (eds.),
Class and Space: The Making of Urban Society. hdoa: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. Calboun
critiques Marx's treament of capital accumulatioo of class struggle in his logical account of capital
accurnulaticm and his separate divisioa of social theufy. Scholars must join the aganizatid to the spatial
analysis of class fmtim, Calhoun argued underscoring the significance of local community-based
relationships for the development of natioaally distinctive features of class during the first Industrial
Revolutim. Tbe direct, Cace-teface, social relatioasbips within segregated waking-class residential areas
facilitated trust and solidarity that in sane cases came to be besed oa class understanding. Calhoun insisted:
.'TO be salient in the class struggle engendered by capitalism, classes - bourgeoisie, proletariat - must be
organized at the same level as capital acaunulation" (Calboun, 51).
33 Wolf, Eric, Europe and tire People withau~ History. Berkeley, Califaaia- University of Califmia, 1983.
Hobsbawm accepted Wolfs definition that rhe bese was "the complex set of mutually dependent relations
among nature, wak, social labour and social aganization" Wolf, 74); see Ecic Mobsbawm, "Man and
History," New Iefi Review, 143, (Jan.-Feb.1984). Hobsbawm chafacterized the base of determination
between base and superstruaure in tern of the "materialist cmceptioa of history", which, within
capitalism, had given a privileged status to the trajeaory of ecmomic praludcm as "the basis of historical
explanation", though it was "not histmica1 explanation itself" (Hobsbawm, 4Z43.44). The key questions
of determinatim in capitalist societies, fa Hosbawm, lay at the juncture of an expanded notion of capitalist
accumulation, on the one side, and actual history, witb all its variety, on the other: "Thus we how of
societies which have the same material base but widely varying ways of structuring their social relations,
ideology, and other superstnraural features" (Hobsbawm, 44).
"Interview with E.P. Thanpscm." lo Middle Atlantic Radical Historians' Organizatim. Visions of
Hisrory, New York: Panthem Boob, 1984. Thatnpsm had chosen to develop the "real silence in Man,
whicfi lies in the area that anthropologists would call value systems ... There is a silence as to cultural and
moral mediations" ("Interview with E.P. Thanpson", 1984, 20; see E.P. Tbanpsotr, "The Poverty of
Theory." In The Poveny of mory & Other Essays, Lon-: Merlin Press, 1978, 241-2; Raymond
Williams, Marxism and Lircrature. Oxfad: Oxford University Press, 1977). The central coaceptual
argument of Thmpsoo is to suggest how "expaience", located at the junaure of social being and social
consciousness, provided a means of linkage between structure and ageacy. In 'The Poverty of Themy',
Thompson exhated scholars to observe the evidence of deLetminatim in the sense of the "setting of limits"
and the "exerting of pressures", which was drawn &an Raymond Williams's chapter m determinatim in
Marxism and Lirercuure. There, Wiiliams argued emphatically that "A Marxism witbout sane mocept of
determination is in effct worthless", yet "A Marxism with many of the concepts of determination it now

with the conceptual and merhoddogical E r m k of hdutrbl capitalism, class, and c u l ~ all f ~ ~ ~
of which are central to my reading of Mayhew Is the city then just a set piece, a dramatic backcld~
fa the real events that are now taking place today in Infocmation Capitais such as London or Paris
Or should the study of the city, and in particular Victaian London, be more systematically joined to
studies of other large-scale social processes City spaces are constructed realities within which
human relationships are also constructed aod at one and the same time, they are "relational spaces",
as Harvey has argued. Space, he beiieves, must be regarded "in the fashion of Leibnitz, as being
contained in objects in the sense that an object can exist only insofar as it contains and represents
itself within relationships to aha objects." "
The dramatic changes that took place in Mayhew's Loadon were themselves aspects of a larger
tapestry stretching back to "post-sixtamth-centwy transf-tions
wke towns were a compound
of political, economic and symbolic power," according to Katprelson. And one of the xxmt
important post-feudal cities was the political capital of London, home of the royal court. Katznelson
argues, socie$y was charactaized by "a new division of property aad sovereignty, and by a
concentration of both in explosively growing urban centres. h bd, it is this very feature that
allows us to define the modam city in terms of the spatial implosion of (machant and industrial)
capital and political pow." " Here was the beginning of ~ RH panm in space. relating to places
has is quite radically disabled (Thompson, 241-2; Williams, 83). Williams proposed to make "cultural
history material" in order to capture "tbe fbll possibilities of the coacept of culture as a constitutive social
process, creating specific and different "ways of life", which d d have been remarkably deepened by the
emphasis on a material social process*'. He did so by incapaating language and consciousness "into the
material social process itself." (Williams, 61). Culture, especially hegemony, Williams understood as a
selective tradition of dominant meanings and values. which was materially produced, mediating being and
consciousness.
36 The project of a axial theory fa capitalist societies, perhaps. is tackled best by insisting on "the
analytical distinctness of structure and agency" as Katzelson has argued (Kafznelson. 87).
37 Harvey, 16, 13.
3"ollowing Katznelm's reading of Jan & Vries's European Urbanimion. 1500-1800, broadly spealring
this period can be divided into three: "In the first 150 years, fran 1500 to 1650, most llfban growth took
place in smaller cities, and the overall number of towns did not inaease beyoad those of high feudalism. In
the next 100 years, two monumental changes occuned. The growth of cities shifted in locatioa and scale,

of wak and places of resicleoce. Manchester belanged to a s e d group of large modern cities,
which even more dramaticdly altaed the traditional aganization of urban space. Katndson argues
that industrial centas such as Manchester were built in the --century
on the sites of old
villages; they were, in fact, built on places of wak accocding to the logic of capitalist
accu~nulatioa~~ Here was "a culture of pastiche'* with its fragmented tempos of city life combiaed
with an appeal to different classes amidst a vay diverse and growing population. Within the built-
form of the city, new tranqmtation techadogies such as the railway and roads dramatically shaped
new panaps of everyday life to and fiom wmk. There was also the "cam-on
and demarcation
definition of cross-class public space" " such as new railway stations Pnd marLaplaces as building
blocks of the urban, industrial, capitalist social structure with its conflicts of class and culture.
Historically, 'the literacy problem' in the ~~ also hinged on conflicts of class
and culture,4' and it was, in fact, also intimately linked with 'We primitivdcivilited debate". Since
the 1960~~ there has been tremendous interest in the history of literacy and "the aaVliterate debate"
within it, with its conflicting problems of definitions, methods, classifications, and thecxies. Harvey
Graff s wak (1970, 198 1) has been pivotal in its focus on hegemony within the practice of critical
literacy. Also important are: R.RW&b*s (1950, 1955) wak on the changing factms of geography
and migration; regionaylocal studies by Shepard (1962); Altick (1963), and V i ( 1982.1989)
away from the Mediterranean to northern Europe, and away from smaller towas, which tended to stagnate,
to a smatler number of large parts and political capitals. This pattern of uneven growth altered dramatically
after 1750. Thereafter, at least until the middle of the nineteenth century, growth in the very large cities was
brought to a halt, and a vigorous urban development took piace once again in smaller cities and towns"
(Katznelson, 29); See Katznelsoa. 12.
39 Ibid., 13.
40 Ibid., 15.
Aarsleff, Hans. The Study of hnguage in England, 1780-1860. Rinam, NJ.: Princeto. University
Press, 1967; From Lock to Saussure: Essays on she Study of Lrurguage and lnrellectual History,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Ress, 1982; The Language-Makers, Loadon: Dudrworth, 1980; The
Language Machine, Laadon: Duchvacth, 1987; Harris Roy and Talbot J. Taylor, Landmods in Linguistic
Thought: The Western Tradition From Socrates to Saussure, Loodoa; New Yak Routledge, 1989: Tile
by Ray Mmk, Bristol, U.K: Tboez~lllles Ress,
Language Connection: Philosophy and Linguistics, Re-
1996; Smith, Olivia, Thc Politics of language. 1791-1819, Oxford; New York Clarendoa Ress, 1984.

have ali been important in showing how literacy is acquired and what its consapems are. The
framewak I use in the approach to the histay of literacy reaches beyad the binary logic of aality
and literacy, articulating instead the growth of V iean reading publics. I hqe to pvide insights
into some of the ways in which "primitive*' labouring peoples and "'civilized" middle-class
Victorians selectad and appropiaced metropolitan mab of written, d, and visual f m of
representation Experientially, the act of reading meant different things to peoples with and without
written histay. Vast numbers of people such as Laadon's street-folk fm example, lived out their
lives without writing within the social constructs of mimtic-perf'dve cultures, whaeas,
literacy, for people with wrinen history in the
city, became a traasceadent
marker of the mansfdon of national identity. It had an ideological objective, in aha wads.
Arnold Hauser (1985) examined tbe growth of a new reading public in England while Naben Elias
(1978.1982) " was mre cmumed with the civilizing procas itself Increasingly, the prominent
well-to-do middle-classes in England broke "th cultufal prerogatives of the aristocracy" by
becoming the ''producers of indispensable goods," not only in the main industrializing sectas, but
also, in the equally impmtant cultural sectas of books. publishing, and education" The growth of
the novel created an introspective, Victorian middle-class world, a private domesticating form of
subjectivity and culture. Other fonns u gemes such as Lonhn Lobour were undestood only as
pcm cousins, a subgenre that came and went with literary fashion, when compared to the novel with
its focus on mural philosophy and nation building, which w e central to their development.
Nevertheless, the novel m ated other genres such as Mayhew's encyclopedia creating "a certain
42 Elias, Nabat, 77w Civilizing Process: Tlrc History of Munners. New Yak: Urizem Bodrs, 1978. Elias's
"establishment/ou&ider theory" argued that it was the structure of emotions and their behavioural cbanges
rather than the struaure of rational thought and technology, wbich underpinned all human expression
(Elias, 1978, 116; 1982,254).
43
Hauser, Arndd, l%e Social History of Art. Rococo, Classicism. Romanticism. New Yak: Vintage Books,
2nd Edition, 1985, 3: 43, 14.

sentantic opeoness. a Living com~ with untinirhPrl reality." Thus M a w s encyclopdia -
situated within narrative structures. languages. aad texts " - revealed a histay of evayday Life
rhat was aiso embedded in a Life history mahodology. * Tk life histay mahod is an imponant
contribution to theories of everyday life, and the problm of cultural communities and identity, axl
in Mayhew's case signified a critical m o m in Linguistic history, which Michela accading to
Paul Thompson, described as an increasing class barrier to the practice of ad history in the
nineteenth century.
The "primitivdcivilized debate" in Chapter 6 examins the significance of Mayhew's
investigation into wandaitlg tribes and Victaian civililation Erom within critical anthropology,
beginning with Rousseau. The idea of ''tk mtive*' " has has a paem and highly innuemial
concept in westem civilization In fact, it is axiomatic that as "the savage*' became the object in
civilization, civilized humanity becam tk subjgt " Tk constitution of "the savage" a "the
primitive" as an object of arnhropological discussion and the changing coacept of "culture*' have
gone together, significantly influenad, of course, by w aphic documents and nineteenth-
century travel literature such as the documents that Mayhew uses. Travel literature as well as the
" La Capra, Dominick, "Bakhtin, Marxism and the Camivalesqw " In Refhiding Intellectual History.
Texrs, Conreas, hguage. Ithaca and Lmdon: Carnell University Ress, 1983,291-324, 317.
" Using Bakhtin's approach to history, La Capra highlighted border areas where reality was already
situated in a shaped by textual processes that historians prefened not to examine. This, of course, raised
questions of how histaians wrote histay in terms of its style as well as amtent that encanpassed these
kinds of linguistic amplexities (La Capra, 1983,954).
46 This methodology was crucial in the development of Jan Vansina's wock the BBC Sound Archives, and
Paul Thompsm's TIte Edwardiuns. It was also crucial in the development of American anthropology in the
1920s. For example, Paul Radin's Crashing Thundcr (1926) was the first unedited documentation of what
an aboriginal way of life in North America was really Like, fian the inside out.
*' Diamond, Stanley, In Search of the Primitive. A Cririque of Civilirarion. Faewad by Eric Wolf. New
Jersey Transadion Books, 1974. Diamond argued that 'the primitive, then, refers to widely distributed
well organized instituticms that had already existed just prim to the rise of ancient civilizatioa" (Diamond,
127).
Fabian* Johannes, Time and the Other. How Anzhrogology Makes rhe Objecr. New Yak: Cdumbia
University Press, 1978.

study of nirreteenth-century languages have all hinged m "the primitidcivilized question". This
question or debate has been expressed comparatively as the wlgar aad refined, the corrupt and
pure, and the barbaric and civilizeb which can also be implicitly Undastood as problems of class
and culture. 49 The "prirmtivefcivilized debateg* can also be urultrstmd as a battle berween realism
with and without mimesis. It was an age-old battle that went right to the heart of romantic ideology
and the romantic aesthetic of the image. This battle has infamed all our current umkstanriing of
the superiority of representation of writing ova depictive-expressive. symbdic qxxxh genres, and
other spoken genres that emaged with a variety of romantic thought in the nineteenrh-century.
In the second half of ttLe ~ ~-century. fa a number of reasons, metropiitan London
moved in new cultural directions as literate urban writers and artists such as Mayhew now came
face-to-face with other cultures, languages, and institutions. Important implications are the fact that
middle-class society - this literate, urbanized individualized hegemonic culture - increasingly
undermid perfonaative. face-teface societies such as London's street-folk An exploited, sizable
casual labour face with its own socimltural resources and forms of entertainment made up such
peripheral and oppositional cultures as these. Mayhew's folk cultures with their local customs and
languages contested the absolute domination of the Victorian middle-class. But these folk cultures
remained, because of practical necessity, self-absabed with their own personal survival, fa
the key
cultural shift towards modernity was the co~cial
character of London itself. The capital of
London became - as did Paris - an important center of cosmopolitanism. As the Victorians
moved into modanity, what was the soci*historical and cultural background, impact, and fate of
Mayhew's London Labour, perhaps the most disturbing journalistic document to emerge out of
England in 186 1 -62
49 Smith, 1984.

(2) Mayhew's London: The Prototypical, Modem Capitatist City
"Reading" a nhwmth-
capitalist city such as Victorian Indon miant that the reader
was implicated in a crisis of perception and represeatation of vast social, political, and cultural
changes. Queen Victoria's London (1 837- 1901) was probably the rmst prototypical city fcx
understanding the growth and development of all rmdernized expading marker-based, capitalist
economies.
Eric Hobsbawxn's dictum to histmans to explain tk past as well as provide a link
with the present allows us to see in Mayhew's London Lzbour that the triumph of capitalism within
bourgeois libal society in
histay is something new, and not tk old uncien
regime. Historically, tondon's economic impatance depended u p three closely related factors.
London's port facilities were at the heart of England's ''import and trans-ship-
trade;" London
was England's single largest consuner market, by far; and as a royal court and govmment center,
it was the trend-serter in conspicuous consumpti-
and the luxury trades". Maeover, before the
lnclusnial Revolution, "primitive transpatation faties" " coupled with handcraft production
encouraged the growth of conmmer and finishing coasumer trades as well as "semi-processing and
capital goods industries like lea- and sugar manufacture, shipbuilding. and silk productioa" "
Eric Wolf pointed out that the "introduction of Kay's rrrmually -red Pying shuttle" in 1773 had
doubled the weaver's output. In 1770 James Harpeaves introduced the "spinning jenny" wbicb enabled a
spinner to spin several threads simultaneously. In 1769 ArMght patented tbe water frame, which drew
the loosely twisted fibers on rollers and wound them on upright spindles in me continuous operation. In
1779, Crompton introduced his "mule," axnbining features of botb water b e and jenny, to which stem
power was applied in 1790. . . . In all of these machines, the applicatim of Watt's steam engine (1 764)
provided the transition from manual to machine opxations" (Wolf, 273). Tbe key idea in modenrization
theory is that underdeveloped societies rernain trapped in traditional institutions and fams of behaviow
&om which they must break away if they are to approiacb the econarnic prosperity of the west.
Ibid. The long term effeas of the Industrial Revolution upon Loodon ilself was to accentuate its "preindustrial
characteristics" as a mter of small-scale production (bid.). In fact. after 1850 the London trades
tended to produce "relatively high value and low bulk" goods. These goods involved specialized
warehousing, a finishing center using "'many ancillary trades", requiring a great deal of labour coupled with
very little "inputs of pcmd' and "relatively little space or fixed capital", wbich could be sold directly to the
customer (Ibid.. 27). On the idea of flexible specialization as an alternative model m indusuialization, see
Sabel and Zeitlin, 'Historical Alternatives to hdass Roduaim: Mtia Markets and Tefbnology in
Nineteenth-Cen tury Industrialization," PUS and Presen~, 1983, 108, 133-176.

Closeness to the market, access to raw materials, the close intarelation of city and govmment plus
a highiy skilled labour force gave London its solid indushial advantage. But it was also mrxe than
this, historically. This was also an age of violent contrasts and mind-bogghg changes. During
Queen Victoria's reign, " the first massive flights from the camtry to the provincial towns. the
breakneck speed of urbanization, and several of the first momerrtous waves of immigrants were
virtually completed during her reign, The rise of reading publics and the proliferatim of urban
spaces can, in hindsight, now be seen in global tams. So can the rise of suburbia, the expanding
supply of initially cheap aad ubotganized labour, and the eve-
separation of home from wak It
was an age of deep-seated rootlessness, denwxalizatioa misery, and suffixing. During the critical
decades of the 1830s and early 1840s. it was 'the condition-of-England question', the social
condition after the Industrial Revolution that obsessed writers like Carlyle, Dickens, Gaskell, and
Engels.
Engels's The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 was, in itself, a first-hand
account of provincial life in Manchestex, in the mid-1840s. Engels combined mataial from
newspapers, Blue books, aad other conteznpaary c0mnxmf.s with his own eyewitness accounts of
working-class life. " Taken together. Mayhew's London Labour and Engels's Condition of the
Working-Class are two of the first confissions " that revealed what the first full-blown crisis of
53 Even the street-folk knew about Queen Victmia's reign. A boy told Mayhew 'Yictaia was Queen of
Great Britain and Ireland. She was ban May 24, 18 19, and succeeded his late Majesty, King William IV,
July 20, 1837. She was married to his Royal Highness Prince Albert, &c., grc" (Mayhew, I: 473).
54 According to Hendersoa and Chaloaer, Engels Vrew very heavily on a relatively small number of ~XIOICS
and pamphlets by Dr. J.Kay, Peter Gaskell, Dr. Andrew Ure, J.C.Symms, Sir Archibald Alison and James
~WI. Two or three chapters are largely besed m evidence printed in the well-known Factmes Inquiry
Commission of 1833-4 and the Children's Employment Ccunmission of 1841-3. The newspapers upon
which Engels chiefly relied were the M~llchcner Guardian, the Nonhem Star and the Weekfy Dispatch
(Engeis, rite Condition of the Working Cks
in Englnnd in 1844. Written with pretaoe in 1892. Loadon:
Ailen and Unwin, 1952 [Isel], xviii). Engels wrote from Barmen, Marcb 15, 1845: "I have met many
workers and I have had long talks with them. Through personal coatact with the Englisb workers I have
learned something of theif hopes and fears their joys and sarows. My own observatims have bem
supplemented by studying authentic sources of information" (Engels, 5.3).
" Hauser, 3: 177. Cmfessims are important in Nathrop Fr)t*s analysis of the Menippean satire.

industrialism Imkd like in the cities of Victman Eagland Like Engels, Mayhew was coacaned
with the relationship baweea capitalism's social structure, tk devdopmea of its idustry, " a d
urbanized spatial structure. Like EngeIs, Mayhew had a superb eye fm ethnography and analysis. ''
They both had impressive novelistic skills of urban spatial design in all its fine-grained detail. ''
They both guided readers through the "shapes on the ground", the mast densely populated slums
and aeighbwhooQ with tkir unknown side streets. " problems of sanitation, sod ranshackle
housing. Poverty was almmt ta~gible: audienas read about the economic linkages betwen the
buildmg mdumy a d the aeation of mly-built envirommnm But it was only Engels who took his
readers step-by-step through one crucial cham called 'The Great Towns' discussing in &tail the
waking-class resifial mghbourhoods of Mmhesta. Steven Marcus argued that "what Engels
has perceived [about Manchesta] and created in a general structure: [is a] fam "a coherent totality.
a concrete, complex, and systematic whde, each of whose parts have a meaning, and more than one
meaning, in relation to all the others." By cOmpariSOa Mayhnu appeared to take his readas
through London's spaces more haphazardly. But his in-bepth investigations of Lordon's urban
spaces were equally structured (as we shall see in Chapter 4). although his structure was a three-
56
Engels recocded statistics fa the cottoa and woollea industry, canals, roads, and slums (Engels, 15, 17,
33-34). He also mentioaed Leeds, Dublin, Glasam ("the populafioo in 1840 was estimated at 282000, of
which about 78 per cent klong to the wrking classes, 50,000 being Irish") and Nottingham ("1 1,000
houses of which 7,000 and 8,000 are back--back houses, which have no through ventilaticm") (bid., 45,
44). Regarding Maadester, Engels coocluded: "I may sum up the impressims of my visits to these districts
by stating that 350,000 workers in Manchester and the surrounding districts nearly all live in inferia,
damp, dirty cottages ... In a word, the worker's dwellings of ManChester are dirty, miserable and wholly
lacking in comfarts'' (Ibid, 75).
58
The principle of panoramic representation provided, in fact. a sense of the panaamic cmstructioa of
history, and a radical change in the scale in which reader's experienced everyday urban life.
'' Engels explored "the most disgusting spot of all" which was "situated to the southwest of Oxfad Road
and is called Little Ireland" (Engels, 71).
60 The Great Towns Chapter*. 30-87.
' Marcus, 263.

tiered economic analysis of casual labour as well as a three-tiered philasophical/m!mphoric system
of heaven, hell, and the Victorian nebmmld Marcus argues that Engels's Condition ofthe
Working Class (one of Engels's key analytical paragraphs desaves to be m eatid here in Ml) is
the paradigm for capturing in its entirety the main OU~~IS
of spatial development nd only for these
early westan industrial cities, but also fm the tweatieth-ce~ltury:
Owing to the curims lay-out of the town it is quite possible f a someone living f a years in
Mancluster to travel daily to and fiom his wak without ever seeing a waking-class quarter
u coming into caatact with an artisan. He w h visits Manchester simply on business u fa
pleasure mmd beva see the slums, mainly because the wcrking-class districts and the
middle-class districts are quite distinct . . . h tho6e areas wb%e the two social groups
happen to come into contact with each akr the middle class s~moniously igmre the
existence of their less fortunate 13eighbours. In the centre of MaDchester there is a fairly
large c0mmtrcia.I district, which is about a half-mile long and a mile broad The district is
almost entirely given over to offices abd warehouses. Nearly the whole of this district has
no permaoent residences and is deserted at night, wkn only policemen patrol its dark,
narrow throughfares with their bull's eye lanterns. The district is intersected by certain
main streets which carry an enarmous vdume of traffic. The lower floors of the buildings
are occupied by shops of dazzling spleadour. A few of the upper stories of these premises
are used as dwellings and the streets present a relatively busy appearance until late in the
evening. Around this commercial quarter there is a belt of built up areas on the average one
and a half miles in width, which is occupied entirely by waking class dwellings. The area
of wakers' houses includes all Mamhester propa, except the centre, all Salfad aml
Hulme, an important part of Pemdlaon and Chorlton, twethirds of Ardwick and certain
small areas of C khm Hil and Broughtcm. Beyond this belt of working-class houses a

dwellings lie the districts inhabited by the middle-classes and the upper-classes. The forma
are to be found in regularly laid out streets mar the working-class districts - in Chalton
and the rermta parts of Cheetham Hill. The villas of the upper classes are surrounded by
gardens and he in the height and remoter parts of Chorlton and Ardwick a on the breezy
heights of Cheezham Hill, Broughton and Peadleton. The upper classes enjoy healthy
country art and live in luxurious and comfatable dwellings which are linked to the ceatre
of Manchester by omnibuses which run every Eiftaen a thirty minutes ... These plutocrats
can travel from their houses to tkir places of bushss in the centre of the town by the
shortest routes, which run entirely through working-class districts without eva realising
how close they are to the misery and filth which lie on both sides of the road This is
because the main streets from b Exchange in all directions out of the town are occupied
almost uninterruptedly on both sides of the shops, which are kept by members of the lower
middle classes.
In spite of Engels impressive scope, Katznelsoa argues that Manchester was "more varied as a
social and spatial place than the book's portrait allows . . unrelieved misery was overstated even in
Maochester, the country's mast class-divided sating." " Katznelson also challenges some of
Engels's other assumptions. He believes that The Condition of the Working Class was too quick to
assume, like Thompson's Making ofthe English Working Class, that there was a natural amf
inevitable passage fiom the destitution and segregation of the waking-class to its focmation as a
class with revolutionary pential. What is so impatant fa urban historians, geograpbs, a d
writers to understand about Mayhew's London Labour, in this regard is that London tabour also a
creates a paradigm. It is not a paradigm for industrial cities like Engels's Manchestex, but rather a
6' Ibid.. 54-5.
63
Katznelsm. 144. Katznelson also argued that Engels's bodr was "sanething of a cartcxm" (Ibid., 144).
But it was only Engels, Marcus argued, who came to describe the extremely desperate living areas of
Manchester's industrial -king-class where "[o]n reaching them me meets with a degree of din and
revolting filth, the like of which is not to be found elsewhere" (Marcus, 263).

paradigm fa c a m the main outliaes of spatial devdqm fm -.
market-
based capitalist cities - of which Loodoa was the largest What Mayhew was able to accomplish.
among otha things, was to examine the maaced hegemmic relationships bawgll class formations
and bourgeoning urban spaces in England's capital. Taken together. Maytuw's and Eagels's
coaceprs of city space could prove to be, in the future, a very fde
area of inquiry into the
relatioaship between city spaces, capitalkt develop-.
and class subjdvity. For in spite of the
radical differences in the way their books were writtea, Ma*
and Engets described the two key
cities of Englad during the same decade of the Industrial Revdution
Mayhew, the well-known satirist of Punch magazine and mwspaper columnist who. in mid-
car-,
became LonQn's metrcplitan curespoadent for the Morning Chronicle newspaper was
obsessed with the urban question and the problems of casual labour within it. Ma*
was also the
most detamiaed anthropologist of Loadoa's developing urban mass culture, obsessed with roles,
conflicts, and developments of English cultural litaacies. Thus Mayhew was unique in certain
respects. "Among social anthropdogists Mayhew is unique," W.H.Au-
the British pet,
observed "In his combination of Fabian Socim passion f a statistics, a Ripley passion f a believe-
it*-not
facts as sheer oddities, and a passion f a the idiosyncracies of character and speech, such
as the only very great novelists have exhibited." " He captured the gaiety, the jokes, and above all
else, the voices of Loadon's strm life. It was a cultural stew brimming over with accents and
nationalities - Irish, Jewish, Arab, Indian, Italian, Polish - cornbid with unfmgettable faces of
people like Jack Black, the rat-killer." Mayhew's use of ad history in gathering urban rites of
passage of the stseer-folk, as they moved unevenly fiom rural to urban, nomadic to settled, ma1 to
written societies and cultures, is one of his most outstanding and lasting contributions to Victorian
history and culture. Not only did Mayhew explae the face of the city, its architecture, languages,
" Audem, Wystan Hugh, "A Very Inquisitive Party", The New Yorkr, February 24. (1968): 121-133, 122.
" Mayhew, III: 11-20: See Appendix.

and nomadic street life, but also thrmgh his investigations, Maytrew examined the -Id
of casual
labour through the self-same cultural lens. It "is asuwishing. reading Mayhew, to learn how many
of the poor were self-employed and the extraacbary diversity of the ways by which they managed
to earn a Living. howeva meager." ' coacluckd AU&L Like Dickens. Maykw saught out
forgotten peoples, unknown buildings. and hidden relationships beoveen capital and urban
development in Victman culture. In doing so, he revealed that the common everyday objects and
living facts of such an expanding, market-based capitalist society can teach us a great deal about
urban history and culh~e. " la the end o m of Mayhew's gratest strengths may have been his
openness to the varieties, similarities, and cmtradictions of human experiences. Fa perf-tive,
community-based lives fascinated Ma*
as they did Dickens. After Mayhew's abrupt resignation
from the Chronicle in 185 1 over editorial -,
Mayhew began to publish wepenny
weeklies, unofficially ad &om his office, of LoaQa's street cultwe, which were later collected
together by his publishers in London Labour and the hdon Poor (1861-62). London Labour
which, followiug E.P.Thompson, contained "the theest and most vivid documentation of the
economic and social problems, the customs, habits, grievances, and individual Life experiences of
the labouring peclple of tk wdd's greatest city of the mid-."
" But this was one
of its dangers - it contained so much information that many scholars "can no mae imagine
reading straight through it from beginning to end than . . . can imagine reading the Eacyclopedia
Britannica." 69 This four-volume document 'O.
which has often been quaed by scholars and
67 Walter Benjamin takes up Engel's position that; "... [nust as Geidion teaches us that we can read the
basic features of today's architecture out of the buildings of the 1850's, so we can read today's life, today's
forms out of the life and the apparently mdary, fagotten forms of that era*' (Buck-Morse, Susan, The
Diolec~ics of Seeing. Walter Benjamin Md the ~rcadcs Project. The MIT Ress: Cambidgr Mass.. 1982,
291).
68 Thompson, 42; see also Paul Thanpsoa. (ed.) l7u Victorian Poor, LcmQn, 1967.
69 Auden, 44, 121.

journalists such as Thompson, is still one of the least uadastood texts and least read in its entirety
of the canon of Victorian history and Litaature to rmge
after Waid War I1 wkn a renewed
resurgence of interest in Mayhew began in the twdeth-century.
(3) The Post- War Period: Six Decades of Sdholadaip
Scholarship relating to Mayfiew's life and work can be roughly divided into six decades
beginning in the 1940s and ending in the 1990s. In the 1940s, there was a small literary resurgence
of interest in Mayfiew's wak. It began with Dorothy Ciecxge's (1945) introduction to Stanley
Rubenstein's The Street Trader's Lot: Being an accowrt ofthe lives, miseries, joys and chequered
activities of the London sellers as recorded by their contemporary Henry Mayhew, together with
R. J.Cruikshanlt's (1949) essay on Dicb and Mayhew. Charles Dickms and Early ~ n~lond " For
Dorothy George, the "supreme merit of M a w s book is that it r6cocds the authenic voice and
catches the view points of tkse vay diverse Londom." " Scholarly imerest in M a w grew by
the late forties, yet it appeared that the talent and imagination that inspired attention to Dicken's
social criticism remained unacknowledged in M a w until 1949-51. Peter Quennell edited three
volumes from the 1862 edition of tondon Labour as well as three other books on Lortdun 's
Underworld (1 950). Mayhew's Characters (1 95 I), and Mayhew's London ( 195 3). Mayhew's
70
Williams, Karel, "Mayhew." In From pouperim to poverty. Routledge & Kegan Paul: h don, 198 1,
237-277. Karel Williams argued that 'The Criminal Risons book could h the missing fifth volume of
London Labour" ('bib, 238).
" Cruikshank, RJ. Charles Dickenr and Early Vi~t0n'~ England, Pitman. 1949.233: Hodcham. A.. "The
Literary Career of Henry Mayhew." MA. Birmingham University* 1%2. Occasionally. Mayhew was even
interpreted as a potential inspiration fa Charles Dickens's work: see also HS.Nelson, "Dickens' Mutual
Friend and Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor", Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 1%5,20,
207-222. Dorothy George stated that "Only volumes i-iv are called LDndon Lobour and the London Poor.
Volume v is The Crimiml Prisons of bndon and Scenes of Prison Life, which "completes the series of
papers on the lower phases of Loodon life.. .." See footnote 3, xi.
Rubenstein. Stanley (ed), lk Sfreef Trader's Lot. London 1851, king an account of the lives. miseries,
joys and chequered activities of the London Sfreef-Sellers. As fecolbed by their amtemporary H. May and
now recalled for the edification of the public by Stanley Rubenstein, with an inrroducticm by Dorothy
George, 1945, ix-xxiii.

h h n describes Lmdds ''extracrdinary diversity of trades by which the urban poor subsi~ted."~
London 's Undenvorld explaes the mimid depths underlying the wald of harat casual labour,
and Mayhew's Charocrers is a dlection of Mayhew's persoaal portraits: the flower-girl, a blind
Mace-seller, a venda of ballads, a asspod-sewerman. Fa QUeam9.I. M aw's London Labour
provided "a M e d pamama of London in tk 'Eifties- of that part of bndoa at least, which
underlay the pompous urbanity of its fashionable str8etS a d squares." 74 Quennell's descriptive
literary apprmch was primarily infamed by the criteria of a realist genre although he did meruion
that Maykw dealt with the poa especially these whe
livehmd was the mo6t precariclus.
By 1955, the sociologist Ruth Glass, whose wcrk was later extended in the 1970s by Germ&
Himmelfarb, the American historian, noted the sweep of Mayhew's wak while s imrl~sly
castigating his writings:
Despite his apt use of various methods of investigation and presentatiou, he
did not produce a social survey but social reportage of a high a& of
sympathy and versatility. There is no theme; by aDd large thae is description
without selection and analysis . . . And although his volumes describe a large
variety of occupations and types, their scope is rather narrow: they deal only
with one nomadic heterogeneous section of the London working-class - those
who traded, mrxally and immorally, in the street and those who workad in
the streets. 75
During the mid-1960s a group of British scholars and writers - John Bradley (1963. 1965).
" Quennell, Peter. Mayhew's Characters: Sekcted/rom 'London Labour and the London Poor', Edited
with a Note on the English Character, Landon: William Kimber, 1951, ix-xvi, p. xiv-xv.
" QuennelL Percr (ed). Mayhew's London. Lmckm: Bracken B- 1984[1951], 27-28. Quennell stated:
"Our text is derived 6an the Wee-volume editim of 1861; the amtents of a fatnb volme. published in
1862, on prostitutes, thieves, swindlers and beggars. have been ami#ed in entirety" (bid., 28).

E.P.Thompson (1 967). H.J.Dyos ( 1967). John Rasenberg (1%8), W.H.Au&n (1968). and Asa
Briggs (1968)- tackled Maytrew's impact on Victorian literamre. Then at the end of the 1960s.
Cass and Dover published the 1862 edition of London Iabour and the London Poor. In the years
1963 and 1965. Bradley's articles ad Briggs's review grappled with literary tkuy and the
Literary reception of Maw. Although Audea and Bradley argued over Mayhew's precise
importame in Victaian history, few schdars disputed the fact that Mayhew had a talent far writing
superb. increELibly readable stories about the human condition. Aub was the most ebullient: " ... if
I had to write down the of the ten gr-t Vicurian EngWumm, Herrry Mayhew would
head the List."
Auden's accolades aside. it is Bradley's focus on Mayhew's litffiuy carex in the
1830s '' that has been fmtive to this dissstvion - that as a "mim Victorian figure" 79 he can
lead scholars in "invariably significant Victorian by-ways." 'O Tension Ween
lit-
and
anthropological i&as remained in Bradley's small essay, however, far as a classical Literary scholar
he never really understood the mimetic-perfocmative cultures of Victman Jkmcbn. He describes
how they "irdulged their vaacious appetites f a farce, burletta, metodrama, pantomime, spectacle,
and extravaganza" " in the "long bill - o h exteading from 7pm until after midnight" with
"roaring and ranting, expansive gesture, bombastic declamation." " He aeva comes to tams with
sociocultural fixmations of 'We real comic Victorian spirit [which] lay in the farce and the
- -- -
76
Briggs believed that Mayhew's reception in his own time - and later - deserved a full study.
Ibid.. 121.
'' Bradley. John. "Henry Mayhew Farce Writer of the 1830's". 7h Victorian Newsletter. 23. Spring, 1963.
21-23. Bradley has written an introduction to Selections to London Lobour and the London Poor.
79
Mayhew. Henry- Selectionsfiom London Labour and rhe London Poor, chosen with an introduction by
John Bradley, Loadoa: Oxfad University Ress. 1965, vii.
Bradley argued that Mayhew was 'he supreme recader of mid-omtury urban squala" who seemed
'from fust to Last, to have remained charming, amusing, consistently enterrajning, intermittently
enthusiastic" (Ibid. xviii).
Bradley, 1%5, 3.21.
Bradley, footnote 3.2 1.

urlem." " which I argue are more adequately framed through Bakhh and Hobsbawm
"The Political Education of Herlry Mayhew", 'Ilxmpon's 1967 essay, was tk first Marxist
history to place Mayhew's texts within a larger political and histmcal context to ractify what
Thompson perceived as the imbalance in scholarly writings about Mayhew's wak Thompson
argues that Mayhew as a sociologist, by "'great face of comast",
tackled the "'ovewklmhg
problem of London poverty" as "'one of absolute insufficiency of wages." His thmy of exploitation
was simple: "ove~rc~k maLes umbpay" and "underpay makes oveawak" Thoqson believes
that Mayhew was "authentic", "meticulous", and 'kigaous" in his investigations of ''tk character
of orthocbx political efoaomy as it was seen fma the mdmi&" " Maykw's obsession with
urban London ad "tk problems of casual labour in ihe metropolis" " was a significant shift,
according to Thompson, from the previous decabe's preoccupation with the factory question.
Moreover, Thompson argues that although Mayhew was c axmd with "reconciliation ratha than
revolution, nevertheless he demanded a reconciliation so searching that it was profoundly
disturbing." " He was seized "imaginativeiy by the problems he was investigating" as much as he
himself seized the problems, and was dtimately censored as well as "Wuged with carespondence"
corraning "the! problems of urban demaalizatim"
83 Ibid., 21.
3 4
E.P. Thompson, 58.
86 Ibid.. 57. Thanpsm argued tha~ Mayhew's concept of poverty was not *he culture of povertf' but rather
an 1849-50s "middle-class consciousness of poverty" (Thompson, 43).
87
hid.. 47.
" Ibid Thompsm also ammented that ". . . these amstitute a moving record of the politid educatim of a
man whose quaiities place him. with Wilriam Cobbett, in a class apirrt, and who shares with him certain
qualities of responsiveness, independence of judgement, and an unerring ear fa significant anecdote."
(Ibid., 56).
89 hid. Imponantly, Thompsa, oaly touched peripherally m spatial issues that are crucial to chis
dissertation: by axnmenting UI Mayhew's editorial in the Morning Chronicle, Oaober 9, 1849 that "[tlhe

H.J.Dyos (1967). tk British urban histman, tackled ' m t it miam to be alivep* in the slums of
Victorian Loadon His essay ex-
fa tk first time, the archival material on Ianch's slum
life, the experieaces, the attitudes, the reasons fa its existerrce, and its survival. Although Dym
laments that " the sheer bodily sensations," " the emotional &mads," "the mental reactions" and
"the gaieties of living in rhe gutters of urban sociay."
had almost disappeared one would almost
think that he had not really read Mayhew at all. Dym's (1967) essay does not focus exclusively on
Mayhew's experiences in the slums, but
he found time to discount Mayhew's contribution
beyond its I d colour and intarest in humanity by using two uamviacing and closely related
armments. First,he argues that Mayhew was basically an "unda-disciplW journalist with a
"spontaaeous desire to make tbe poa known to the rich" and mt a social analyst like Charles
Booth. Mayhew provided little m e than a paarxamic view of poverty and itiaerant employment
seen fiom the streets, Dyos argues. Stxoodly, he argues in my view inaccurately that Mayhew's
investigations were not in-depth did not, in fact, ''take the reader very far off the streets into tfre
choking wildaness of the slums themselves." Despite Dyos's unfava~able and inaccurate
critique, his urban interests are a critical orientation that continues in this study. Using Booth's
maps, for example, Dym was deeply interested in the g-al
ecomrnic and social impact of city
planning and railway expansion on London's spatial development
A breakthrough year came in 1971. It restablistred Mayhew's London Labour together with
the Morning Chronicle letters as important sociocultural documents fa sustained historical
analysis. Two British colleagues, E.P.Thompson and Eileen ~ e o edited , ~ Mayhew's Morning
--
pestilence [Cholera] bas ravaged nor our parks, squares, and terraas, but the narrow courts and pent-up
alleys of the metropolis" (bid., 42).
Dyos, 1967.5; Buoth's fife and W u r of the People of london (1889-1903) used a variety of methods
including participant observatim relying an reports fkm schools rather than on direct interviews.
9' Dyos, 13.
Thompaoa, E.P. and Eileen Yea 27te Uakmwn Mayhew, Merlin Press. 1971.

Chronicle articles. Thompson and Yeo argued that they had cliscovered Mayhew's earlier wak in
his Morning Chronicle articles, the 'Answas to Ca~~espoadenrs' cdumns, aad Low Wages.
Compared to H. J. Dm's wak, Thompson amtimed to reiterate that Ma-
was completely
absorbed in the problems of urban cbnmaiization as he walked through Lordon's back alleys.
talked to people in their homes, and atteaded trade me&ngs. Thompson believed that Mayhew's
work was a serious discourse on poverty when taka together in its betails; in fact, Thompson and
Yeo both argued that it was "the the impressive survey of labcur a d of povtxty at the mid-
century which exists." 93 Eil- Yeo also t d a slightly different tack Ha =say. "Malyhea, as a
Social Investigator," * argued that Maykw's wock as an "gommic a d sociological analysis"
entitled it to an imponnnt place in the history of social invstigatioa"
Moreova. she situated
Mayhew within the anthlqmlogical tradition, arguing that his ethnographic descriptions deserved
the respect of today's social scientists. She believed, quite rightly, that Mayhew had "a sure sense
that the opinions of the poor, their aspirations and expectations, their evaluation of tkir lot and life
in general were as impanant to the iquiry as facts about wages." " Yeo assated that "Mayhew
came to use the crucial idea that economic change was refkacted through a cultural lens." ''
9 3
Thompson, 1971.23.
9J Yeo. Eileen, "Maybew as a Social Investigatcx." In 77ze Unknown Mayhew, 1971.51-95.
96 Ibid., 57.
9' Ibid, 84. Yeo asserted that Mayhew grouped toward me mcept of a subculture which he could not, in
the end, successfully formulate*' (Ibid., 54). Yeo also argued that Mayhew tried "for the first time in the
history of English social investigatim to define a poverty line" ('bid). bokhg briefly at the
costermongers as a subculture, Yeo articulated how "tbe aaditiaos and memories of groups of wakers"
were highlighted by Mayhew to show that Weir dignity and independence were being undermined as their
relationship witb employers deteriorated into me of crude cash-nexus" (bid). Regarding the
costexmongers, Yen stated: "It was in the case of the costermmgers that Maybew made most clear bow a
sub-culture coloufed political a#itubes. The custers had the most irregular work and wage of all. But me
fact was certain - they bated the police. The police harried them at wcxk pushing them off the streets
when they tried to sell their wares; the police mtiaually interfieti with their fawluTjte amusements,
gambling games and Pials of strength. In the coster cobe, "to serve out (beat up) a policeman is the bravest
act by which a custermmger can distinguish himself." Mayhew observed that the casters were "nearly ail
Chartists". But far fiam demanding their rights in the cOcpOrate m y of the natiaa like the artisans,
Chartism meant to them first and faemost fighting the police, since they equated tbe police with "the

Compared to Row~ufee and Booth Mayhew had a much more developed socidogical awaremzss.
she argued waking "coasl;lrmy to develop a claent fiamewak f a the survey." " Early in the
Chronicle's survey, accocding to Yeo, before his mature analysis of casual labour and its causes,
Mayhew was already examining th impact, boch moral and social, of a causal rhythm of work Fa
instance, in his study of unskilled labour at London's docks, Ma-
developed a conceptual
framework of how irregular wak hours combiaed with unstable wages led to unstable habits, how
Mayhew's coaceptual kamwak, in fact. Nraed "tk favwite Victorian shibboleth that bad
morals cause poverty upside down"w
Anne Hu-'s
1977 book lrn was the fim large-scale American attempt to understand
Mayhew's place in Victorian literature. Using a psychobiographical and farmal literary approach,
Humpherys attempted "to bring together all known facts about Ma*
while simultaneausly
explaining the 'enlargeraents, hiatuses and abrupt abaadonmems that characrerize his wak" lo' For
Humpherys, Mayhew made the recognizable deeply romantic, and the familiar strange, realizing
r* 102
that "in his long descriptions of various str8et smes, his style was at its best.
But she has
serious problems with his sense of journalism, his use of language, and his impact m Victorian
history. Like Dyos, Humpherys feels that Mayhew's influence on the world of investigative
reporting was minimal. She feels that his "inadequate" intaviews "subjugated tk interviewer to his
governing power" (Ibid., 85). Yeo also briefly touched on '%he repercussions of economic change on a
healthy W y life aad a seane old age" with such groups as the two old sawyers. Yeo recounted how the
two saws
reminisced that it was "a rule in our trade that the eldest son was en titled to his hther' s
business. Now I don't see a sawyer in Loodon who has an apprentice" (Ibid., 84-85).
99 Yeo, 69. For Yeo, Mayhew was "a relentless classifier" (Ibid.. 86).
Humpherys, 1977.
101
Humphays, xi.
Im Ibib, 139. Regarding the relationship becaam the author and his audience, Humpherys was mcxe
concerned with moral issues sunamding coclarey language, "the obscenity inevitable in any fithful
report", rather than witb issues surrounding literacy and the reading publics (bid., 152).

subjects by trying to eliminate the obsava's respmes and melt his questions into the answers."
and that his techniques were "outstripped in tkir uefbkss almost at once." Qualitatively, she
argues that "impovements in kid, scope and reliability of the dicennial census aim made this
procedure obsolae." I"
Her most scathing analysis fcruses on tk fact that "the m e precise and
detailed Mayhew's picture was, the less sirmificant each example became. Furthermore. the overall
picture of slum conditions and the causes of poverty was lost," lW
that be took no part in "serious
intellectual life" Io5 that his wak is truly "sui generis, " lM and that be "didn't really advance
beyond the state of Lnowlalge at a particular timn" lo'
Humpherys cmfludes that M aw's
surveys were essentially fagotten after the 1860s because they were published in "an ephemeral
newspaper famat, had even ye not been geuxally available in colllple form" lo'
"By the time the
four volumes ... finally appeared in 1861 -62," Humpherys coaclu~ "the revolutions were out of
date and irrelevant to contemporary concerns. Fa this reason the four volume publications had
practically no influence tither on the SOCidogy ar tk literature of tk late Victorian period" l"
Stedman Jones's rebuttal of Hurnpherys was basically curect: "Where the book fails is in the
thinness of its portrayal of the political and intellectual conjuncture within which Mayhew was
writing . . . . No one reading through the Morning Chronicle survey could plausibly accuse
Mayhew of laziness, or lack of systematic intellectual ambition. Something mure than peculiarities
'03 Ibid. 164.
Im Ibid.. 190.
'OS bid, 11.
106
Ibid.. 144.
'07 hid., 163.
'OR Ibid, 164.
'09 bid, 165-66.

of his teaperameat must account fa it." 'lo Tk American histaim. Gatrude Himmelfub, has a
slightly different but similar coac1usion a ht Maw: "While many of his projects were left
unfinished, "indolence*' hardly seems the right wmd for someone who produced as much as be did
and sometimes at breathtaking speed If much of his wcxk was incomplete and ephemeral, that was
the nature of his trade; he was primarily a journalist, not as we have come to think of him, a
sociologist a histaian" " '
In 1973, Himmelfarb established b nhn Labour as an iqa%mt document of Victorian urban
histay. )Iar essay on Mayhew's "cuiture of pmertf was a law d m of andher essay that first
appeared in 1971. 'I2
Maykw's "subtitles r aw than the title*" Himmelfarb believed most
accurately described London Labour's pian and the "bulk of its conterrts." Importantly fa
Himmelfarb, Mayfiew's very first pamphlet, "Of wandaing tribes in general," which charactaized
the streetfolk as a whole, was also the title of the opening chapter of the first volume of London
Labour. In the final analysis, fa Himmelfarb, Mayhew's wcrk continued to be "an enquiry on tk
subject of London Lubour md the London Pwr." 'I3 She is enthusiastic about Mayhew; he was
"one of the m st remarkable chroniclers of the time," a "one-man Royal Commission," 'I4
and an
'I0 Stedman-Jones, Gareth. The Labours of Henry Mayhew. Metropolitan Correspmdent of the Morning
Chronicle*', London Journal, 1984, 10, 1. 80-85. S tedman Jmes brought an importaat cultural and literary
analysis to Mayhew's &don Luhur. He discussed three important issues: (1) changing academic
attitudes and issues in anthropology and history, (2) changing coastituencies or "rather the rapid
disappearance of a coostituency fa wharn Mayhew could have been writing", and (3) changing fams of
inner and outer mloaization. S tedman Jones wrote: "Changes in the way anthropology and history have
been understood in terms of Victorian culture now make Mayhew a much more central wimess to the
shows and exhibitims of -don and the impact of racial attitudes ... Certainly the fears of the industrial
revolu tioa .. . was driven into the exotic and be imaginary museums" (Ibid, 80). This impatan t cultural
and historical approach concerning "'exotic and imaginary museums" of the mind is impatant to my
dissertation.
" ' Himmebb, Gertrude, nMayhew's Pm: A Roblem of Identity", Victorian Srdics. 1971, 14,307-329:
"The Culture of Poverty." In Tire Victorian City, edited by HJ. Dp, 1973, 707-36; Tlre Idea of Poveny.
England in the Early Indus1rial Age, Loadon: F ak & Faber, 1984.
Himmelfarb, 1971, 313.
"3 Himmelfarb, 1973, 718

ambitious saies
but in tk d he was IXX she a r m that "original". HB views on Mayhew's
reading public - that tbey "may have canied into later pamphlets and vdumes the impressions aod
expenations &rived fmro earlier articles" 'I6
- was clarified by Taithe's mdy (1996) revealing
that Mayhew's readership was a new, rather than an dd reading public. Himmelfarb brings a
powdid analysis to MaytLew's sueetscapes, battles over space and time as well as racial schemas.
But her analysis is overshadowed by unconviaciag argum that he exploited the pour fa his own
ends, that the book's mmkrical samples were insignificant (excluding the Morning Chronicle
articles), and that Landon Labour was a middleclass ideological cmstnrctim that led to greater
margidization of the poor. Mast impatamly, Himmelfaarb's intapretation of "tk culture of
poverty" is problematic. London Labour, she argues, '%ad tk conceptual effect of pauperizing the
poor by first creating the most distinctive, most dramatic image of the lowest class, and then
imposing that image upon the lower classes as a wble." She argues that Mayhew's identification of
the street-folk with the waking-class promoted an ideological paception of the poor. "Mayhew's
'nomadic races' equated with problems, customs, life experiences of the 'labouring pocx' ," she
argues, "the work itself reflects something in the ti-, so- in the substance, which permits
the confusion of street-folk with the labouring poor ... [and] is not uacommon [with]
contempaarier." l7 Sk coaclucks that he sucfeeded in ppulariziog "a ~lew idea and image of
poverty, a poverty that was not so much an ecommic pkmmenon as a cultural om-a
'culture of
poverty*. as we have since learned to call it." Funhermrxe, she argues that tk culture of poverty
was "a small and distinctive 'tribe' which was a pamanent feature of society, a testament to that
part of society that resisted civilization" "To Mayhew, one suspects, chey wee a r&uk to the
'I5 Ibid., 314.
'I6 Ibid., 717.
"' Bid.. 312.

ourgeois spirit, a saving r m t of dissent, an adversary culture wmhy of respect." "'
Ultimately, for Himmelfarb they were more of "a species in the Darwinian serrse" 'I9
than extended
kin-based communities. She projects certain nktemth-
bourgmishthrogological
assumptions of distrust and sensationalism onto London's '"primitive" street-folk In the same vein.
Himmelfarb denies the range of expectations and obligations to share responsibilities fa
the
subsistence. ma-
social continuity, and cultural creation of thme kinds of mobile
communities. Following E l m Burke Leacock's critique, a major assumption was made by many
'culture of poverty' scholars in 1971 such as Himmelfarb. They believed that "a virtually
autonomous subculture exists among the jmm, which is self-perpetuating and self-defeating. This
subculture, it is argued, invdves a sense of resignation a fatalism and an inability to put off the
satisfaction of immediate desires in ader to plan for the future." l"
Moreover, tkse charactaistics
were also linked with educational motives fostering illiteracy, fa example. Oscar L.ewis's view of
the culture of poverty is worth quoting here:
The culture of poverty is not only an adaptation to a set of objective
conditions of the larger socieq. Once it comes into existence it tends to
perpetuate itself from generation to generation because of its effect on the
children. By the time slum children are age six or seven they have usually
absorbed the basic values and attitudes of their subculture and are not
psycholo@cally geared to take full advantage of changing conditions and
incrd opportunities which may occur in their lifetime.
Leacock has pointed out that ''through 'the culture of poverty' and similar notions, the
'I8 bid., 366.
--
'I9 Ibid., 712.
Iz0 7Xe CCuure of Poverry. A Critique. Edited by Eleana Burke Lero& New Yak Simm and Scbusta.
1971, 11.

nineteenth-cenntry argument that the poor are poa through tbeif own lack of ability and initiative,
has reentered che sce~e in a new form" Tlx! Chronicle's survey arrd London &ur did cover a
major cross-section of Lodon's labouring and artisanal trades. acc

** 125
otherwise lack-lustre tarts.
Richard Maxwell for his part challenged scholars who emphasized '%he picturesque elements of
Mayhew's work" and "thus ckqxived it of its theoretical face."I"
Drawing on a sociogdc
approach to adme and society. Maxwell's essay has deeply influenced my view on the power of
Mayhew's urban vision - for Mayhew's decision "to devote so much atteation to the people of the
streas came at a crisis-poist" I"
in his jmmdistic cares. Maxwell sketched out his intapetation
of M aw's theay of everyday life, which, he believed, embodied W ' s
street-folk whose
physiological axxi psychological characteristics wue material, cumemal, mnadc. and "absdutely
[set] apart from aha city dwellers."
Maxwell believed that Maykw wrote about Loadon's
"undiscovered population" in a "state of 6~0~)mic crisis" '" to establish tkir imaginative and
historical place in Victaian Lordm Secoadly, he created "a distinctive vision of city life" that
.. "dreams of freedom, reconcllrn g an environment that 'assassinates you with reality' and an
indivi&al seasibility that wants aiem~as and mobility."
He advocated strong cultural
continuities &wem Maybew's earha minx wak and "the huge monumem of L,ondon Labour".
Maxwell concluded by calling for "a fresh urderstanding of how Maw's obsession with the
streas allows him to move towards a disthmive vision of city We." 13'
1971 to 1981 marked ten years of intease scholarly research on Mayhew with Karel Williams's
'" Ibid., 52.
Maxwell, 104.
Ibid, 87.
12' Ibid., 99.
Ibid., 91.
130 Ibid., 102.
13' Ibid., 89-90.

essay in 198 1 .IJ2 Fa Williams. epistaaology foctlsS8d on tk nature of language within tk history
of knowledge, and to this ed, he argued f a a Saussurian approach to language. Unfatunately,
Mayhew exists fix Williams only as a text &8ct,
aot as a c01lctete historical writer living in a
particular time and place. From a publishing paspective, Williams also argues that Mayhew's
Great WorM of London or The Criminal Pnsons of London (Ma*
and Binny, 1862) was the
most crucial document that histaims coatinually ignored. He based his a r m m the fact that
the reprinted Great World of bndon was described by Mayhew's publishers in their catalogue as
the "companion volume to the preceding," and was baud with the 1 86 1-2 four-volume edition of
London tabour. ACC

contained new recycled mataial that focused mainly on the strm fdk so that now three volumes
were now required The 1861 three-vd~~ edition by Griffin & Co, omitted material on
prostitution and the 1861-62 faur-volume edition by Grim Bob included the aiginal material on
prostitution as well as various essays on thieves, swindlers, and beggars.
To conclude, there were two series of questions regarding Mayhew's Morning Chronicle and
London Lubour that Williams fmulated- The 6rst set of questions concans the relation between
these texts, and the second set of questions mncmu their conterrt. How did the various serial and
book publications relate Were they part of aae pow. a were there breaks What was the
relationship between the Morning Chronicle's investigative prom surrowrdiag manufacturing
trades and the second London Labour investigative prom surraubg the street fdk Regarding
content, were the Morning Chronicle letters a poverty survey as Thompson and Ym argued Or
were they a theory of exploitation as Samuel argued in 1973 Was the concern with street folk in
London Labour as trivial as some histmans make out Because Williams implicitly approached
Lortdon Labour fkom a mvelistic point of view, he concludes u~lco~vincingly: "If Mayhew's texts
are on the edge of modaaity, it is ... because it is the non-unitary and ul~controlled quality of the
discourse in London Lobour which defines the modanity of Maykw's texts." i35 This appearance
of "supposed carelessness" that results especially from the first impression revealed more about
William's tendency to judge by "a novel-centred conception of fiction"
rather than the real
structure of the w ak
Most currently. in 1996, Bemard Taithe
has engaged in a Literary/historicaVphilological
reinterpretation of Mayhew's publications. His reintapretation has contributed to literary theories
'3 hid.. 239.
-. ---
135
hid., 238.
Relihan, 1993, 310.
''' Taithe, Bernard, 7Re Essential Mayhew. Representing and Communicating the Poor, Lmdao: R im
Oram Press, 1996.

of reception, histaical memory, and iinguistic histay. Taithe examkd the philological and
ethnological &bate sunoundjng London Labour, using a cultural approach infamed by Norbert
Elias and Roger Chartier. He was also inspired by Olivia Smith's The Politics of Language (1984).
which emphasized the cotlllections between grammar, etymdogy and politics, an approach that also
informs this dissertation. Fm Taithe, Mayhew's seose of "[wlads haunted his wak and their
history gave clues to the hidden history of tk crowd" 13'
Furthermrxe, Taithe's sense of Mayhew's
contribution to historical memory desemes to be quoted here:
To write the creator of such wideranging histmy of "Oursetves", was to
venture into history in the making. Unlike mast jamalhtic faays,
Mayhew's project was historical, a fact of which he was conscious. His
perspective was also, perhaps, unwittingly, refaming most ideas of history.
It negated the dogma of progress . . . Mayhew was writing a text that
presented itself as an ideological slice of reality, as the transcription of the
real fixed in a-tempma1 immediacy. What was then goal histaical practice:
distance from the subject, work on archives, the choice of a political
chronology, was aot part of Mayhew's project, He wrote histq without
chronology, history that did not strecch further than human memory, history
that virtually ipxed politics and favoured economics ... 13'
At the literary level, Taithe argues that diffaem historical readings of Ma*
were based
upon different appeals to different texts - diffaent projects ovalap; some stop in mid-sentence;
even London tabour, which llepdcd be studied more contextually, eaded in uncertainty. Taitk
argues: "London Labour was perceived in various ways at every stage of its existence. It was read
according to how it was presentat as part of an expensive aewspapa; as a cheap penny periodical
13' Taithe, Bernard, 47.
139
bid., 28.

sold alongside 'penny dreadfuls', and as an expensive four-vdumc book" '" To this end, Taitk
studies M aw's readers ad
their literacy practices. The public ~~~~espondences between
Mayhew and his readers, Taithe noted, were printed on and within the covers of the weekly issues
of bndon Labour and the London Poor beween 185 1-52. Accocding to Taithe, this reflexive
"sociQlhnographic'* form of writing was "an open cultural artefact." I*'
It comprised mainly urban
waking-class aad lowa-middle-class men and women with wornem writers, quite canectly, "in a
minority, along class lines." '" Although Taithe aewr discusses the Menippean satire. he tacks
on one central aspect of the satire, the Victorian adventure hero seeking mxal truth. Taithe argued
that Mayhew's inductive mal pMosophy of education, described in his long pamphlet, 'What to
Teach and How to Teach it (1842)". justified '%is pedagogic novels of tk 1850s and was behind
his whole ouput."
He argues that Mayhew's philosophy combW with the new photographic
style of the Illuszrated London News aeated tk tkmerical backbo~ to London Labour.
Furthermcxe, the Answers to Correspondents columns " fid London Labour as a paradoxical
opea/closed text. It provides the long missing subtext that clarifies the underlying tkuies of
London Labour. opening them up for public debate. MayW's early articles reveal poverty to the
middle class, and the later penny articles of London Labour link isolated groups together. They
point out parallels among the livin8/waking conditions of different groups as a f m of class
140 Ibid., 5.
I4 1
Ibid., 6.
'" Ibid., 30.
143
Maybew wrote:
. . . the mode of education, a means of imparting a knowiedge of these subjects,
should canmit in hinging before the pupil all the most extra

consciousmss."
Fa Taithe, Maykw "wrote histmy without chronology, history that did na
stretch furtha than hwnan memay, history that virtually ignaed politics and favoured txonomics.
In this 'imitation* of daily Life, so much like daily life s~~
the reader had tfie unique
opportunity of emeriag by way of it lk 1-
[as a Literary genre] framed this imemnioa" la
Mayhew's Lorrdon &ur
(1 86 1-62] has often beem quoted by scholars, poets, and journalists
Like Thompson, Kimmelfarb, iuxi Audert Ad it may be a five-vdum corpus after all as Karel
Witliams has argued Yet it still remains a challenge to scholars today, fa bndon Lubour still
maintains a fascinatim and indesm~ctible longevity ova the last 150 years, which Lies, in part, with
its challenge to literary and intellectual orthoboxy. This dissertation's imadisciplinary approach is
important in order to kame the problems associated with Maytrew's urban docuIllen, fa few
canonical Qcumerrts require, I believe, such sustained rs-evaluation as Hemy Mayhew's Lunhn
Labour and the London Poor. 146
144
Ibid., 7.
14' Ibid., 28.
146
Taithe argues: Tew texts have such an indistinct image and require such urgent re-evaluatim" (Taitbe,
4).

Chapter 2
Reconstructing the Constructed: Space, Culture,
and Exploitation in Henry Mayhew's London hzbou~,
Seeking the World of Henry Mayhew.
Victorian Loadon was to Henry Mayhew - the journalist, noveiist, and playwright
- a paradigmatic place: something that was both dusive and clear. Victaians needed to
construct a picture of tk city, ard in an age wkm film did mt yet exist the oaly new
genre open to this kind of urban representation was the newspapa. Big-city newspapers
wanted to give their audiences - both the wotking-class and the middle-class - a fed
as well as a picture of the big city. Newspapers wanted to give the anxiety-ridden middle-
classes a sense of community as well as a sense of advenh~e, even though they lived
mostly within the boundaries of the city. This was the nkenth-cemuy framewak of a
burgeoning print-aiented wald, the beginning of tk modaa aewspapa with its own
vecnacular idioms in architecture, languages, and the face of the city. In order to create a
sense of authenticity, adventure, and living breathing facts, it was important to
reconstruct the constructed, and to point out both the contradictions in a city filled with
suffering masses. @ the effects of the movement toward moderaitation' This was
Mayhew's London. Here was a meuqchs that was basically a city of commercial and
resichtial sectas - streets. squares, neighh~bods, courtyards, and houses filled with
an inexhaustible supply of people. * The sense of coastant movement. of shoulder-te
shoulder cultures, of aowQd marketplaces, crowded sueas, and crowded rooms was
completely reinfaced in Mayfiew's London Labour, as well as the sense of capitalist
exploitation at the docks and in the 'sweat shops'. Victorian Loadon was, for Mayhew,
' Paraphrasing conversations with Dr-Jerry Zaslove. As Mayhew recomuucced the constructed for
Victorian London, Seigfried Kracauer also did this for Berlin in the 1920s.
Mayhew, II: 328.

the therxaicd structure and the paradigm And Mayhew used this paradigm to develop
his own sense of seWreflection and self-CO1LSCjaus~s as a journalistic adventurer, urban
explorer-jkmeur, mde, gr.mmariPP and thsaist of tk city to reveal to his readers
what tfie interstices, bcxda-crossings, and spaces of tk city were all about. Conscious of
waking within and often against larger hegemOIljc systems of representation. Maytrew
was also a grammarian workmg within the English Romantic tradition who attempted to
propagate the ideas of comparative phildogy by examining historical languages and
societies from below. Thus Mayhew became a tbxist of culture, of cityspaces, and
capitalist exploitation, and because he is, in this
a thaxist, k must be takm
seriously, and wt cast aside as just aaotha impressionistic literary hack who wrote an
amazing cdlection of now withzed and irrelevant newspaper articles.
Of course, it was partly Mayhew's fault, accocding to Ralph Samuel, that his wak
has not been taken as seriously as it deserves. His articles on Low Wages ceased
publication after vay few publications. His "Answers to Cmespondeats", in which he
developed a systematic attack on sweating, was never gathered togetha. His Morning
Chronicle articles, aad the twepenay parts, were thrown together in a "quick and sloppy
way," and most of his material on wage earners was omitted altogetha firom London
Lobour so that Landon's strsa-folk eventually dominated his mnnrmemal book '
Commenting on Mayhew's attitude to life, Athol Mayhew writes that he was "by turns
sanguine and despondent - low in all the ecstasy of a perspective fomm, and now
down in the dumps of impajhg bankruptcy." ' But beyoad this personal glimpse into
his life, his place in Victorian history was pr e-emiaently based on these vay aewspaper
articles that were collected together in London Labour and the London Poor. Amidst a
professional car88 that brought Punch magazine to life as well,the background to
Mayhew's life is worth examining f a the light it sheds on Henry Mayhew, the man.
Civility appears to be intimately bound up with a particular way of seeing life, called the gwe;
See Judith Walkowitz, Ciry of Drecrdf 1 Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Lnte-Victorian
England, Chicago: University of Chicago Ress. See also Walter Benjamin's The Flaneur" in
Baudelaire, Charles, A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, translated by Harry Zobn,
London: NLB, 1973,37.54.
5
Samuel, 48; quoted firom The Unknown Mayhew, App. 1,477.

Henry Maytrew (1 8 12-87) entered the wdd of upper-middle-class Victman society
on Novaxhx 25, 1 8 1 2 at 16 FitPoy Square, Londoa, the fourth son of Joshua Mayhew,
a rich Carey Strea sdicitcr who fatked seventam childrm7 Maykw's fukr believed
in ''the carcareer open to eaterpise and talent, and that their own lives proved their merit . . .
but more than anything else. it meant superiaity," ' Joshua staunchly believed in the
family tradition that his sons should be sdicitas like himself but mxmva, he firmly
believed in 'jurisprudence'. Suthaland Edwards recalled Mayhew senior "having
business sometimes to transact at a neighbouring pdice court, he had the distanee
measured fiom the court to the square in which he lived Raclroning from some [one]
particular point it was just one mile. But the cabman who drove him to tk court tharght
it was m e than a mile; upan which Mr. Mayhew paid for two miles, summoned the
cabman [to court], and obtained judgement fa eightpence with costs. . . . At last the
cabmen in the nei-
Then he took the offender's mmba, pr-
got to how him, and seeing him approach, drove away.
against him fa refusing the fare a d
recovered as before." Years later it was no accideat tka that Hemy and his braha.
Augustus, specifically satirized their father's eccentric behaviour in "A Highly
Respectable Man", a poem especially written by them in 1848 f a the Comic Almanack
Little is known about Mayhew's mother, Mary Ann Fenn. who married Joshua in 1806
and died in obscurity in 1845.
Mayhew attended Westminster S chl, but but Mayhew was fift8en years old after
an argument with the headmaster. Dr. ~oo~mugh,'~ he ran away from school l' with his
7
Humpherys, 1.
10
Althol Mayhew reported that - instead of following the prayer book during a Saturday evening
abbey service, Mayhew crammed fa a Monday maning Greek grammar exam and surnrulPn in
clawing his way fram the bman to the middle of the Greek challenge candidates. But he was
challenged fa his impropriety by me of the Masters and cunmanded to write out 500 lines of
Virgil at the same time. Goalenough intervened with a further %hour delay, but m the following
Tuesday aftertrooo, Mayhew now headed the Latin challenge witbout the impitim completed,
he challenged the headmasm's autbmty to flog him, defied the orders and ran out of Wesaninster
school along with his life-lag friend, Gilbert A'Beckett. (Athol Mayhew, 1895, 10-25; see The
A 'Beckens of Punch, Coastable & Co., 1903.

clawst mend, Gilbat Abboct A'km ( I 8 1 1 - 1856). The glaring inadequacies and
hypocrisies of &cation wlpre to haunt Mayhew for the rest of his life; k recalled at one
point "that we were mt even taught cur own language, mr even writing or reckoaing, but
bed to death with rban tongues." Furthenmxe, he recalled cynically: 'We were sent
into the wald to get our living out of the elements by which we wae SUKOUXKW, in the
same beastly igmraace as any Carib not only of the physical wald about us, but of our
own natures and our fellow awes, as well as of all that was right, beautiful, hdexi
noble in life." l2 In 1842, still grappling with pedantic phil-
of education,
M a w wrote a long educatid pclmphla. m t w Teach and How u, leach It (1842)
as well as a philosophical article on surprise, "What is the Cause of Surprise And What
Connection has it with the Lam of Suggestim' I3 Between 1854 and 1864, Mayhew
also wrote sevaal popular biographies f a boys iac1udi.q
Story of the Peasmt-Boy
Philosopher (1 8%), The Wonders of Science; or, Young Hwnphry Davy (1 85s). Young
Benjamin Franklin (1 86 1),and The Boyhood of Martin Luther (1 863). In writing f a a
young audience, Mayhew used tk lives of Ferguson, Davy, Franklin, aod Luther as role
models to teach the importance of virtuous conduct, unflagging &&mination,
attainmeat of knowledge as the nreans to success.
Following the Westminsttr fiasco, his father sent him away f a a year as a
midshipman on the last East India C qmy boat bouad for Calcutta I'
and
Upon his return
from India in 1829, attempting to follow in his faw's footsteps, he apprenticed as a
lawyer in Wales, a profession to which he was exaemely unsuited'5 Neither Mayhew
' ' A Dictionary of Contemporary Biography: hudhok of the peerage of rank wnh and intellect,
G. Gfiffia and Co., 1860. mected prM quoted in Taithe, 19%. 3. According to Roberts, "two
of the lawyers, Mr.AVBeckett and Mr. Mayhew, could afford to send their soas to Westminster
School" ('Robens, 1972, 19). Accading to Roberts, "the educatim received . . . was mixed .. . F a
A* Beckett and Mayhew it was Westminster, . . . fa Charles Dickens, Douglas Jenold, Henry
Vizetelly, and Renm Nicbdscm it was attendance at schods named after their headmasters"
Gbkrts. 16)-
" Taithe, 3, footnote 3 and 4.
All Joshua's sans except ALfred chose journalism instead of law, rebelling against their father's
legal prof-icm (Athd Mayhew, 9).

himself nm most of his fiends went on to main for professional life so, on returning to
Londoa Mayhew himself gave up the legal pofmsion to pursue the world of literature
and the theatre. Droparts fiom the legal profession Mayfrew's and
a c q u m eventually included "A'Beckett, Rede, Brooks, [in fact] all of tk Punch
crowd" Accading to Thackeray. Maykw's friends w e also
loved to go on "pulls on the river, delicious reading of mvels, mag-,
and
editas who
saunterings in many studios; a land wfiere nren call each atha: by the Christian nams,
where most are pocx. where ahmt all are young." Journalism offered Mayhew's crowd a
retreat fiom conventional careers in law, the Church, aad tk military; but it also gave
M a w the chance to work closely with his three younger br-, Hmace ( 1816-72),
Augustus (1826-75), and JUI~US 17, on different creative projects, a d at different times.
Two other brothers, Thomas (1 8 10-34) and Edward ( 18 1 3-68) along with Hem-y became
journalists in the early 1830s. Edward became Fine Arts critic fa the Morning Post. Even
with a mid-career change at thirty-five as a vererinary surg801l, he still retained his
literary tastes publishing books on the ''Managenmt of the Dog", "The Illustrated Stable
Management", ad "The Illustrated HorseDocta." '' Thomas, the ddest brotha, broke
into radical journalism at the time of the Reform Bill crisis as the edita of Hemy
Hetherington's Penny Papers. He was also the temporary edita of the Poor Man 's
Guardian (July-December 1 83 I), tbe most important radical newspaper of the 1 830s.
From 1832 to 1834, Thomas was invdved in the ''Penny National Library" but after the
failure of his penny encyclopedia, k committed suicide in October 18%." Most of
Mayhew's f'rierds - besides Charles Dickens and Douglas Jerrdd - came tiom
comfocta ble middle-class homes: "Their fathers were bodrseilers, merchants, architects,
musicians, journalists, naval officers, and lawyers, and in most cases quite successfir1 and
l6 kherts, David, F., "Mae Early Victorian Editors." In Victorian Periodiculs Newsletter 16.
June 1972, 17-28, 17,15.
l7 Hodder, Memories of My 7he. 1872. Hodder reported that Julius was trained as an architect
(Ibid.. 62).
I* Ibid., 59. Edward bad "a paralytic affection which rendered it impotssible for him to walk,"
according to Hodder (Ibid., 60).
19
Htlmpherys, 1-30; E.P. Thanpsm, 1967% 13-14.

prospaous." " Ad it was LoldoP tk catex of Eqhh theatre that also drew Maytrw
and his fiierds Gilbert A'hkat, John SaunQrs. Thmcbe Hook, Mark Lamm,
Douglas Jerrdd and George Godwin, with k g e Sala and Pierce Egan as scerre
desigmm. 21 Bah tk editcxial -Id
a d tk world of the theatre absolutely captivated
Mayhew. When he was but twentya~ years old, M a w edited tk digest, The 7'hief;
tog&& with A'Beckett, then just a year later, in January 1834, Mayhew's 6rst fare The
Wmt&ring Minstrel, was probuC8d at tbe Fitz~~y Theatre.
7%e Wanhring Minstrel
was written fa the f m comectian, Reeves, while Mayhew's otk farce, Bur However
(1838), was written fa the celebrated Beajamh Wrench Four art of five of Mayhew's
plays including A Troublesome Lodger (1 832) wae written in the 1 830s as well as two
bwlettas - The Barbers at Coun (1835) set in Charles Il's reign a d The Young Sculptor
(1 839) ser in Michaelangelo's Italy. Mayhew's audiences came to enjoy themselves.
They were mostly waking-class, according to Bradley, and used to the loag bill, which
extended from seven in the evening to well after midnight. The long bill was often
composed of a farce, burletta, three-act play and pantomime. Truth ad falsehood.
sensibility a d foolishaess, dignity aad indignity were part of But Hawever's stay, and
typical of certain geaeric threads reralling the genre of the Menippean satire.
Thoughout his life, Mayhew was asdated with many influential newspapers and
magazims such as Figaro in London, the Morning Chronicle newspaper, and Punch
magazine. "'I'he early aiaereenth-ceatmy literary magazine and the journal of political
satire prepared the way fa the Victorian comic journal," -ding
to AIvin Sullivan.
"When Punch appeared in 1841 ," Sullivan wrote, "its readers had already been exposed
not only to the tactics of the political satirist in the Anti-Jocobin Review. John Bull ", the
lo Roberts. 16.
" Bradley, 22. It was at the minor theatres like the Fitzroy that Mayhew's farces, burlettas, and
burlesques were staged becaw Dnvy Lane and Convent Garden had a moaopoly on theatre rights
until 1843.
'' Sullivan, Alvin, ed. British Lirerary Magazines: nK Victorian and Ehvardian Age, 1837-1 913.
London: Greenwood Ress, 1984. According to Sullimn, John Bull (Deamber 17, 1820 - July 19,
1892) was "established to suppat king and constitutiar and to attack Queen Cardine and the
Whigs" (Ibid., 506).

Age ", a Figaro in hndon. but also to social and LitaYy satire a d mcsarirical humour
ia Blackwod's, Fraser 's Magazine, the New Monthly, or Bentley 's Miscellany." Douglas
Jmold wrae serials fa the New Monthly in the late 1830s, while William Malrepeace
Thackaay (1 8 1 1- 1863) ma& similar contributions to Fruser's. They both created
66h~maous papers as staff writers fa Pzmch in tk 1844k," afm&ng to Sullivan
*'Thereafter, the humrrnulc Serial became an asdal feature of the successful comic
journal. A unique synkFis of tk literary magazine ami the jamid of political satire,
Punch bsame the praatype of ik Victman comic puraal." From its vay first
pubtication, Punch 's prtxursa a6 - Figaro in London (183 1) - launched a wave of
"Figam-mania" " with A'Beckat at tk editorial Wm 'The great succgs of tk Figaro
published in Paris, and the extraam popliarity of th plan on which it is cmlucted,"
A' Beckett CO-
"have induced us to establish a similar periodical in London,
which we humbly hope will be received with as much appbation as our sparkling,
sharp-flavmed, and highly-relished paw'' " Mayherv's own editmal stance in
1835 to 1836 can be linked directly with Figaro's growing @tical direction " acc

severely cens

journalists living ad working together in Paris a k tk War years. 32 During tk late
1830s a d the early 1 Wk, accoccfing to E.P.Thompson, Ma* lived in Loodor! mainly
in rwms near the British Museum in Hemming's Row trying ocld schemes for making
money quickly. In fact. it was out of these bohemian years that Maytrew began to gain the
literary r-tion
that enhltcul into the twentiethamtmy. Spielman's analysis was
correct: "There can be no doubt.," Spi- wrote, ''that Ma* was a genius, a
fascinating companion, and a man of iaexhaustible resource axxi humour - although
humour was but oae side of his brilliant raiad" 33 But Spi-
Vily, Hodder, and
other writers including Bradley mistakenly believed - as we shall see - that "InQlence
was his beseahg sin; aad his will war, untutud"
With Figaro behind him, and ebcouraged by his literary companions (some of whom
were already waking on other titles such as Jerrold's Punch und Judy), Maybew hatched
the idea of creating a sharply satirical mag-
Charivari. 3"~ng
called Punch, or the L mh
to Ginswick it was duriag tk summer of 1 84 1, while walking
across Hampstead Heath with George Hodda that Maykw conceived his idea. 36 Like
" British bohemians were mostly journalists struggling in the limited market of the 1830s and
1840s; see Ahdayhew, 1895, 1-10. Mayhew rescheduled Jarold's debt. The Parisian stage of
Mayhew's life is debated; see Humpherys, 14, and footnote 18.
33 Spielmann, M.H, Tire Hiszory of "Punch", by M.H Spielmann, Lmdcm. Paris, Melbourne,
Cassell and Company, Limited, 1895.
Vizettelly, Henry, Glances Back rhrough Sevenry Years. 2 vols. Loadon: Kegan, Paul and Co.,
1895, foomote, 43.
'' Thompsm, E.P., 17, fooarare 21. Cruikshank claimed that the idea of Punch was taken from
George Cruikshank's Omnibus (May 1841-January 1842) (Sullivan, 505). Sullivan argued that
73e Man in the Moon (January 1847 - June 1849) with writers such as Shirley Brodrs and
Augustus Maybew was "the best written and most successful of Punch's literary rivals in the
1840s" (Ibid, 507).
36 Ginswick, J., Lnbour and rht Poor in England and Wales, 1849-1851. Vol. I, Lamashire,
Cheshire, Yo&shire. Edited with an Lntroductioo by J-Ginswick, Frank Cass, 1983, xxii; HR Fox-
Bourne, 117; M.H.Spielmann*s The Hisrory of "Punch ", 1895. rpt. New Yak, 1969, 17-34.
Spieimann provided a detailed accumt of the magazine's first fifty years. h 1955, E. Williams
edited an extensive cdlediaa of Rmch's cartootls in A Cenfury of "Punch" (London). This was
followed by RG.G.Rice*s A History of "Punch" (Lmbon, 1957)- a commentary on the magazine
and its dims from Mark Lemon to Ma1aA.m Muggeridge. Alan Rager in The Mahogany Tree:
An infotmal Hisrory of "Punch " (New Yalr. 1979) gave another perspeaive of the magazine
from its origins until the 1970s.

William Hogarth (1 697- 1 764) ", an
theaetical prsdecesscr, May&
deliberately used the eye of a caricaturist turning rmre and me
to the pressing social
issues of the day. He ckarnatically and sometimes vidently wasted virtue and vice
among the labouring pocx with satire aad scathing political analysis. Mr. Punch, the
mag-s
logo, was depicted as a buffooa, dwarf, showman and high-min&d clown In
Lorrdon Labour, Mayhew recaded a verbal history of Punch with Pwrch himself as a
"short. dark pleasant-looking man, dressed in a very greasy and vay shiny green
shooting-jack&"'
The history or migination of Punch . . . is taken fiom Italy, and brought
ova to Enghrl by Porsini, and exhr'bited in the streets of Ladm far
the first time fiom sixty to seventy years ago; though he was mt the
first man who exhibited, fa there was a female here befae him, but
not to perf=
at all in public - nam mkmwa but handed down to
prosperity. She brought the figures and frame over with her, but neva
showed 'em - keeping it an unLmwn
and la&
Pasini came from Italy,
in England, and exhibited his perfmnances in the streets
ofhadoa. aadrealizedan~sumofmoaey.
Mayhew continued to reccxd that: ''tk @performance
was quite different then to what
it is now. It was all sentinrental tka and very touchy to the feelings, and full of good
morals. Tbe first part was only made up of the killing of his wife and babby, and the
37 Pevsner, Nikdaus, The Englishness of English An, 1964 [1956]. Pevsner wrote that Hogarth "is
most tarnous fa his series of painrings and engravings such as Maniage a fa Mode tx Ihe Rake's
Progress. But he began as a painter of what is called *bconversatioo pieces", small groups of
people joined together in conversatiah a same other aftim, a type of painting the English were
especially fmd of' (kvsler, 51). In turn, Mayhew seemed to have translated Hogarthian
aesthetics for his own prrrposes by deliberately seeking out social outcasts. Heir, in part, to the
Continental Baroque tradition, Mayhew created his own visual and verbal ideas in the
development of time through narrative motion; see Kunzle, David, 77u Early Comic Strip:
Namive Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c.1450 ro 1825. Berkeley;
Lm Angeles; Loadon: University of California Press, 1973. David Kunzle argued that in 1753,
Hogarth published his own themetical treatise, the Analysis of Beauty: "Hoganh's theory is
chafaderized a h all by its dynamism . . no] Hogarth, art is a visual dynamics in itself. Its
essence is motion, and although he does not speak explicitly of narrative motion, his entire
thought, his very aeative process, is predicated u p variation, evolutim, the development of time
of visual ideas', (Kunzle, 338).

second with the execution of the hangman and kiIling of the devil - that was the aiginal
drama of Punch, hacded down to Rosperity fa 800 years." 39 Fa fmm the fim Punch
was lamchi as 'tk veaaable s u m of English comic periodicals." " ad in the high
Victorian era, paradoxically, it was the bastion of upper-middle-class consxvatisrn
C hark L. Graves in Mr. Punch 's History of Modern England recarQd a different aspect
of the magazine at its beginning:
For Punch began as a radical and democratic paper, a resolute champion
of the poa, and desolate and depressed, aad the early v d m abourd
in evidences of the miseries of the 'Hungry Faties' and in burning pleas
fa their removal. The strange mixture of jocularity with intense
earnestness which confronts us on every page was due to the charactas
andantecedentsofthe~whofouodedaodwrotefathepapaat
its outse~"
Mark Lemon, also the editor of Punch, wrote: '"Ihe Maal of Punch was to be the
voice of the oppressed, especially victims of debtors* prisons, capital punishment, the
P m Law, Sabbatarianism, and aha earnest abuses." 42 Bradley recalled: ''Looking
through the early vdumes of Punch one notes the preponderaace of items concerning the
condition of England", which was the social condition that arose with tk ladustrial
Revolution. It was in the 1830s that Carlyle cuafroilted England with "the condition of
England question*'. The fluctuating economy brought about a terrible imemrity forcing
many people into "squalid lives in squalid towns." The middle- ami uppa-classes tried
various sorts of ref=
and investigations. "Tk waking-classes wavered betwm
political and ecommic action; they struck in 1825, burned ricks and smashed machinery
in 18 30, united in and felt cheated by the reform struggle of 1832, turned with enthusiasm
* Bradley, Jobn, "Henry Mayhew Farce Writer of the 1830s," The Victorian Newslener 23,
Spring, (1%3), 21 -23, xix. Accoeding to Sullivan, 77u Grem Gun (November 16, 1844 - June 28,
1845) was "the first axnic weekly with enough literary and artistic talent to cunpete with Punch"
(Sullivan, 505).
41
Bradley, xix-xx.
42 Lemon, Mark, British Literary Magazines, 1884.

to the continuing trade union movement, a d were faced by governmeat repession to
the points of the Charter.. . They r im petidom& marched, aganized quarrded, and
usually lost." "
With the launch of Punch, English caricature came alive. WeeLiy comic magazines
were created by M aw, Dickens, and Thackeray, f a example. "Douglas Jmdd in his
"Q" articles for Punch and in his weeklies took the lead in itrement attacks on all fams
of humbug, just as k todt the lead in organizing cbkhg clubs in the taverns of Soho,"
according to Roberts. Jarold was aciolowledged "tk kmg of wit, he combiaed a flair f a
satire with a waspish anger at the high a d mighty and a warm feeiing fa the low and
humble." Robats contiwed: "In his Punch articles aad his Shilling Mugane this wit,
anger, and humanitarianism flowaed. TIE New Poor Law was "a terrible curses*; political
economy "an economy that's to teach the poa to live on aothing'*; bishops are hypocrites
who "bless war and call sddias peacemakers"; class legislation "no m e a less than
robbery." In his oOening article in Aurch, Jardd anmuaced that Punch would reflect the
"wisdom that crieah fiom the streas." Although Jefrold's own Weekly lasted only 18
months, he was a constant contributor to Punch and sub-edit- of tk Daily News.
Mayhew's bohemian friends can be found at every level of journalism, "'editing comic
weeklies, reOating Parliament, writing leaders, working late hours as sub-editor,
investigating social distress, a d engraving ad
illustrating illusaations." ' What they
brought to the world was "a compassion f a suffering, an irreverence fa all humbug, a
disinterest in politics, and a romantic escape fkom reality in lurid nxhhmas fa
the
stage and sensational novels. The first of these four traits, compassion for all suffering, is
perhaps" " their hallmark, following Robats. Mamva. tkir haums. where they found
the 'makings of ttreir staies', could be found "in the filthiest rothxies and courtyards
and the most dismal jails and workhouses, exposing the plight of tbe pm. " Years later
even when M a w was waking as a seasoned journalist for the Chronicle, he met a
03
Bradley, xx.
'' Ibid.. 18.
Ibid
46 Ibid., 19

man living in a cheap lodging-house ''whxe +ala and wretchedness [still] produced a
feeling approaching awe. . . I mer b a d so gaunt a picture of famine To this day the
figure of the man [still] haunts m" " Punch was Mayhew's braiachild but he lost
editorial control, it seems, only a year after it was launched, and in the ad, M a w sold
his shares to Mark Lemon fa a trifling amount of mmy. His braher, Gus, stayed on the
editorial board of Punch until his death in 1875.- Lwking back. Maykw's bn&n
Labour and the London Poor, Dick-'
Household Words, Thackay's Cornhill
Magazine, and Jendd's eclitorial directioa of Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper
illustrated the achievenmts of a whde generation of Punch staff.
Now with Punch behind him, Maykwjained faces with his broths in contributing
to otkr aumaous magadaes a d periodicals.* During the 1840s. Mayhear wrae several
works of fiction with Gus. Tog- they wr- The Greatest Plague of Lye: or the
Adventures of a Ludy in Search of a G d Servant ( 1847), which was about the
difficulties of finrting a want, while Whom to Marry (1848) was about the adventures
of a young woman in search of a good husband. Ma* aiso published two fairy tales,
The Good Genius that Turned Everything into Gold (1 B W ) , which was a 'Christmas
Fairy Tale' and The Magic of Kinriness (1849). Ad during the euphoria of the world's
first international exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851, Ma* produced 1851: or
the Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sondboys. so It was produced in monthly parts, beginning
in February, 185 1 togetha with a 16-part series on the exhibition fa the Edinburgh News
and Literary Chronicle " beginning in May. In N o v b
1 85 1, Hemy and Gus began
part publication of The Shabby Fatnmerley, a sequel to The Greatest Plague in Life;
Mayhew also began issuing Low Wages in parts at the end of November. According to
49 Comic Allfl~n~lck tine Comic Magazine (1846-50).
IS51 was an adventure story about a middle-class north country iamily who visited Loodon and
marvelled at England's cunmerciai supremacy Geage Cruikshank was the illusmta.
Sixteen articles were anitten bxwetm May and Aug w 185 1. Almg with Gus, he also wrote a
new novel, The Image of his Father, which was an intricate plot of mistaken identities, racism,
seedy solicitas, and the like.

Karel Williams, s2 Maybew m y have also published TIe Mormas, or Latter-Day Saints
in 1852." In 1856, Mayhew plunged into a new m y dofummsd sziahed survey of the
Lo&
prisms called the Great World of lon&n, which erded abruptly in &sentence
with Part IX, a d which Wiliiams argues was a missing fifth volume. Mayhew's
completed section dealt almost exclusively with criminal London and in the end his
publishers commissioned John Binny to complete the volume to which Binny eventually
added 150 pages of his own mataial to The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of
Prison bye (1 862).
From f 854 to 1864, Maytrew wrote three travel books on German culture He wrote
The Rhine and Its Picturesque Scenery (1 856) togerber with tbe cornpaaim bodrs, The
Upper Rhine: The Scenery of its Banks and the Manners of its People (1 858) and the two-
volume German Life and Manners in Saxony as seen in Saxony at the Present Day
(1 864). In monthly said fcxmat, Mayhew published 7%e Shops of London und the
Trades and Man@mturers of Great Britain (1 865). which was a series of tributes to
British industry design& to advertise a variety of collllll~rcial products. Undoubtedly
Hemy Ma* wrde a remarkably diverse body of work including plays, novels,
biographies, travelogues. and educational philoscrphy to make a living His complece
sociological waks included the Morning Chronicle collation, which in itself was a
major part of London Labour and the London: Poor, the 185 1-2 incomplete London
Labour and the h don Poor, togetlax with the Answers to Carespondetlce, the Great
World of London (1 856) running in monthly part publication from March to November
1856. and later additional volumes by GrifFia Bohn & Co.
'' Williams, Karel, "Mayhew." In From Paupenjm to Poveny. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
I98 1,237-77,238.
'' Men of the Timc: A Dictio~ry of ConIemporuries, Containing Biogruphicul Notices of Eminent
Characrers of Both Sexes. 1 lLh Edition. Thompsoa Cooper, Loadon: Gemge Routledge and Sons,
1884.
54
For mae detailed biographies, see E.P. Thompson, "Henry Mayhew and the Morning
Chronicle," in Thampsoa and Yeo, Tirc Unknown Mayhew, Merlin Ress, 1971, 11-50; N. Crass,
The Common Writer, Life in Nineteenrh-Cenfury Fleet, Cambridge University Ress, 1985.93-
102; Anne Humpherys, Travels into the Poor Man's Country, University of Wgia Ress, 1977;
John Bradley, "Henry Mayhew: Farce Writer of the 183Os," ThP Vierorion Newslener 23. Spring,
(1963). 21-23.

Once he became financially SBCUT~, he married Daqlas Jardd's oldest daughter,
Jane (1825- 1880), and moved fiom Clement's Inn to the Shrubbery, the West London
suburb of Parson's Green where be ''m large debts fa furnishrag and
ornatlleming the premises". " His wife work& direQly alongside him taking mast of his
s6
dictation fa the Morning Chronicle, and accoccfing to Ma* in his pef' to
Gerntan Life and Manners, Jane cosainued to be "literally my right bar4 Scribbling to
my dictation" But in 1846, Mayhew faced a huge financial setback Erom which k never
eva recovere& His railway periodical. 7'he Iron Tines (July 1845-May 1846) along
with Thomas Holt, tbe publisher, was bankrupt. Althargh Ma* made casual reference
to bankruptcies in Lon& Lahour - there were "gluts in the markets, an increase of
heavy bankruptcies and "panics," such as were srpaiared in the money marke& in 1825-
26. and again in 1846. with the failure of banks and merchants" - he never mnioaed
his own bankruptcy directly in the text. According to 7%e Times newspaper, however,
dated February 12, 1847, Mayhew's "balance-sheet showed that fiom July, 1843, to July,
1846, the debts amounted to 2.0 181.. . . . The bankrupt estimated his profits in 1844, at
3001. ; in 1 845, the same; and in 1 846, he received fiom Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, on
account of Punch, 2001.; from the iron Times, 1501.; fiom Bradbury and Co., Zl., for the
Almanack; fiom Mr. Stevens. fa an interest in the Rioce of Wales's Prim, 251.; tiom
Mr. Howe, f a certain literary labours, 1001.; fiom the Era, of which he is part progriaa,
1001.; and 2Sl.fa tk Pocket Book" " With the failure of The Iron Times, Mayhew, his
wife and two children, Amy and Athol, were faced to live out their lives on the verge of
bankruptcy even after Jane's death in 1880.~
55 Humpherys, 18.
56
Mayhew, Henry. G e m fife and Manners as Seen in Saxony at the Present Day, Vol. 1, Allen
and Co., 1864; dedication To my wife, iiterally my right hand, scribbling to my dictation"; see
Taithe. 67.
57
Regarding characteristics of the Menippean satire, Mayhew's bankruptcy destroyed 'We epic
and tragic wholeness of a person and his fate" (Bakhtin, Mikhail, 1984, 116).
'' Mayhew. II: 300.
59 The Times, Friday, Fetxuary 12, 1847.8.
60 Mayhew's bother, Horace, inherited their father's estate.

In Septemba 1849, Mayhew went to Bamoadsey, the ceater of the leather industry,
for a tint-hand investigative repat m Jacob's I sle made famous in DicLat's Oliver
Twist (1 8 37). His Morning Chronicle expose - unsigmxl and indignant - hit the stre%
on September 24, 1849. Mayhew's coacern ova th sanitary coaditicm of tkse
particular slums directly resulted from the chdtxa epidemic of 184849. In oap year
alone, from September 184849, 14,000 people died in Laukm, and perhaps as many as
53,000 died in Englaad and Wales altqgether. The tide reached its peak in LonQn ar
September 10, 1849 when 432 people died fim this disease. At oae point. Ma*
focused on the crucial relatiomhip betwleen it and social space. He anal@
relationship between disease and ovacrowded waking-class nei-
the
that lay
sandwiched between aims highly-diffaentiated city sectors: "So well kmwn are the
localities of fever and disease," he argued, "that that would almofit admit of being
mapped out pathologically. a d divided into its morbid districts aad deadly cantons''.61
Mayhew's vivid description of Jacob's Island was also publishxi in Meliora:
We then iourneyed on to LonQn-street, down which the tidal ditch
continues its course. In No. 1 of this street the cholera first appeared
seveateen years ago, and spread up with fearfirl videace; but this
year it appeared at the opposite emf, and ran down it with like severity.
As we passed along the reking banks of the sewer the sun shone upon
a narrow slip of the water. In the bright light it appeared the colour
of strong gram tea, and positively looked as solid as black marble in
the shadow - ilYtYY1 it was more like watery mud than muddy water;
and yet we were assured this was the only water the wretched inhabitants
had to drink As we gazed in hcura at it, we saw drains and sewgs
emptying their filthy contents into it; we saw a whole tier of doorless
privies in the open road, common to men and women, built ova it;
we heard bucket after bucb of filth splash into it, and the iimbs of
the vagrant boys bathing in it waxxi, by pure face of comast, white
as Parian marble . . . " In this wretched place we were taken to a house
Humpherys, 16.
62 Meliora, September 24. 1849. 21, fmote 26.

whae an infant lay dead of the cbdera We asked if they really did
drink the warn The answer was, '"lhey were obliged to drink the
ditch, withart they could beg a padfbll or thieve a paUU of water."
But have you spoken to your landlad about having it laid m for you
"Yes, sir; and he says he will do it, a&
than to believe him.63
do it, but we know him berter
Following his first article on Bamondsey, Mayhew pasuacled the Morning
Chronicle editas to publish a full-scale threepart series - om article appeariag daily -
surveying poverty in England, and Mayhew was appointed London's 'Metropditan
Correspondeat'. J3@and was divjded into six broad areas: the Manuf-
Districts,
the Agricultural Districts, tb Mining and M asllfm Districts of South Wales, the
Mining Districts of Nath Wales, the Meuwtan Districts, and the towns of Liverpool
and ~irmingham" Two orha meqomkm, Angus Bahune Reach and Charles
Mackay, reported on "Labour and the Pocx" on alternate days in the rural districts and
indusrrial areas outside of London. On October 18, 1849, the Chronicle anmunced that
the series would provide "a full and npldled description of the mad, intellectual,
material. and physical condition of the individual porx throughout England*' and wc~uld
"equal, perhaps surpass, official or parliamentary reports in impartiality, authenticity, and
cornprehensiveaess." " The propal Morning Chronicle inquiry had calren a novel d
imponant turn; this was the very first time that a prow of this size had ever been
undertaken by a British aewspaper. The Morning Chronicle admitted to its readers that in
its efforts % settle the great social problems of tk day and ascertaia w ktk any (and
what) legislative mwwes can be adopted to improve the mental and physical condition
of the poor, we have invariably been stopped, embarrassed, thrown out, a compelled to
pause and tum aside by the want of trustworthy infixmation as to the facts." ' The
Chronicle set out to reconstruct the facts, and it fell to Mayhew to brilliantly reconstnrct
63
Thompson, 1967.44.
-
Ginswick, J. (ed.), LPbour and rhe Poor in England and Wales, 1849-1851. Volume 1.
Lancashire, Chesire, Yorkshire; Frank Cass: Lardon, 1983, xiii.
66
Ginswick, xi.

tfiem fm LoaQa Fa the first time Carlyle's question about the ''condition of England"
was about to be explffed as a conthous aad many-sided problem on the urban coadition
and casual I-. which could n, 1- be igmed "
Victorians were well-schoded in the social conditions of the rnrblstrial Revdution
before Mayhew began his first sa&il sodaley with the Mming Chronicle. " b e had
been numerous Royal Commission and Select Committee investigations into the
condition of women and chilcken in factaies (1832). in mines (1842). and in potteries
( 1843). all published in familiar blue covers. Statistical societies such as the Manchester
Statistical Society existed in almost every ma.
city fietping to conduct government
survey work, so that taken together, they created tk first steps towards faming social
policies and plans of
Edwin Chadwick's 77te Repon on the Sanitary Conditions
of the Labouring Population @Great Britain (1842) stated: 'We have found that the
inhabitants of the fiont houses in many of the main streets of those towns and of the
metropolis, have Ilever entered the adjoining courts, a seen the interiors of any of the
tenements, situate at tk backs of their own houses. in which their own wak people
reside." Gage Godwin, editcr of tk Builder, also champid bata public heath and
housing for the par. B m and raised in Loadon he too lm~v of its wrackd housing.71
According to Ginswick, as far as the press was coIlcetaed it had 'been taking an
increasing interest in the wealrnesses of social arrangements, writing in strong terms of
their social cast and advocating inquiries and repats which, if nor ~sarily instructing
their readas, at least contirmed their prejudices." " The specitic policy driving the
67
bid., xvi.
Boston, Ray. Tice EsserUial Fleet Street. Its Himry and Influence, Blandfad: Lmdon. 1990.
Ray Boston wrote that James Perry (1756-1821) was 'the King of London journalism', and ownereditor
of the Morning Chronicle, who ueated the professim of journalism, following press
historian, Charles Peabody (Boston, 49).
69
Yeo, 53; see footnote txmom of p.55.
" Robem, 20. Godwin was also somerhing of a bohemian, writing a farce fa the theatre when he
was a young man, and moving fian archi tenure to journalism.

Morning Chronicle was clear and certain: "it was opposed to Palmerston's faeign policy
and sought an improvemnt in the conditioas of life among the labouring class at
home." AS a majm competita to the Times, tk Chronicle had a long histay. a
substantial audience, an experienced team of parliamentary r w s like Hazlitt and
Dickens, and a new Peelite group of propietcxs. Beginning on February 2 1, 1 848, new
proprietars included the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Lincdn, Sidaey Haben, a&
other influential Peelites, a d a xww edita, John Jhuglas Cook Cook had been a repona
at The Times, and had gathered round him "a brilliant staff of cdbutas, including
George Sydney SmythR afiawards Lard Strangfad, Gilbet Veaables, Abraham
Hayward, William Vewn Harcou~t, and Thackay. Its bushss manager was William
Dele the father of tlre clera y v edita for Thc Times". " Among tk LooQa
dailies of the early 1850s, The Times was 'king'. It sold over 50,000 copies a day, more
than all the akr Lamb dailig combiaed '' In 1855. the repeal of the aewspaper sump
duty 76 rapidly transformed tk British newspaper industry. Penny daily papas now
appeared led by the hew Daily Telegraph, which sold 141,700 co~ies daily by 1861,
leaving The Times far behind. 7-1 Roughly ten years befme, in 1846, the press had been
shackled by taxes, by excise, and by Revenue officas who dogged the steps of
newspapermen and printers; ckre wae adveztjsement duties of 1 s.dd.each, a compulsory
stamp of Id. on all aewspapers, wkher pted or not, and a heavy paper duty, so that, in
effect, every pound of paper was weighed and stamped by a Revenue offica. In 1853 the
advertisement duty was finally repealed. Then in 186 1, when Gladstone was Chancellor
of the Exchequer, the paper duty was finally abolished "
M a w published roughly 80 articles on London's manufacturing trades for about a
73 Ibid., xii.
7J English Newspapers. Chapters in the History of Jounralism, 1887, 153.
" Read, Dcmald. l%e Powr of News. The History of Reurers. 1849-1989. Oxfad University
Press: Oxfa& 1992. 19.

year. first daily, then wePkly with Augustus klping him in the research aad writing
Sutherland Fdwards recalled the excitement as well as the imaginative quality character-
istic of Maw's Loadon office:
He was in his glary at the time. He was largely paid ad, greatest joy
of all. had an army of assistant Wfiters, stenographas, and hansom
cabmen coastantly at his call. LoaQn labourers . . . were brought to
the Chronicle office, wfrere they tdd their tales to Mayhew, who
redictated them, with an atlrlcri dout of his own, to the shorthand
writer . . . Augustus Mped him in his vivid descriptions, and an authority
on @tical eammy contrdled his gay $-tics. "
Uader the constant pressure of newspaper deadlines and persoaal carelessaess,
Mayhew was undtubtedly slipshod with regard to his statistics even though he used
standard sources including Pater and the Blue Boob, Registrar-Geaeral repats, the Post
Office Directory, the Occupation Abstract of 1841, the Repat of the Constabulary Farce
Commissionas, and the Official Returns of the Mmopditan Pdice. In spite of a wealth
of resources, an "errata" slip insert& inside the frant of an 185 1 baund cdlection, f a
example, listed 37 numtrical arm. Nevertheless, the maja thrust of Mayhew's work,
with ewrmous and smmims viol-
juxtapositions of detail, investigated the Victaian
urban wald of casual wak. Mayhew was merciless "in exping the fact that destitution
came not fiom a lack of self reliance but from unbelievable profits made by employers
and the subsistence wages they paid" 'I Ma* divided th labowing poa into three
broad classifications - 'Wose who will wak, won't wak, and can't wak". He then
investigated five broad groups of manufactuting activities among the first group.
Following Ginswick, Mayfiew examhd ''those that will wak": "the clothing trades,
covering not only the tailoring industry but also dress-making and milhxy, the
manufacture of gentiemen's hats, and the boot trade." He also examirred "the silk
weaving of Spitalfidds, the manufacture of lea-
and leather goods, the making of toys,
80 Sutherland Edwards, George, 60; E.P. Thompsoa. 58; Mayhew also W T ~ that his jxnoaal
interviews were "here given as they were spoken" (Mayhew, I: 46).

and finally a miscellanerxrs group of trades associatad with wood, consisting of sawyas,
then turned to distribution activities of b&m. He Iodred into tk operations of the
docks, their specialized activities and the life of mm wuking in them; he examined the
merchant marine a d the difficulties of life as a saila, and the meboplitan transpcxt
system, paying particular attention to the omaibus drivers and coaductas, the hackwy
coachmen and cabmen, carmen and paters, and those who found their living on tk
Thames, the watenaen, the ti%termerr, and skambmt men, Tbe wholesale distribution of
food, meat, fish, and vegetables, also came under close scrutiny and tk "live" cattle
mar& of Smithfield, the carcase meat marb of Newgate, r d Whitechapel,
the fish market of Billingsgate, and the vegetable markets of Covent Garden, the
Borough, Spitalfieids, Farringdon aod Portman w e all examinaLn
Retail trades followed, and then London's street-fdk on the fringe of "those that will
war'. The second classification - ''those that that war-
consisted of a mixed
group of pmple, the elderly, the destitute, aad the ummpioyed In examining the third
classification - "thx that will not war-
Maykw emxed an underground world of
the vagrant, the criminal, and the prostitute. He used QQens of infamants - shore-
hunters, tk little girl at the cat's-meat shop, and the ballast-heaver's wives U. fa
instance - to guide him through the labyrinth of London's filthiest slums in search of his
stories. LI At tk cheap lodging-houses. Maybew was presemed with "'so many peculiar
features that I thought it better, even at the risk of being unnrPlhnlica1, to avail myself of
'* Ginswick, xi.
83
Ginswick. xxiv.
Maybew met the ballast-heaver's wives at the British and Faeign School, in Shakespeare-walk,
Sbadwell to make the public aware that they were seeking "the same fieeban ban the control of
the publican wbicb the caai-whippers had obtained" (Mayhew. HI: 286).
Mayhear gained access to a court off RaremYy-lane "thrwgh a dark narrow enuance. scarcely
wider than a doorway, nmning beneath the 6rst floor of me of the houses to the adjoining street+'*
Once inside the cornt, he described it as "about 50 yards long, and not mae than three yards wide,
surrounded by lofty wooden houses, with jutting abutments in many of the upper stories that
almost exclude the light, and give them an appearance of being able to tumble down u p the
heads of the intruders with roughly 1OOO people living there at my me time" (Mayhew, IlI: 1, 2,
153, 141, 142).

tbe channels of infarnation opemj to rn ratha than defa the matter to its paper place,
and lose the freshness of the impression it had made u p my miod" wi He double-
checked the facts of the lodgers at th ckap ckspodging-house usiag insider infmnation."
Ma*
wrote: "I read to them the account (in the Morning Chronicle) of my previous
interview with them, they were nmch delighted at saeiag tkamelves in print, and
immediately arranged ckmselvcs on a seat all a r d the mom"
Maykw recorded
further: "As it was, the piace was cram so fill, that the light was completely blocked
by the men piled up on the seats and lockm, and standing befae the win&ws. The room
was thus remhed so dark that I was obliged to have tk gas light4 in ader to see to
take my notes; I myself was obliged to mount the opxite lock to take the statistics of
the meaing.'m
Appalled by what k saw, Mayhew's particular choice of subject matter, as Raphael
Samuel noted, seams to have beerr shaped largely by his rising anger at capitalist
exploitation, particularly as it affected tk dda Loldoa occupations aad trades. " Above
all else, he was fascinated by the sweat shops. Perhaps it was this f btioa with the
sweat sbps, which accounted fa sol~le of the trades he omitted from his 'cyclopedia':
railway servants and gas stolrers, compositors. eqgineers. bricklayes, a!xi bcdcbimkrs. 91
Neither did he take his readers "inside the wulshop, except in the case of the domestic
outwaks." g2 Ma* inteaded to focus on "that class of pm whose privations
seemed to be dw to the insufficiency of their wages." " He revealed how the problems of
Ibid.. 3 12.
87 Ibid.. 314-15.
89 Ibid., 239.
Regarding capital, Engels stared: ^Capital is the all-important we- in the class war. Power
lies in the hands of those who own. directly a indirectly, foodstuffs and the means of production"
Engels, 32).
9 1
Samuel. 50.
92 Ibid, 51.
93
Morning Chronicle, letter 11: Tbanpsar and Ym, 1971, 104.

casual labour in the l~l~opdis, the ovawfielming -going
pmblans of London poverty,
were directly related to orthodox political econamy and its callwaess. "Since the
establishmat of slaughter-hruses, and aptly hckd from my LEnowledge of their effects
upon the workmen, have thqr been namtul" an infamaat told Mayfrew, "- tk clemand
for articles of the best cabinet-work. in tk manufacture of which th uxtliest woods and
the most skilled labour Lordon can supply are required, has diminished upwards of 25
per cent. The demand, mreover, continues still to diminish gradually." 'Y "Tk number
of haads in the LonQa track fiom 1831 to 1841 de~lhxi 33 per cent relatively to the rest
of the jmpulaticm*', accading to Maw. '' He visited a gang of men at work at six at
night, ballasting a cdlie in tk Pod % to see &st-hand the intmsity of tkir wakgl He
questioned and ems-questid the whistliug and &mmg boy wbo still clung to "his
assertion that he ma& 2l.per we&'.
Mayhew revealed how L axhfs abudant
unskilled a d semi-skilled workface broke down peexisting trade customs thus
creating new fams of overwork and explatation. To do this, Mayhew compared
statistics with factual case histories such as the suffering of the labouring poor. On
November 6, 1849. he r8cocded: "I had seen so much want since I began my investigation
into the condition of the labouring porn of Lotdon that my feelings were almost blunted
to sights of adraary misay. Still I was unprqared f a tbe amunt of suffering that I have
lately witnessed I could na have believed that thae wae human beings toiling so long
and gaining so little, and starving so silently and koically. round about our very
homes." '' Maykw's manifesto prefigured some of his future conflicts:
I aim to reveal the economic and social causes of povaty - I shall
consick the wfrde of the Menopolitan poor under three separate
9J Mayhew, III: 231.
95 Ibid., 223.
96 Ibid., 275.
9' Mayhew rrpmed: "I ded a meeting of the coalwhippers. that I might take their opinion an the
subject, when I found bat out of eighty individuals only four were satisfied that fermented liquas
could be bspensed with by the labortring class" (Mayhew, ID: 244).
99
Thompsar, E.P.. 1967% 46.

phases as they will work, they can't wark aad they won't work
While treating of the poorly paid I shall endeavout to lay befae
the reads a catalogue of such occupations in Laodon . . . to ascertaia,
by positive inspection the conditicms of their homes to learn by close
communion with them not only how little they subsist on but how
large a rate of profit they have to pay for tk little upon wfiich they do
subsist . . . to calculate the West the petty capitalist reaps from their
massitis. loo
Besides the scale of London's casual labow, equally striking was the distribution of
the menopditan work face, bdh men a d wotllen. Gittswick reptat
Of nearly 633,000 males over the age of twenty who lived in Lordon,
some 47,000 were skmmaktm and tailas, 26,000 were ckmstic servants
of one type a amtha, about 5 1,000 were artisans in the building trades.
nearly 42,000 were in the food and drink trades, about 13,500 were
furniture makm and sellers, some 3 1.000 dther drove vehicles through
the Lordon streets a wae messengers and paters, and at least 40,000
were unskilled labourers, eking out an existence fiom &y to day and
from season to season.
Women were even more restricted: "Ma~ly, of course, were dependent on their
husbands, or were widows, a were young girls without any employment; but of thme
who earned their living thae wae about 1 19,000 domestic savants of various kinds,
nearly 74,000 ntwoewomen and nearly 46,000 chanvomen, washawomen and manglers.
In fact these three groups accounted fa marly twmhirds of the total number of adult
women wbo had to wak fix a livelihad" lo'
Readers reacted quickly, whole-heartedly, and genamsIy to some of the more
horrifying stories. Hardly a day passed that tk Chronicle did mt receive money to
relieve spific cases of personal distress a for relief in general. Publicity given to the

wretched cdtion of the worLers in ttre "&e
trades", the Spitalfields silk weavers,
and the ballast-heavers sparked a movement towards th geaaal impovement of their
economic circumstil~lces. In London, tailas Md public m!&ngs at which Maybew and
the Chronicle were publicly thanked fa the work which had bex~
to bring tMr
economic a d social condition to public notice. lrn Readas petitid Parliament "fa
some means of restraining the present downward progress of the made to pauperism and
misery." lo3 Whe. wak was available, they fonatd a "Guild** or House of Call where
information could be supplied, and wtrere migrant tailas cculd call in, Some tailor's
formed a workmg tailot's joint stock company to go into business fa themselves rather
than being caught up in the "sweating" and middleman system. The Chronicle also acted
as a f m of labour exchange fa aeedim cdlecting and keeping a list of nams of
those wfio wanted wmk a d itaamittently infcxming the public of its existence. It also
published from time to time, nams of pecple offering wcxk The ballast-heaving system
attracted Sir J ams Duk M.P., John Delane of The Times, and even Henry Mayhew
himself to improve the wages and employmem conditions of the ballast-heavers by taking
up their case with the Governmeat. The Spitalfields silk weavers also berrefited
Prompted by Mayhew's accounts, certain employers raised the wage rates and
prominence was given to this in the press. 104
Mayhew's investigation into London's street-folk had a vernacular characca all its
own. Yet in spite of all he had sen and experienced as the Morning Chronicle's
metropolitan journalist, the cultural distinctions he drew betwen Victorian civilization
and the wandering tribes of street-folk still remained a crucial aspect of his analysis
(Chapter 6). And the battles ova city-spaces were also crucial to his argument as we shall
see in Chapter 4. Ginswick himself reconstructed certain facts regarding these city-
spaces :
Lawyers lived in Kensington in greater relative numbgs than in any
other district, but law clerks, except those who lived round Chancery
102
Ibid., xxvi.
lo3 Ibid.

~andtbelnasofCourt, wereto befouadinIslington Domestic
savants, b& male and female, a d gov- wae found in the
m e affluent areas of St. George's, Hanover Square, S~ianres's
Wes-.
Marleybooe arxl Kensiagtm Tailm were strong in
St. James's, Marlyebolre and St. Pancras, but relatively mxe so
in the east end of Lmdm, in Whitchapel, St.kge's in the East,
and Stepney, where women tailas in particular ma& waistcoats
and cheap goods fa the slop shops. The chief districts fa shoemalrers
were St. Pancras and Maryl-
in the oorth, Lambeth and Newington
in the south, and Whitechapel and Berhaal grm in the east, Gardeners
wtzemainiyinWandswarthandKeasingto11 Beyondall~districts,
the City was the locality fa publishers and bodrsellers, in the area of
Patamoster Row and in the nunwous courts ararnd Fleet Strm
Watcfimalrers congregated in surpising rmmhtrs in Clerkenwell
and St-Luke's. And the list goes on Coachmakers wae in S~Pancras and
Marl-;
shipbuildas in the dockland areas of Stepney and Poplar;
dyers and calendeters in Sheditch and Bethnal Green, where the silk
manufacture was also carried on; leatha workers in Bermoodfey;
sugar refiners in Stepw, Whitechapel, and St. George's in the East;
cabinet and furniture-makers wae in St.Pancras but more particularly
in Shoreditch; coopers were in the districts marest the docks; rope
and sail-maks in Berhnal Green a d Stepney; and wakers in gold,
silver and precious stones were to be found in Clerkenwell.'OS
In relationship to these prolifaating urban spaces and modes of exploitation,
Mayhew's Morning Chronicle investigation was comp~ehensive, cultural, and
compassionate. Like Marx, Mayhew was collcaaed with the circumstances that led to
ovawak and wdapay. and like Marx. he idemifid low wages with the drive f a surplus
value. On its own, this must entitle Mayhew to an impcrtanr place in the history of social
investigation f a as Raphael Samuel argud "Mayhew am to iidemify povety neitha
with character, like the mcxal reformas, nr even with 'casualism' and geaaal6commic
'05 Ibib, xxiv.

inscmrity, like Bevetidge a Boork So far as the wage-earner was concaned he put it
down quite definitely to capitalist super profit". 'His divisim between the 'honourable'
and the 'dishot~n~able' ends of the trades." Samuel coathex& "b-
wages regulated
by 'custom' and those at the mercy of 'competition' provides a much betta starting point
than a mere flat rate in&%.*' lM
Inevitably, Ma*
fell into arguments with the Economist over suppat fm the
Tailor's Guild with Lad Ashley, patron and pesident, over tk Ragged Schools, and the
Moming Chronicle ova Eree track He attearpted to trace the rehticmship becween
juvenile delinquency and the Ragged Scboois, and his finfinn,c saiously questjorred the
popular view that the schods reducedjuvenile dehpmq. In OCtObg 1850, Ma*
abruptly resigaed owr editorial taqnxhg with his copy lo',
while tk Chronicle claimed
"our Special Correspondents were distinctly instructed to c d h Wmselves as much to
facts. and not to trouble themselves abaut opinions cx infer-."
'00 In 1 85 1 , the whole
Morning Chronicle series on "Labour and the Poor" came to an official end, but as
Thompson has argued Mayhew was transfamed by these events from a mere literary
explorer into an aganizer and chronicla of the oppressions of tbe pax:
It is reasonable to suppose that he had at first urulPrralen the
'mea~litan commission' in the normal course of journalistic
vocation: a serious and worth-while job, but at the same time
a good money-spinaer, likely to last, But in a matter of weeks he
had been totally seized by the problem and the seeds of the people
who he was investigating. The discontents of the pocx of the world's
largest metropolis beat upon the doa of his office. He heard and
reported hundreds of life-stories, becoming the confessa and
rector of the despairing and inarticulate ... in this way, a vocation
had become a mission; and as he bumped up against one vested interest
after anotha, whether in hard economic life a in academic political
106
Samuel, 52.
lag Morning Chronicle. Oackr 31, 1850, 20.

armmy he was fad
into a gram commiw ami leaduship." '09
But as time went on, ''tk Ma*
of the Morning Chronicle was already beginning
to recede, and tk sonmht quahtt~ - but also mxe dramatic aad mxe readable -
M a w of the street f& was taking his place. After amther decade a two, this was the
only Mayhew that was reraembered - even pahap, by himself." "* Unofficially and
now from his own office, Mayhew launched his own serial publication called t onah
Labour und the London Poor, which first appeared on December 14,1850, but tkn it too
stopped abruptly this time ova a financial displte with his pimers on February 21, 1852.
The tailm had stood by him, because it was on their behalf that LIE break with tk
Chronicle was first ma& TO publish his -penny
weeLly pmphhs, Mayhw waked
alongside Richard Knight, a salaried missionary of the LoaQn City Mission, and Henry
Wood who, leaving the Chronicle along with Mayhew had made such a significant
contribution to London Labour that Mayhew amsidered him to be c~le of its authors.
Between 185 1-52, there was a palpable and overt sense of relationship between Mayhew
and his audieace, which had originally been revealed through the Chronicle's
coc~espondence cdurms.'" hnhn Lobour had d y just begun wkn Mayhew's readers
asked him to answer their letters publicly. The "Answers to C o r r ~ . which "
Mayhew printed on end papers, smumbd his wddy issues, but fiom the beginning
Mayhew and his readas mght different aims. Mayhew saw the "Notices" as a platform
for his own wak while his readers saw the "Answas" as a communication platform fa
ideas, debates, contradictions, and coc~ections to borh his work and previous leners to the
editor. It was an inmsely public dialogue: Ma*
learned about his readm and they, in
turn, leanred about each otha. Late in 1 85 1, Mayhew' s views on economics became a
separate four-part publication called Low Wages: their Cause, Consequences and
Remedies Il2, form& in part., in his "Answers to Cmespoadmrs".
109
Samuel, 50; quoted in Thompson and Yeo. 44.
"I Mayhew was invited by the coalbearers 70 visit them at their houses whenever I should think
fit" (Mayhew, XU: 251).

In ader to accomplish the task of his serial publication, Ma*
rew~tked.
expanded a d re-arranged much of the Chronicle's mataria1 oa the street-tracks fm his
new publication. 0th new matarid was also created The cdlected rrurttr;d thn wem
through several editions befae it was completed and published as a fow-volume wcxk in
186 1-2, and it was then reprinted in 1864-65. Maybew's vision, as he stated in the
Preface to Volume I, was to publish "tk history of a people, fiam the lips of the pmple
themseives." l3 By 185 1, k had Qdicaced the first volume to Douglas Jarold "whom,
knowing most intimately, the autha has learnt to love and honour most profoundly."
Basic facts surrounding Mayhew's new pubiication, London Iabour, are relatively simple
to gatha together but the historical process itself is more complex - fa Mayhew wrote
a number of differeat texts ded Lon& tabour and the London Poor at different tinrec
aod fcx different readas. As well, different publishers selected different parts of the
original serial publications creating different editions, and diffkmt schdars have given
different readings of M a w based upon an appeal to these different texts. In 1851-52,
Griffin, Bdrn and Co. bound togetha two volumes of Mayhew's pamphlets as the I85 1
edition of h don Labour with the cxiginal Setial numbas in the margins. But ova a 10-
year span, Mayhew's publishers vacillated, finding Maytrew's material on prostitution
problematic; some copies of the 185 1-52 edition of London Labour included Mayhew's
treatment on prostitr~tion, others did wt. The 1861 Griffin & Co. threevolume edition
omitted this material as well, but the 1 86 1 -62
Bohn and Co. four-volume edition
once again included the material on prastitution plus various contributions on thieves,
swindlers and beggars.
The 1861 and 1861 -2 London Lubour editions contairwl aew a d recycled material
so that three volumes were now required. Lortdon bur Volume III wove together some
of Mayhew's original Morning Chronicle laters (the last half of Volume III) with his
interviews with street entertainers which came from the Great World ofLondm said of
1 856. Mayhew reprinted descriptions of coal whippers, dock labouras, and hackney
cabmen togetha with tk Morning Chronicle ankles on low lodging houses, vagrancy,
and homelessness. "4 In akr wads. Mayhew's first three vd- of London Lobour
113
Mayhew, I, xiv.
'I4 Williams, K*, 260.

examird a distinct aad diffaent group of "tho6e that will waY'. London Labour
Volume N, which was largdy cdlabaative and examirwl ''the that will aor wak",
was plblisbed in 1862. 'I5
It comistsd of Mnytnv's han 37 pages, Heming's original
15s pages on prostitution left unfinichal in 1852.'16 Bhy's ad Hailiday's essays on
thieves and beggars, aod Revaend Tuclariess' survey on LonQa's
charitable agencies.
These four vdums comprised the histaiographic ca#m excluding The Criminal Prisons
of bndun, but Mayhew's c~lltempaaries appeared to make no such division. Gccording
to Karel Williams. Mayhew's publishx's catalogue, bound with the 186 1 -62 four-vdume
edition of bn&n Ldwur, described Crimi~l Pn'sons as the ''companion vdume to tk
preceding*" lL7
The last twenty years of Mayhew's life - beginning with his German period until
his death in London in Tavistock Garckns m July 25, 1887 - remain partly mysterious.
In 1870, he appeared in Metz as a fdgn carepmht along with his son, Athol, who
waked as a professional photograph%. lk
following year he created a survey of
working-men's clubs, Report Concerning the Trade and Hours @Closing Usual among
the Unlicensed Victualling Establishmerrts Now Open for the Unresmkted Sale of Beer,
Wine, and Spirits, as Certain So-Called "Working Men's Clubs", Dism'buted
Throughout the Metropolis." Thee years befae his death, he and Atho1 produced
L.undon Characters: nlustrations of the Humour, Pathos and Peculiarities of lonbn
Life, a sseries of sketches, a part of which was drawn fiom the Chronicle's investigations.
They also publiskd togaher a privately-printed bmk on Mowt Blonc. 'I8 At the time of
Mayhew's death. the Illustrated London News cmmmmd:
But of all of them being dead except Henry, who in his later years
moved in rather a small circle, it was but natural that the wald
should regard the literary Mayhews as extirrct. If the autha of
"5 Mayhew had written mly the first 37 pages (Mayhew, IV: 37). Mayhew's c o l ~ twrote
a
another 155 pages leaving it unfinished in 1852.
'I6 Mayhew, IV: 37.
11 8
Bradley, xxxi.

London Labour and the London Poor had died earha, many people
would have been present at his furreral in Kensal-Green C m on Saturday
last. As it was, those fa wbo6e cause be had so valiantly umtemkd
seem to have fagotten him lg
Regarding Mayhew's Morning Chronicle investigations, The British Quarlerly
Review written in 1850 is worth quoring he:
The publication of these letters has proved an epoch in our social
history; and of the man by whom such a wmk of investigation
was codved, and by whom it has been so far executed, it may sufdy
be said in the mest sense of the fine dd Roman phrase, 'He has
desaved well of his coumry.' Mr. MayIm"s primary object was
simply to bring facts to light; to furnish, piece by piece, to tk Engiish
public and the English legislature, a more thorough ad minute report
than had ever befae been attemptad of the state of the wuking-classes
and of the poor in London. Wben finished and thrown into the form
of an encyclopaedia, alphabetically arranged, his 'Morning Chronicle'
Lmas will form a wak unique in literature . . . a kiad of unofficial
authority a chiefship in the meEcopolis. 120
Not only did some of Mayhew's friends remember him this way as a kind of
uoofficiai meuopditan chief but &so many ninereenth- and twentieth-century readers and
historians remember Mayhew's London Lubour as "the thefulest and most vivid
documentation of the ecommic and social problems, the customs, habits, grievances, and
individual life experiences of the labouring people of the world's greatest city of tk mid-
ninetenth-cenhrry." 12'
Mayhew was deeply imaated in the world of the theatre and the
burlesque as this chapter reveais. In conclusion, Henry Mayhew's hn&n Labour and
Taithe, 2. Mayhew bad me very mcial prcdarsu* - Engels - but as Paul Thompo has
argued "despite his popularity, Maybew had no direct successas" (Thompsoa, Paul, 1978, 36).
The British Quanerly Review, May 11,1850,491493,491.
''' Thanpsaa, 1967,445242; see also Paul Thompson. ed.. Tlre Victorian Poor, Landon. 1967.
The later Great World and The Crimi~l Prisons (1862) were to examine another class of 'omwmkers',
prostitutes, thieves, beggars, and swindlers.

the London Poor will always remain tk standard fa wxkmdbg tfre street Me of
Victorian Loadon, and a paradigm fa u-
the dynamic relationship benuam
London's spatial envirommt and urban labarring ptm and waking-class
consciousaess. As we move into C w 3, the dissatatioa turn to a small but very
important chapter outlining the Menippean satire: its form, characteristics, and relevance
to Mayhew's London La40ur. The dis~enation argues that the seemingiy fiagmemed
issues, themes, and styles of Maytrew's histaical Qcument can be explained within the
confines of this relatively unknown but impatant literary geme.

Chapter 3
London -our
and the London Poor: The Case for the Menippeon Satire
The Menippean satire - more rarely calied the Varronian satire - was allegedly created by
Menippus of Gadara (third century B.C.), a Greek cynic whose works are now lost.' Menippus
had two important disciples, however, the Greek Lucian. and the Roman Marcus Varro who was
recorded to have written 150 books of what he called Sarurnae Menippeae.' Vmo's works only
survived in fragments, but the tradition of Lucian and Varro was carried on through Peuonius,
and Apuleius, author of The Golden Ass. ' The traditional Menippean satire was treated in one of
three ways according to Relihan. The Menippean satire developed mainly out of verse satire,
which was most frequently used by adding prose interludes but it has now come down to us
mainly as prose form with its incidental verse.' The Menippean satire is a form with its own 2,000
year-old tradition even though contemporary scholars such as Relihan argued that "the bloom is
off the rose of Menippean satire. What was once novel is [now] a somewhat discredited
commonplace; the term has been long enough in vogue that it has been expanded beyond what
many would consider its reasonable bounds, and its usefulness has justly been questioned."
Mindful of Relihan's analysis, Chapters 4.5, and 6 will nevertheless argue that London Labour
' Bakthin. Mikhail, Problems of Dostoevesky's Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson.
Introduction by Wayne Booth. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis. 1984.
' Relihan. 49; Bakhtin. 1 12- 13.
' Bakhtin. 1 13.
Frye. 309. According to Relihan, two other developments included the restructuring or understanding of
Menippus himself. which considered the genre a subdivision of the diatribe, and also "as a stylistic
phenomenon known as prosimerrum"(Relihan, 3). Relihan separated out classical Mcnippcan satire from
the confines of Cynicsm and verse satire. following Riikonen (1987). (Relihan, 3).
' Relihan. 3.

preserved within it important Menippean characteristics even under modern pressures from the
novel. " In fact, it absorbed the novelistic form, among other forms, into itself.
The Menippean satire's existence can easily be demonstrated. according to the Canadian
literary scholar, Northrop Frye: "No one will challenge the statement that the literary ancestry of
Guliiver's Travels and Candide runs through Rabelais and Erasmus to Lucian. But while much
has been said about the style and thought of Rabelais. Swift. and Voltaire, very little has been
made of them as craftsmen working in a specific medium, a point dealing with a novelist we
would not ignore."' Frye argues that: "Petronius. Apuieius, Rabelais, Swift, and Voitaire all use a
loosely-jointed narrative form" relying on "the free play of intellectual fancy and the kind of
humorous observation that produces caricature." "rye's
argument can also be extended to
include Henry Mayhew. If Mayhew had been a novelist primarily. his work on London Labour as
a journalistic ''craftsmen working in a specific medium" ' with "its loosely-jointed narrative
form," '" endless catalogues and lists, dialogues, humorous characterizations, and constant
ridicule of philosophers and pedantic critics would not have been ignored. Therefore, starting
with a theoretical examination of the structure and characteristics of Menippean satire I begin
with Nonhrop Frye (1973) and Mikhail Bakhtin (1994). the two most important contemporary
scholars of this relatively unknown genre. while I also rely heavily on Joel Relihan's study of
Ancient Menippean Satire ( 1992).
In his Anatomy of Criticism ( 19731, Frye distinguished four types of fiction that could occur
alone or in various combinations with each other: novel, confession. anatomy, and romance. Of
Frye. 308.
7
Frye. Nonhrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1973[ 19571.
308.
8
Frye. 309.
Ibid.

these four types. the term "anatomy" described the Menippean satire, a term which Frye
considered misleading and is not. in all respects, appropriate to Mayhew:
The Menippean satire deals less with people as such than with mental
attitudes. Pedants, bigots, cranks. parvenus. virtuosi. enthusiasts,
rapacious and incompetent professional men of all kinds. are handled in
terms of their occupational approach to life as distinct from their social
behaviour. The Menippean satire thus resembles the confession in its
ability to handle abstract ideas and theories. and differs from the novel in
its characterization, which is stylized rather than naturalistic. and
presents people as mouthpieces of the ideas they represent. ... The
novelist sees evil and folly as social diseases, but the Menippean satirist
sees them as diseases of the inteilect, as a kind of maddened pedantry
which the philosophus gloriosus at once symbolizes and defines."
Importantly, Frye's "anatomy" was not described as a genre in the classical sense, it was a much
broader literary classification that tended to blur distinctions between the novel, confession,
romance. and anatomy. And he renamed the genre "anatomy", following Burton's Anatomy of
Melanclzoly, to indicate to scholars that they should not identify immediately with the nuances
peculiar to specific ancient texts." But beyond the world of classical scholarship, Menippean
satire as a critical term has been used to discuss a vast genre of world literature, comprising the
fulI range of seriocomic and learned fiction, and has denoted very generally a subversive
combination of fantasy. learning and philosophic thinking." in other words, the genre of the
'" Ibid.
" Relihan. Joel. Ancient Menippean Satire. 1993.4; See Frye's analysis. 1957. 308- 12.
I' Relihan. 5.
13
Ibid.. x.

During the Roman and Renaissance periods. the word "satire" meant either of two specific
literary forms. one verse and the other prose but according to Frye. it meant "a structural principle
or attitude." I'And in the case of the Menippean satire under discussion. the form and the attitude
both applied to the same name. The term "satire" - as an attitude - combined fantasy and
rnorafity, but it was more flexible, and could be either entirely fantastic or entirely moral - as a
form - shading off into more purely fanciful discussions. The more purely moral type - a
social utopia - was a serious vision of society as a single intellectual pattern. Is Sometimes this
form became full length with more than two speakers as with Mayhew's use of multiple voices.
The setting then was usually called a symposium or cem with strong Platonic influences, which
stretched unbroken down through urbane conversations concerning everyday life, its opinions,
ideas and cultures. '"n
Mayhew's case, these urbane conversations appeared to be much closer
structurally to Hogarth's eighteenth-century "conversation pieces", small groups of people joined
together in conversation or some other action, a type of painting, following Pevsner, which the
English were especially fond of." l7
Frye defined the term "satire" as "irony which is structurally close to the comic: the comic
struggle of two societies, one normal and the other absurd, is reflected in its double focus of
morality and fantasy." In
In his earlier 1944 article, "The Nature of Satire", Frye noted that there
were two things essential to satire: "one is wit or humour, the other an object of attack". IY In the
Amlomy, he added that the wit or humour was "founded on fantasy or a sense of the grotesque or
" Frye. 310.
Ibid.
I" Ibid.
l7 Pevsner. Nikolaus, The Englishness of English An. 1964 [ 19561.5 l .
In Frye. Northrop. 1990, 149.

absurd," Imaginative fantasy alone then." according to Frye, "becomes the one essential element
that elevates satire to a major literary form." ' The Menippean satire had other equally important
characteristics. It was extroverted and intellectuai. argued Frye, while the novel tended to be
extroverted and personal; its chief interest was in human character as it revealed itself in society."
A Menippean satirist grappled with evil and foolishness as diseases more of the intellect. as a
kind of educational madness while the novelist saw evil and foolishness more as social diseases."
The Menippean satirist. in other words, 'strutted his stuff intellectually. He grappled with
intellectual themes and attitudes. piling up as well as digressing upon an encyclopedic mass of
information surrounding his story or overwhelming his scholarly targets with "an avalanche of
their own jargon," as Mayhew did. The creative treatment of encyclopedic information
combined with the analysis of evil and foolishness were two very important organizing principles
in Mayhew's London Labour as we shall see. London Labour thus appears to have followed in
the English tradition of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy that Frye argued was "the most
comprehensive survey of human life in one book that English literature has seen since Chaucer.""
In terms of defining this literary genre, Frye adopted the word "anatomy" to replace "the
cumbersome and in modem times misleading "Menippean satire."" " Furthermore, he argued that
Frye, Notthrop, 'The Nature of Satire," UTQ 14 (October 1944): 7589.76.
'" Ibid.
" Frye. 1973. 308.
" Frye, 309.
" Frye. 3 1 1
" Ibid.; Frye stated: 'The word "anatomy" in Burton's title means a dissection or analysis. and expresses
very accurately the intellectualized approach of his form"(Frye. 3 1 1 ).
'' Ibid.. 3 1 1-12. Frye noted: 'The display of erudition had probably been associated with the Menippean
tradition by Varro. who was enough of a polymath to make Quintilian, if not stare and gasp, at any rate call
him vir Romanorurn eruditissimus" (Frye. 3 1 1 ); The tradition also continued in Martianus Capella and
Boethius. as well as the Greek Julian (Relihan. 4-5): Relihan qualified his work as "Ancient Menippean
Satire" because he meant "to speak of the specific relations among a limited number of texts, and to confine
[himself] to the practical criticism of a genre that changes through time"(1bid.. 9).

"Menippean satire has no ancient sanction as a generic term,"'" that "there is no term to label a
genre of literature until the sixteenth century, and I am free to attempt to make a meaningful term
of it." " In fact, the only formal definition of satire preserved from antiquity spoke only of
"morally corrective poems", according to Relihan." The popular belief that the Menippean satire
was acknowledged in antiquity by this name as an "alternative convention" of satire was based on
a misreading of Quintilian, he argued -historically,
the term "Menippean satire" was not used as
a generic term untiI 158 1. when Justius Lipsis wrote his Satyrs Menippea. Somnium. Lusus in
noslri aevi critic~s.~ "Sarura" was an appropriate term for a mixture of prose and verse, which
was first found in Lucian's work."' The Menippean satire, which parodied the practice of
preaching was, on Roman soil at ieast, a parody of traditional satire in many ways, and militantly
against authority. The loss of central authority in the Menippean satire, of the author's
presentation of a single point of view, Bakhtin also noted, relating it to his dialogical principle."
Relihan defined the term "genre" "as a body of [literary] conventions, in structures and in style, to
which certain themes are more appropriate than others. The reader, aware of the conventions of
the genre, pays attention to variations on these conventions. deviations from them, or simple
compliance with them."" Relihan continued: "The point of the work is revealed in large part
through the use of these conventions. The conventions themselves have a life of their own, obey
an inner logic. and may be said to have a history independent of the text. One must look outside
therefore, to the genre as a whole. in order to understand an individual work; by virtue of its
" Ibid.. 9.
" Ibid.
'n Relihan. 12.
Ibid.
31' Frye, 1993, 13.
" Frye. 17.
" Relihan, 10.

generic affiliations, a text is not self-sufficient but makes sense in the context of its tradition1*."
Historically. the Menippean satire began to merge with the novel, producing various hybrids. but
the endless catalogues and lists, the dialogues. the characterization along humorous or
carnivalesque lines. the narratives, and the constant ridicule of philosophers and pedantic critics
were all central characteristic^.^ Relihan argued that only particular combinations of
characteristics characterized the Menippea. whereas other combinations characterized only other
related comic, or noncomic, genres." The Menippean satire - at its most concentrated -
presented its readers with a world vision that had a single intellectual pattern. This intellectual
structure made for "violent dislocations"
in the way readers normally understood the logic of
narrative or story telling. But this appearance of "supposed carelessness" 37, that resulted
especially from first reading revealed more about the reader's tendency to judge by "a novelcentred
conception of fiction" " than it did about the real structure of the work at hand. The
importance of chronologica1 storytelling. as in the novel, is undeniable, but there are also other
kinds of imaginative narratives that challenges the reader's perceptions of time and space
including the Menippean satire.
In Problems of Dostoevsky 's Poetics (1 984). Bakhtin documented the rise of the modem
"polyphonic" novel, and crucial to its development, was the genre he called 'menippea*." '' The
genre was essentially dialogic and comic; it was opposed to the monoiogic serious genres
" Ibid.; See also Bakhrin. 106.
Relihan. 3 12.
'' Relihan. 5.
'" Relihan. 3 10.
" Ibid.
" "id.
'' Bakhtin. 132-47.

(tragedy. epic. history, rhetoric, the epistle). which took for granted "an integrated and stable
universe of discourse." "' In this genre, the relationship of author to his readers that was cenual to
the interpretation of the work. broke down. The narrator discovered that he "means more than one
thing." and truth came about as a possibility that arose from the conflict of ideas. The polyphonic
novel was a world of carnival, in which everything was turned upside-down. Carnival iife was
more than "a mere safety value, deflecting attention from social reality," argued Natalie Davis in
her study of sixteenth-century social life in France. She argued that "festive life can. on the one
hand, perpetuate certain values of the community (even guarantee its survival), and on the other
hand criticize political order. Misrule can have its own rigor and can also decipher king and
state." "
Socrates and Plato were also of great importance here. and Bakhtin postulated a prehistory of
Menippean satire in which Menippus appeared as the only person who gave it fixed form. "
Bakhtin, like Frye, cast his net wide: the diatribe. the soliloquy, the symposium, the novel and the
utopian literature all developed under its influence. '3
Sometimes Bakhtin was careful to
distinguish between the genre and things merely influenced by it. while sometimes he was not. It
seemed that the menippea could be viewed as an intellectual attitude adopted toward the value of
truth and the possibility of meaning, as well as a particular world view, that might be revealed in
a number of different genres. More importantly Bakhtin's attempt to define the genre in terms of
a number of interrelated structural and thematic elements, most of which are also relevant to
Relihan's more restricted study of the Menippean genre in antiquity is central to my approach to
Mayhew. These characteristics - listed below - prove to be very important comparatively to
- - -- - -
*' Bakhtin. 6; quoted in Holland 1979. 36. n. l I.
" Davis. Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modem France. Stanford University Press. 1 975.
97.
'' Bakhtin. 6: quoted in Holland 1979.33. n. 12.
'" For Bakhtin and his theories, see Todorov. 1984.

Frye's earlier discussions. and they are summarized as follows:
( 1 ) As a genre of ultimate philosophic and religious questions. the Menippea contemplated
the world on the broadest possible scale with fantasy and free invention following this.
(2) The Menippea revealed an extraordinary freedom of plot and philosophical invention,
and an independence from plausibility in its depictions: The most important characteristic of the
Menippea was the creation of extraordinary adventures in which to test a truth or philosophical
idea, which was embodied in the person of a wise man or sage. This accounted for the frequent
journeys to heaven and hell. whose real purpose was the testing of an idea in the world. In
Menippean sorire, the Odyssey was a series of more metaphysical quests where truth may be
found."
(3) The Menippea is characterized by an experimental fantasticality, which is very important.
There is observation from an unusual point of view. typically from on high, as when Menippus
looked down on the earth from the moon in Lucian's Icaromenippus. Visual representations of
exotic places endemic to factual travel accounts also combine. This brings about a radical change
in the way everyday life is observed as in London Labour. From its beginning, Mayhew opened
London Labour with a broad theatrical sweep of London's street markets on a Saturday night as if
one might imagine he is perched atop St. Paul's cathedral:
Here, and in the shops adjoining, the working-classes generally purchase their Sunday's
Dinner; and after pay-time on Saturday night. or early on Sunday morning, the crowd in
the New-cut. and the Brill in particular. is almost impassable. Indeed the scene in these
parts has more of the character of a fair than a market. There are hundreds of staIls, and
every stall has its one or two lights: either it is illuminated by the intense white light of
the new self-generating gas-lamp, or else it is brightened up by the red-smoky flame of
Relihan. 33.

the oId-fashioned grease lamp. One man shows off his yellow haddock with a candle
stuck in a bundle of fire; his neighbour makes a candlestick of a huge turnip, and the
tallow gutters over the sides; whilst the boy shouting "Eight a penny, stunning pears!"
has rolled his dip in a thick coat of brown paper. that flares away with the candle. Some
stalls are crimson with the fire shining through the holes beneath the baked chestnut
stove; others have handsome octahedral lamps; while a few have a candle shining
through a sieve; these, with the sparkling ground-glass globes of the tea-dealers' shops.
and the butchers' gaslights streaming and fluttering in the wind, like flags of flame, pour
forth such a flood of light, that at a distance the atmosphere immediately above the spot is
as lurid as if the street were on fire."
(4) The Menippea is constructed on three levels (Olympus, earth, the underworld), which
was a consequence of its wide-ranging philosophical univer~alism.~
(5) The organic combination of fantastic, elevated, and even mystical or religious elements
with the dregs of earthly life - robbers* dens, brothels, prisons and so on - was characteristic of
slum naturalism. Bakhtin pointed out that slum naturalism was present in its fullest degree in the
works of Petronius and Apuleius. As we shall see. Mayhew's adventures took place in
marketplaces, bazaars, taverns. and slums as well as in prisons and dens of thieves." Mayhew
collided with worldly evil, depravity, baseness, and vulgarity in their most extreme expression.
(6) A wide use of inserted genres: novellas, letters, oratorical speeches, symposia, and so on,
with varying degrees of distance from an authorial point of view, or parody is typical of the
Menippea. Bakhtin here alluded to the mixing of prose and verse genres. The Menippea
'' Mayhew, 9. See also Stafford, 1984.482.
Jh Bakhtin, 1 14.
47
Mayhew recorded his visits to a den of thieves (Mayhew, IV: 31 1.316) and a rookery (Mayhew. IV:
294).

penetrated large genres such as the novel and the encyclopedia. for example, subjecting them to
certain transformations, mixing styles and tones. "What is coalescing here is a new relationship to
the word as the material of literature." argued Bakhtin." In Menippean satire. the heroes of Old
Comedy traveled to heaven and hell to find simple common sense answers; the genre championed
common sense over chariatans, quacks and frauds. Humiliation followed pretenders to the truth.
for the genre distrusted all philosophic systems. Furthermore, strange exotic languages and a
great variety of styles were relied on; it dealt freely with personifications and abstractions."'
These are important characteristics of Menippean satire but there are also important differences
between Old Comedy and Menippean satire. When earthly problems proved insoluble in Old
Comedy. the fantastic was invoked as a source of soiutions, and in the happy endings of comedy
these solutions were found; but Old Comedy was not just present in Menippean satire - as a
linguistic model and a thematic source for tales of the triumph of simple common sense over
dogmatic formulations - it was also the source of specific plots. Old Comedy was the comedy of
words. and comedy at the expense of words."
(7) Violations of the established civilized norms of behaviour, including habits of speech '',
words that seem inappropriate because of their "cynical frankness" and scandals were also
typical of the Menippea. Such breaks in the normal order of the world freed human behaviour
from the presuppositions that predetermined it. Moral-psychological experimentation and a
representation of abnormal psychic states were observed: insanity of all son" split personality,
Bakhtin. 1 18.
'" Relihan, 33.
"' Ibid.
" Bakhtin. 117.
" Ibid.
'' Mayhew recorded his visit to the insane asylum. He stood at the window on an upper floor of the asylum
looking down on the crowd of homeless men and women waiting for the door to open: "A few were
82

unusual dreams, and so on. In Mayhew's case, as we shall see in Chapter's 2 and 4, bankruptcy
and moral dilemmas destroyed "the epic and tragic wholeness of a person and his fate" *
suggesting another person within. raising the question that characters do not coincide with
themselves.
(8) A greater imponance is given to the comic element in the Menippea than it is in the
Socratic dialogue. The humour may be greatly exaggerated (as in Varro) or greatly reduced (as in
Boethius). In the case of London Labour. the dialogic and comic are equally important.
(9) The Menippea exhibits a love of sharp and oxymoronic contrast and abrupt transitions,
unexpected comings together of distant and disunited things, and mesalliances of all sons.
( 10) Elements of social utopias are common in the genre and are usually presented in the form
of a journey to an unknown land. What functions did the adventure plot or quest fuffill in the
whole of Mayhew's artistic designs To answer that question, according to Bakhtin, Leonid
Grossman pointed to three basic functions concerning the novel. The adventure world expressed a
very ancient trait: "the impulse to introduce the extraordinary into the very thick of the
commonplace, to fuse into one, according to Romantic principles, the sublime with the grotesque,
and by an imperceptibie process of conversion to push images and phenomena of everyday reality
to the limits of the fantastic." ''
( 1 I ) A concern with social and topical issues is often evident in the Menippea. Bakhtin spoke
of journalistic overtones in the genre; and referred to the satires of Lucian as an "encyclopedia of
without shoes: and these keep one foot only to the ground. while the bare flesh that has had to tramp
through the snow is blue and livid-looking as half-cooked meat*' (Mayhew, III: 428).
Bakhtin. 1 16.
s5 Bakhtin. 85. 103. Yeo commented that this "'genre of literary rambles had much earlier roots in lighthearted
and thrilling tours of quasi-criminal London. exhibiting its "cheats and villanies". still very much
the subject of Tom and Jerry's camera obscura in 182 1 " ( 197 1.66). The introduction of an adventure world
also guided the reader through "the labyrinth of philosophicai theories, images and human relationships",
all packed together into an easy-to-read novel.

his times."
a sort of Diary of a Writer. As a genre, it was especially relevant when disputes over
"ultimate questions" had become an everyday phenomen~n,~ as was the case with Mayhew's
concern with the impact of the Industrial Revolution SX and urbanism on the labouring poor in
Victorian London.
Bakhtin points to the essential unity of the Menippean satire over six hundred years of
history. And although he did not consider all the different ways in which the various seriocomic
genres were used, nevertheless Bakhtin created an important series of relations between
Menippean structural elements and the corresponding search for newer ones. These interrelations
between multileveled consuuc tion, stylistic and tonal variations, subsumed genres, the use of
verse, mad characters, fantasy and voyages and thematic breakdowns of older notions of truth and
order, were of course of crucial imp~rtance.~ In conclusion. both Frye and Bakhtin focused more
on modem than ancient literature using Varro, Seneca, Petronius and Apuleis as a platform from
which to leap into modem times. They both reiterated that much of what was strange in modem
fiction belonged to an ancient tradition. Both claimed that the Menippean satire, however they
had named it, had a profound influence on a wide range of other works. Both believed. like
Re1 i han, that the Menippean satire "falls between the cracks of traditional literary categories."
which is what had happened with London Labour. Frye argued: "A clearer understanding of the
form and traditions of the anatomy would make a good many elements in the history of literature
come into focus. . .. . In nearly every period of literature there are many romances, confessions,
Bakhtin. 1 18.
'' Ibid.. 1 19.
5Wobsbawm described three periods of the Industrial Revolution: ( I ) 1780-1840. the classical age of the
Industrial Revolution; (2) 1 840- 1890, capitalism's rule: and (3) 1890- 1939, the age of imperialism and
monopoly capitalism (Hobsbawm. 1964.272).
"' Relihan. 8.
Relihan, 35.

and anatomies that are neglected only because the categories in which they belong are
unrecognized." " Both of them agreed that a new relation of the author to the work was the issue.
For Bakhtin. the Menippea expanded into the genre of the novel. "Thanks to this." Bakhtin wrote.
"the genre of the Menippea was able to wield such immense influence - to this day almost
entirely unappreciated in scholarship - in the history of the development of European novelistic
prose."
In terms of classical literary critici~rn,~ however, a serious and unfortunate consequence
of their work (which this dissertation is not prepared to examine in any great detail) was that the
ancient texts were themselves "deprived of a history". They were presented as one, and "that
individual works were not so much subjected to analysis as used to exemplify elements important
to the development of later literary traditions." When Bakhtin spoke of a "powerful and multibranched
generic tradition," he did not, Relihan argued, contemplate the change in the classical
genre through time, except to posit a prehistory for what he saw as a stable form."
Inside classical scholarship. Relihan elaborated on three important aspects of Menippean
satire - a fantastic narrative, the burlesque of language and literature. and practical jokes at the
expense of academic learning - which were important to this discussion and to which we now
briefly turn. The setting of Menippean satire was typically fantastic: such settings have been
catalogued with "posthumous judgements, dialogues of the dead, divine assemblies, heavenly
symposia, and sojorns in heaven or Hades." 65 In this fantastic setting, Menippean satire
travestied important things (epic, myth, religion etc) using humour as a weapon towards literary
and cultural authorities. Menippean sarire was true to the simplicity of its Cynic origins that
" Frye. 1973. 3 12.
h2 Bakhtin. 1 19.
"' See Relihan, 8.
Bakhtin, 1 15; Relihan. 8-9.
" Relihan. 2 1-22.

maintained that "the simple life is best."
It was not a great leap from this position to elaborating
the characteristics of Menippean satire set forth by Bakhtin."' But it was important to see that
fantasy served not only to undermine other forms of cultural and literary authority, but also to
undermine the importance of particular Menippean satire itself. As Bakhtin points out, there is no
consistent authorial point of view in Menippean satire. Menippean satire "tends to pull the rug
out from under the reader." " Menippean satire created a narrator who was a fantastic
experimenter. a traveler to impossible places and impossible sights to observe a world turned
upside-down. Menippean sarire was not a comedy, and it had no happy ending." There was also a
conventional Menippean ending, which bears some similarity to conventions of verse sarire. in
that the lessons that were preached and taught in the narrative were eventually negated, or were at
best, inadequate. Therefore, Menippean satire created an unreliable narrator, who was incapable
of understanding all that he saw. He was oblivious to his own inadequacies and contradictions as
he strove toward his intellectual goals.'"
"Parodies of Platonic myth and writing are mpant" in Menippean satire, according to
Relihar~.~' Moreover, Menippean satire was a parody of literature because it played with the
traditional assumption of the author's control of a coherent work 7' using a multiplicity of styles.
The genre was very tolerant of digressions whose sum total was a view of a universe - a
universe which could not quite be understood. Vocabulary, dialects and grammar were as
hn Relihan. 23.
('' Ibid.. 22.
" Ibid.. 23.
'' Ibid.
Ibid.. 22.24.
'' Ibid.. 25.
" Ibid.. 25-26.

fantastic as the actions they described, and alternated in "the wildest swings from grand to low
style, from fustian to textbook simplicity. from the recherche to the banal." '' Parallel to the
juxtaposition of language was the juxtaposition of relevant and seemingly irrelevant material -
"the shocking juxtaposition of irreconcilable opposites" - which kept the narrative "from
marching uninterrupted to its appointed ends." 7'
There was more here than "the shocking
juxtaposition of irreconcilable opposites" however. Frye also sought anatomy here, the ruthless
compilation of facts and information observed with an ironic aye, and an attempt to get all of life
between the covers of the book." 75 Menippean satire developed "philosophical formulations of
the inadequacy of human knowledge and the existence of a reality that transcends reason; but in
its origins the genre merely thumbs its nose at pretenders to the uuth by a denial that anything
other than common sense is valuable or apprehensible." '" The world is, to the Cynic, irrational
and incomprehensibie; even though Varro's massive erudition is displayed in "abstruse
vocabulary, technical lists, etymologies. learned allusion. and philosophicaI arg~rnentation."~
Viewing human folly from some great height was one of the genre's most important comic
c~nventions.'~ In other words. the genre created characters who had achieved wisdom through
reaching impossible heights through impossible means.
Relihan submited that the various strange features of Menippean satire were logically derived
from, and consistent with, a literary aesthetic that approved of the organic mixture of prose and
verse in a single literary work. What transformed Old Comedy into Menippean sarire were the
" Ibid.. 26-27.
'" Ibid., 26.
'' Ibid.. 28.
7h Ibid., 29.
Ibid.. 30.
'' Ibid.

parody of the narrator and the narrator's quest (a gift of the Odyssey) and the parody of
philosophical thought and philosophical genres, particularly those of Plato."j By insisting on such
a literary form. Menippean satire was essentially "an antigenre. a burlesque of literature at
large""' and therefore deeply anticultural. It played with "the underpinning of all ancient
literature, the connection of aucror and auctoriras; in it the author is not a teacher. and it assumes
no stable moral or didactic purpose. Thus the genre can be turned to specific parodies of those
genres that are explicitly instructive: ... [as in] the encyclopedia in Vano (embryonically)."" In
Menippean sarire, fantasy undermined interpretation of the frustration of reasonable expectations.
and of irony. There was an unreliable narrator or source, no driving unity of purpose (hence the
digressions), and no fixed point of view. Such a plot as there was was very sirnpte; rhetoric and
persuasion were minimal. Because the genre strove for effect through impropriety, the author of a
Menippean satire accused himself of a lack of respect for taste, tradition, and decorum, and this
was usually translated into self-parody when the author identified himself with his narrator. Selfparody
extended to the parody of the author's own knowledge. and the rejection of a11 dogma
which the form implied led to the rejection of the author's ability to preach. Or even to
understand. The narrator was central to the work only as the nexus of confusion." With these
kinds of brief considerations. we can see that there was. following Relihan, a coherent Menippean
tradition from Menippus into the Middle Ages.
If, after reading this dissertation. the reader were asked to set down a list of the qualities that
were memorable about Mayhew's London Labour, the list might reasonably look something like
this; firstly. there is a richness and clarity with which the sights, sounds, spaces. and even smells
of London's Victorian street life come to life in addition to the naturalness, diversity, localism,
7v Ibid.. 34.
'" ibid.
'' Ibid.. 35.

and accuracy of the dialogues, and the immediacy and vividness of the street-folk themselves;
second there is a constant obsession with encyclopaedic and exhaustive techniques as well as
subject matter, which is used in highly intellectualized ways; third, the elaborate, charming and
carnivalesque ways that Mayhew's nomadic characters parody civilized bourgeois Victorian
patterns of thought and behaviour are certainly evident; founh, the revelation of characters.
experiences, and events using dialogic interviewing techniques is noteworthy. It should not be
difficult for the reader to see, as the dissertation unfolds. that these four points describe elements
in London Labour, elements, which relate to the genre of the novel, satire and confession
respectively. Lundon Labour is a complete Menippea. or more specifically, a genre of the
carnival/grotesque (as in the illustrations in the Appendix and the humorous dialogue of Chapter
5, etc. ). X3 HOW did this parricular literary genre actually work in practice, and how did ir fir info
the history of documentation as well as reception This is why I introduce the question of genre.
not simply to add a literary dimension to a complex prose documentation of urban life, but to
explain its direct affect and ambivalence toward the subject itself as in the case of Mayhew's
exhaustive documentation of "unreal facts" in relationship to a feeling of terror as well as fantasy
(see page 108). At one level, Mayhew is trying to persuade his readers to accept his middle-class
reformist values, but, in fact, what he creates is a tension between his poor and the middle-class
readers. and that this inteltectual tension is central to the way Mayhew uses the Menippea. For
Mayhew, the satirist. the genre of the Menippea (cornic/grotesque) was able to create a broad-
brush, panoramic view of London from both inside and outside the city with the whole Victorian,
middle-class world as its target. These, then. are some of these critical issues that are discussed in
Chapters 4, 5,6.
'' Ibid.

'' Relihan. 3 13-3 14.

Chapter 4
Space-Wars and Exploitation in Mayhew's London
(1) Introduction
Through his scattered but detailed descriptions. Henry Mayhew in London Labour developed
a theory of space in relationship to a theory of exploitation by focusing on how differing and
opposed Victorian classes came to represent their lived experiences spatially. At one point he
writes to his readers: "I have already portrayed to the reader the difference between the homes of
the two classes - the comfort and well-furnished abodes of the one, and the squalor and bare
walls of the other." ' Somewhere along the way in his travels. he hit upon a three-planed literary
construction for London. From London's macadamized streets, to its lofty chimneys, to its
underground sewers, Mayhew recorded his impressions of these vast spaces of London. Below
goounnd' Mayhew wandered through 'hellish* sewer systems" ' aware that it was "dangerous to
venture far into any of the smaller sewers branching off from the main."
At street level. he
analyzed the minurae of London's dust, din, and vermin. as well as its actual street construction.
laws. and methods for cleaning. London Labour recorded London's embattled spatial terrain
including everything from its housing, to its streets, and to its squares but it was also more than
this. London Labour was a fantastic adventure quest set amidst extraordinary situations - from a
Menippean point of view. Victorian city spaces. at one and the same time, were a tangible
relational construction for Mayhew. They were, what David Harvey has called, "relational
' Mayhew, 111: 22 1. Engels described St. Ciles as "situated in the most densely-populated part of London
and is surrounded by splendid wide streets which are used by the fashionable world . . . Such dens of
extreme poverty are often found close to the splendid mansions of the wealthy" (Engels. 33-34)-
' Mayhew's ratcatchers and bugdestroyers also worked in dark places. In one of the most angular and
obscure courts branching out into Chapel-street. Somers-town, Mayhew discovered "a perfect nest of ratcatchers"
(Mayhew. 111: I ).
' Mayhew. 11: 15 1.
'' Ibid.

spaces". Social relationships were ordered within these lived spaces. that is. space was regarded,
"in the fashion of Leibnitz, as being contained in objects in the sense that an object can exist only
insofar as it contains and represents itself within relationships to other objects."
Chapter 4 thus
examines several problems concerning urban history that are framed by Mayhew's analysis of
Victorian London's urban spaces - its docks. streets, marketplaces. houses. and railways -
within the broader context of a developing new mass culture. But before plunging directly into
Mayhew's descriptions and analysis of London's 'extraordinary' spacial situations. the
dissertation establishes the broad historical conditions, both technological and social. of
nineteenth-century England as well as the more specific historical setting and significance of
London.
(2) The Historical Setting of Victorian London
The greatest migration of peoples in recorded history began in the nineteenth-century. and
with it, the horrors of uncontrolled urbanization. From 1847-48, for instance. the catastrophic
Irish famine uprooted 1% million out of a total 8% million people, producing a massive
emigration to England's rapidly growing provincial towns and clusters of villages. It was in
Liverpool, according to Mayhew. where "the tide of immigration flowed the strongest."
Immigration coupled with industrialization uprooted generations from their traditional homes and
workplaces, breaking down age-old local traditions and bringing about the emergence of a new
middle-class.' And the ever-widening spatial segregation of nineteenthsentury city life began. in
' Harvey. 16. 13. Space is understood here as the actual geographical-urban spaces of Victorian London.
Regarding Liverpool. Mr. Rushton informed Mayhew: "Between the 13& Jan. and the 1 3h Dec.. both
inclusive . . . 296.23 1 persons landed in this port (Liverpool) from Ireland. Of this vast number. about
130.000 emigrated to the United States: some 50.000 were passengers on business: and the remainder
( 16 1.23 1 ). mere paupers, half-naked and starving, landed. for the most part. during the winter. and became
immediately on landing, applicants for parochial relief' (Mayhew. I: t 2).
CIass existed in Marx's two senses: (1 ) according to the objective criterion of human relations to the
means of production. especially as exploiters and exploited; (2) according to the subjective criterion of
class consciousness. Marx and Engels defined the term "class" in the first sense to open the Communist
Manifesro in what is called Marx's macro-theory. Class in the fullest sense only came into existence at the

part. here at the London Dock - "the very focus of metropolitan wealth."
The Docks. together
with its fleets, was part of Britain's greatest water-borne achievement. "So vast an amount of
shipping and commerce had never been concentrated in any other single port." Mayhew claimed
as he forced his readers to grapple with the reiationship between London's wealth and London's
casual labour force with its inferior housing. He urged his readers to visualize London's Docks, to
pass. in their imaginations, "from the quay and warehouses to the courts and alleys that surround
them. and the mind is bewildered with the destitution of the one place as it is with the
superabundance of the other. Many come to see the riches, but few the poverty, abounding in
absolute masses round the far-famed port of London." "There are acres upon acres of treasure,
more than enough, one would fancy. to stay the cravings of the whole world," he continued, "and
yet you have to visit the hovels grouped round all this amazing excess of riches to witness the
- - - -- - - - -- - -
historical moment when classes began to acquire consciousness of themselves as such. (Genovese. 1984.
13). Regarding the term '*class". Hobsbawm argued: "Class is not merely a relationship between groups. it
IS also their coexistence within a social. cultural. institutional framework set by those above" (Genovese,
2 I ). Regarding "subaltern". Hobsbawm also argued: 'The world of the poor, however elaborate, selfcontained.
and separate. it is a subaltern and therefore in some sense incomplete world. . . . only because
the initiative that changes conditions on a national scale comes from above or because the mechanism for
diffusing ideas are generally outside". (Ibid.) The main characteristic of the bourgeois as a class was that it
was "a body of persons of power and influence. independent of the power and influence of traditional birth
and status" (Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Capital. 1848-1875. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1975.
244). Working-class consciousness did not exist in 1778 or indeed during the French Revolution. For
Hobsbawm: "It certainly came into existence between 18 15 and 1848. more especially around 1830. The
very words 'working class' . . . occurs in English labor writings shonly after Waterloo. and perhaps even
earlier. and in French working-class writing the equivalent phrase becomes frequent after 1830
(Hobsbawm. The Age of Revolution. 1789-/848. New York: NAL. 1962,249). The most active, militant
and politically conscious of the labouring poor were not the new factory proletarians but the skilled
craftsmen. independent artisans. small-scale domestic workers, and others who lived and worked as they
had done before the Industrial Revolution, but "under far greater pressure" (Hobsbawm. 1962. 253).
Lefevbre stated: 'The proletariat. though predicated on the working class as the historical subject of
alienated labour and living, was not an empirical category. It was a category of negation in both a critical
and utopian sense. refemng to the fragmentation of human labour and existence and its dialectical opposite,
the practical negation of existing conditions in their totality" (Lefevbre, 72-3). The labour movement was
"rather a common front of all forces and tendencies representing the (mainly urban) labouring poor"
(Hobsbawm, 1962,252). The labour movement began to emerge as a way of life during the first half of the
nineteenth-century. and by 1848 the risings of the labouring poor were making the revolutionary demand
for a new kind of society. "What was new in the labour movement of the early nineteenth-century was class
consciousness and class ambition." argued Hobsbawm. "A specific class. workers. or proletariat. faced
another. the employers or capitalist" (Hobsbawm 1962. 248).
Mayhew. 111: 308.
" Ibid., 302.

same amazing excess of poverty." Houses within the London Docks appeared to be "four times
more crowded than in other parts of London, and more numerous by half as many again than
those even in the low-rented district of Bethnai-green." The London Dock itself sprawled over
ninety acres and three parishes of London, St-George's. Shadwell. and wapping." The docks
were. according to Mayhew, "but one of six similar establishments - three being on the north
and three on the south side of the Thames." " Another construction of docks, the West India
Docks built in 1800'~. were the first docks ever built in London "about a mile and a-half from the
London Dock" l3 on the north side of the Tharnes. Sprawling over 295 acres. they were nearly "3
times bigger than the London Docks, and 12 times bigger than St. Katherine's." Here at the
Docks - amidst "one of the most extraordinary and least-known scenes of this metropolis"-
Mayhew also bore witness to the violent scramble for work. Among "masses of men" at "halfpast
seven in the morning" at the gates of the London Dock, Mayhew reports that "many have
gone there, and gone through the same struggle - the same cries; and have gone away, after all,
without the work they have screamed for." '' The Tharnes. he theorized, was not only "the grand
medium for carrying on the traffic of Great Britain in the world." It was also "the capital of an
island which is a mere speck on the map of the earth, is centered and originated, planned and
executed, so vast a portion of the trade of all the nations." He continued to draw word-pictures for
his readers. He speculated that "in order to accommodate the whole of our merchant vessels. a
dock of 15,000 square acres would be necessary." In other words. "there would be required to
1 0
Ibid. Mayhew recorded that "the cranes creak with the mass of riches" (Ibid.).
!' Ibid.. 302.
' Mayhew. 111: 65. According to Mayhew. the remaining docks included St. Katherine's Dock. the
Commercial Docks and timber ponds. the Grand Surrey Canal Dock at Rotherhithe. the East Country Dock
and the Regent's Canal Dock (Mayhew. 111: 3 1 I - 12).
'I Mayhew. 111: 3 10. The warehouses for imported goods." according to Mayhew. %re on the four quays
of the import dock. They are well contrived and of great extent. being calculated to contain 180.000 tons of
merchandise; and there has been at one time on the quays. and in the sheds, vaults and warehouses. colonial
produce worth 20,000.0001. sterling" (Ibid.).
I' Ibid.. 304.

float them an extent of water sufficient to cover four times the area of the city of London. while
the whole population of Birmingham would be needed to man them." " Mayhew concluded: "It
would, perhaps. hardly be credited. that the value of the articles which our rnercantiie marine is
engaged in transporting to and from the shores of the kingdom, amounts to upwards of one
hundred million pound sterling. Such, then. is the extent of the external transit of this country.
There is scarcely a comer of the earth that is not visited by our vessels." l6
Britain's crowning transporntion achievement was the great trunk lines with their miles of
iron tracks." The London to Birmingham Railway, engineered by Robert Stephenson in 1837.
was the first great railway of the Victorian age with Euston tati ion" as its London terminus. In
184 1, Bradshaw's national railway timetable, sporting its famous yellow wrapper, appeared
inside the stations while inside the trains. Victorians 'whiled away the hours' reading the latest
"yellow-back novels of G.P.R. James. Marryat and Mayne ~ eid.'~ There were 500 miles of track
l5 Ibid.. 3 18.
l6 1bid. Mayhew recorded: "From 500 to 800 vessels frequently arrive at one time in London after the
duration of a contrary wind, and then such is the demand for workmen, and so great the press of business.
owing to the rivalry among merchants. and the desire of each owner to have his cargo the first to the
market. that a sufficient number of hands is scarcely to be found" (Ibid.. 3 12). Along the Thames, there
were also new pier deveiopments: "Not only since the steam era have new boats and new companies
gradually made their appearance. but new piers have sprung up in the course of the Tharnes from
Gravesend to Richmond. Of these piers. that at Hungerford is the most remarkable, as it is erected fairly in
the river: and on a fine summer's day. when filled with well-dressed persons. waiting "for their boat." it has
a very animated appearance" (Ibid.. 335).
" The Stockton and Darlington railway, according to Mayhew. was completed in 1825 when "steam-power
was first used as a means of propulsion and locomotion on a railway" (Mayhew, 111: 322). According to
EngeIs: 'The first of the important railways was the Liverpool and Manchester, opened in 1830. Today
1 1 8451 all the big cities are linked by rail - London to Southampton. Brighton. Dover. Colchester.
Cambridge, Exetcr (via Bristol) and Birmingham; Birmingham to Gloucester, Liverpool and Lancaster ...
and also to Leeds ... Leeds to Hull and Newcastle via York" (Engeis. 23). Railways extended "upwards of
12,000 miles, or four times the distance across the Atlantic." according to Mayhew. (Mayhew. 111: 32 1 ).
'Thus we may conclude that each passenger has journeyed I7 !4 miles", Mayhew recorded, "and that the
grand aggregate of travel by all the railway passengers of the kingdom will be 1.052.327.632 95 miles. or
nearly eleven times the distance between the earth and the sun every year" (Ibid., 324).
18
Railway passengers approached Euston Station ( 1835-9) through the famous "Euston Arch." Euston
Station reached back architecturally in history to the Greek propylaeum. while nineteenth-century arcades
and railway spaces covered by a simple shed of metal construction interpenetrated its public space. (Dixon,
Roger and Stefan Muthesius. Victorian Arcltirecrure. New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press,
1978.99).
l9 Altick. Richard D.. The English Common Reader. A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800-

y 1838.4.500 miles by 1840. and over 23.500 miles of railroad track by 1850.~~ Track was
everywhere, " even below gound.= The national railway network. centred in London, and the
Repeal of the Corn Law, in particular. substantially benefited the Port of London's import trade.
which gave London a unique distribution trade advantage both internationally and nationally.l'
Mayhew commented on the growing relationship between the railway and London's more
spatiall y-extended markets:
The facilities of railway conveyance. by means of which fish can be sent from
the coast to the capital with much greater rapidity, and therefore be received
much fresher than was formerly the case, have brought large supplies to London
from places that beforehand contributed no quantity to the market. and so indeed,
as I heard in all quarters of Billingsgate. an extraordinary lowness of price in
this species of diet. This cheap food, through the agency of the costerrnongers,
is conveyed to every poor man's door, both in the thickly-crowded streets where
the poor reside - a family at least in every room - in the vicinity of Drury-lane
and of Whitechapel, in Westminster, Bethnal-green. and St-Giies, and through
1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Revised Edition I963[1957]. 299.
"' There were speculative frenzies from 1835-37. especially 'he railway manias" of 1844-47 (Hobsbawm.
1962.65). However, according to Mayhew. it was in 1845 that 'he rage for railway speculation was most
strongly manifested" (Mayhew. 111: 322).
' By the Iatc 1860s. the North Eastern Rail way controlled "every foot of rail between the Scottish border,
the Pennine hills. the sea and the River Humber" (Dyos. 1973. I: 282-283).
3 7
" London's Underground opened in I 863. From 184 1 to I 85 I. rail ways formed within the metropolitan
area were the Great Northern; the Camden Town and Bow; and the Northern Kent Lines. The extension of
the Southampton Railway from Vauxhall to Waterloo-Bridge, as well as the Richmond Line were built
during the same time but, according to Mayhew. "for these no cuttings have been made." By the end of
June 1849. Mayhew recorded that the railways had carried 60.398.159 passengers (Mayhew, 111: 321 ).
27
Charles Booth wrote that London "is not only an unrivalled national emporium and world-market, but it
is also the Mother-city of the Kingdom and of the Empire. . . . Everything can be bought in London, and
therefore. everyone comes to buy. and the Metropolitan manufacturer himself finds his advantage as a
buyer as well as seller in this great market. For London is as much an emporium for raw materials coming
from all parts of the world. as for finished products" (quoted in Stedman Jones. 197 I. 160-6 1 ).

the long miles of the ~uburbs.'~
But the railway's efficiency began to destroy London's urban spaces: "Cities were cut up . . .
like so many pieces of pie."
and the communities left intact were now cut off from one another
by these very tracks. The railway's efficiency. in fact. began transforming whole neighbourhoods,
following Dyos. Railway companies, like city planners. "mrnrned wide belts of lines and siding
through city slums preferably where land costs and protests" were negligible, and beyond the
railway's widespread technological and social ramifications, other social changes had taken place
as well." The railway's mechanical efficiency began to replace natural rhythms of tide and wind.
"I consider that the railways have injured me, and all wet fish-sellers, to a great extent,"
complained a fresh-fish seller to Mayhew. "Fish now, you see, sir, comes in at all hours, so that
nobody can calculate on the quantity that will be received - nobody. . . . Before the railways - and
I never could see the good of them - the fish came in by the tide, and we know how to buy, for
there would be no more till next tide. Now, we don't know+" "
Apart from the railway and the docks, London itself became the most dramatic outward
symbol of the nineteenth-cenmry capitalist ~ orld.~ By 1839, even though London had grown to
688 square miles and rooghly 2 million." still people were on the move. Census repons of 1849-
'" Mayhew. I: 62.
Dyos. 1973. I: 212.
" Ibid.. 282-3. 'The truth was that, here as ekewhere." writes Dyos, "the opening of the new rail way had
simply increased the number of travelers who . - . obstinately preferred to travel by the streets. and to stay
at least one night there" (Ibid., I: 21 2).
" Mayhew. 1: 68.
'' Concerning the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the population of industrial England. Engels
stated: 'The face of the country has been completely changed . . . Lancashire's population has increased tenfold
in 80 years: and many large towns have grown up there. Liverpool and Manchester, for example, have
together 700.000 inhabitants. Near at hand are Bolton (50.000) inhabitants. Rochdaie (75,000). Oldham
(50.000). Preston (60,000). Ash ton and Stal y bridge (40.000). These and many other factory towns have
experienced mushroom growth" (Engels, 16). Engels also reported: "Between 1801 and 1844 the
population of Birmingham rose from 73,000 to 200,000. while that of Sheffield rose from 46.000 to
1 1 1.000 (Ibid.. 20).
'9 Winter. James. London 's Teeming Streers. 1830-1 914. London and New York: Routledge. 1 994.55.
According to Engels, the 184 1 census of London stated that its population was 1,949,277 (Engels, 23).

50 estimated that 2,363.14 1 people were t iving in London and the number of inhabited houses
was 307,722," so that by the time of the 1851 census. city dwellers (51 per cent) began to
outnumber Britain* s country folk.)' According to Stedman Jones. massive population increase
was not paralleled, however, by the construction of additional housing in the centre of London;
on the contrary, London's commercial and industrial developments were the primary reason for
the removal of the working-class from the central area ." London's great expansion in the
nineteenth-century. particularly in the 1830s and t 840s. was. in other words. due more to
commerce than industry. Docks with their huge warehouses ", goods yards. railway line
extensions Y. and new railway stations '' swept away certain residential areas. Godwin's Town
Swamps and Social Bridges recorded:
People have been driven in from the dwellings destroyed in Holborn, Clerkenwell
and Spitalfrelds. and they have been thrust on the other population; huddled into
any hole and comer they could put their head into - not from poverty, but from
sheer want of any dwelling within reach of their work; respectable artisans,
particularly among the class that work at their own homes, even makers of a little
Mayhew estimated that there were 4 1.000 itinerants in London. 30,000 of these were costermongers (fish,
fruit and vegetable sellers). 5.000 were manufacturers, and the rest were in greens, vegetables. and drinks.
(Mayhew. I: 4); see David Alexander. Rerailing in England during the lndusrrial Revolution. University of
London: The Athlone Press. 1970.65.
30
Mayhew. 11: 82.
'' Hobsbawrn. 1975. 173. Victorian London had become W e largest city in the world. over twice as large
as Paris. its nearest rival in 185 1 " (Stedman. Jones, 1973. 160).
" -The warehouses for imported goods." according to Mayhew. "contain 180.000 tons of merchandise: and
there has been at one time on the quays. and in the sheds. vaults and warehouses. colonial produce worth
20,000,0001. sterling" (Mayhew, In: 304).
.U
Mayhew concluded that "we have of turnpike roads. railways. and canals. no less than 130.000 and odd
miles. formed at an aggregate cost of upwards of 86.000.0001' (Mayhew, Ill: 327).
In the 1830s. a new building type. the railway station. began with buildings such as King's Cross Station
( 1850- 1852) and Paddington Railway Station (1 852-1 854). Their sheds eventually replaced some of the
largest and finest of London's architectural examples of iron and glass construction (Hitchcock. Henry
Russell, Architecrure: 19th and 20th centuries, Middlesex: The MIT Press, l963[ 19581, 12 1 ).

fancy articles and of part of watches. have been forced into the same dwellings
with some of the worst class who have been driven from Field Lane and the
slums near Sharp's ~ lle~.)~
Mayhew discovered that "the population has diminished most of all in St. James's. and the
houses the most in the City." " Mayhew reported. moreover. that suburban districts "such as
Chelsea, Marleybone. St.Pancras, Islington, Hackney. Shoreditch, Bethnal-Green, Stepney,
Poplar. Bermondsey, Newington, Lambeth. Wandsworth. Cambewell, Greenwich. and
Lewisham. have all increased greatly within the last ten years. both in dwellings and people." ''
Immense suburbs ". "unknown till recently." a according to Mayhew. branched off from "almost
every street. labyrinths of courts and alleys. [are] teeming with human beings, [and] . . . almost
every room has its separate family." " He estimated that along "200 miles of new streets" 42 built
since 1839. "no less than 6405 new dwellings having been erected annually." *3
he effect of new
house construction, Mayhew claimed, was that "capitalists may in one year embark sufficient
" Godwin. 1859.20.
Ibid. Following Stedman Jones. between 1830 and 1856. New Oxford Street cut through St. Giles.
Victoria Street cut through the rookeries of Westminster. Commercial Street cut throtigh Whitechapel.
Farringdon Street, and New Cannon Street, and Victoria Street cut through the poorest. most densely
populated parts of the City (Stedman Jones, 166). Furthermore. Stedman Jones argued: 'The building of
New Oxford Street displaced over 5000 persons; it was estimated that the Farringdon Street clearances
involved the displacement of up to 40.000 inhabitants" (Ibid.). Engels commented: "In London there is a
well-known 'rookery' of St. Giies. which is to be demolished to make way for wide new thoroughfares"
(Ibid.. 33).
39
Mayhew reported that there were also "remoter suburbs of Blackheath, Croydon. Richmond.
Twickenharn. Isiewonh. or wherever thcrc are villa residences of the wealthy" (Mayhew. 11: 78). 'Two
thousand miles of houses" had been built in London during the last twenty years. according to Mayhew
(Mayhew. 11: 65).
411
hid. Asa Briggs described London as 'an urban jungle'. It was "a province covered with houses. its
diameter from north to south and from east to west is so great that persons living in the furthest extremities
have few interests in common; its area is so large that each inhabitant is in general only acquainted with his
own quarter and has no minute knowledge of other parts of the town" (Briggs, Asa, Victorim Cities. New
York: Harper & Row. 1963.332).
4 I
Mayhew, 11: 82.
Mayhew. 111: 223.
" Ibid.

means in building speculations to erect. say 500 new houses, in any particular distri~t.~ Mayhew
argued that it was *a rage for building," " evoked. in part. by "the state of the money market." '
were considered to be hot-spots of crime. disease, and the 'dangerous classes'. Nevertheless. the
working-class "clung obstinately, regardless of discomfort to themselves, to the immediate
neighbourhood, or at least within walking distance of it." "
Victorians had been totally unprepared for the broad economic and social unrest coupled with
the revolutionary technological changes that swept over England during the '30s and '40s.
Politically. the revolutionary wave of 1830 had affected all of ~ uro~e~: more specifically. the
British Reform Act of 1832 marked the final defeat of the aristocracy by bourgeois powers in
Western Europe. Hobsbawm writes that "the ruling class of the next fifty years was to be the
'grande bourgeoisie* of bankers, big industrialists, and sometimes top civil servant^.'^ " London
was becoming an urban jungle, filied with a growing middle-class, the labouring poor, and a
U
Mayhew. 11: 2. Mayhew argued that "the inhabited houses in the five districts of the Registrar-General
have increased to the extent of 45.000, or from 262.737 in I84 I. to 307.722 in 185 1 " flbid.). Engels
commented on Manchester: "Builders who erected new houses put them up without regard to the situation
of older neighbouring property. The tiny gaps which exist between the houses are called 'courts' for want
of a more appropriate name. There is more evidence of planning in the rather newer parts of the Old Town
. . . Here the spaces between the blocks of dwellings consist of regular - generally square - courts, from
which there is access to the streets by a covered passage" (Engels. 65).
J 5
Mayhew. 11: 324.
"" Ibid.
47
Stedman Jones. 197 1. 170. Stedrnan Jones argued that. despite a large growth in population, the
industrial structure of London. and the geographical distribution of its inhabitants were little different from
that of the eighteenth-century (197 1. 160). According to Mayhew. the Queen's ratcatcher, Jack Black. had
a parlour that looked "more like a shop than a family apartment" (Mayhew. In: 1 1, 19).
" Together with the emergence of the working-ciass in Britain. it marked a radical innovation in politics,
which concluded with the defeat of the 1848 revolutions. In Britain, France. the German states and all of
Italy. following Hobsbawm, "there has never been anything closer to the world-revolution of which the
insurrectionaries of the period dreamed than this spontaneous and general conflagration" (Hobsbawm.
1962. 139).
"' Ibid. According to Hobsbawm. they were "accepted by an aristocracy which effaced itself or agreed to
promote primarily bourgeois policies, unchallenged as yet by universal suffrage. though harassed from
outside by the agitations of the lesser or unsatisfied businessmen, the petty-bourgeoisie. and the early
labour movements" (Ibid., 353).

netherworld bulging with gangsters. tramps. prostitutes, and so on. This growing middle-class
was highlycontrolied on the outside. and anxious and fearful on the inside - like the
schoolmaster. Bradley Headstone. in Dickens* novel. Our Muruul ~riend.~ Writers expressed.
most acutely, a kind of restlessness, ambivalence, and anxiety. "It was a strange isolation I then
lived in.. . . recalled Carlyle. "In the midst of their crowded streets and assemblages. I walked
solitary; and (except as it was my own heart, not another's that I kept devouring savage also). as
the tiger in his jungle." 5' Charles Dickens captured a different but similar kind of experience:
"Put me down on Waterloo Bridge at eight o'clock in the evening, with leave to roam about as
long as you like, and I would come home. as you know. panting to go on. I am sadly strange as it
is. and can't settle." '' Waiter Houghton believed that "Victorian society. particularly in the
period before 1850, was shot through. from top to bottom, with the dread of some wild outbreak
of the masses that would overthrow the established order and confiscate private property." 53 The
political crisis came in 1848, according to him: "In February revolutions burst out on the
continent. In March there were riots in London.. . . In April the government filled London with
troops under the Duke of Wellington. . . . In June, the Houses of Parliament were provisioned for
a siege. The strong measures were successful and the Chartist movement, already weakened by
internal dissension collapsed. . . But the threat was revived by the Hyde Park riots in 1886. and
the anxiety was kept alive by the existence of masses of dark, impenetrable, subterranean
blackguardisms in the slums of every city." '' More than any other city, in the period after 1850.
'" Ibid., 320.
I' Carlyle. Sanor Resortus. The Life and Opinions of Herr Teu/elsdrockh. edited by Charles Harrold. New
York: The Odyssey Press, Book 11.7, 1937[ 18371, 163-4.
'' Christie. George Forstcr, 1939.69.
" Houghton. Walter. The Victorian Frame of Mind 1830-1870. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1975.
55.
54
Ibid., 55.
55 Ibid., 58; Stedman Jones. 197 1,285.292; The word "mob" stemmed from the word "mobile". and
British rulers had always regarded lower-class mobility as a threat. sometimes with good reason.

London also became a symbol of the problem of the 'residu~rn'.~~ *Pitted against the dominant
climate of moral and material improvement however was a minority of still unregenerate poor:
those who had turned their backs on progress. or had been rejected by it". argued Stedman Jones.
"This group was variously referred to as 'the dangerous class', the casual poor or most
characteristically, as 'the resid~urn*.~ ... however the 'residuum* was explained, its continuing
existence was a source of increasing anxiety." " In his investigations on this subject. Mayhew
felt. however. it was his "duty also to deny" 59 that the coal-heavers were "the dangerous classes."
"So far as my experience has gone. I am bound to confess. that I have found the skilled labourers
of the metropolis the very reverse, both morally and intellectually, of what the popular prejudice
imagines them." 60
Nineteenth-century Victorian London was huge. and seemingly impenetrable. Here was a city
in which one could roam for hours "without leaving the built-up area and without seeing the
slightest sign of the approach of open country." 6' According to information Mayhew had
retrieved from "respective districts in the Registrar General's department," 6' London contained
''74.070 statute acres." 63 These acres were developed into "garden. arable or pasture ground. or
as road or street, or waste place. or enclosed yard or lawn." " In fact, "the whole ground is
s6 Ibid.. 12.
57
Ibid.. I I.
58
Ibid.
6l)
Ibid. Mayhew stated: 'The unskilled labourers are a different class of people. As yet they are as
unpolitical as footmen. and instead of entertaining violent democratic opinions. they appear to have no
political opinions whatsoever; or, if they do possess any. they rather lead towards the maintenance of
"things as they are," than towards the ascendancy of the working people" (Mayhew, 111: 232).
6 l
Engels. 30.
Mayhew, 11: 203.
" Ibid. Spacial comdon existed on land as well as water. There were halls "'extending from the street to the
water-sideWwhere basket-men or foremen waited in turn "to clear the ship that is offered. "basket-men's
rooms" where gang foremen remained on the job. and "depots" or floating piers used as "a receptacle for
the tackle with which the colliers are unloaded" (Mayhew. 111: 236).
M
Mayhew, 11: 203.

already occupied for a thousand purposes of a great commercial city."
Mayhew reported. In a
city of more than 2 million - in a city, in fact. that was to exceed 5 rniIiion by the end of the
century - people were ton apart psychologicafly. Engels noticed that people rushed past each
other "as if they had nothing in common." ''They are tacitly agreed on one thing only - that
everyone should keep to the right of the pavement so as not to collide with the stream of people
moving in the opposite direction."
According to Stedman Jones. Victorians were tom "between
feelings of complacent pride" in London's size and wealth. and "feelings of dread" 67 at the
terrible threat that London represented. The problem was not one simply of size. however- For the
distance between the rich and the poor expressed itself as well in the ever-widening spatial
segregation of nineteenth-century urban life. Employers and merchants no longer lived above
their places of work 68. although the labouring poor such as London's dust-men. born and bred in
London's East-End. stayed put working where they lived, sometimes never passing Temple Bar.
In fact, within the confines of a two-mile radius of Temple Bar, characteristically well-to-do
artisans as well as poor casual labourers lived within walking distance of their work during the
1830s and I 840s.~~ Cabinet-makers worked in their own rooms. in Spitalfields and Bethnal-green.
65 Mayhew, 11: 339.
66
EngeIs. 3 1. Engels also commented on the fact that what was true of London was "true also of all the
great towns, such as Manchester. Birmingham and Leeds" (Ibid.).
67
Ibid.. 3 1.
" Urban areas in late eighteenth-century European cities were divided into industrial quarters. commercial
districts, and residential areas. and the great processes of differentiation began with the trend toward class
isolation where the wealthy separated themselves out spatially from the lower classes. This multiple
revolution in territorial space as well as social segregation. even if somewhat fluid and incomplete, yet
interlaced by older craft patterns. became a central phenomenon of the large-scale urbanization of
nineteenth-century England. and Victorian London. for its pan. was embedded within this larger urbaneconomic
network (Rasmussen. Steen Eiler. London: The Unique City. Introduction by James Bon, The
MIT Press: Cambridge. Mass.. l967[ 19371).
69
Stedman Jones. 197 1. 14. The lower middidupper working class was characterized by lack of economic
independence or real property, insecurity. mobility. and vulnerability. The stereotypical representative of
the lower middle-class small capitalist was the grocer who was assumed to be the natural enemy of real
workers and artists. Merging into it from above, there was a class characterized by its palpable possessions;
"limited. fragile, independence. and small-capitalist ideology - a petty bourgeoisie of big-city and smalltown
tradesmen". as "shopkeepers, Icsscr intcllcctuais and professionals such as school-masters and
notaries. and landowning, educated farmers" (Kunzle. The History of the Comic Strip. The Nineteenth
Century. 1990.7-8). These characteristics were also imbued. often enough, with upward and downward

Mayhew recalled, and. sometimes two or three men "in different branches occupied one
apartment." 'O
Working scavengers also lived close to where they worked, &"in the
neighbourhood of the dust-yards, occupying "second-floor backs," kitchens (where the entire
house is sublet. a system often fraught with great extortion), or garrets." " Mayhew observed that
bone-grubbers, rag-gatherers, and pure-finders usually lived "in small garrets in Bermondsey's
poorer parts carrying on their trade in their own rooms, 'using and keeping the 'pure' there; hence
the 'homes' of these poor men are particularly uncornfortable. if not unhealthy." '' Poor districts
such as these became an immense terra incognim periodically mapped out by urban explorers
such as Mayhew, who catered to urban traveller's insatiable demands for travellers* tales,
especially stories of the feared East-End. "a huge city itself in all but name." ''
mobility. combining conservative. liberal, and radical tendencies within them. The threat of sinking was
conjured up in the Communisr Manryesro of 1848: 'The lower strata of the middle-class . . . sink gradually
into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern
industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists. partly because their
specialized skill is rendered worthless by new means of production" (Marx and Engels, 1955. 2.252:
quoted in Kunzle, 1990. 8).
7()
Mayhew. 111: 224. Mayhew described the cabinet-makers as "a sober class of men. who seem so perfectly
subdued by circumstances, that they cannot or do not struggle against the system which several of them
told me they knew was undoing them" (Ibid.). Engels referred to Rev.G.Alston's statistics on Bethnai
Green: "It contains 1,400 houses. inhabited by 2.795 families. comprising a population of 12.000. The
space within which this large amount of population are living is less than 400 yards square, and it is no
uncommon thing for a man and his wife. with four or five children, and sometimes the grandfather and
grandmother, to be found living in a room from ten to twelve feet square, and which serves !hem for eating
and working in" (Engels. 35) (my italics).
" Mayhew declared that there were '262 men employed in the Metropolitan Scavenging Trade; one-half of
these at least may be said to work 16 hours per diem instead of 12, or one-third longer than they should"
(Mayhew, 11: 222).
" Mayhew. 11: 226.
73
Mayhew. 11: 143. Mayhew recounted the familiar smell of poverty: 'The rooms of the very neediest of
our metropolitan population. always smell of fish; most frequently of herrings" (Mayhew, I: 62).
74
Stedman Jones remarked: 'The old methods of social control based on the model of the squire. the
parson. face to face relations, deference. and paternalism. found less and less reflection in the urban reality.
Vast tracks of working-class housing were left to themselves. virtually bereft of any contact with authority
except in the form of the policeman or the bailiff' (Stedman Jones. 197 1. 14). "Slum" is the root word for
the modern meaning of the word "slum" which includes whole houses and districts in town and country
that are low. unfrequented parts of town.

(3) Mayhew's Metropolitan London
During the 1820s. the term "metropolis" was first applied to London as an entire region,
rather than to the City, which was. of course. the oldest-inhabited part of London. Along Fleet
Street. which runs from Temple Bar to Ludgate Circus, stood St.Bride's Church. the parish
church used by Fleet Street newspapermen. Giltspur Street led into the open space of
~rnithfield.'~ There. until 1855, was held St.Bartholomew's Fair, one of the great cloth fairs of
England, as was Sturbridge. England's greatest fair.76 Alongside the cloth fair. Smithfield Few
up to be London's main cattle rnarket or exchange. "Smithfield, or the Cattle Exchange".
Mayhew recorded, "is the oldest of all the markets; it is mentioned as a place for the sale of
horses in the time of Henry 11." 77 "Billingsgate. or the Fish Exchange," he continued. "is of
ancient but uncertain era. Covent Garden - the largest Fruit, Vegetable, and Flower Exchange
- first became established as the center of such commerce in the reign of Charles 11; the
establishment of the borough and Spitalfields market. as other markets for the sale of fruits,
vegetables. and flowers. being nearly as ancient." '' During Smithfield's early days. "jugglers.
'' Saunders. Anne. The A n and Archirecrure of London. An Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Phaidon. 1984.23.
26.43. 160.
i6
McCullough, Edo. World's Fair Midways. An Affectionate Account of American Amusement Areas.
From the Crystal Palace fo rhe Crys~al Ball. New York: Exposition Press, 1966. 18.
77
Mayhew. n: 26.
78
Ibid. Mayhew writes that the Royal Exchange dated '%om the days of Queen Elizabeth, and the Bank of
England and the Stock-Exchange from those of William 11. while premises for the Corn and Coal Exchange
are modern" (Ibid.). Mayhew commented on the fact that there were now two Clothes Exchanges. "the first
one opened by Mr. Isaac being the most important. This is 100 feet by 70, and is the mart to which the
collectors of the cast-off apparel of the metropolis bring their goods for cast-off sale." The second
Exchange, known as Simmons and Levy's Clothes Exchange. was for "more especial business purposes,
except in the mornings." Although in neither of these places "is there even an attempt at architectural
elegance, or even neatness". it is "the eagerness. crowding, and energy" that are "the grand features of the
scene" (Ibid.). The second Royal Exchange was also destroyed by fire in 1838 (Mayhew, 11: 47 1 ). Covent
Garden Market (1 827-30) and the elegant Hungerford Market (1 830-33) were designed by Fowler.
Hungerford Market became a lecture hall (1 85 1 ). suffered a fire in 1854. then in 1862. Charing Cross
Railway Station was built upon the former site. The Royal Exchange with its open piaua stood in between
Threadneedle Street and Cornhill. It had roughly 100 shops packed with merchants who used it as a
meeting-place, and it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. The third Exchange (1 84 1-44) still
remains (Geist. Johann Friedrich. Arcades. The History of a Building Type. Trans tated by Jane New man,
John Smith. Cambridge. Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 1983. 10). The New Exchange was one of the
most important prototypes of the English arcade. directly influencing Samuel Ware's conception of the

--
tumblers. musicians, ballad-singers. conjurers, stilt-walkers. bear-leaders, and other strolling
entertainers frequented the fair." 79 More recent market spaces such as the Caledonian Market
( 1855) were filled primarily with animal stalls " but the most spectacular Victorian marketplace
was the Columbia Market built in 1869 by the Baroness Burden-Coutts. which was closed in
1885. then demolished for flats between 1958 and 1966. Nicholas Pevsner described it as "easily
the most spectacular piece of design in Bethnal Green. and one of the great follies of the
Victorian Age."
At one level. London Labour was perhaps an exhaustive description of life in
London's bazaars - a teeming sphere of commerciai enterprise. Paxron's Crystal Palace, the first
international bazaar, built in 1851, continued the tradition of London's bazaars, most of which
were built during 1816 to 1840 '' between Oxford Street, Piccadilly. and the Strand. Thus London
was the prototypical metropolis, the dominant polis. the center of a web of dependencies until the
late nineteenth-century when London became the imperial city. Concentration and growth,
interdependence. and diversity helped to shape the spatial images of London itself. But how,
following Mayhew, did the pubIic and private spaces of Victorian London, and the relations of
- pp
Burlington Arcade (Ibid.).
79 l3en Johnson. in his comedy. Banholemew Fair. recorded: "Buy any ballads! New Ballads! Hey! cries a
woman ballad-singer who printed sheets for sale: and while she is singing to a gentleman a confederate
tickles his right ear with a straw. causes him to raise his right hand from this pocket to rub his ear, and then
pick his pocket" (McKechnie. Samuel, Popular Enrertainments through the Ages. New York: Benjamin
Blom: New York, 1969. 3 1). Henry Morley recorded: 'The right of levying a toll. sometimes even a right
of coinage. was derived by the clergy from the crown: and to this day, throughout Europe. no fair can be
lawfully held. except by grant from the crown. The fairs of the most popular saints. to which men flocked
from afar in greatest numbers. became their chief marts in every country" (Memories of Baflholemew Fair,
i 968[ 18801. 15. 17). Improved transportation and communication eventually undermined. then superceded
the early eighteenth-century fair with its wholesale function. Traders had waited until the return of the fair
ro stock their yearly goods; they had traveling-clerks from all sorts of houses connected with their business
waiting every month for their orders. Trade was now eventually handled by barges, fly-waggons. vans.
stage-coaches. or steam packets (Bristol Fair, bur no Preaching!, 1823. 32); see David Alexander.
Retailing in England during rhe lndusrrial Revolution. 1970.40).
no
Hobhouse. Hermione. Last London. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1972. 186.
81
Ibid. When Burdett-Coutts heard that there were plans to extend Billingsgate Market. she decided to
found an open market for fish as well as other provisions. which would benefit East Enders, who were
being excluded from the traditional markets. Though no tolls were charged, the scheme was opposed by
anxious dealers established elsewhere who prevented wholesalers from supplying the market.
'' Geist. 1983, 49.

production and reproduction get to be the way they were by the mid-nineteenth-century
(4) The Public and Private Spaces of Mayhew's London
Henry Mayhew urged his readers 'to think of the big picture' by reconstructing the smallest
of detak8%e
urged them "to reflect on the vast amount of traFf~c" rattling along the streets of
London even as he examined the minutae of London's dust, dirt. and vermin".
Think of "the
70,000,000 miles of journey through the metropolis annually performed by the entire vehicles
( which is more than two-thirds the distance from the earth to the sun)," he urged his readers.
Think of "the enormous weights and friction continually operating upon the surface of the streets
- as well as the amount of grinding and pulverizing, and wear and tear, that must be perpetually
taking place in the paving-stones and macadamized mads of London." 86 Form "some mental
estimate as to the quantity of dust and din annually produced by this means alone." " Bear in
mind, he told his audience, the fact that every part of London is "on the average gone over and
over again 40,000 times in the course of the year, and some parts as many as 13,000 times in a
day".
An omnibus driver told Mayhew that he "had driven his "bus" seventy-two miles (twelve
stages of six miles) every day for six years, with the exception of twelve miles less every second
Sunday. so that this man had driven in six years 179.568 miles." 89 The "total number of
83
Because Mayhew was fond of the panoramic effect. his readers could lose their sense of depth. becoming
part of the same painted surface that surrounded them (paraphrasing Stafford. Barbara. Voyage into
Subsrance: Art, Science. Nature. and rhe lllusrrated Travel Account. 1760-1840. Cambridge, Mass. And
London: The MIT Press. 1984. 1 89).
Mayhew. 11: 185.
US
London was. of course, rat-infested. Jack Black told Mayhew: "Rats are everywhere about London. both
in rich and poor places. I've ketched rats in 44 Portland-place. at a clergyman's house there. There was 200
and odd. . . . This. thinks I. isn't the right thing for Portland-place" (Mayhew. 111: 3 19).
H6
Mayhew. 111: 3 19.
87
Ibid.. 185. Mayhew believed that London's house dust and rubbish accumulated primarily from "the
residuum of fires, the white ash and cinders, or small fragments of unconsumed coke" (lbid.. 166).
Ibid.
Mayhew. 111: 338. The surface routes of the omnibuses *lend to common centres" or *We great trunklines
of the streets" (Ibid.. 336).

omnibuses traversing the streets of London is about 3000." Mayhew calculated, "paying duty
including mileage, averaging 9l.per month each. or 324.0001.per ann~m.~ Each omnibus
averaged "between forty-five and fifty miles a-day," he reckoned. "computing the omnibuses
running daily at 3000." '' London's omnibuses. he computed, traveled "upwards of 1 40.0 miles
aday. or a yearly travel of more than 50.000.000 of miles: an extent that almost defies a parallel
among any distances popularly familiar." " Mayhew calculated that each acre of London
received "6.272.640 square inches" of rain. which was "almost beyond the terms of popular
arithmetic." He calculated that the metropolitan area was "in square inches, 4646 14,444,800.
Now, multiplying these four hundred and sixty four thousand, six hundred and fourteen millions,
four hundred and forty-four thousand, eight hundred square inches, by 23, the number of inches
of rain falling every year in London . . . the "total quantity of rain falling yearly in the metropolis.
[was] lO,686.132,230,4OO cubic inches." Yearly rainfall in the metropolis computed to
"35,399,721,220 lbs.. or 172,053,447 tons." Mayhew concluded that "it would appear that the
rain falling in London in the course of the year is rather more than double that of the entire
quanrity of warer annually supplied ro the metropolis by mechanical means, the rain-water being
to the other as 2.005 to 1.000 9' (Mayhew's italics).
There were already a number of open public and private spaces in London by the
seventeenth-century, each with its own particular character. There was St. James's Park where
King and Court took exercise, and of course, Hyde Park and Moorfrelds with its "Walks" and
open fields for archery and games. There was Vauxhall Gardens. the New Spring Garden (1661),
the most famous of all the London pleasure gardens
as well as Gray's inn and Lincoln's inn
-
Ibid. 338.
" Ibid.
" Ibid. Mayhew calculated that "the extent of steam navigation on the Thames, performed daily in the
season. is no less than 8280 miles" (Ibid.. 336).
93
Mayhew. 111: 230.
w Vauxhall Gardens closed on July 25. 1859 (Wroth. Warwick. The London Pleasure Gardens ofthe

with their gardens too. All the nobility as well as other wealthy families left the narrow smoky
town inside the walls and moved to the open quarters nearer the parks, the country, and the court
during the seventeenth-century. according to Rasmussen. London's first private squares were
created in these selfsame "open quarters near the parks and the country." 95 .4t the same time as
London's first private squares developed. it was also the first time an outward residential
appearance. "classical in style and Italian in name," 96 was determined by the upper middle-
classes. But who of Mayhew's street-folk. in the middle of the nineteenth-century, cleaned these
*'comfortable. self-confident. and above all else, private garden squares of London" '' '"I think
I've got the best side of the square," an aristocratic crossing-sweeper named Billy, told Mayhew,
"and you see my crossing is a long one, and saves people a deal of ground, for it cuts off the
comer. It used to be a famous crossing in its time - hah! But that's gone." " Billy recounted that
not only was he born-and-bred in Cavendish-square but that he had also been "sweeping a
crossing - for now near upon fifty year." * His former aristocratic customers, he told Mayhew,
included the Duke of Portland, Lord George Bentinck "at the comer of Holly Street," "Prince E
-. as lived there in Chandros-street. the bottom house yonder." the Earl of ~ ainsborou~h'~ also
Eighteenrh-Century, Foreword by A.H.Saxon, Hamden. Connecticut: Archon Books. 1979[ 18961,286).
During its peak. the Vauxhall Gardens. had a bandstand in the center. refreshments to the left. and the game
and spectacle area at the rear of the gardens (Kyriazi. Gay. The Great American Amusernenr Parks. A
Pictorial History. Citadel Press: New Jersey. 1976. 13). Vauxhall Gardens is now marked by Goding Street
in the west. Oswald's Place in the east, Leopold Street and a small portion of Vauxhall Walk to the north.
and Upper Kennington Lane to the south.
'' Rasmussen. Steen Eiler. London: The Unique Cizy. Introduction by James Bone. The M.I.T.Press:
Cambridge. Mass., l967[ 19371, 165.97.
97
Ibid.. 733.724. The Repon of the Royal Commission on London Squares (1 928) placed the building peak
between 1800 and 1850: 'The activity on the development of London's garden squares reaches its height in
the early part of the nineteenth-century. By 1850, practically all the well-known squares were completed"
(Rasmussen, 733). The only new public park constructed in the metropolitan area, following Mayhew, was
Bishop Bonner's Fields. now called "Victoria Park at the east end of town" (Mayhew, 11: 286). By 1860,
upper middle-class garden squares were supplanted by semi-detached suburban houses with their little
garden plots. (Rasmussen, 7 16).
9s Mayhew, 11: 470.
99
Ibid.. 467.
"*' Ibid., 468.

from Chandros-street, and Lady Miidmay from Grosvenor-square. But what constituted "the
"property," so to speak. in a crossing, or the right to sweep a pathway across a certain
thoroughfare" queried "one of her Majesty's Ministers" lo'
in conversation with Mayhew. "What
were the rights of property. in such cases, and what constituted the title that such a man had to a
particular crossing Why did not the stronger sweeper supplant the weaker Could a man
bequeath a crossing to a son, or present it to a friend How did he first obtain the spo~'~ lo'
According to Mayhew. battles over the rights to sweep London's squares were literally at
ground level. We read that there are "few squares without a couple of these pathway scavengers.
such as Cavendish or Ponman. [where] every comer has been seized upon." lo'
" We can scarcely
waik along a street of any extent, or pass through a square of the least pretensions to "gentility,"
*r 10,
Mayhew observed, "without meeting one or more of these private scavengers.
The streets and
squares were policed spaces-
the street scavenger's property rights were basically "under the
protection of the police." For it was the poiice, Mayhew discovered. who decided that "he who
was oftener on the ground was the rightful owner; and the option was given to the former
possessor, that if he would sweep there every day the crossing sweep should be his." The 'start-up
capital* was ~rnali,'~~ Mayhew realized. while the *fringe benefits' -"small weekly allowances
of "pensions" '06 from sympathetic neighbours - could be substantial. Regular crossing-sweeps
had "kept to the same spot for more than forty years" taking "up their posts at the comers of the
-- -
'"I Ibid.. 11: 468. 465.
I"'
Ibid.
103
Mayhew. 11: 466. Following Mayhew. the "scavagers. it seems. are not required to sweep any places
considered "private," nor even to sweep the public foot-paths" (Mayhew. 11: 220).
"* Mayhew stated: 'That portion of the London street-folk who earn a scanty living by sweeping crossings
constitute a large class of the Metropolitan poor." Mayhew divided the crossing-sweeps into causal and
regular labour. but taken "as a class. crossing-sweepers are among the most honest of the London poor-"
Mayhew continued: 'They all tell you that. without a good character and "respect of the neiphbourhod."
there is not a living to be got out of the broom" (Mayhew, 11: 465).
"15 Ibid., 465.
I(&
Ibid. A crossing-sweep recalled, in conversation with Mayhew. one of the houses in his neighbourhood.
"Now. there's Lord Fitzhardinge, he's a good gentleman. what lives in Spring-gardens, in a large house.

streets or squares" as "a kind of stand." Regular crossing-sweeps together with butlers and
servants in neighbouring mansions worked symbiotically together. Sweepers are often employed,
Mayhew records, "by the butlers and servants in the neighbouring mansions for running errands,
posting letters. and occasionally helping in the packing-up and removal of furniture or boxes
when the family goes out of town." Moreover. "... one or two of this class have for years been in
the habit of having new suits presented to them by the neighbours at Christmas." Irregular
sweepers fmd badly by comparison; young people -"boys and girls who have formed
themselves into a kind of company"-
worked together day-by-day on three or four crossings
especially around Trafalgar-square Im. Crossing-sweeps. scavengers, dustmen. and nightmen
comprised one broad class of sueet-finders ",
according to Mayhew. while bone-grubbers, rag-
gatherers, pure-finders, cigar-end. and old wood collectors formed another, and sewer-hunters
and mudlarks. dredgers or river-finden, who worked underground, formed yet another.'" Below
ground, Mayhew tracked how the sewer-hunters, working together "in gangs," marked "the
points and bearings of the subterraneous roads they traverse" in order "to know their way
underground." 'lo
Mayhew knew first-hand that sewer-hunters had "to stoop low down in order to
proceed. and from the confined space, there are often accumulated in such places, large quantities
of foul air, which. as one of them stated, will "cause instantaneous death." ''I In fact, a sewennan
Mayhew interviewed, had "a stoop in his shoulders" I" from "living so much in the
He's got a lot of servants and carriages" (Mayhew. Il: 496).
Irn Ibid.. 466.
It18
Mayhew, 11: 136, 149. Rubbish carters collected house-refuse, both 'wet slops' together with 'nightsoil'.
and 'dry house-refuse, or dust and soot'. and street-refuse. both 'mud and dirt' and 'dry rubbish'
(Mayhew. In: 28 1 ).
"* Sewer-hunters "belong to the same degree. to the same class as the "mud-larks," that is to say. they
travel through the mud along the shore in the neighbourhood of shipbuilding and ship-breaking yards. for
the purpose of picking up copper nails, bolts and old rope" (Mayhew. 11: 150).
110
Mayhew, 11: 137. 'They must be familiar with the course of the tides, or they might be drowned at high
water" (Ibid.).
Ill
Ibid.. 11: 15 1.
'I2 Mayhew, 111: 20.

113
"shores"(sewers). Dredgers or river-finders worked the same watery domain. Using the
Hercules, the Goliath, and the Samson, to name but three of seven dredging-engines, they
extracted ballast from the riverbed.' ''
Landon Labour's 'hell' was as much a psychological state as a physical one. Just as
crossing-sweeps from the squares. main thoroughfares. or public buildings11s fared better than the
regular crossing-sweeps. rubbish-carters fared differently in different areas as we11."~ In
Hampstead. in "out of the way" places. a rubbish-carter earned 8s.more a week than a rubbish-
carter working in ~reenwich.'" Mayhew concluded: "One of the main causes of the deteriorated
wages of the rubbish-carters is the system of contracting and subletting. This, however, is but a
branch of the ramified system of subletting in the construction of the "scamped" houses of the
speculative builders. The building of such houses is sublet, literally from cellar to chimney." 'I8
Spatial isolation played its part too. Garret-masters railed against the system for they had "no time
for social intercommunication.^'
Neither did the chairmasters or colliers. Mayhew recorded
that "the struggle to live absorbs all their energies, and confines all their aspirations to that one
endeavour. Their labour is devoted. with the rarest exceptions. to the 'slaughter-houses,
linendrapers, 'polsterers. or warehouses'." '" One man flatly informed Mayhew: "I work from 6
every morning to 9 at night - some work till 10 - I breakfast at 8, which stops me for 10
minutes. I can breakfast in less time, but it's a rest; my dinner takes me say 20 minutes at the
I"' These dredging-engines were "now stationed respectively in Barking Reach, Half Reach near
Dagenham. and the bottom of Half-way Reach off Rainharn" (Mayhew. 111: 269).
Mayhew. 11: 466.
116
Mayhew, 11: 335. According to the Post-Office directory of 1 85 I. "under the head of "Rubbish
Carters," 28 are given, 9 names being marked as "Dust Contractors*' and 10 as "Nightmen" (Mayhew. It:
2 12).
" Mayhew. 11.335.
"* Ibid.
119
Mayhew, In: 224.
"" Ibid.

outside, and my tea eight minutes. All the rest of the time I'm slaving at my bench. How many
minutes* rest is that. sir 38." 12' Slaughter-house men'" who depended "entirely on the
slaughter-houses for the purchase of their articles. with all the disadvantages that I described in a
former letter" I"
usually worked "seven days a week the year through." "' "Slaughter-house
men" were a "special race of employers".'3 Mayhew reported. They were "aware of the inability
of the garretmasters to hold out against any offer. no matter how slight a renumeration it affords
for their labours." They continually lower "their prices until the entire body of the competitive
portion of the cabinet trade is sunk in utter destitution and misery."
~ a ~ h reported e w that '*a
coalwhipper's life is one of debt and struggles - it is a round of relieving, paying. and credit." 12'
One of them claimed: "We should have taken a stand fourteen years ago . . . against this system;
r* 128
but then we must live.
In response to these grueling kinds of working conditions, Mayhew
concluded: 'This excessive toil . . . is but one element of over-production.**9 Mayhew's 'hell*
even had its colour. Everything about the labour of the coalwhippers. for instance, was black.
including their hair, whiskers. "stubbly beards and moustachios." the sails, "the gilding in the
figurehead of the vessei" except "a portion of the [coal-whipper's] nails" which was "the only
spot of white discernible on their hands." I-''
These diffzring kinds of urban shapes on the ground - "the doors, the staircases, the
"I Mayhew. 111: 230.
I" Ibid.. 229. One of the *'worst wharfs in London**. according to Mayhew. was called We slaughterhouse"
by the coaIbackers themselves because even the strongest were worn out through excessive toil and
could only "last twelve years at work there" (Mayhew. 111: 251-252).
"' Mayhew. 111: 229.
"'Ibid.
Ibid.. 224.
'" Ibid.
I" Mayhew, 111: 24 1.
IZR Mayhew. 111: 225.
It9 Ibid., 230.
I" Mayhew. 111.238.

alustrades. the window-frames. the room-skirtings. [and] the closets" "' that Mayhew described
- were integral to the new class-based shapes in society. Ira Katznelson writes that "the analysis
of working-class formation is in significant measure the study of how working people construct
images and mental maps of the remarkably innovative spatial terrains in which they found
themselves forced to work and to live." 13'
" Classes," he claims "can no longer be thought of as
unified and uniquely determined objects set in an abstract space-less realm . . . The relations of
production and reproduction do not float above places. They are co-constituted within them.
Space is a material product of given social and cultural formations. With all its multifaceted
aspects, it is determined by the productive forces and the relations of production that stem from
them." "' Mayhew too came to realize that even the spacial bballotrnent of gardens. which yield a
partial support to the allottee. are another means of cheap labour." IY
The allotment was "by no
means a thorough employment, but merely an "aid," and consequentiy a means, to low wages",
according to Mayhew. "Such a man has the advantage of obtaining his potatoes and vegetables at
the cheapest ate. and so can afford to work cheaper than other men in his class." '" Among all
the spacial formations constructed in London. beyond the streets and squares themselves. lay the
terraces and semi-detached houses. They formed the largest group of any Victorian building, and
more than any other kind of building they determined the character of Victorian cities including
London.
''I Mayhew. 11: 300.
'" Ibid.. 205.
"' Class and Space. The Making of Urban Space. edited by Nigel Thrift and Peter Williams. New York
and London: Routledge & Kcgan Paul. 1987. 13. When the population of England and Wales was 24
million, a quarter of the land in England was owned by a mere 1200 people, according to Stcdman Jones.
(Stedrnan Jones. I97 1.30-3).

(5) Home Spaces of London
Mayhew calculated that the total number of metropolitan houses belonging to the wealthy
classes were 54,000. the number of middle-class houses were 90.000, and the number of "the
dwellings of the poor and labouring classes" were 165.000.'~~ During 1841 -51. London's new
house construction soared to 46.901 homes. particularly in the north and south district^.'^' During
the same period. on average, Mayhew estimated that there were "200 houses annually pulled
down in London"
and St-Giles. 18 1
with the total decrease in the City itself. 592 homes, the Strand. 389 homes.
in many cases. Victorian slums were Georgian buildings. although
the worst kind of early Victorian building eventually became slums as well. Particularly after the
cholera outbreaks of the 1840s. concern for public heath led to attempts to provide better homes
for the working class.'" The most characteristic expression of middle-class ideals was the small
suburban detached house with its own garden in both the country as well as in the suburbs."'
Hobsbawm argued that "the home was the quintessential bourgeois world, for in it, and only in it
'.'"bid., 56. In terms of habitation. Mayhew recorded in 181 1 that "the number of inhabited houses in the:
metropolis was 146.0 19, and in 1821 it was I64.948." By 1841. the number of "inhabited houses had
increased to 262.737" and by 1849, the number was 307,722 (Mayhew, 11: 340).
13' Mayhew. 11: 285. The Returns of the Registrar General. according to Mayhew. indicated that 9. 624 new
houses were constructed in the West Districts. 13.778 in the North Districts, 349 in the Central Districts,
8.343 in the East Districts, and 14.807 in the South Districts (Ibid.)
Ibid.. 284.
139
Mayhew recorded that "greatly as suburban dwellings have increased. and truly as London may be said
to have "gone into the country," the greater quantity of the large, excellent. unfailing. and cheap supply of
the fruits and vegetables in the London "green" markets are grown within a circle of from ten to twelve
miles from St.Paul'sW (Mayhew, 11: 339).
''" The Society for Improving the Conditions of the Labouring Classes (1 844) supported by Lord Ashley
built a block of "Model Houses for Families" in Streatham Street, Bloomsbury. in 1 849-50, near the British
Museum. This trend-setting four-story brick and stucco block contained self-contained flats arranged
around three sides of a courtyard. which allowed air and light into the back of the building. Open brick
galleries with iron balconies created access and were intended. according to Henry Roberts, the architect. to
give each family the privacy of its own front door, while at the same time separating the flats to prevent the
spread of contagious diseases (Dixon. 72-3).
I" Hobsbawm, 1975.47.

could the problems and contradictions of society be forgotten or artificially eliminated." '" '"The
most immediate impression of the bourgeois interior of the mid-century," he continued. "is
overcrowding and concealment, a mass of objects ... its objects. like the objects which contained
them, were solid. a term used, characteristically, as the highest praise for a business enterprise.
They were made to last. and they did." "' Yet for all their solidity. comfortable middle-class
homes were situated on streets that smelled "like a stable-yard" lU and were perfect dust mills"lS
on windy days. But the dust that penetrated suburban houses la
was a small price to pay for
comfort compared to the most alarming, working-class living spaces that the labouring poor
inhabited. At one point in London Labour. Mayhew angrily told his audience, "Society men
rented houses of their own - some paying 70l.a-year, and the non-society men [were]
overworked and underpaid, so that a few week's sickness reduced them to absolute pauperism."
147
Mayhew described an amazing cross-section of housing spaces. They ranged from "half-a-
dozen houses of the very smallest dimensions, consisting of merely two rooms, one over the
~ther"."'~ to rat-infested houses "on the north side of the river" '" approximately "5 1 feet above
the high-water mark of the ~harnes".'~ to a "parlour" that "was overpowered by the odour of the
"'Ibid.. 230-1.
lJ3 Ibid.. 23 1.
I44
Mayhew. 11: 195. Mayhew commented: "Strangers coming from the country frequently describe the
streets of London as smelling of dung like a stable-yard" (Ibid.) Three loads of London horse-dung -
between Nash's Quadrant in Regent-street and Oxford-street. which was only 1/3 of a mile - was removed
daily (Ibid.). A "regular frequenter of Smithfield market." told Mayhew that the best way to calculate the
annual number of droppings from "1.67 1,300 sheep. calves. and pigs yearly coming to the metropolis". was
to multiply "1,673,000 Ibs., or 7220 tons." divide by 4, to arrive at "1 805 tons per annum" (Ibid.).
I45
Mayhew. 11: 183. "Even around such places as the Repent's-park. Mayhew stated. "at many seasons
this dust is produced largely, so that very often an open window for the enjoyment of fresh air is one for the
intrusion of fresh air" (Mayhew. 11: 189).
146
Mayhew, 11: 183. According to a Board of Health Report. "the excess of dust arising from the imperfect
scavenging of the roods and street" cost somewhere "between two and three millions sterling per annum"
in the wear-and-tear of extra washing" {Ibid.).
147
Mayhew. 111: 22 I ,
I48
Mayhew, 11: 144.
149
Ibid.
Ibid., 39 1

ats." Is'
In Bethnal Green, Mayhew interviewed a penny mouse-trap maker who lived as a
cripple in "a little room" about the "size of a hen-house" Is' adjoining a small cottage at the back
of the road. Climbing boys sometimes slept in "barracks (large rooms), or in the ceIlar (where the
soot was kept); some never slept upon anything that can be called a bed." "%ayhew
discovered
a coalwhipper who "resided in a wretched part of Wapping, called, appropriately enough. "the
Ruins" where some houses had been pulled down forming an open space "at the end of a narrow
rr 154
airless alley.
Slums or districts of the low lodging-houses for the poor. Mayhew found
primarily in St.GiIesTs and Wentworth-street, Whitchapel. as well as Dnrry-lane, Gray's-inn
Lane. Chancery Lane. Bloomsbury, Saffron-hill and ~estminster."~ Surprisingly Rubbish caners
"abodes" were not generally crowded in with the poor.1s According to Mayhew. they lived "off
the Edgeware and Harrow-roads. as buiIding has been carried on to a very great extent in
Westbourne, Maida-hill. &c.; in Portland-town, Carnden-town, Sorners-town, about King's-cross;
in Islington, Pentonville, and Clerkenwell; off the Commercial and Mile-end roads; in Walworth,
Camberwell. Kennington. and Newington." Is'
Is' Mayhew. 111: 20.
'" Ibid.. 2 1.
153
Mayhew. 11: 252. Mayhew recorded: 'The circumstances and character of the chimney-sweeps have,
since Parliament "put down" the climbing boys, and undergone considerable change. The sufferings of
many of the climbing boys were very great. They were often il l-lodged. iIl-fed. barely-clad. forced to
ascend hot and narrow flues. and subject to diseases - such as the chimney-sweep's cancer - peculiar to
their calling" (Mayhew. 11: 137).
15' Mayhew. 111: 243.
Is' Mayhew. 1: 25 1-2. Compared to the middlc-class xnse of morality and space. *'in some [low-lodging]
houses considered of the better sort, men and women, husbands and wives, old and young. strangers and
acquaintances. sleep in the same apartment. and if they choose, in the same bed" (Ibid.. 257).
IS6
Mayhew, 11: 295.
157
Ibid. Mayhew recorded Charles Booth's comments on the effects of smoke on housing districts. "I
think," said Mr-Booth. "one great effect of the evil of smoke upon the dwellings of the poor; it renders
them less attentive to their personal appearance. and in consequence. to their social condition" (Mayhew,
11: 342). Mayhew stated that the poor who lived in "St-George's-in-the-East and the neighbowhood of Oldstreet,
St.Luke'sW do not wash their clothes because the air is so full of soot that they cannot hang out their
clothes to dry (Ibid.).

Costerrnongers lived a little differently: sometimes they freely chose to live in "the yard" "'
even though they normally controlled their own district's living spaces. as did the ~ews."~
According to Mayhew, costers usually resided "in the courts and alleys in the neighbourhood of
the different street-markets." IM 'They themselves designate the locality where." writes Mayhew,
"so to speak. a colony of their people has been established. a 'coster district.' and the entire
metropolis is thus parcelled out. almost as systematically as if for the purposes of registration." 16'
New Cut (Larnbeth) ranked first, then Whitcross Street. then Leather-lane, Drury Lane. Petticoat
and Rosemary Lane, and Camden own."^ Petticoat-lane itself comprised its own geographic
area of 23 streets; according to Mayhew: "It embraces Sandys-row, Artillery-Passage, Artillery-
lane, Frying-pan-alley, Catherine Wheel-alley, Tripe-yard . . . until the wayfarer emerges into
what appears the repose and spaciousness of Devonshire square. Bishopsgate-street, up Borer's-
lane . . . or into Houndsditch through the halls of the Old Clothes Exchange." '" Visually,
Petticoat-lane was a panoramic "vista of many coioured garments, alike on the sides and on the
ground," I" which presented "a scene which cannot be held in any other part of the greatest city
of the world, nor in any other portion of the world itself." '65 Mayhew recorded, with
"' Ibid. A chimney-sweeper who had been a servant-maid revealed to Mayhew: "Here are the stables and a
couple of blind alleys. nameless. or bearing the same name as the yard itself. and wherein are huddles more
people than one could count in a quarter of an hour. and more children than one likes to remember"
(Mayhew. 111: 47).
159
Mayhew. 11: 39. Out of 35.000 Jews. 18.000 lived in the East-End of London where "their numbers were
sufficient to institute a "settlement" or "colony'"' (Ibid.. I 18). Jewish neighbourhoods. where wholesale and
retail traders lived. were also isolated East-end "settlements" or "colonies" "peculiar to themselves" (Ibid.)
160
Mayhew, 11: 28.
16' Ibid.
16' Mayhew. 1: 47.
163
Mayhew, II: 10. In Petticoat-lane. the headquarters of second-hand trade. traffic was the most enormous
amongst its dark alleys (Mayhew. I: 26). Street-buyers worked "the more secluded courts. streets and
alieys" or called "periodically at certain places to purchase articles" which were usually sold "at the door or
within the house" (Mayhew, 11. 104, 103).
I65
Ibid. Monmouth-street. the great old shoe dismct. had been sketched by Dickens "as to its general
character and appearance" (Mayhew. 11: 35). Dickens stated: 'The stranger who finds himself in 'The
dials" for the first time, and stands. Belzoni-like. at the entrance of seven obscure passages, uncertain

characteristic detail, that all "these narrow streets. lanes. rows, passages. yards, courts, and places,
are the sites of the street-trade carried on in this quarter. The whole neighbourhood rings with
street cries. many uttered in those strange east-end Jewish ones which do not sound like English.
Mixed with the incessant invitations to buy Hebrew dainties, or the "sheepest pargains." is
occasionally heard the guttural utterance of the Erse tongue. for the "native Irish," as they are
sometimes called, are in possession of some portion of the street-traffic of Petticoat-lane, the
original Rag Fair." " Rosemary-lane also had "its off-streets." 16'
Mayhew recorded. such as
"Giass-house-street, Russell-court. Hairbrine-court. Parson's-court. Blue-Anchor-yard, Darbystreet,
Cartwright-street, Peter's-court. Princes-street. Queen-street. and beyond these and in the
direction of the Minories, Rosemary-lane becomes Sharp's-buildings and Sparrow-corner. There
are other small non-thoroughfare courts. sometimes called blind alleys, to which no name is
attached."
(6) Street Spaces of London
Spacial corridors called streets were themselves a contested spacial domain.Ib9 London's
streets numbered over 10,000, according to Mayhew's calculations.'" Parallel to the Thames ran
which to take. will see enough around him to keep his curiosity and attention awake for no inconsiderable
time." Dickens continued: "From the irregular square into which he has plunged. the streets and courts dart
in all directions. until they are lost in the unwholesome vapour which hangs over the house-tops. and
renders the dirty perspective uncertain and confined" (Mayhew. 11: 35). For a further description of secondhand
store shops. see Mayhew's record of Dickens's comments on p. 24.
166
Mayhew, 11: I I.
'15' Mayhew. 11: 39.
Ibid.
'" Mayhew records that "'there were 200 miles of new streets formed within the metropolitan police district
between the years 1839-49" (Mayhew. 11: 286). Mayhew documents Mr. Law's comments in his 'Treatise
on Constructing and Repairing of Roads": "Of late years wood has been introduced as a material for paving
streets. and has been rather excessively employed both in Russia and America. It has been tried in various
parcs of London. and generally with small success. the cause of the failure being identical with the cause of
the enormous sums being spent annually in the repairs of the streets generally, namely, the want of a proper
foundation" (Mayhew, 11: 182).
170 Mayhew. 11: 184. Peter Cunningham's "Handbook of Modern London" asserted that the rneuopolitan
streets. "if put together. would measure 3.000 miles" (Ibid.). Regarding the amount of London traffic,
Mayhew recorded that there were 1500 licensed omnibuses, 3000 licensed cabs. and 21.214 horses in 1849-

"two great lines of streets," roughly six miles each. 'I
One line of streets extended "along
Oxford-street. Holborn, Cheapside, Cornhill, and Whitechapel to the Regent's-canal, Mile-end,"
while the other stretched "from Knightsbridge along Piccadilly, the Haymarket, Pall-mall East,
the Strand. Fleet-street, Watling-street. Eastcheap. Tower-street. and so on by Ratcliffe-highway
to the West India Docks." 17'
"With its thousands of miles of streets and roads on the surface, and
its thousands of miles of sewers and drains under the surface of the earth," ' Mayhew focused
not only on these corridors themselves but also on the upkeep from a sanitary, social. and
economic point of view.
I74
Not surprisingly. London's street-work was "elaborate and costly.""5
The City of London's streets were about 50 miles long,"6 and beyond that. adjoining them
directly were "I00 miles of paved streets" In
plus there were an additional "200 more miles in the
*t 178
less central parts of London, following information received from the Surveyor to the City
Commission of Sewers. Mayhew realized that, outside their own parish, London's inhabitants had
a vested community interest in keeping up "the condition of other streets besides their own."
"Besides the inhabitants of Regent-street. for instance, all the riders in the 5000 vehicles that
daily pass through that great thoroughfare are affected by its condition." People who lived along
-
50. Furthermore. Paris traffic did not "even amount to one-half of what it is" in London. (Ibid., 184-5).
171
Mayhew. 11: 184.
"' Ibid.
173
Mayhew. 11: 179.
"' Ibid.
f 75
Mayhew, 11: 278. M ayhew re cords: "Streets tra ail y by what Cowper. even in his day. de scribed
as "the ten thousand wheels" of commerce - is an elaborate and costly work (Ibid.). Mayhew also
documents: 'We have ascertained the length of the streets of London - we have estimated the amount of
daily, weekly, and yearly traffic -caIculated the quantity of mud, dung. "mac," dust, and surface-water
formed and collected annually throughout the metropoIis" (Mayhew, 11: 207).
I76
Mayhew. 11: 27 I. The surveyor also calculated "about 5 1 miles lineal. about 770.157 superficial yards in
area" (Ibid.). With the addition of the "precincts of Bridewell. St.Bartholomew, St.Jame's. Duke's-place,
Aldgate. and others, have been added to the jurisdiction of the Sewers Commission by Act of Parliament."
the Surveyor estimated 'the area of the carriage-way of the City of London at 44 1.250 square yards, and
the footway at 328,907. making a total of 770,157 square yards" (Ibid.).
177
Mayhew. 11: 27 I.
178
Mayhew, 11: 201. Mayhew calculated that 'the 50 miles of the City may be safely calculated as yielding
daily 1% load of street mud per mile" (Ibid.).

Regent Street, Mayhew realizes, had "to bear the cost of keeping that street in good repair and
we1 lcieansed, for others ' benefir us well ar for their ~ ~vn"."~ City traffic was like the tide. The
first flood came and went from 1 1 A.M. to 2 P.M., then the second flood rose gradually again till
5 P.M..'~ and every day London's greatest traffic jams occurred on London-Bridge where 13.000
"conveyances" passed over the bridge - every 12 hours."' Mayhew had calculated some
fantastic figures about London's traffic, which has already been mentioned in part:
We have merely to reflect upon the vast amount of traffic just shown to be
daily going on throughout London - to think of the 70,000,000 miles of journey
- through the metropolis annually performed by the entire vehicles (which is
more than two-thirds the distance from the earth to the sun) - to bear in mind
that each part of London is on the average gone over and over again 40.000 times
in the course of the year, and some parts as many as 13,000 times in a day -
and that every horse and vehicle by which the streets are furnished, the one with
the four-ironed hoofs, and the other with the iron-bound wheels - to have an
imperfect idea of the enormous weights and friction continually operating upon
the surface of the streets - as well as the amount of grinding and pulverising
taking place in the paving-stones and macadamized roads of London; and thus
we may be able to form some mental estimate as to the quantity of dust
and dirt annually produced by these means alone.18'
179
Mayhew. 11: 20 1.
1M0
Mayhew, 11: 280.
"I Ibid. After dusk. the streets of London could not be traversed "without lanterns or torches*' (Mayhew. 11:
180.) Mayhew reminisced that this was "the case until the last 40 or 50 years in nearly all the smaller towns
of England. but there the darkness was the principle obstacle; in the inferior parts of "Old London,"
however. there was the additional inconveniences of broken limbs and robbery" (Ibid.). In fact. the first
experiments in modem public gas and electric illumination took place in the iron-bracketed lanterns. which
illuminated London's Royai Opera Arcade. (Geist. 35).
''' Mayhew, 11: 185.

The care of the streets generally-speaking was left "to the corporations and the parishes." Is'
99 Is4
while sewers remained "the object of national care.
Recent improvement. according to
Mayhew. seemed "to have established itself gradually from the improved tastes and habits of the
people," Ia5
although the streets of the poor, Mayhew discovered. were rarely swept at all until the
turn of the century. According to Mayhew even streets "of the better order were often flooded
during heavy and continuous rains, owing to the sewers and drains having been choked." "The
sewage forced its way through the gratings into the streets and yards. flooding all the
underground apartments and often the ground floors of the houses, as well as the public
thoroughfares with filth." '" Cowper's ironic description of "going by water." was. in fact, how
his contemporaries perambulated "some of these streets." '" What Mayhew also documented was
the transition between manual and machine labour. Some streets were always cleaned manually
-"St. Martin's-court; the flagged ways about the National Gallery; and the approach. alongside
the church, to the Lowther Arcade; the pavement surrounding the fountains which adorn the
"noblest site in Europe" and a variety of passages, yards. and minor streets."'"
But street-
machines had begun to clean "public thoroughfares under the control of the Commissioners of the
18.1
Mayhew, 11: 180. Historically. Mayhew discovered through examining he records of all civic
corporations*' that legislation 'ordered that the streets should be swept" but these orders were not enforced
"until after the great fire of London" (Ibid., 179). Mayhew recorded: "From the reign of Henry 111. down to
the civil war which terminated n the beheading of Charles I., mention is more or less made of the
combatants having availed themselves of the shelter of the rubbish in the streets. These mounds of rubbish
were then kinds of street-barricades. opposing the progress of passengers. like the piles of overturned
omnibuses and other vehicles of the modern French street-combatants" (Ibid.).
184
Mayhew, 11: 180. The 1848 Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was responsible for London's sewers
with the exception of the Court of the Sewers of the City of London.
I" Ibid.
186
Ibid. Mayhew recorded: "On the I " of August, 1846. after a tremendous storm of thunder. hail. and rain.
miles of the capital were literally under water; hundreds of publicans' beer-cellars contained far more water
than beer, and the damage done was enormous" flbid.).
187
Ibid., 179.
188
Mayhew. 11: 239. Mayhew believed that "the first mention of a scavenger in our earlier classical
literature. is by Bishop Hall, one of the lights of the Reformation, in one of his "Satires." 'The Oath of
Scavengers. or Scavengers, of the Ward" were sworn "on the Gospel": "Ye shal swear. Thatye shal we1 and
diligently oversee that the pavements in every Ward be we1 and rightfully repaired. and not haunsed to the
noyance of the neighbours; and that the Ways. Streets. and Lanes. be kept clean from Donge and other

Woods and Forests, running from Westminster Abbey to Regent-circus in Piccadilly. and
including Spring-gardens, Carlton gardens. and a portion of the West Strand." '" By 1843. streetorderlies
'" had also begun to take care of Regent-street between the Quadrant and the Regentcircus.
and along Oxford-street between Vere-street and Charles-street. 191
Besides street corridors, there were also canals that were "the most immediately connected
with the interior pan of the metropolis." 19'
On these canals, especially the Paddington, the
RegentVs, and the Surrey," '9%arges plied to-and-fro loaded with "30 to 40 tons" '% of street-
manure. Mayhew calculates the loads of manure or street mud. as we11 as defining them.
Filth. for the Honesty of the City" (Mayhew. 11: 206).
Ibid.. 238.
190
Street-Orderlyism was first "a new mode of improving "the health of towns." and secondly, "an
improved method of employing the poor*' (Mayhew. Il: 257).
19' Mayhew. 11: 259. Mayhew records that one man was "assigned the care of a series of courts, a street. or
500, 1000. 1200. 1500 or 2000 yards of a public way. according to its traffic, aftcr the whole surface has
been swept "the first thing in the morning" (Ibid.). "In Oxford-street, for instance. it has been estimated."
Mayhew documents 'that 500 yards can be kept clear of the dirt continually being deposited by one man; in
the squares. where there is no p t traffic, 200 yards: while in so busy a part as Cheapside. some nine men
will be required to be hourly on the look-out" (Ibid.).
192
Mayhew. 11: 201. The Thames was more than a commercial conduit for world trade. It was also a watery
medium for pagenay. Mayhew recalled Charles Knight's description in Knight's book called "London":
In the time of Elizabeth and the first James. and onward to very recent days. the north
bank of the Thames was studded with the palaces of the nobles: and each palace had
its landing-place. and its private retinue of barges and wherries; and many a freight of
the brave and beautiful has been borne. amidst song and merriment, from house to house,
to join the masque and the dance. and many a wily statesman. muffled in his cloak.
has glided unseen in his boat, to some dark conference with his ambitious neighbour
(Mayhew. 111: 327).
On the river's north bank. Mayhew reported that. for about 200 years, "all the magnates of the metropolis.
the king, the members of the royal family. the great officers of state, the Archbishop of Canterbury. the
noblemen whose mansions had sprung up amidst trees and gardens on the north bank of the Thames, the
Lord Mayor, the City authorities. the City Companies. and the Inns of Court, all kept their own servants.
attired in their respective liveries" (Ibid.). Mayhew stated: 'The Thames ... was then the principal arena for
the display of pageants. These pageants, however. are now reduced to one - the Lord Mayor's show"
(Ibid.. 328).
193
Mayhew, 11: 201.
1%
Ibid. A barge of street-manure contained 'about one-fourth (more or less) "rnac." or rather "rnac" mixed
with its street proportion of dung, &c., and three-founhs mud. dung. &c., contains from 30 to 40 tons, or as
many loads" (Ibid.).

According to Mayhew. the manure or "street mud from the Hayrrwrket" 19' was a "1% load each
wet day the year through." He also calculated that "Fleet-street, Ludgate-hiit, Cheap-side,
Newgate-street, the "off' parts of St. Paul's Church-yard. Cornhill, Leadenhall-street. Bishopsgate-street,
the free bridges. with many other places where locomotion never ceases, are in
proponion to their width. as productive of street mud as the Haymarket." '% Mud. the scavengers
told Mayhew, was "all that is srvepr from the granite or wood pavements. in contradistinction to
"rnac." which is both scraped and swept on the macadamized roads." '" But it was "mac". above
all eke. that had particular stay-power.
198
"Mac" stuck like glue: it was "the most adhesive street-
din known." Mayhew recorded that on "busier macadamized roads" near "the interior of
London" 20' it was commonplace to collect "two can-loads" '02 for every mile of road. But for all
the problems of living with mud, mud transformed life out of death. "Out of the London mud
come the London cabbages," wrote Mayhew. "So that an improvement in the scavaging of the
metropolis tends not only to give people improved health, but improved vegetables: for that
which is nothing but a pestiferous muck-heap in the town becomes a vivifying garden translated
to the country." "beath also mysteriously extended the dust-men's own lives. During London's
Ibid. Mayhew recorded that in the Haymarket. "which is about an eighth of a mile in length. and 18
yards in width. a load and a half of street-mud is collected daily (Sundays excepted). take the year through
Ubid.).
Mayhew. 11: 201.
19' Ibid.. 197. "Mac** was principally "the grinding and pounding of the imbedded pieces of granite. which
are the staple of those roads" (Ibid.). "Mud in high-spirits" was how Miss Landon characterized London's
street din. (Mayhew. 11: 183).
19' "It IS, perhaps, the most adhesive street-dirt known." Mayhew believed. "Mac was kneaded and worked
"into a paste" by London's street traffic (Ibid).
'W Ibid.
'"' Ibid.
"" Ibid. Macadamization - introduced '*into the streets of London until about 25 years ago" - was
constructed with "a layer of stones, broken small and regular in size, and spread evenly over the road, so
that the pressure and friction of the traffic will knead. grind, crunch. and knit them into one compact
surface" (Mayhew. 11: 18 1). Roads "even in the suburbs immediately connected with London. such as
Islington. Kingsland. Stoke Newington. and Hackney. were 'repaired when they wanted it"' (Ibid.).
'"' Mayhew, 11: 258.

plagues. dustrnen traditionally carted away the dead, yet "not one of them died of the plague.
even during its greatest ravages." The plague also protected their health providing "extraordinary
instances of longevity" even by modern standards - one dustman "lived to be 1 15 years;
another, named Wood, died at 100; and the well-known Richard Tyrrell died only a short time
back at the advanced age of 97." UY Death sometimes also opened up a business space directly on
the street. The Portman Square sweep told Mayhew: "One of my neighbours persuaded me that I
should pick up a good curmst at a crossing. The man who had been on my crossing was gone
dead, and as it was empty, I went down to the poiice-office, in Marleybone Lane, and they told
me I might take it, and give me li beny to stop.,' Different sectors of London's streets were
covered with different materials - Aberdeen granite (now Tharnes ballast) m. macadamized
road pavement =, and wooden pavement m. Ln upper-class middle-class ~itzro~-s~uare."~ where
Mayhew was born, granite pavement kept in good condition lasted for 20 years whereas
Cheapside neighbourhoods lasted only for three or four years. Four hundred miles of stone
pavement covered 50 miles inside the City and. roughly six or seven times as much without
"bearing down upon the Thames in all directions." "I
according to Mayhew. Over thirteen
'IU Mayhew. 11: 175.
'"5 Mayhew, 11: 473.
3 )6
Ibid.. 182. Regarding statistical accuracy. Mayhew confirmed that it was only possible. however. "to
arrive at an approximation as to the comparative extent I have spoken of; and in this attempt at
approximation. in the absence of all means of a definite statistical computation. I have had the assistance of
an experienced and practical surveyor. familiar with the subject" (Ibid.).
'07
Ibid.. 18 1. Granite was "brought by water from Scotland. and a small quantity from Guernsey" (Ibid.).
YM
"Macadamized was "a word adapted from the name of Sir. W. MacAdam, the originator or great
improver of the system" (Ibid.). Engels stated: "Between 18 18 and 1829 a thousand miles of roads with the
legal minimum width of 60 feet were constructed in England and Wales, and nearly all the old roads were
remodeiled on Macadam's principles" (Engels. 22).
2Im
Ibid. Wooden pavement was formed of "blocks of wood. generally deal. fitted to one another by
grooves. by joints, or by shape, for close adjustment. They are placed on the road over a body of concrete.
in the same way as granite" (Ibid.).
210
Ibid., 18 1.
'I' Ibid., 182.

hundred miles of macadamized roads were
St. James's-square was first. then
smaller streets in the aristocratic parish of St.James's and St-George's, and then Piccadilly
according to Mayhew but not without a battle. Wooden pavement was a relative newcomer
covering just "five miles of London's thoroughfares" including the Old ~ aiie~.~" The street
implied "a certain loss of innocence or perhaps enjoyment of. the unbridled, the mean, and the
obscene" "' and. as we shall see. different streetscapes and the people who inhabited them played
by different rules. Space was thus a political instrument of primary importance. strictly
controlled, with a hierarchy and segregation of all of its parts."5
(7) Policing the Street Spaces of London
Gutters were the coster's marginal territory2I6 while city streets proper were a playground and
the promenade for the b~ur~eoisie.~" Michael Angelo Taylor's Act (Act of 1817) clarified who
was responsible for removing different kinds of street nuisances. According to Mayhew. the
"only acts now in force which regulate the government of the streets, so to speak, are these best
"' Mayhew recorded that them roads were north of &he New-road and of io extension. as the City-road.
and westward of the New-roads' junction with Lisson-grove"; west of "Park-lane and of the west-end
parks"; east of "Brick-lane (Spitalfields) and of the WhitechapeI High-street": and south "(on the Surrey
side) from the New-cut and Long-lane. Bermondscy. and both in the eastern and western direction of
Southwark. Lambeth. and the other southern parishes" (Ibid.).
"' Ibid.. 182. According to Mayhew. it was the implemented during the last I I or 12 years.
214
Winter. 1994. 8. Homelessness could also be found in the Asylum for the Houseless Poor where a man
told Mayhew that he was quite literally thrown into the streets. going an entire week without resting.
Engels commented on homelessness: "Every morning fifty thousand hndoners wake up not knowing
where they are going to sleep at night" (Engels. 37-38).
"' Regarding the policing of space. Lefevbre has argued: '*It is. in other words. an administratively
controlled and even policed space" (Lefevbre. 288.) see also Poulantas 1978.201: quoted in Ray Forrest.
Jeff Henderson and Peter Williams, Urban Political Economy and Social Theory, The Theory of Social
Space in the Work of Henri Lefebvre. Gower: London. 1982, 180. The city for Lefevbre was as "an
arrangement of objects in space: urbanism as a way of life" (Katznelson, 96). Lefebvre was a pioneer
raising and pursuing longdormant questions rather than a scholar who answered theoretical and practical
questions.
=Ib Winter. James. London's Teeming Streets. 1830-1914. London and New York: Routledge. 1994. 100- 1.
=I7 Corfield. Penelope. I.. 'Walking the City Streets: The Urban Odyssey in Eighteenth-Century England."
Journal of Urban History. 16.2. February ( 1990): 132- 174. 132-3. 140.

known as Michael Angelo Taylor's Act. and the 2&3 Vic.. best known as the Police Act." 2'R
According to James Winter, people were fined, for "sweeping rubbish into sewers, beating
carpets over footways, allowing vehicles or animals to block the right of way, slaughtering pigs,
slacking lime, piling up bricks or timers, and depositing wares. Eyewitnesses can arrest without
warrant any vehicle driver who fails to place flash-boards around a load of night soil or noxious
chemicals. thus allowing the contents to slip over on to the road." "9 Regarding the "rights to sell
provisions from stands in the streets of the metropolis", it appeared to Mayhew "to be merely
permissive.'* "O
The regulatory history of Engiand's itinerant trade in manufactured goods went
back at least to the eighteenth-century. According to David Alexander, William 111 passed a
licensing Act for hawkers and pedlars, imposing a basic 4l.fee with an additional charge of 4l.for
each animal pulling a cart. But the Act also exempted from Iicensing hawkers of foodstuffs,
craftsmen selling their wares in markets and streets, and travelling tinkers. coopers, glaziers, and
other repair men.r' In 1785, another Act was passed raising the tariff on using animals to 81.. and
forbidding pedlars to sell in towns where they were not residents, except on market days. Four
years later, in 1789, an amending Act added the additional constraint, that to obtain a licence
pedlars required character statements from the parish clergyman and two other "respectable
inhabitants.""
Licensed pedlars were required to tack their name and license number
conspicuously to their carts, packs or rented shops, and by the nineteenth-century no legislation
had fundamentally changed these provisions.m It was also clear from Parliamentary Debates.
218
Mayhew. I: 59.
219
Winter incorrectly suggested that "Londoners. in effect, were taught how to behave on the streets but not
how to move spatially through it" Winter, 42). According to Mayhew. the Act required "all householders
every morning to remove all householders from the front of their premises any snow which may have fallen
during the night" (Mayhew, 11: 180).
"%ayhew. I: 58.
2' Alexander. 65-6.
" Ibid., 66.
lbid.

according to Alexander, that shopkeepers had pressed to totally abolish the itinerant trade, yet
none of this legislation applied directly to costermongers and peddling tradesmen. Control over
unlicensed peddling was a local matter ultimately defined by town or market improvement
Acts 224 as Mayhew had recorded.
Shopkeepers had considerable influence on the poiicy adopted by town authorities towards
hawkers. Even though licensed pedlars, not costermongers, were the shopkeeper's principal
competitor. shopkeepers - in their symbiotic relationship with the costers - expressed real and
imagined grievances from time-to-time against them as well. But, as Mayhew notes, shopkeepers
could not control the working-class trade for they would "not be driven to buy at the shops."
"They can't be persuaded that they can buy as cheap ay the shops," he continued. "Besides they
are apt to think shopkeepers are rich and the street-sellers poor, and that they may as well
encourage the poor." Mayhew concluded that "[tlhe poorer women, the wives of mechanics or
small tradesmen, who have to prepare dinners for their husbands, like, as they call it, 'to make
one errand do'." zi Working-class housewives purchased fruit, fish. and vegetables from street
traders and the market, and their bread. meat. cheese. and groceries from shopkeepers. When the
police suppressed a street market usually at the request of the London shopkeepers, trade in the
shops fell sharply as women shopped elsewhere in other street markets and surrounding shops.
Mayhew recalled the street battle over New Cut market:
Within these three months, or a little more. there had been removals of
the costermongers from their customary standings in the streets. This.
I have stated, is never done, unless the shopkeepers represent to the potice
that the costermongers are an injury and a nuisance to them in the
prosecution of their respective trades. "Leather-lane," I was told, "looked
2~' Ibid., 67.
Ibid.. I: 60.

like a desert compared to what it was. People that had lived there for
years hardly knew their own street; and those that had complained,
might twiddle their thumbs in their shops for want of something better
to do." 226
In Leather-lane, Mayhew recorded the same battles over policed spaces. "The shopkeepers
speedily retrieved what many soon came to consider the false step (as regards their interests)
which they had taken, and in a fortnight or so, they managed, by further representations to the
police authorities, and by agreement with the street-sellers, that the street-market people should
return. In little more than a fortnight from that time, Leather-lane, Holborn, resumed its wonted
busy aspect."
Nevertheless, under pressure from the big shops, new laws were also passed
affecting street trades. The most damaging was the law that prevented the costerrnongers from
standing stitl; they were liable to arrest loosing their wheelbarrow and stock. Between November
1849 when Mayhew began to write about the New Cut market and December 1850 when he
returned to it again in London Lcabour, "the mob of purchasers diminished by half and many
costerers with regular stands had been removed." "' Mayhew argued: "We should, therefore,
remember while venting our indignation against pattering street-sellers, that they are not the only
puffers in the world, and that they, at least, can plead poverty in the extenuation of their offence;
whereas. it must be confessed, that shopkeepers can have no other cause for their acts but their
own brutalizing greed of gain." z29 Mayhew concluded: "If ancient custom can be referred to. it
will be found that the Shopkeepers are the real intruders, they having succeeded the Hawkers.
226 Ibid., I: 59.
227
Ibid., 60.
a Humpherys, 59.
229 Mayhew. I: 3 10.

99 ZM
who were, in truth, the original distributors of the country.
(8) Conclusion
In the end, it appeared as if Mayhew's labouring class itself was superfluous, a form of
collective waste, if you will, cast aside by the city's economic machine. But paradoxically, a
source of the labouring classes' identity was discovered in this selfsame economic irrelevance. It
pointed people towards a world of nomadic, cast-off, and second-hand things that fascinated
Mayhew so -"a universe they were specially equipped to transform, since only they could feel
towards it that combination of empathy and miserly delight which London Lobour describes." Z)'
But amidst this paradox, Mayhew had developed a theory of space in relationship to a theory of
exploitation. For he had come to realize that there was a direct relationship between the means of
production and the way urban space was both reproduced and experienced. "Go where we will,
look into whatever poorly-paid craft we please," Mayhew stated, "we shall find this trading
operative. this middleman or contractor. at the bottom of the degradation." =' " Of this contract or
lump work, I received the following account from the foreman to a large speculative builder.
when I was inquiring into the condition of the London carpenters. ..."How the work is done, or
by whom, it's no matter to them. so long as they can make what they want out of the job. and
have no bother about it," he continued. "Some of our largest builders are taking out this plan, and
a party who used to have one of the largest shops in London has within the last years discharged
all the men in his employ (he had 200 at least). and has now merely an office, and none but clerks
and accountants in his pay.""3 Mayhew continued:
Of course I need not tell you that the first contractor, who does the leust of all,
gets the most of all; while the poor wretch of a working man, who positively
30 Mayhew. 11: 4
"I Maxwell. 96.
'" Mayhew. 11: 329.
XI-' Ibid.. 330.

executes the job, and is obliged to slave away every hour, night after night.
to get a bare living out of it; and this is the contract system. A tradesman, or
speculator. will contract, for a certain sum, to complete the skeleton of a house,
and render it fit for habitation. He will sublet the flooring to some working joiner,
who will, in very many cases, take it on such terms as to allow himself, by
working early and late, the regular journeymen's wages of 30s.a week, or
perhaps rather more. Now this sub-contractor cannot complete the work within
the requisite time by his own unaided industry. and he employs men to assist
him, often subletting again, and such assistant men will earn perhaps 4s.a day.
It is the same with the doors, the staircases, the balustrades, the window-frames,
the room-skirtings. the closets; in shon. all parts of the buildingLU
Mayhew discovered the "same marked contrast" "' between the customary and competitive
boot and shoemakers. the carpenters and joiners, and tailors. "The principle source of regret," for
the London chairrnakers. was "that the public have no knowledge of the quality of the articles
r* 236
they buy.
For Mayhew. "the decline which has taken place within the last twenty years in the
wages of the operative cabinet-makers of London is so enormous, and moreover. it seems so
opposed to the principles of political economy." "' Concerning the cabinet trade, Mayhew stated:
.. . we find a collection of circumstances at variance with that law of supply
and demand by which many suppose that the rate of wages is invariably determined.
Wages. it is said. depend upon the demand and supply of labour; and it is commonly
assumed that they cannot be affected by anything else. .. . the history of the cabinet
trade for the last twenty years is a most convincing proof, for there we find.
Mayhew. 11: 330.
"' Mayhew. 111: 223.
"6 Ibid.

that while the quantity of work, or in other words, the demand for labour,
has increased, and the supply decreased. wages instead of rising, have suffered
a heavy decline. .. . What other circumstances is there affecting the renumeration
for work. of which economists have usually omitted to take cognizance The
answer is. that wages depend as much on the distribution of labour as on
the demand and supply of it."8
"This law", Mayhew concluded, "may be summed up briefly in the expression that over-work
rt 239
makes under-pay.
London's spaces - concreteiy expressed through its markets, streets, docks, squares. and
fairs - were physical locations, real estate developments, and mentaI attitudes or consciousness.
Diverse kinds of social activities constitute a fourth realm of social relations, that is, space itself.
Especially through form or design together with production, consumption, and exchange. space in
Victorian London must be considered as one major element of the productive forces of society. In
Victorian London. then. there was increasing centralization of wealth on the one hand, and
increasing poverty on the other. Londoners were segregated within a complex hierarchy of
residential and non-residential domains, some of which were transformed into collections of
ghettos. Mayhew's street-folk, for example, were at once socialized, integrated, submitted to
artificial pressures and constraints. as well as separated and isolated People were segregated
into functional and hierarchical ghettos: deluxe residential estates like the Grosvenor estates 2"
'" Ibid., 226.
"' Ibid., 227.
'W Ibid.
'"' Lefebvre 197 1, 168.
-I I
One master sweeper told Mayhew that "in his apprenticeship days ...[ he] had to wait at the great
mansions in and about Grosvenor-square. on some bitter wintry mornings" while little children-sweepers
waited at "rich men's doors" (Mayhew. 11: 366).

and slums like St-Giles ~ookery."' luxury clubs iike the Traveller's Club and working-class pubs
and coffee houses like Rodney's coffee house; and public green spaces and private parks like St,
James. These spatial ghettoes were not only juxtaposed with one another, but were also
hierarchically arranged. spatially representing the economic and social hierarchy. dominant and
subordinate sector^."^ Victorian London's personal and collective spaces existed sirnultaneously
in relation to abstract spaces, which were seemingly homogenous but were, in fact, hierarchical.
The essential spatial contradictions of Victorian society were the confrontations between them.
Between socid spaces produced by the complex interaction of ail classes in the pursuit of
everyday I i fe and abstract spaces, or the externaiization of economic and political practices
originating within the capitalist class and the state, lay conflict.
Cities are metropolitan forms with distinctive internal spatial configurations. Here in the
cities, ciass-based communities create bases of imagery, identity, and organization, which are co-
constituted in space as well as time. Mayhew's street-folk as well as the middle-class lived in
spaces that were produced by specific on-going relationships between the natural environment
and the dynamics of human labour. In these diverse spatial worlds, their battles over the Victorian
social order with its spatial dimensions, mediated between large-scale social processes and the
cultural activities that established human consciousness.2~ By focusing on Victorian London as a
nineteenth-century locus for human activities with determinate forms, Chapter 4 has attempted to
focus on ways that can help explain the development of modem western cities:"
how people in
differing and opposed classes came to represent their lived experiences spatially.2" which
"'
- - - -
According to J.H.Vaux's Flash Dicrionaty (I 8 12)- "slum" is little more than a name for a room.
Though by the 1820s. the word had three distinct meanings as a slang expression for various kinds of
taverns and eating houses, for ioose talk and gypsy language. and more vaguely, for a room in which lowgoings-on
occurred.
"-' Lefebvre 1978,309- 10.
2-44
Katznelson, 203-4.
24 5
Ibid., ix.
'" Ibid.. 210.

Mayhew wrote so powerfully and extensively about in London Labour and the London Poor
( 1861-62). As we move into Chapter 5, the dissertation moves into Mayhew's examination of the
domain of the "oral/literate debate" as well as popular oral, written, and visual forms of
representation both as an aspect of the Menippea and also as a concrete aspect of reality. For
Mayhew was obsessed with what Victorian street languages and cultures from below sounded
like within the structure of a capitalist city cailed London.

Chapter 5
6Conve~tioa ~ieces": Vernacular Forms of Representation
in Mayhew's L~OIL
(1) Introduction
For the first time in mid-Victaian Loncbn, a major wak by Henry Ma*
called
Lundon Lobour and the hrrdan Poor (1 86 1-2) Qcumented popular Victaian oral.
written, and visual f m of representation2 But ratkr than treat them primarily as
Litaary issues (which Mayhew did not do either), this dissatation exa-
Mayhew's
perspective of tk speeh of London's smxtfdk as pimatiIy the circulatiociof alien
utterances within bourgeois Victaian society, as well as their reception, representation,
' Pevsner, Niltolaus, Englishness of English An, 1964 119561, 51. Impcxtantly, Pevsner wrote
that Hogarth "is most famous fa his series of paintings and engravings such as Marriage a la
Mode or The R&'s Progress. But he began as a painter of wbat is called "amversation pieces",
small groups of people joined together in cunversatioa a some other action, a type of painting the
English were especially fmd of." Mayhew, in turn, seemed to have translated Hogarthian
aesthetics f a his own pupas by deliberately seeking out social outcasts. Heir, in part, to the
Continental Baroque traditicm, Mayhew aeated his own visual and verbal ideas in the
development of time through narrative mation. David Kunzle wrote that in 1753, Hogarth
published his own theoretical treatise, the Analysis of Beaury: "Hogarth's theory if characterid
above all by its dynamisn . . . to Hogarth, art is a visual dynamics in itself. Its esseuce is moticm.
and although he dcxs not speak explicitly of narrative motion, his entire thought, his very creative
process, is predicated upm variation, evolutioa, the development of time of visual ideas', (Kunzle.
1973, 338).
Following Roger Chartier, represeoutim is a temn that pnains to three levels of reality. Firstly,
represen tatioo pertained to the level of collective represen tation that embodies within peapie, the
divisioas of the social wmld and the aganizatim of the schemes of perceptioa by which people
classified, judged and aaed in the world. Seumdly, representation pertained to the level of forms
of such symbolic mamances" as images and rites, of exhibitim and stylization of identity.
Thirdly, represmtatim pertained to the level of Qlegatim to representatives of the coherence and
stability of their identity. (Chartier. Roger, On the Edge of the Clifl: History, Languuge, and
Practices, 1997,5).

and repercussioas within the "'0caVliterate debate". By uriluiDg tk characteristics of the
Menippea (comidgr~taque) as a fiamewuk this dissertation also examines Mayhew's
consciousness of grotesque pafamances, multi-styled genres, the mixing of poetic and
prose speech. which were central to linguistic repreSeLltatim What Mayhew examined
with varying degrees of distance, were really violations of Victorian forms of behaviour
such as habits of speech,' cynical wads: and scanc!ais. Tke violations broke in upon
the ncxmal a& of Victorian life, freeing the strat-fdk from mtain 'civilized'
presuppositions that predetamined their bebaviour. Along tk way, Mayhew also
obswed unusual psychological states - insanit$ and unusual f m of dream states.
Chapta 5 thus hits together some of the mcial historial and cultural threads behind
Mayhew's work - late seventeenth-, dghteernh- ;tad
British
linguistic history (especially ad history) as well as other visual and written vernacular
forms of representation, which were central to the rise of a reading public.
Lovejoy, Arthur, l7u Greu Chain ofBeing, 1%5[1949] argued that the ward "romantic" bad
come to mean so many things that, by itself, "it means nothing". Despite Lavejoy's coatention,
Rene Wellek, in his loog paper, 'The Concept of Rananticism in Literary History", 1%4[1949],
13 1-33, &fined Rananticism as (1) the attempt to overcome the opposition of subject and object
in personal experienae; (2) the shift fian neoclassical theay to the dialectical and symbolic view
of poetry and; (3) the attempted reconciliati011 of the self and be waid, the coascious and
unconscious elemeats in our humanity.
Mayhew described his visit to the asylum. There, he stood at the window an an upper flax of tbe
asylum looking down oo the crowd of homeless merr and wanen waiting fa the dax to -0: "A
few were without shoes; and these Leep one foot oaly t the ground while the bare flesb that has
had to tramp through the snow is blue and livid-looking as halfcooLed meat" (Mayhew, m: 428).

(2) The Historid Bdcgnmd to the 'LOrslULiterote Debate''
The "aayliterate debate" has been defiaeb. described, aad QbaW anmag scholars
and intellgtuals in England since the sevemkmh-ceawy.' Job Lock's philosophy of
language. elabaated in his Essay ( 1690). and murished by comparative anthropology
and travel literature, was unquestionably the mast influential theay of language in
Britain throughout the eighteenth-cennrr~~' For Lock language was bah a social
institution, 'Wle great Insenunent, arrd commm Type of Sociay," and the vehicle for the
communifuicm of ideas. '' hptady. rccardiDg to Harris, he re-
tk idea that
human ex@-
were embedded in soci*histmcal coatexts in which languages were
created. He also rejected the double &amity
issue, which argued that firstly the
linguistic sign could represent both things as well as ideas, and secondly, that the signifier
and the signified f d a significant, mt arbitrary, linguistic relationship. In deferrse of
' Vincent, David, 'The Decline of the Oral Traditioa in Popular Tradition." In Popufar Culrure
and Custom in Nineteenth-Century England, edited by REStach. Loodon: Cram Helm, 1982.
According to David Vincent: 'Tbe oral aaditioa is a seventeenth-cenw tenn fmt introduced by
Joseph Hall, the Anglican Bishop, who uses Biblical authority as a weapon against the Ranan
Catholic position oa the cxal tradition: 'As fa the aall Traditions, what certaintie can there be in
them What foundation of truth can be layd upan the breath of man How doe they multiply in
their passage, and either grow, ar dye u p hazards The English oral nadition and its amnectim
with the study of popular culture began with John Brand's Observations on Popular Anziquities
(1777), in which Brand told us tbat 'though erased fian public Authority fran ttre wn'rten Word',
these records of popular culture '%me committed as a venerabie -it to the keeping of the oral
Tradi tioa"*(Vincen t, 1982, 21 -22).
"leff, 1982, 147. Aarsleff stated that in 1746, CcmcWads Essai sur L'origin des
Conniossames Humoines, drew its inspiration from Lacke's Essoy (1690). in 1770, Hexder wrm
his prizewinning essay Libcr Ubcr den Urspnrng der Sprache. I . Paris. the linguistic &bate
raged over language witb DiQIot, Rwsseau, de Br- and Ccmciillac. The debate on Condillac's
work also led Wder, Leibnitz and Michibelis to write heir own prize-winning essays on language.
In Berlin, the debate raged with Maupertuis (1748) and in Scotland, witb Smitb (1761) and
Monboddo (1773).
Land, 1986.43.
10
Ibid.; See Aarsleff, 28. Locke's Works, vd. 9,512-554, gave "A Catalogue and Character of
most Books of Voyages and Travels" in ratin,
Spanish, Italian, French and English. There was
some reasan to believe that Ldce compiled it himself (Aarsleff, 72).

his position Luck wrote:
Wads conve to be ma& use of by Men as the Signs of tkir Ideas;
not by their natural connexion, that there is between particular articulate
Sounds and catain Ideas, for tkn there would be but one Language
amongst all Men; but by a voluntary Imposition, whereby such a Wad
is made Arbitrarily the Mark of such an Idea The use then of Wads. is
to be sensible Marks of Ideas; and the Ideas they stad fa,are their
propa a&
immedi~te signification "
Although Locke's views profoundly influenced theories about literacy, Ma*
battled against Locke's conceptualitatim from within the English Romantic tradition.
Mayhew tried to reconcile his journalistic dmmmlation of London street languages and
the harsh realities of labouring and wcxking-class cultures with a deeper, richer sense of
an urban world overflowing with "~aoglossia". In doing so, be implicitly challenged
Locke's assumptions, that thae was an ideal speak in the text, that language was
perfect, and that certain languages were civilized while others were not. Following Olivia
Smith, eighteenth-
scholars such as Lock attempted to c~ntr01 linguistic
Locke's Works, Vo1.3, "On Wads"; quoted in AarslefT, 63.
" Dixourse or metalinguistics was "language in its ccmuete living totality" (Bakhtin, 181). In
tenns of dialogic canmunicatim. Jobannes Fabian wme: "Writers can be dumb and readers deaf
as long as literacy is imagined to exist oa a plane of signs, above, outside of, a apan Erom the
agitations of voice" (Fabian, Jobannes, Time and the Other. How Anrhropology Makes the Objecr.
New Yak: Columbia University Press, 1983.84)- Fa Voloshinov (1930). "the wad is a two
sided act. I give myself verbal shape Erom another's point of view, ul~hately frOm the point of
view of the community to which I belong. A wad is a bridge thrown between myself and another.
If one end of the bridge depends an me, then the orher depends on my addressee. Utteran- ate
like DNA chains: eacb is a link in the chain. and none of them can be studied outside this
(Bakhtin, 1986, 136).

categorig as c ell as tkir paceived relationship to
qualities; l3 sc~ars were
English The "aavliterate debate" tried to set limits - aad still amtimes to try to set
Iimits - to what were consickred to be the rmst civihxi, moral, and rational practices
during the last 250 years. Bearers of t r m techniques of self-knowledge such as
h k e fiamed and sometimes tried to destroy other languages embedded in orher social
practices. Or to put it aaaher way, they tried to desaoy bearers of differing COI~C~QB of
Literacy by &migrating adhary dialects, argas. id patois. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
of the English Language (1755). which popularized standard dictioaaries and grammars,
stated: "Illiterate writers, will at oae time a another, by public infatuation, rise into
renown, wtro not knowing the aiginal h p t of wads, will use timm with colloquial
Licentiaslless. cdouad distinction, and faget prqxiety."" Upper-class English was a
monument to higb culture's mom eduhg characteristics, Juhson argued, whereas
lower-and middle-class languages were "cant", just paishable commodities like the
people themselves. He argued that this 'Yugitive cant, which is always in a state of
increase or b y , cannot be regarded as any of the durable materials of a language. and
thaefae must be Wered to perish with akr things unworthy of presavation." l5
Mae
than eighty years after it was first written Bishop L ows A Shun Introduction to English
Grammar (1762) continued to warn its readers against imitating qualities found in
I'
Smith, Olivia. The Politics of lcutguage. 1791 -1819. Oxfad, New Yak: Clarendm Ress,
1984.9.
'' Smith, 13.
'' Smith, 14, 16,22 24. Lmd Moaboddq James Harris's fiend, (Harris's Hems (1751).
extended Johnson's notioa of "cant" to include the idea that "the languages of children, savages
and tbe vulgar are [actually] imbruted in tbe material wald." and are "scattered througb different
languages-"

primitive languages. But the literary mant gar&, among ortrers. demanded clarification
of what "civilizatim" really meant - especially in regards to language - urging that
there was a creative and @tical m~~sity to rediscova a written vaaa~ular.'~ Beyond
the politics of priated texts. tk battle over language exrencCed into open political
conflict." Political activists like the radical lawyer, writer, and linguist. John Home
Tooke, argued that language was a public fam of dialogue abused by upper-class
'netaphysical jargon and false maality which can ouiy be dissipued by aymdogy." "
Tmke also argued that hguage was an evolutionary institution fa human
communication, abd that primitive and civilized people perfarmed the same cognitive
operations, although their linguistic differences were cultural a d colltextual. 'Ihe on-
going Romantic &ate
about languages, its orientation towards the "araVLiterate debate,"
togaher with the developumt of a comparative-historical philology.19 all attempt& to
dramatically refbte eighteeath-century thought= And although Toolre - as a Romantic
polemicist himself- successfully wove togetha tk philosaphy of language as well as
philology. by the l82Os, rhese two Qmdnc had followed separate paths.
Established philology was closely associated with the Gmmn masters of the field,
Bopp (1791-1867) and Grimm (1785-1863), who compared the grammars of Sanskrit,
17
Smith. 9-10.
'' Tcmke (1736-1812) was tried fa sedition in 1777. He was rehrsed admissim to the bar in 1779,
1782, and 1794, wbea he was imprisoaed fa seven months without any criminal charges, and in
t 801, be was denied a seat in Parliarneat (Smith. 1983, 135); See Smith, 146, concerning the
Annual Review and the British Critic's review of Took's Diversions of Purley (1 798).
l9 Comparative philology was a term proQosed by Schlegel in 1808, when scholars began to
embark oa the canpalive analysis of In&European languages; Sce Aarsleff, 1982, 73, %.

Old Slav. Lithuanian, ad Old GarnPa" Bawaen 1 8 1 1 and 1829, Jakob Grinnn togaha
with his brotha W ' i pubW Hand md Gretel, and Snow White, tk most f-s
tales of Gaman fdLIae with their universal tbeares and common ImbEufopean roots of
European languages a d ~egencls.'~ Philology. as an histmeal science, mx only created
chronological beachmarks f a languages thmdves but also to some extat exercised a
reflexive exploration of itself. " By finding mmmm features vmag European cultures
and languages, philology played an impMant part in highlighting perceived differemes
between European and "primitive" cultures. " In otk wcxds, pbildogy, travel literature,
and ethaography, with kir own abilities to distance other ptqles, combined to help
establish a European idadty during the cdoaial period 24
From the 1 840s to the 1 860s - duiag Mayhew's crucial investigative years - a
Cambridge liaguist nand WiUiam Whew& led a second gemxatim of linguists against
Locke, championing historical languages and located tk ''oravliterate debate" within this
debate. By the 1860s, however, the linguistic ti&
had turned yet again, and p&ap the
fate of London Labow with it. Bred and Taine, Saussure's direct predecessas,
challenged the pedominant notions within tk Romantic tradition, proposing a return to
Lock instead. Accading to Aarsleff, they pitted the idedogy of Lake and the
philosophes against Victorian sages like Mayhew and Carlyle who believed that "life and
'O Williams, Karel, 46.
" Ibid.
" See P.B~trke and R POM. Zk Social History of hguage. Cambridge Studies in Oral and
Lirerate Culture, Camtwidge University Press, 1987; P. Joyce, 193-214; L.Hunt (ed.), 73e New
Cultural History. University of Califmia Ress, 1989.
23 Ibid., 48.

meaning lay in the actual wads of the origiaal, in the sage's own use of language, [and]
mt in what can survive !nuMlarizing~ of their 'content'." " Nevatheess. within this
embattled terrain. Mayhew's comparative, histaical, aod s-c
approach to languages
became! one of nineumthamtury England's most hpmtamt Romantic refutations of
eighteenth-century thinking about languages. Fu Mayhew's London Labour was
involved in a linguistic proja it can be argued, to achieve political refam, but it was
not as politically explicit as H m Todre's 1790s disccllrse on language "Surprisingly,
Mayhew chose to adopt the rmst fat--
tk%xy of language," Karel Williams
argued 'Words haunted his wak a d their history gave clues to the hidden history of the
crowd" 27 Mayhew was really an urban explaer and grammarian who attempted to
propagate the ideas of comparative philology by examining histmcal languages and
societies. He was also very conscious of waking within and against larga systems of
representation. In examining wads, he sought tk linguistic roots of his own urban
investigations by documenting the aal tradition of LooQn's street folk for "the very first
time." " Mayhew's approach to popular philology as opposed to the establiskd
philology of Bopp and Grimm was political, cultural, and epistemological, and as such it
enabled him to construct an historical aDd mrxal dhmsioa, even fa secret words used
24 Williams. Kprel, fmae 18.48: In 185 1, Mayhew's howledge of Orimm and Bopp p W
him among an elite in the study ofphilology, according to Williams.
" Aarsleff argued that Took interfered with the development of English Language tbsay and
moreover, that the philological tradition is an abberation. Smith argued otherwise.
Williams, Karel, 45.

on the streets of Loldrng In umclusim London Lobour was an attempt to develop an
alternative histay of the people using a Romantic tkay of language. Ma*
attanpted
to reveal the comp1exities of Victaian urban life by repiacing the hkean tradition with
Romantic f m of representation Fa Romantic idedogy has played an absolutely
crucial role in Watern theories of language, history. sociology, literary, and artistic
studies on a global scale over the course of the last two cemries. And fa his part,
waking within this tradition, Ma*
moved back and forth from Hinitions of wads to
a theory of languages. just as he moved back and fath fiom descriptions of London's
streets and the analysis of casual labour, to a
of the capitalist city. To Maybew's
credit, he attetnpted to reconcile differing fm of popular literacy and differing kinds of
readerships, even though the Morning Chronicle aewspaper targeted primarily middleclass
readas. Ad he attempted to do this thra~gh Qcumentiag the rise of the Victorian
reading public with its popular ad. written, and visual forms of representation, to which
we now tum30
29
Mayhew interviewed a Sunday cross-sweeper whose father "was a 'terpreter. and spdce seven
different languages. m] used to go with Banaparte's army. and used to 'terpret fa
him"(hlayhew, 11: 485).
'O Wellek, 1964[1949], 131-33.

(3) Literacy and the Rise of the Victorian Reading Public
Maybew's wcxld was saturated with diffaent. overlapping urban reading publics.
Victorians gathered around the bookseMas's stalls, in tavm, wukshops, and
coffeehouses, '' such as Beajamin's, " Rodway's. 33 a the British Coffehouse in
Cockspur Sum .' There was a burgeoniDg commercial reading public, 35 the Churches
and Mechanics's institutes reading public, and an active radical public, which "organized
---
3' Ma*ew recads that a scrrrflabourer's "'I read sametimes at ~&be-shops (Mayhew, II, 237).
The negro aOGSiLLg-swbepc~, who had lost bolb his legs stated: "Afra I wcnt down to GLasoow fa
my money, I qmed a little dee-house; it was called 'Uncle Tan's Cabin"' (Mayhew, II: 490).
A regular scavenger told Mayhew "'Sartinly I've seen wcxking people reading in coffee-shops:
but they might as well be resting theirselves to keep up their strength"' (Mayhew, 11: 225).
" Mayhew, I: 86.
Mayhew, ID: 350.
'' One of the Six Acts, known as 60 George III, was put into effect by the upper-class in
December 1819, "to wipe out [all] radical demagogues, anti-governmental and anti-religious
papers" (Thompson, E.P., 1966,719-20). All printed matter wb subject to a four-penny surtax
including newspapas. It was now defined as "'any periodical carraining news a comments
published more often than every twenty-six days, printed on hwo sheers or less, and priced at less
than 6 pence exclusive of the tax" (Altick, 1955,327-28). When the stamp duty was lowered to a
penny from 1819 to 1846. the battle still involved editas, booksellers and printers as well as
hundreds of news vendas. hawkers and agents. mere were aeative approaches to breaking the
law. For example, John Cleave, publisher of the famous Wcal paper. the Police Gazetre.
circumvented the tax in the 1830s by advenising the day-dd Times. Morning Chronicle and True
Sun at half-price (Webb, 1955,32-33; Thanpsorr. 1%6,729-30). In some instances, the same dayold
London newspaper changed hands over 30 times. La the 1850s. Mayhew desaibed how street
hawkers dd
"one straw for me newspaper9* to avoid breaking the law in selling the radical
Republican newspaper. Mayhew recorded: 'The Svawer offers to sell any passer by in the streets a
straw and to give the purchaser a paper. which be dares not sell. Accadingly as he judges of the
character of his audience, so he intimates that the paper is political, libellous, irreligious, or
indecent." Mayhew was told, that "as taf back as twenty-five a twenty-six years, straws were
sold but only in the country, with leaves 6ran the Republican, a periodical published by Cariisle,
then of Fleetstreet, which had been prosecuted by the government. But it seems that the trade died
away, and was little or hardly known again until the time of the trial of Queen Caroline, and then
but sparingly. Tbe straw sale reaches its highest commercial pitch at the era of the Refam Bill"
(Mayhew. I: 239; see also Thompson, 1966, 719-20). A chaunter told Mayhew that when he was
thirteen years old, Wadless, houseless, untaught, and without any means of getting a living":
" . . . one of the Stampoftice spies got me to sell sane of the Poor Man's Guardians, (an
unstamped paper of that time), so that his fellow-spy might take me up. This he did, and I bad a
month at Coldbath-fields for the business" (Mayhew, m: 195).

itself in the face of tk Six Acts, sad the tax= on larowledge." " The first My years of
the nimeenth-cennuy had seen swee~ing changs in ttre publishing industry in England
in the different kids and amwnts of books that were sold as well as some of its
marketing practices. -cling
to Mayfrew. Odd Numbasellers, Steamboat
Newsvendors, tk Sellers of Second Editions, Board-Wak, Tract-Sellers, Sellers of
Childrens' B&
d Song Books, Bodr-auctioaeers, Book-StaUqem, and Railway
Newsvendors. with their high volume a&
high leasing rates, '' sold to a diverse reading
pubiic. Thae was a h a vast array of snuggling streex-seilers of stationery who sold
sellers of almmacs, pocket-books, rrremnadum and account-books, odd numbers of
periodicals and broad-sheets, playing cards, conversation cards, stenographic cards and
racing cards. Sellers of penny shorthaod cards practiced a repetitive kind of street lecture,
"embracing the same ideas in nearly the same wuds over and over and over again." 39
Here was a Literary wald full of street-trading men As Maybew writes, they were
iiterate, married, and "keeoish politicians, both fiee-tradas, and against freetrade wkn
36 Thompson, 1966, 729. In tern of libraries fa reading, the wood-carvers* society, accocding to
Mayhew, had among their colldm: 'The Architeaural Ornaments and Decaatims of
Cottingham," The Gothic Ornaments" of Pugin, Tatham's 'Greek Relics," Raphael's "Pilaster
Ornaments of the Vatican," Le Pautre's "Designs," and Baptiste's 'Collectioo of Flowers," large
size; while among the casts are articles of the same choice desaiptioa. The objects of this society
are, in the wocds of the preface to the printed catalogue, "to enable wood-carvers to ccqxme fa
the advancement of their art, and by farming a deaicm of bodrs, prints, and drawings, to affad
them facilities for self-improvement; alsa by the fism of infamatioa among its members, to
assist them in the exercise of their art, as well as to enable them to obtain employment** (Mayhew,
1x1: 221).
37 Ibid., 289.
38 Ibid.
39 Mayhew recaded: The exhibilor. however. pleads that the anstant exchange and interchange
of passengers, and his Qsire to give each and all a hir amount of infmtiar, makes the
repetition admissible, and even necessary" (Mayhew. I: 261).

they was-a-talking of (he bats days when tky was young." "
On the s tre, morning and evening aewspapers had "now become a trade of no
small impmane" There was @&zing as well, accocding to Maybew. which was used
for the "‘privilege of selling to railway-passengas within the precincts of the [railway]
terminus." Railway News verdors sold "light reading," oae-vdum novels sold fa Is.
and "monthly parts" of serials were published as well as "shilling bodrs of porn." One
experienced railway book-seller tdd Maykw that his customas seamid "quite lost in a
W* " often staading and read- "for half an bar cr an hour at a time." '* The
imaginary dream wcxld of books, filled with adventure, violence, and sensationalism
acted as a kind of emotioaal surrogate fm real-life urban experie~~~. 43 1 repressed the
fact of the real dilemmas facing Victorian society by
catain feelings of
anxiety; yet at the same time, acuxding to mas, it produced peculiar intanalized
tensions within everyday Victman life, which led to the W of lifelong restlessness
that were seen in Dickens and Carlyle. Books even played a palliative role. The mousetrap
maker tdd Mayhew that he used books to whileaway the pain in his thigh He
- ----
40
Mayhew, I: 289. "A small libary of history, voyages, travels, and instructive and entertaining
periodical wals, was placed" at the disposal of the street orderlies, a~cording to Mayhew
(Mayhew, TI: 263).
41 Ibid,. 295.
'' Elias, 1982,42235,249-50; See also Robert Jauss, 1989.40: In Black Swine in the Sewers of
HampsreadBe~h the Su@ce of Victorian Sensationalism (1989), Thomas Boyle tackled the
problem of modernity in m id-Vim England from 1830 to 1870. Boyle argued that crime
columns, eqeckdly fkan 1850 onwards, revealed that two Englands mxisted together aaoss the
entire class spsmm. Ln fa4 aloogsik a civilized arthodox notim of AngbSaxm cultural
superiority, with its "peculiar mixture of self-assured outrage and befuddlement", ran a brutal
strain of murder and madness. (Boyle, 1989.34, 109); In The Other Victoriuns, Steven Marcus
argued that Wictorian official cmsciousness of displacement and denial . . . repressed [ed)
informati- about sexual indiscretion" altogether. (Boyle, T. Black Swine in the Sewers of
Humpstead= Beneash the Suq7ace of Victorian Sensatio~lism. laadon: Penguin, 1989,22,24).

ecounted: that "wkn I I had in acute pain with my thigh a scientific book. or a wak
on history, or a volume of travels. would carry my th~ghts far away, ad
I shahd be
happy in all my misay - hardly cmschs that I had a trauble, a care, a a pang to vex
me." a
Other books were now sold more 6requently fiom barrows. as street-sellers wae
faced to keep moving by tk poiice, and this process, in turn. changed markethg
practices along with the increasing tempo of life in Loah. Mayhew cammted on the
fact that 'the weU-known light form of street conveyance is now fast superseding not
only the book-auctiomx. but tk bookstall in rhe hmkm streets." 'Ihirry to f q
years @a. street auctioaeers systematically and extensively "auctid* new books in
front of public-houses or inns, accading to Mayhew; but now. only two auctiomxs
waked irregularly aad chiefly in "the provincial towns, a d especially the country
marlas." a In tbe midst of chac@ng marketing practices such as these. boolcs, especially
novels. becaroe indispensable to Victcnian life." Tk novel - saleable and secular -
became a cultural commodity central to tk rise of this diverse reading public.' Mayhew
Maybew, III: 22. He also said that he thought "it is solely due to my taste fa mechanics and my
love of reading scientific both that I am able to live so COtllfoctably as I do in my afflictim"
(Mayhew, ID: 23).
45 Maybew. II: 298.
" Hauser. 1985.4.434; Tbanv, 1971.21: Frasa. Derek and Anthony Sutcliffe. (eds.) 7k
Pursuit of Urban Hifiory. hQa: Edward Arnold 1983. see Blumin, quoted in Fraser &
SutcWk, as producers of "the industrializatiaa of oar-industrial goods."
At the turn of the amuqr, fa the first h e, the upper-class grasped the shea size of the reading
publics. It also experienced firsthand "tbe problems of mass prabUicms and dismbution."
Eventually, however, the entrepeneurial Victaian middle-class hoke down "the cultural
prerogatives of the aristoaacy" (Haw. 1985.4.53; Altidr, 1955.8 1).

documenmi tbe fact that "English novels replace samons, wtLere "samoas, m ratha the
works of the old divines . . . are rareiy see. at these stalls, a if seen, are rarely
purchased'*g With the disappearance of the Messiah and the Death of Abel comes the
rise of English novels such as The Vicar of Wakefield. Tom Jones and Richardson's
Pamela. dictionaries and "Old Loadoa Mags." so
Between 18 16 and 1850, the annual publishing rate fa novels hit 100, but the real
public breakthrough in publishing came when tk price of serial mvels - reduced by
onethird - bgame truly afTadable fa everycme~~' Mayhew's London Labour became
serialized in
185 1, selling 13,000 copies, twmpence f a a weekly copy and
nine-pare for monthly inst-.=
It was 'We fim "blue booY' eva publiskd in
twopenny numbers," " accading to Mayhew. Dich's Pickwick Pqers (1837) became
a sensation, after a discou~agingly slow start, so wfien Part 15 sdd fa 1 shilling each, the
sale of Pickwick Papers reached 40,000 copies saializatim gave tbe waking class
their first chance to own tkir own
acc

dictionaries '6 also sold regularly. Maytnu's Ladon Lcrbour itself hluc&d an extensive
refereace index and errata &on
at the d of every volume which gave it as well a
udjctim-Wre precisim~ n In many ways, L#z&m Lobour literally functioaed as a
dictionary of tfre unckwc~ld including Lonbon's prostitutes and thieves, even its
undagrouad sewers." To combat what the middle-class perceived as 'We mcarious twe
penny trash,"
at the turn of the century, Hannah Mae publkld tk Ckap Repository
~racts.~ ''When pemy bmks were few and vsy sd." a religious tract seller told
Maykw. ''religious tracts were by far the chapest things in prin~'* Tkn during the
1820s. two powafirl religious institutions, TIE Society f a the ROI130tion of Christian
Knowledge and Hemy Brougham's Wety fa the Difhsion of Christian Knowledge,
were created to publish, among other things, religious tracts. During the 1830s and up
until the 1870s, two otha middle-class institutions stood betrind the drive f a increased
literacy levels: the British and Foreign S c M Sacie~y and the National Society fa
56 Fifteen years after the Loodon Philological Society began in 1842, it began to canplement
Richardson's 1836 diaimary with another additim. Earlier eighteenth-century dictionaries were
more often a colleaion of rare wmds ( W i i Karel 1981,45). W i stated: 'Crucially, the
national dimensim of any linguistics a philology amid not be beaer exemplified thao through
this parallel aeatim of philology and fume!; both dig deeply into the roots of Kultur"
(Wiliams, Karel, foomote 14-46).
Ibid., 48-9.
58
Ibid.; See Mayhew. II: 18 1-37.
j9 Ibid., 74. Alilrmed by the bisk tdfic in cbaphh, broadsides and bakds, Hannah Mae
stated that "[vlulgar and indeceat penny baks were always common, but speatlative infidelity,
brought down to the pockets and capacities of the poor, forms a new era in our histmy" (Alticlr.
1955, 71-73). From 1813 onwards, the battle fa control of the publicatim of ninereenthceatq
seeet literature and the revival of traditional ballads was fought out betweem Tanmy Pin and his
greatest rival, James Camacb with his "cocks'* and "catchpennies"(Mayhew, 1: 289).

Educating the P m acmdiag to rhe Principles of tk Established Church6' In 1813. Tk
National Society, during its early fotmative years, developed rarghly 230 schods with
40.Q00 stu-; in 1 820 it deveioged 1,600 schods with 200,000 students; and in 1 8 30 it
developed mare than 3.500 schools with 350,000 studmu."
Dame schmls, penny-a-weelr e v e schools. Day ad Sdy-sfhods, @
Workhouse schools, the Children's Frid Society, Roman Cathdic Schods "at charges
suited to the pm," " as well as the Ragged Schods Union
now studded &'the localities
63 Webb, RIC, The Bnfish Working Class Reader 1790-1848. Lirctacy a d Social Tension.
Loodoa: Gearge Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1955. Most people learned to read befae learning to write!
(Webb, 1955, 17). The Swedish bistaian, Egil Johanssm, believed that "most peqle should be
able to read as weil as canpose - but not necessarily write - in their own language in ader fa
literacy to have any real meaning" (bustar, 1985, 162). His approach to universal literacy had
particular relevance and support for Vida Neuberg wbo &fined Literacy in eighteenth-century
England as "the ability to read a bodr a a single sheet printed in English" (Neuberg, 1971,93:
quoted in Housmi, 1985,162). The mers" enjoy reading Charles Dickens, Eliza Cook,
Cap~Marryaff. and Ainsworth (Mayhew, 1: 250). School Literacy was a very valuable, specif~c
use of language, acorrding to Paul W i but as a form of axnmunicatioa, written literacy
assmed that other ways of communicatioa were inferia. regardless of their significance in m s
of people's Lived experiences. Furthermare, authority st~\~xutes were, and still are erected on this
basis, supporting social differentiation, stignathtioa, and reinfacement of inequality (Willis,
1977).
68 Mayhew recaded: "As ammg olber classes, I met with uneducated men who had exaggerated
notions of the advantages of the capability of reading and writing, and men who possessed sucb
capability as a wathless achievement" (Mayhew, 11: 294). Regarding Jewish education, here
were "seven Jewish schods in Lardan, four in the city, and three at the West-end, all supported
by volunmry amtributions". There was the Jews* Free School, Bell-he, Spitalfields with "1200
boys and girls*', the hhnt School Houadsditcb with '400 little scholars", the Orphan Asylum
School, the Westem Jewish schods, Dean-street, fa girls, and in Greek-street, f a boys, and the
West Meuopditan School, Linle Queen-street, f a girls, and High Hoiban, f a boys (Mayhew, II:

eading rooms had continued through the 1820s aod into the 1830s in small-tow "inns.
"hush-shops'*. a "private houses". " A d in the process. post-war. anorkingclass reading
societies like The H aqxh Clubs and political unions Lrept habred of tbe upper-class
alive: "[Iln Blackburn," Thompson reminded us, " ~ of the Female s Refam
Society use "The Bad Alphabet f a tk use of the Chil&en of Female Reformers": B was
fix Bible. Bishop aad Bigary, K fa King, King's evil, Knave and Kidnapper; W f u
Whig. Wealoless, Wavering. a wic~es'.'~ Sunday mmppem w e very irnponaat to
wakingslass pmple; Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper and the News ofthe World were the
most impmant of all. In a 1843 study of a London waking-class parish, 6 16 out of 1493
families read the Sunday newspaper: 282 took Bell's Weekly Despatch; 79 todr the
Sunday Times; 23 Bell's Life in h d n ; 15 the Penny Sun&
Times aad 13 the Weekly
~hronicle.'~ Costenaongers also had a taste fa boolrs; Mary, a crossing-sweeper " told
Mayhew: ''When my sight was betux. I used to be very partial to reading; but I can't see
the print, sir, now. I used to read the Bible, and the newspaper. Stmy-books I have read
too. but not many novels. Yes. Robinson Cwoe I know, but not the Pilgrim 's Progress.
128). Accnding to Mayhew. the "great majority of Jew boys, in the street, canna read" (bid.).
The coal-whippers also '*estaMished a school. witb acaamodatioa f a six hundred scholars, out
of their small earnings" (Mayhew, III: 237).
69
Hauser argued that three bistaical phases arose with the growth of the new reading publics: (1)
17 10, with the rise of new periodicals and novels at midcennny; (2) 1770-1800, with the rise of
pseud+historical thrillers; (3) and 1800, with Walter Scott and the rise of the ranantic novel.
(Hauser, 1985,3,61.216).
70
Thompsm, 1966, 718; see also Shepard, -lie. History of Street Literature. The Story of
Broadside Balladr, Chapbooks, Proclanratioons, New-Sheets, Elections Bills, Tracts. Pamphkrs,
Cockr. Corchpc~ies, and other Ephemera Newtm Abbot: David & Charles, 1973. 110.
Listmaking was also a very early form of the practice of literacy. Mr-Tiffin. the senia partner, in
Tiffin and Son, 'Bug-Destroyers to Her Majesty and tbe Royal Family", told Maybew: "I have
customers in an books fa whom an house has waked these 150 years; that is, my father and self
have waked fa them and their fathers*' (Mayhew, m: 37).
" Fraser, Hamish, Tlre Coming of the Mass Markt. 18504914. Arcbaa Books, 198 1.72.

I've heard of it: tky tell me it is a wry intersting book to read, but I aeva had it." "
Anocha crossing-sweep responded to Maykw's questions about the practice of reading
with the statement: "Sometimes, a k I get home, I read a bak if I can barrow one.
What did I read last night Wd. Reynold's Miscelian~ befae that I read the Pilgrim's
Progress. I have read it three tims ova; but tbae's always somahiag KEW in it." 74
Costermongers were also fond of kuhg any-
read aloud to them. Oae man fiom the
beer-shop often read the Sunday paper dard, and during summs evenings a
costermonger, a any neighbow trained as a "schollard," even read aloud in tkk own
cou~yards.~* In a meaiag with Ma*.
tifty thieves revealed hat they had read "lack
Shepard," and the iives of Dick Turpin, Claude & Val. and all the other popular thieves'
novels. as well as the "Newgate Caleniar" and '2iva of the Robbers and Pirates". Those
"who could not read themselves" "had "Jack Shepard" read to them at the lodging
houses." 76
Surveys of reading, writing and counting skills began by the late eightcenth-century
in ~ng1a.d.~ The 1811 census revealed that 3.500.000 adults mld read, while 1.750.000
mld mt," and in 1 837. legislation (6 & 7 William N C86) required that "a state
7' Mayhew. 1%8, II, 480.
73 Ibid.
75 Ibid.. 474.
75 Ibid., 25.
77 H~ston. R A. The Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity. Illiteracy and Society in
ScotM and Nonhem England 1600-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Ress, 1985.163;
see also Engels, 1844,250.
78 Webb, 1955.21-22.

marriage document" 79 should be canplaed "with signatures."
yean later. the
fm national qcxt on literacy (1840) revealed that 67 pa cent of men and 5 1 pa cent of
women were able to sign tk marriage register, and in 1851, litaacy levels increasd
slightly (70 per cent of men and 55 pa cent of women could sign their mums).
Regarding the practice of signing obe's nam% a woman told Mayhew:
When she was "in place," and kept weekly accounts, she had been
complimented by ha mistress m her neat haad but that she and her
husband (a man of indiffaent character) had been streer-seUers fa seven
a eight years, and during all that time she had only once had a pen in her
hand; this was a few weeJFs back, in signing a petition - something
about Sudays, she said - she wrote ha XWIE with great pain and
difficulty. and feYed tbat she had
even spelled it aright!"
The 185 1 census Wmsifjed the campaign fa a national ducation system. and
ninaeen years lam. fmmal schooling becam manrlatory with the Faster Act (1870)."
In March 1 851, the Ragged Schods Union and Mayhew collided over the debate
regarding the impact of literacy and schoding on crimecrimeo The Union claimed that their
. - ---
79 Schofield, Roger. "The Measurement of Literacy in Re-Industrial England." Ln Literacy in
Traditio~f Societies. Jack Goody. ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.3 19-320.
Ibid ; See also Gra€f.. Harvey. "Literacy and Social Structure in Elgin County, Canada West:
1861." In Social Hisrory, 6, April (1973a): 25-47-28-29; What the 1861 Census can tell Us
About Lilerocy: A Rqdy." In social History. 6. (19730: 337-349. 338.349. Thompsm. 1966.
712.
'' Mayhew, I: 462. Regarding Literacy rates ammg male rubbisb-carters, Mayhew reccxded: "I
think I heard of fewer instanax of defeztive education ammg the rubbisb-carters than among
other classes of unskilled labourers. The number of men who could read and not write, I found
computed about half" (Mayhew, XI: 294).
" Altick, 1955,170; see also Webb. 1950.349; Hobsbawm, 1973-94-95.

schools reduced juvenile deiinquency by teaching them to read and write. Mayhew
argued otkrwise, refenkg ammg other thh&s, to a co~lversation he had with a boy at
the Ragged School, High Street. Wapping:
"They was saying what they used to learn We, . . . They asked me to
come along with tkm for it was great ha . . . When I got there the
master was vay kind to me. ... I soon got to like going there, and went
every night fm six months. Tke was about 40 cr 50 boys in the school.
'b most of them was thieves, a d thq, used to go thieving the cuais out
of barges along We. and cutting the ropes off ships, and going and
selling it at the rag-shops. . . . About half of the boys at schod w e
thieves. . . . C - used to go a t of schod befixe any of US, and wait
outside the door as the boys came out. Then he would call the boys he
wanted fa his gangs on one side, and tell them to wfiere to go and steal.
He used to look out in the daytime fa shops where things could be
'prigged,' and at night he would tell the boys to go to then He was
called the captain of tk gangs."
Mayhew was deeply ambivalent about the Ragged Schools. On the one hand,
Mayhew admitted that "in all probability" it was the Ragged Schools that created "this
extension of the ability to read" from "twenty who d d read" about "a dozen years ago"
to "upwards of thirty'* now. On the aher hand, Mayhew also felt that the Ragged

Schools were totally Mective as an educational resource. Mayhew argued: "the
attendance of tk street children at tk Ragged Schod is most uncertain" He continred:
". . . the avaage of these boys at t ke schods, &es not exceed two hours pa
week, so that the amouat of education thus acquired . . . must narily be scanty in the
extreme; and is frequently fagoctea as soon as learned" 'We are (also] teaching the
thieves to prig the articles marked at the him figures," ' Maykw conclu6ed In the
he remained umvioced about literacy's efficacy among London's street fdk He
recurded: 'We think, if we teach thm reading and writing, and to chatter a creed, that we
have armed them against the temptations, tk trials, a d the exaspaations of life ...We
exercise their mtmrries, mak thm human parrots, and then woada that they do mt act
as human beings." " Ultimately, M aws banle with Lord AsNey, president of the
Ragged Schods. was a battle over the philosophy of culture and maality. Mayhew
staunchly believed that 'Philanthropists always seek to Q too much, aad in this is to be
found the main cause of their repeated failures. . . . this over-weening disposition to play
the part of pedagogues (I use the ward in its literal sense) to the poor, proceeded rather
from a love of powa than from a s-e
regard for the people." 'We should, however.
ask ourselves whether men can stay their hunga with alphabets a grow fat on spelling
books," Mayhew quaid 'Wanting employmat, and consequently food. and objecting
to the incarceration of the wakhouse, can we be astonished - inrleprl is it not a natural
87
Mayhew, I: 321.
88
Mayhew's analysis of language dealt with the complex socio-cultural acts of hegemony as
battles over representatim within a broader theory of poiitical and cultural change (Mayhew, II:
264).

law - that they shadd help rhemselves to tk popaty of ahas!" ''
Throughart moderaity. iiteracy has mast often been repesented histaically as
unifmm and universal practice across all times and places. It has been categaized as
develaprnent/undardevelopment, literacyluality, print/aality, a litexacy/illittxacy.
Literacies, however, are mt autonomous practices; rather, they are cultural fmns of
social reproduction. These complex fixms are concrete, localized value-laden, mediated.
aad indira combining technological and idedogical practices together. They are also
enhdded within tht: daily lives of embodjeb speaking perm such as Mayhew's saw-
folk At one level, Maytrew undastood that literacies were diffaentiated reading
practices that wae continually chaagiog.'' Fa Mayhew's fascination with popular ad.
written. and visual f m
of representati011~ were marks. icom of inclusion; and to
some degree, he escaped discussions of race and class by crossing cultural barriers,
constructing an imaginary folkspirit among Londoa's street fdk that, we shail discover,
-
90
Histaicaily, the way scholars tackle literacy coacepts, assumptiars and expeaatims related to
basic Literacy levels, amditims and their accurafy, their uses and meanings, amtinuities and
transfamatims, need to be radically revised Harvey the American historian. believed that
nearly everything written oa the subject of literacy labours under "tbe spectre and shadows of
maiemizatioa theories witb their sumg assumptioas of literacy's role, powers and provenance."
Most scholars, he argues, either work within it, suffering "conceptual and interpretive difficulties,"
or in rarer instances, challenge its assumprims and its relaticmsbip witb Literacy (M, 1988,8-9).
The "shadow of modernization tbeaies" are easily found in Alticlr, 1955,94,97; G.M.Trevel yan,
quoted in AJtick, 1955, 171: E.P.Thompsaa, 1966,713; Stedman Joaes, 1971,286; Viam
Neuberg, 1973,192; Schdield, 1968.311; Shepard, 1973,110; Vincent, 1982,21-22: Humpherys,
1977,90: Sanderson, 1972,89,93; Webb, 1955,15: and Thanas, 1986,97. Following Emerson
(1983), to be successful. literacy must be an integrative, camparative, general tbeay, in which
creation, receptim, text, ocher Yam-shaping idedogies" and perfimmce practices, are all
considered together in the same terms.
91
Mayhew's investigative search fa "meaning" was, at ooe level, semantic and personalistic; it
included a questimer, an addressee. and the anticipaticm of a response.
9' Mayhew, U: 10S; See -A Ferret M a w advertisement (Mayhew. 11: 56).

was orally and rituall y-based
(4) Carnivrrksque Str#t Literatun in Mayhew's London
Carnivalesque sum literature was a powdid ccmkosx of a world tumd upside
down. It m a t e d certain critical values, guaranteeing its opposition towards the
political a&. interestingly and -y.
Mayhew classified "all the street-sold
Literature which due to the hanging of malefactas" " as "gallows" street Literature. As a
specific kind of low literary genre, "gallows" street literature was very impatant in
maintaining a carnival sense of tk panerer's world
Natalie Davis has ranhki us that rather than being a mere comic 'safety valve',
carnival everyday life d d decipha "king and states*. "Gallows" street literature farmed
a "very extensive portion of the reading of the pmx" supplied by the "Sarowfirl
Lammatiom" a d "Last Dying SpePrh Confession, and Exaxtion of crimirrals." An
old man recounted Rush's execution. He tdd Ma*
that not loag "after Rush was
hung, he saw, one evening after dark, through the uncurtained canage window, eleven
persons, young aai dd gathaed round a scanty fire," gs and tkre around the fire, he saw
"an old man was reading to an aneative audieace, a broad-sheet of Rush's execution,
which my informant had sold to him." % The patteers told Mayhew that they had
developd - over the last twenty to thirty years - a publishing a d distribution program
--
93 hid. I: 280. A strolling aaa told Mayhew that while he was in jail far playing without a
license: ". . . a little penny wak came out entitled the 'Groans of the Gallows' . . . a The
Hangman's Career, illustrated with pictures" (Maybew, III: 143).
9J Ibid.. 281.
95 Ibid.. 280.
96 Ibid.. 280-281.

for "gallows" literature, which was "almost entirely" Loldoa-based 97 Their publishing
program included the first small hadbill to "half-sheers", broad-sheets, and "double
broad-sheas" '' fa very spedal occasions such as Rush's execution Ma*
r6cocQd
that the broad skt - entitled "the Samwfd Lammation and Last Farewell of
J.B.Rush, who was adered for Execution on Saturday oen at Ncxwich Castle" - was
*'the best. in all respects. of any execution broad-shes" lrn
he had ever seea He also felt
that even "the "copy of verses" which. accadiag to tk establhkd custom, Rush had
supposedly composed in his cell -"his being unable, in some &tams, to read and
write being no obstacle to the composition" - seems, in a literary point of view, of a
supaia strain. Despite the fact that Rush's copy of vases was a superior "death-vase",
according to Mayhew, "one copy of [such] verses often did service fcx the canticles of all
criminals condemned to be hung." In fact, the verses were written to "sacred a psalm
tunes, such as Job, a the Old Hmdreth." AU execution broad-sheets firom the wast to
the best were easy to unchmmt 'he narrative, ernbracing trial, biography, &c.. is
usually prepared by the prints, being a condensation fiom the accounts in the
newspapers, and is perhaps imelligible, simply because it is a coxuknsation" If, "'thm,"
97 Ibid.. 281.
98 Shepard, W e. History of Srreef Lifermure. Srory of Broadridc Balladr, Chapbooks,
Proclamations, New-Sheers, Election Bills. Tracts. Pamphlets, Cockr, Catchpennies, and other
Ephemera. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1973,26. What were same of the aucial fmns of
street literature A chapbook was a bit-ywrself kind of paperbedc It was a single sheet of paper
folded fust in four, eight, twelve a sixteen pages, then sdd ^uncut and unstitched at a halfpenny
or a penny each'' to a custaner who split the pages open and stitched them together in a form of a
beak. A broad-sheet was either a large sheet of paper, uncut and printed on both sides. a a
pamphlet folded fran oae of these single sheets (Shepard, 14 -15).
loo Ibid. Acmding to Mayhew, Rvsb ad
the Wnings sold 2,500.000 copies each (Ibid.).
Execution braadsbeers ranged roughly Etam 14"x 29" to 19" x 29"wilh their "Sarowful
Lamentatioos" and their "Last Farewells*' (Sbepd, 101 ; see also Mayhew. I: 234).

said one Death-hunter, "'tk murderer has not been apprehended, a is unknown. we has
our fling, and I've hit tk mark a few chaaces that way."' Besides the written narrative,
there w e three illustrations depicting tk execution (see Appendix). The largest
illustration rep- "Rush, c i M and ISUS- s- Mr. Jamy. Sm" The
smnd illustration depicted "Rush shooting Mrs. Jenny," a lady depicted with a
'waspish* waist surrounded by an enamous bundle of gown-slirts, and a "prostrate
body" at ha feet. A "curect" portrait of Rush "from one in the Nonuich Mercury" was
W third. Sometimes the Last ScxrowfbI bnmtalicm also amtahxi a stez~aypic "Love
Lener", written '%om the depths of the ccmhnd d, witb the amckmmd pen, ink,
and paper," The next most hpmtant broad shea was the 'We, Trial, Confessioa and
Execution." it coatained the same subject matux as the 'Zamentation", except that a part
- "perhaps the judge's charge at the trial, a perhaps tfie biography - was removed,
making rmm fa the 'Execution", and occasioaally for the "Colldemned Smnon." lo'
Maeover, Rush's "COLlfession" to the cbapiain of Norwich Castle was published as a
separate Cdession. In impatant cases, the "triai, &c." was also created into separate
bills as part of the Smowful Lamentation The last publication (prepared by one man but
with the same content) was called "the book", which sometimes set the title-page in hi1
display such as "Horn-ble Murder and Mutilation of Lucy Game, aged 15, by her Cruel
Brother, William Game, aged 9, at Westmill, He$mzMire. His Committal and
Confession. With a Copy of Letter. Also, Full Particulars of the Poisonings in Esser " Irn
"The booif' was usuaily constructed of eight, but sometimes only constructed of four,
1°' Ibid. 284. Mayhew moved back and fartb fluidly between the visual traditions of lardon's
street-folk. In the section pertaining to ^the Street-Sellers of Poison fa Rats*', he reprinted a copy
of a bill complete witb "wcxds and type" showing "the nature of the sport of rat-catcbing."

large-sized pages.
The street sale of "Comic Exhibitions" a street caricatures focused on "the sale of
any humclrous. or meant to be humxw sheet of engravings" fa "a vay cheap
pe~yworth." Io3
accocding to Mayhew. Comic Exhibition No. 1 was &tied, "'The
Ceremonial of the Opening of the Great Exhibition in 185 1, with Illustrations of the
Contributions of All Nations. " 1°$
The "contributions" were reserved fa Nas. 2 and 3 as
two iarga "cuts", at the head of the broad w. The second larga cut showed "'the
Crystal Palace ascend@ by a b ~ People ~ fiom every " cammy looited on fdlowed
by the "Procession from Palace-yard to Hyde Park" of approximately nimty graesque
figures with kads larger than their bodies and legs ridiculously small. Comic exhibitms
also sold "Galleriesof Comicalities", a a series of figures "somerimes satirically,
sometimes grotesquely given without any aim at satire." IM Olha popular grotesque
pieces - twesided gutta-pecha heads as well as "comic heads" lM
made "of clay
ordinarily used in the making of pipes" lo'-
wae sold as well. Gutta Pmcha toys were
"small co10u~ed mode4s of the human face, usually with projecting me and chin, a d
wide distmted mouth, which admit of being squeezed into a diffaent form of features,
their elasticity causing them to recurn to the original caste." Politicians, royalty, and
policemen. "who might be obnoxious to the strw-aadas," aII came in for a drubbing
'03 Ibid., 286.
'06 Ibid., 440.
107 hid. Mayhew recaded- ^Sane of the 'canic heads* may be amsidered as hardly well
described by the name. as amoag lhem are death's heads and faces of grinning Qvils. 'The best
sale of the comic heads,* said me man, 'was den the Duke put the sddias' pipes out at the

from Mayhew's street-fdk as well. ""Here," one man used to say, "htxe's the Duke of
Welhgtm's kul fa id. . . . His mse speaks for itself." la
Tk grotesque was an
historical pheammmn that reprrsened contradictory aspects of life 'Og Tk tam
"grotesque" first appeared, in its narrowest sense, at the end of the fifieenth-cmury,
when a catain kind of Roman anament called groresca was excavated from Titus' bath.
These groresca a transfamation amfacts patrayed extremely inferwoven plant, animal,
and human fm. which seemsd to be giving birth to each aha.l10 The challenge to the
old stable a&, in this regard was inseparable fiom the birth of the new.
As an impatant part of the carnivalesque, the graeque genre was composed of
vezaacuIar parodies which were bab written and aral; "' thq, wee rituals that included
comic shows of the rnarketplace,ll' as well as oaths and curses, which were billingsgate
barracks; wouldn't allow them to smoke there. It was a Wellington's head with his thumb in his
n- taking a sight, yw know, sir"' (Mayhew, I: 440).
108
Mayhew, I: 434.
' Mayhew. UI: 5 1. The performer of Punch told Mayhew "Rmch, you know, sir, is a dramatic
performance in two haas- . . . There is tragic parts, and canic and sentimental parts, too. . . . Sane
tarniiies where I perfocms will have it most sentimental - in the original styie; them tamilies is
generally sentimental themselves. Others is all fa the amic, and then I has to kick up all the
games I can. . . . It's the march of hintelleu wot's a doing all this - it is. sir" (Mayhew, III: 43-
44). Concerning changing Wetic styles, he also recounted: "Everybdy's h ny now-a-days,
and they Like cunic business. They war't listen to anything sensible a sentimental, but they wants
foolisboess. The bigger fml gets the most mmey" (Mayhew, IIX: 51).
The grotesque played iwlf out in a gigantic Guy Fawks-day celebration. Mayhew remded:
One of these shows was paraded m the Royal Exchange, the muchants
approving of the exhibition to such an extent that six pences, shillings,
and halfuowns were showered into the hats of the lucky casters who had made
the spedatiar. So excited was the public mind, that at night, after business was
over, processions were formed by tradespeople and reSpedabIe mechanics, who,
with bends of music playing, and banners flying, on which were inscribed anti-papal -
rnotms and devices, marcbed through the streets with hmhg torches, and after
parading tbeir monster Popes and Cardinals until bout nine o'clock at night,

~unhamcrp tk wmld of the mask frw which tk graesque was daived.
included caricatures, comic gestures, such as ''th spirit of emulation, of imitation, of
bravado," "* which Ma* f d ~mrrg catpin boys k iaavimd, parodies, facial
grimaces. and eccennic postures that were also cem!ral to mimcric culrwe~.~'~ "Tk role
of historians and theaists of literature and art is to reconstnrct this canon in its me
sense", argued Bakhtin "It should not be intupreted accading to the nams of modern
times; nor should it be seen as deviation from present-day conceps. The grotesque canon
must be appmkd -ding to its own mcpsracmmrs." 'I6 Accuding to Bakhtin, the
carnivalesque fdlr culture of Victorian London offad "a completely diffaent,
mmfficial, extraecclesiastical and extrapoiitical aspect of the wald, of maa and of
human relations. "I1'
The satirical broad-sheet, "whae comedy had always reigned in spirit if not in
form""' was transformed by Hogarth's irmoduction of caricature into Englad,
--
eventually adjourned to sane open space - like Peckham-rye a Blackheath -
where the guy was burned amid the mast boisterous applauses (Mayhew, I: 274).
Acc

acclxding to David Kunzle, the cultural histman. Under the stylistic transfdon of
caricature, ''tk broad-sheet be can^ truly comic, in fam and spirit; and it became, as
never befue, a weapon in the politid and social struggle." 'I9
'"k emfry of caricature
into the broad-sheet took place umk the impetus of the great @tical-social events
around the turn of the century," argued Kunzle. '"The shock of the loss of the Mcan
colonies; the rapid strides of the Mustrial Revolution, and th cmsquent migration to
the towns [mant that] the period c. 1780-c. 1820, [was] one of unique restlessness and
litigiousmiss in Eaglish Life . . . In scope and vdume alaae. it desaves the nanre"
of
the golden age of English caricature.
(5) The Street L v of Laadon
In London's courtyards and alleyways, snea-folk culture121 had coditiooed Londoa
life so profoundly that by 185 1, "half the -people
of bmbn . . . strictly speaking, were not
Loadoners at all, but had been born ekewhere." Ir
Mayhew r8caded:
They came with their ''penny gaffs", their running patteras and
musicians like Brummagem Jack id the Country Paganini, and their
'la Kunzle, 1973,359.
'I9 bid. Acccxding P Mayhew, "The politics of these classes are, perhaps, far the most pan,
'liberal Tory.' In most lodging-houses they take one a two papers: the Weekly Di~polch, and
Bell's Weekly Messenger, are the two usually taka. I how of no exception to this rule. The
beggars hate a Whig Miaisoy, and I know that many a tear was shed in the hovels and cellars of
Loadon when Sir Roben Pet1 died" (Mayhew, I: 250).
'O Kunzle, 1973, 359.
12' Mayhew's stacistia o.the street folk popuhim fluctuated dramatically. At one poio~, he
estimated that these groups accounted for sane 5~,000 men, women, and children. The street
traders, the buyers and sellers, who daminated Lac~doo's street folk accwated fa 415th~ of the
total populatioa, while the oosters accounted fa roughly 30,000 people. Mayhew also calculated
that the street folL comprised 2.5 pa cent of LmQn's total popllatim. (Mayhew, I: 6; XX: I, 11).

various conflicting "faeign" dialects so nuanced in their linguistic
hierarchies that even tk parterm scaaed tk mere casters with the
contempt of the pickpocka fa the pure beggar. 'We are haristoc~acy of
the strtx%", they exclaimrrl. 'T~eople doa't pay us fa what we gives 'em,
but only to hear us talk We live like yourseU, sir, by the hexercise of our
hintellens - we by talkiag. ard you by writing.13
It was here that May-
discovered larger-than-life pasooalities, mouth-pieces of the
Menippean satire wtro were "a few of the m t mmwd 'pafocmefs' on this theacre of
actioa"12' Beyoad Brummagan Jack and tk Carntry Paganhi. chae was Bristol
George, Corpaai Casey, Jemmy tk Rake, a d Navy J em "a giant in size, and canck~"'~
as well as a "giant in sh" [who] used to work fa his living Wviag "a barrow at the
formation of the Great Western Railway." But mw, according to Mayfiew, his
"prevailing plan" was to "waylay gentlemn in the decline of life, and to exhort m aq
by threats of accusation and exposure." "Next to Navy Jem," Mayhew recclrdeb "may be
perceived a little snrnted woman, of pretended Scorch, but really Irish extraction. wtrose
husband has died in the hospital with ~~Llsumption at least as many rimes as the hero of
Waterloo has ,caen engagemmfs." Mayhew a h described "Peter the crossing-sweeper, a
rnan who fa years went about showing similar wounds, which he pretended had been
inflicted W e fighting in the Spanish Legion - though, truth to say, he had never been

nearer Spain than Liwrpool is to New YcrL9* Tbxe was also "Captain Moody" who
had "occasid interviews with some of tk gip~ey tribe, a d bearing fiom tkndves of
their wonderfit1 amusemeats, he left the sober walks of life and joimxl this vagrant
fraternity." lZ7 "His roving disposition tkn induced him to try che sea a d tk knowledge
he obtained during several voyages fined him for those maritime Bauds which got him
the nanui! of 'Csptain Moody. tk lurk*." I"
" By far the most illustriars [was] 'Nicholas
A -, a name kmum to the whole cadging frataaity as a real dsmxhnt fiom Bamfj.I&
Mme Cumq and the 'prioce of lurbs'
paaaers fm thirty yeas past" '" Ma*
r8cocded: "Nichdas A - is now in his sixty-second year, a perfect hypochrmdnac. On
his authaity - a d it is, no Qubt, too true - he has been 'lurking' on every
conceivable system, fiom faging a bill of exchange Qwn to 'maundering on the fly,' for
the gream part of his life; and, excepting the 'hundred aad thirteen times' he has been in
provincial jails, society has endured tk scourge of his deceptions for a quarter of a
century at least." '"
Among Lmxbds streex-foW Mayhew discovered "a group whose lives were based
on a code of shared w s as different from that of otha Loodoa walanen as from
respectable middleclass Eaglishmen" "I
It was the "curi&~seaa world of tk
12' Ibid.. 244.
"' Ibid., 245.
Iza
Ibid.
'29 Ibid., 246.
130 bid.
Thomp~~~ and Yea 1971,86.

costmnongas who had a highly aster laaguage with "a Nde back-spellhg." 13'
It was "reducible to rm rule a d seldom refmable to any origin" '" with "'classical
crigin[s] of many of tk flash or slang wcxds." lY Furthermae, it was "communicatal, as
in other slang, as much by the inflection of the voice, tk emphasis, the tone, the look, the
shg, the nod. the wink. as by tk wmds spoken."
According to Mayhew, tk object
of their secret slang was "to shield their bargainings at mar&
a theif conversation
among themselves touching their day's wak and pofits, from the knowledge of any Irish
or uninitiated feilow-traders."
Tk language aim bad its own iphorismr. MayhAu
recorded that the ''hasehldas in Duke's-place are all of the Jewish pasuasion, and
among the wtas a saying has sprung up around it. When a man has been out of work
fa some time, he is said to be 'Cursed like a pig in Duke's pla~e'."'~' Seaa names and
CQ&S
called "hieroglyphics of tramping9* "' had particular significance for tk casters as
well as the pattars: "the thetetm~ngers, like the cabmen and pickpockets, are hardly
ever known by their real xmxx!~; even the honest men among tfLem are distinguished by
some strange appellation. Imkd, they are all known one to ahother by nicknames, which
they acquire either by some mode of dress, some remark that has ensured costemanger
13' Mayhew, I: 23. Mayhew believed that the language spoken primarily by boys was Wterly
devoid of humour**.
'33 Ibid.. 23.
13' Ibid.. 1: 234. In amversation with a Regular scavenger, Maybew cunmented: "I have
observed. by the by, that there is not any excessive vulgarity in these men's mes a -t so
much as grossness in sane of their expressioas" (Mayhew, II: 224).
136
bid., 23. The Tbames Watermen, acuxding to Mayhew, were "often saucy, abusive. and even
sarcastic. Their interchange of abuse with are another, as they rode on the Thames, dowa to the
commencemeat of the present century, if not later, was reararkable fa its slang" (Mayhew, m:
328).

applause, some peculiarity in trading, a some Mixt a singularity in persod
appearance." 13' Tb "King" of the tumbling-boy amsing-sareepas told Maykw:
"-e was a fight last night betwtxm 'Broke his Bones,' - as we calls Amoay Horns -
sod Neddy Hall - tk 'Sparrow,' a 'Spidpr. ' we calls him". lo
Whm two panam first
met, M a w r8~01ded that they ofien began tbe conversation: '"Can you 'vdrer rorneny'
(can you speak cant) What is your 'mone)reerV (name)" - Pefhaps it turns out that one
is 'Whiteheaded Bob,' and the other 'Plymouth Ned' They have a 'slant of gatter' (pot of
beer) at the lrearest 'boozing ken' (ale-hue), and swear eternal ~~p
to each
other." 14'
Linguistic levels existed even baweea the straa-fdk tkxwlves. Tk
costermonger's slang clr "cant" differed fiom the pattaer's: "The custer's slang was so
interlarded with their getma1 remarks, while their ordinary language was so smothaed
and subdued, that unless wkn they were professionally engaged and talking of their
wares. they might almost pass for fa&gm7~."~'* Maykw, as a philologist, documented
dozens of slang wads. '" Beyond the wud "bunse" manhg "OWXI profit." '" Mayhew
13' hid., 247.
la Mayhew, II: 502.
I" Mayhew, I: 218. Mayhew reouded two other fine examples. When 3wo hawkers (pals) go
together, but separate when they enter a village, me taking each side of the rotad, and selling
different things; and, so as to infam each other as to the character of the people whose house they
call, they chalk certain marks m their dcxr-posts." Or if "a 'patterer' has been 'aabbeb' that is
(offended) at any of the 'cribbs' (houses), he mostly chalks a signal oa a near the door" with
marks of diammds, inverted triangles, and squares meaning "good" ("Bate"), "spoiled by the
impru&nce of some other patterer" ("Cooper'd"), and "likely to have taken you up" ("Gammy")
(Ibid. ).
142 Ibid.. 218.
14' Amxding to Mayhew* the street sellers of arugh drops and medicinal amfecLi~~ary, fa
example, d ed their "medicinal cmfeaiaa" "lohachs," whicb was an Arabic tenn signifying "a
tbiag to be licked" (Mayhew. I: 206). Mayhew began an extended desmiptian of the wad "sewer"
with his reference to "one of the earlier instances" of "any detailed meatim of sewers*' bet-

ecorded curious tams Iike "fenicadauzer'*:'"no fear of a femcodouzer fa the butcher.
How is it spelled, sir Well, if yau can't find it in the dictionary, you must use your own
judge. What dog it mean It mans a dewskitch (a good thrashing)."' '" Tk word
"bummaree**- 'the jobber a speculata on the fish-exchange** a fishmonger tdd
Mayhew. "was originally a bum-boat man, wb purchased of the wind-smacks at
Gravesend a the Nae. aad seat the fish up rapidly to the market by I d " M a w
concluded that the 'anpage spoken by this rambling class [tkstreet-fdlr] was peculiar
in its co~~~tructim" It consisted of "an odb Hdky of coclollevf;Pn ED@&, rude
provimialisms, and a large propmion of the slang c o d y used by gypsies and aher
'travelas,' in cunveying their ideas to those whom they wish to purchase tkir
c o ~ ~ e s 147 . -
"the years 1660 and 1670" (Mayhew, XI: 403). Mayhew mxxded that The noun Scavenger is said
by lexicographers to be derived ban the German schben, to shave or scrape, 'applied to those
who saape and clear away the filth fram public street a orha places* (Mayhew, 11: 205). Mayhew
documented that the word '%ug" was "a Celtic word signifying a ghost a gobtin." "It was applied
to them after Ray's time, most probably because they were considerexi as 'terrors by night'. Hence
our Englisb wad bug-kar. The wad in this sease often ocarrs in Shakespeare, Winter's Tale. act
iii, sc.2. 3; Henry XI. act v. sc. 2; Hder, act v. sc.2. See Douce's Illurrrations of Shakespeare, i.
329"' (Mayhew, IXI: 34).
'a Ibid., 470. Mayhew recalled that in "almost every instance novel information which I gave to
the public concerning the largest M y of the street-sellers, the ~06tennoagers, this word 'bunse'
(probably a caruptian of bonus, bone being the slang for good) first appeared in print" (Ibid).
14' Ibid., 478.

(6) The Vernacular Voices of London:
(a) '4~attcre~n148
The streauatcxs, known as pa#erers, included "the strw-sellas of stationery,
literature and the fine arts." They were men who. in the wrxds of Strun." strove to 'Wp
off their wares by pompous speeches, in which little regard is paid eitha to truth or
propriety." Mayhew believed that the mountebank who sold ''medicins with pompous
orarions," was axmxtd histmcally to 'Wle "puftering** part of tk stra# trd." I*
To
illustrate his point, Ma*
rmded a "scene in Moaaieffs popular farce of
'Rochester,' where tk hao personates a mountebank"
with 'his 'pompous orations'
indulged in by tk strgt orators in days of yore" I"
Silence there, ad hear me, fa my wads, are m e precious than gold;
I am the renowned Docta ParacelmS Bornbastes Esculapsu Galen dam
Humburg von Quack, member of all the cdleges unrlE.r the Moon; M.D..
L.M.D., F.R.S., L.L.D., A.S.S. - and all the rest of the lem of the
alphabet: I am the seventh son of a sevearh son - kill a cure is my
m o - and I always do it; I cured the Great Emperm of Nova Scotia,
of a polypus, after he bad btm given over by the faculty - he lay to all
appearance dead; the first pill he took he opened his eyes; the second, he
raised his head; a d the third he jumped up and danced a hornpipe. ... I
""TO patter. is a slang tenn. meaning to speak". aaxwding to Mayhew. (Mayhew, 1: 213).
bid.
lS0 Mayhew, I: 216.
Is'
bid.

anybody a sigh: verigo, pertigo, lumbago, a d all the other go's are sure
to go. wtreoeva I come.1s=
"Perhaps the latest ~ a nin England." k Mayhew recocded "was [seen] about
twenty years ago. in the vicinity of Yanmuth." lS3 TIE moumebaok "was drssed in a
periwig and an ernbroiched coat, with ruffles at his wrist. a s w d to his side. and was a
repestmation, in shabby geneel, of che tite gd- of rhe reign of Quee. a"
lY
He addressed his audience "from a stage, a d ma& his music atOactive by mixing it up
with music, dancing and tumbling; and sometimes, also, equestrianism on tk gtm of a
village; a d by having always the swiss of a mery andrew, cr clown." '" According to
Strun, in his "Sports and Pastimes of the People of England", the jestours, a "gesters" in
the "old English dialectWwere "the relaters of the gestes, that is, the actions of famous
15s Mayhew, I: 216. A penny-circus jester at the cheap circuses told Mayhew: Thexe are oaly two
kinds of clowns, the stage, and the circus clown, only there is different denaninatiaas." "Fa
instance, the clown at the fair and the clown at the regular theatre as well as the penny gaff (when
they give panumimes there), are me and the same clown, mly beam a worse; accarding to the
pay and kind of performance; but it's the same sort of business" (Mayhew. III: 131). Cmcerning
the number of clowns in Iaadoa, he srared: "'I shouldn't think you would exaggerate, if you was
to say there was from one hundred and fifty to two hundred who theanselves clowns" (bid.).
"Funny Billy", a canvas ar penn y-gaff clown, told Mayhew "woaQrhrl staries of first-class aaors
at ''The Effingham," and of astonishing pesfonners at '@The Bower," a "Rotunda", and of the great
clowns, Paul Hening and Tam Matthews, and Heaor Simpson, the great pantomimist" (Mayhew,
1II: 121). The causal clown a straggler has ruined the prdession of clowning acaxding to one
clown. 'They take to the clown's business mly at holiday a fair time, when there is a little money
to be picked up at if and after that they go back to their own uades' (Ibid., l20).A streetclown
confided in Mayhew: 'Frequently when I am playing the fmt in the streets, I feel very sad at heart.
I can't help thinking of the bare cupboards at hme' (Ibid.). Mayhew ccmmented: "His story was
more pathetic than comic, and proved that tbe life of a street-clown is, perhaps, the most wretched
of all existence- Jest as be may in the street, his life is literally no joke at hame"' (Mayhew, 111:
119).

persons, w ktk fabulous or real." These "shon jocular stories"'% wee "calculated to
promoce menimenf in which tk reciters paid little respect to the claims of propriety a
even decency." The gesters called ''jjapers and juglers, and jangltxs of gests," wee 'the
same as the bourdours, cx rybaubers, an inferior class of miastrek, and propaly called
jestas in the mdern sense of th word; wbse wit, like that of tbe mary andfews of the
present day (1800) consisted in low obscenity accompaaied with ludicrous
gesticulatiar"'" Knigtnoa the poa. also described tkm, "As jlpcrs ad
janglas. Judas'
chyldren, Fa- chem fbtasies, old f& tkm mpluth" lY Maybew's literary
descriptions of *'the public-house acta," *UE stading standing," and "th present reciters
"of verses and mcxal speeches " was &signed to provide histaical Connectjons
between the life of the mountebank and the modern nimanfh-century patterer.
Maytrew's list of running and standing pattaers includd Death and Fire Hunters,
Chaunters, Second Edition-sellers, Reciters, Conuadnrm-sellas, Board-waken,
Strawers, Sellers of Indecent Publications, Street Auctioneers, C*
Jacks,
Mountebanks, Clowns, various Showmen, Jugglers, Conjurors. Ring-sellers for Wages,
Sovaeign-sellas, Ccxn-curers, Grease-removers, French-polishers, Blacking-sellers,
Stenographic Card-sellas, and Vendors of Raceurds u lists.la Ma-
described the
"panaers" as an "ingenious and wordy members of the same chanering. jabbaing, or
'" Ibid.
In Ibid., 119.
'13 Ibid., 216.
Is9 Ibid., 217.
I6O Ibid.. 243.

panering*' fiatenrity*"'6' who "in their ckss and appear-
peseat but little difference
to that of the "gem"."L" Tbae were as many "different gndes of patteren" as thae wae
divisions in literature, accocding to Maw. 'fke was a beggar's "patter patheric" as
well as comic aad religious patter. TIrere was also desaiptive patter "where the veaxkx
describes, however ornately, what he really sells". There was "bounciag. to puff off
anything of little a no value" "classical, as in the case of the sale of stenographic cards."
sporting, as in race cards," and "real patta (as it is unlPrstood by the profession) to make
a thing believed to be umat it is m" Maybew's gentbum iaformant, w b had already
written about 'the Religion, Mads, kc., of pattam," divided patteras into three social
classes who all baame panerers tbrmgh misf-
'First, - those w b wae well ban
and brought up. Secondly, - those whose pare- have been dissipated and gave them
little education. Thirdly, - base who - whatever their early histay - will not be a do
anything but what is of an ithisant character." They were "as a My," however, "not
distinguished by that good aad friendly feeiing to oae awrher which is remarkable
ammag the castmmngers." 16'
The first class of paotaers attracted "many men of
respectable conmctions. and evea classical anainmemswLu including 'We son of a
military officer, a clergyman, a man brought up to the profession of medicine, two
Grecians of the Blue-mat School, clerks, shopmen, and a class who had been educated to
no especial calling - some of the latter being the natural sons of gentlemen sod
'63 Ibid.. 243.
" Ibid.. 216; Aaordiog to Mayhew* ''sane wear a moustache, while others indulge in a Hmri-
Quaue beard" (Mayhew, I: 214).

noblemea"165
" I was once the inmate of a lodging-house," commeated his infcxmant. "in
which there were at aae time five l.Jniversity-men, three surgeolrs, and several sons of
brob-&wn clerks, a of other professid men." '-
oaths were mme harid" he
continued. "extravagant, and farfetched than anythins I had ever heard" The second class
of street-patteras. like "three well known cbaractas - BristoI G age Corporal Casey.
and Jemmy the ~ake."'" wae tk "most mcral"; many wae "devmt communicants at
church a members of dissenting bodies" while ahers cauld "still be found once or twice
a week in the lecture rooms of the Mechanics' Institute nearest to their residence." The
third class of street-pattaers, liJce "a man . . . conspicuous by the misfatune of a sabre-
wound on the check," had ''~ecled a predilection fa vagriilY:y, and can nor will settle
to any ordinary calling." Mayhew, believed, however, there was a fourth "larger class.
who are wanck~~
fiom choice - who would rather be streetaaton, and quacks, and
perfocmecs, than anything else in the waid" He subdivided them into three distinct
labouring classes under the heading of "tk theam things they respectively sell or
&/I67
6
'Pattam" consisted of 'Uxxe who sell soIl)ething, and patter to help sell off their
goods; those who exhibit something, and p aw to help off the show; and those who Q
nothing but paw. with a view to elicit alms." 16'
Under the heading of ''Patterers who
sell ."169 Maykw grouped together quack doctors, grease removers, wage panerers, ring
sellers, dealers in can salve, r am paste, fiench pdish, plating balls, candleshades. rat
lti5 bid.; "Many simillr cases might be mentimed," Mayhew cmunenteQ
observation and experience" (Mayhew, I: 217).
founded on real
Maybew. I: 218.
16' bid., 214.
I6"d., 309.
la9 Ibid.

those selling "tk several varieties of stm~ literature." Irn TIE semad class of paneras
were those street-f&
who exhibited objects; they included "juggiers, showmen, clowns
and fortune-tellers." 171 Lastly. the third class of patlerers - those "who Q it on the
bounce" 172
to help off the show were "essentially distinct" fiom the first two classes of
panerers, baause, according to Mayhew, they "aeitha sell na amuse, but only victimize
those wtro get into their clutcb."
Panering, that is the practice of -king pafocmatively, required a vay high I d of
"professional skill." In 'Wmking the litanies." on the street cr in "an infma public-
house. somerimes a br-.
a a coffee-simp" '" was somaimes "very distressing to the
voice," Mayhew discovered "Oae man told me that it had brdren his, and that very often
while out he had lost his voice altogerher."
Mayhew was told that 'Were are not
twelve panerers in Londoa whom a critical professa of street elocution will admit to be
capable of 'wocking a catechism' a a Litany." In
Basically tk pattmx was a salesman
with a sales strategy; he had "something in his hand, on whose maits, real a preterrkd,
170 Ibid., 214.
"I Ibid., 309.
172 bid.
'73 lbid. 310.
"' Ibid.. 236.
17' Ibid.
I76
Mayhew, IX: 53.
lf7 Ibid

he talks people out of their mosey," '" Somaimg with ''sham official documems." aad
cases "certified by the mhisttz ard churchwardens of a parish which exists only in the
imagination." "lf the truth be saleable, a runniag patterar pefas selling the truth." as an
informant told Maybew, "'fm theu he can "go the same round camfixtably anotha
day."'179 If, however, Maybew continued that the are "no truths fu sale - no stories of
criminals' lives and loves to be cordensed fram the diffusive biographies in the
mapapers - no 'helegy* f a a great man gane - m prophecy aad no crim.mn-
the
death huntg invents, a ratha, anmums them He puts some one to death fm the
masion, which is called 'a cock'. The title, a "Death Hunter", refared not only to the
pattaas seiling staies of "all the murders that become topics of public conversation" but
also referred to "his being a 'murder' on his own accowu, as in the sale of 'cocks"'. A
death hunter told Mayhew that over the course of the last decacCe he had "singly or with
hiS "&9*180
put borh Louis Phillip and 'We Duke of Wellington to death" twice,
following in tk footsteps of "the press", inventing a embellishmg "atrocities, which
excite the public mind."
To attract their audiences, 'Wle ruoning (a flying) trada"lal in "mobs" a "schools"
of "two, three, a. four mar" In
used the "hurly-burly" they created "on each side of the
street," la3 creating the illusion that they were proclaiming such interesting a important
'13 Ibid., 219.
Ibid., 228.
IEO Ibid., 229.
lR1 Tbd., 215.
' 8'bid*, 222.
IE3 bid, 212.

"Barbarous. " Love," "Mystdous." 'Taraer Crimes." aad tk like"
but wirhout
announcing any bpaniculars." "It was usually the detail of some "'barbarious and honible
murder", M a w ramntal, "or of same extraordhaq m e n ~ - e such as the attack
on Marshal Haynau - which has roused public attention" '" ud "been the case during
the progress of any absabing event subsequently." la' Running paEtaers cx "Death
Huaters" dealt in fabulous camivalesque street genres - "murdas, seductions, &-
cons, explosions, alarming acddents. 'assacsinatinnc' , deaths of public charaaers. hels.
and love-Iatas. But popular, a notarious, murders are the "great goes".1ag A running
panera disclosed that some of the mst popular fictidous murders ("cofks" '9 were the
murcjms at Chigwell-row lW. Sarah Holmes at Lincoln 19', Scarbaough 19, ~ivapool~~~,"
and the "Hmrid and Inhuman Murder, Committed by T. Dray, on the Body of Jael
lss
Ibid.
lS6 Ibid.. 215-16.
" Aamding to Mayhew. "When the Popish pla agitated England in the reign of Charles II, tbe
"Narratives" of the design of a handful of men to assassinate a mole nation. were eagerly
purchased in the streets and taverns. And this has been be case during the progress of any
absorbing event subsequently" (Mayhew, I: 216,222; Shepard, 1973: 73-74).
"' "A cock" is "a fictitim statement o evm a pretended fictitious statement**. acaxding to
Mayhew (Mayhew, I: 222).
190 Ibid.
I9
Ibid.
193 Ibid., 223.

ecounted that ''there had been little a mthing &hg in the murder line - no ooe could
cap him - till Rush turned up a regular oump." 19-' On the momiDg of Rush's exgution
"we beat all the regular newspapers out of the field; fa we had the M, true, and
particular account down, you see, by our own express, and that can beat anything that
ever they can publish1% ... many's the pe~y I've turrpd away wkn I've been askd for
an account of the whde business before it happeaed" lW Afk murdas. "'fires are tidy
browns,"19' remumed aMher panere experiezxed in psnaing fires at the Houses of
Parliament, the Royal Exchange, and the Tower. He explained to Mayhew that these
. .
stories were sold as "the work of incendaries, - of mmstts, to get rid of perplexing
papers, - of government officers with troublesome accounts of balance. - of a sporting
lad for a heavy wager, - of a conspiracy of builders, - and of 'a unsuspected
party-"""
(b) Standing Patterem, Chauntem, or BP1IPrl-Singers
Occasionally running panaas became "staading pamers, chauntas, or ballad-
singers."
According to Mayhew's account of Srmn's "Spans aad Pastimes of the
lg5 Ibid., 223.
19' hid., 230.
199 Ibid.
'00 bid, 222. Mayhew reccxded: "Of the regular ballad-singers, sentimental and comic, there are
not less than 250 in and about LonQa" (Mayhew, III: 1%). 'The street-ballads are printed and
published chiefly in the Seven Dials* a Chaunter told Mayhew. 'Tbere are four ballad-publishers

Pqle of England," "in modern language, rhymers. singas, story-tellers, jugglas.
relaters of koic actions. buffoons. and peas"'; . . . all of them anae kluded unk the
name of minstreI."
Following the Nomulll C~~~qllest. Strun reccxded that th minstrels
"were pmnitted to perfam in the rich moaastaies, and in the mansions of the nobility,
which they fkequently visited in large parties, and especially upon occasions of
fesrivity."
Minstrels "constituted the theatre, tk opaa and thhe of of powerfd
and wealthy." Strun coaclucCed that he was "very certain that the po& the songster. and
rhe musician were 6requently united in the same person" Mayhew also argued that
running patttxers. lilce Brwnmagem Jack and the Country Paganini, were not only "the
sufficiently legithate desceadaat of the jestour. sad in some respects of the
mountebank" but they wae also mmxtd to the dent street-fdk. The ancient streetfolk
were accompanied "gemrally by a chauntern "to reader their peafamances more
attractive." Mayhew concludad that his own "account of the authors, &c.. of street
literature shms that the analogy still holds." zm
Every standing pattaa a "boardman" needed a "pitch", "board wak", and an
audience." TO attract anemia to ckir pamphlets and papas. rhey used ei-
"a board
with colaured pictures upon it, illustrative of the amtents of what they sell, a else by
in that quarter, and three at the East-end. Many tdhds are wrim expressly fa the Seven-Dials
press, especially the Newgate and the political ones, as well as those upon any topic of the day.
There are five known authors for the Dials press, and they are all suet ballad-singers. I am one of
these myself" (Mayhew, m: 1%).
lo2 Ibid., 226.
lo3 Ibid.. 273.
Ibid.. 237.
'" Shepard, 1973.100; Webb. 1955.28.

gathering a crowd around them, in giving a lively a harible description of the papers a
Wks they are ' wocking '." Tky too used "cocks" in stra paintiag as well as sum
literanue. The low literary genres of street literature were saturated with the dialogues of
admry everyday life. Two favourite tlrremes were the "Annals of the White House in
Sobsquare," " and the "Mysteries of Mesmaisrn" Tk White House was "a notorious
place of ill fame" and its board illustrated "skeJetolls, mffias, aad
harm," while
the "Mysteries of Mesmerism" was an accarnt of that "newly-discovaed and wonderful
power in runrr and art9* ard its b d illustrated "womep in a state of coma."
Sane of
the most fashionable "illustrations" a visual f m of represensadon included "the
flogging of the nuns of Minsk, the blood streamiag fkom tkir nakd shouldersm . . . the
young girl, Sarah Thomas, who murderad ha mistress in Bristd, dragged to the gallows
by the turnkeys and Calaaft, the hangman; [and] Calaaft himself, when charged with
"starving his motfier." Two of the nmst elabaate illustrations - the Mannings aad the
Sloanes - each had "a series of 'compartments', represenhg the different stages of the
events in which thme heroes and heroines floltrished 99
What 'WE s W 9 mxkd mst of all, however, was "the best of patter" "O
or "the
gifr of the gab" '1
as k worked alone with a board which he consi&zed was "as good as
206 Ibid., 232.
Io7 Ibid., 233.
"* Ibid., 232.
209 Ibid.
"O Ibid., 232.
'" Ibid.. 234.

a man" 'IZ
' AfGef ainaeen years' experience of the pvra and paps line in rhe streets." a
sta.ding patux tdd Mayhew, 'I find that a fodish mmensical thing will sell twice as fast
as a good ma1 sentimental one; and while it lasts, a good murder will cut out the whde
of them. It's the best selling thing of any. I used at o m ti=
to patter religious tracts in
the stre& but I found no encu~aganea'~~ ... So I was ctiven ino the comic stamling
panas"'. 214 'We dm*
t care what's in tlr ' ~ s in ' w bar&.' he cominud 'All we
want to do is sell 'em; and the me
horrible we makes tk affairs, the m e sale we have.
We do vay well with 'love-leners.' They are 'cocks;' that is, they are all fiaitiou~'."~
"The last dying speeches and executions are all printed the day befae," he explairwi
"They're always &ME on the Sunday, if the murderers are to be hung on tk Monday.
I've been and got them myself on tk Sunday nighti over and ova again."' 'Here you
have also an exact Ueuss,' he said to Mayhew, 'of the murderer, taken at the bar of the
old Bailey!' wtren all the time it is an old woodat that's bm~ used fa every criminal
for the last forty years."' Reflecting on one of his mxe m~mcrablexperiences. he
recalled: 'I rememb a party d Jack Straw, who laid a wager, half-a-gallon of beer,
that he'd bring home the morrey fa two Qzen blank papers in one hour's time. He . . .
began a p aw about the political affairs of the nation. . . telling the public that he dared
not sell his papas, they w e treasonable; so te gave them a maw - that he sold fa oae
penny. in less than the hour he was sold clean out., and returned and drank the bea'."216
"' Ibid., 235. Regarding religious tract sellsf Maybew nmded: "When penny bodrs wae few
and very small, religious tracts were by hr the cbeapest things in print" (Mayhew, I: 241).
Ibid.
Ibid., 234.

"Jack Straw's priacipat "pitch" was at Hyde Park Cclraer, 'where,' said the man [who
Mayfiew] &OQBd
as wmking with him, ''kused to COUE it vay strong against Old
Nosey. the Hy& Park bully as he called him. To my knowledge he's made IOs., and he's
ma& 15s.on a night'.'""
"Cocks" were also taken fiom quarter-sheets of recitations and dialogues. Mayhew
recorded such "literary fmgeries" as "Good Advice to Young Men on Chmsing their
Wives", "Drunkard's Catechism", "Rent Day; a, the Landlad gatbering his Rents", "A
Hint to H usbh aad Wives", "DiunLard's Catechism", tk "Sddier's Prayer-book and
Bible", mimicking the latest newspapa style. Oae of Maykw's shat accounts of "the
bat and longest known" of these staeuypic '%Wary fcrgeries" a "cocks" bears
repeating. The "Cruel and Inhuman Murder Committed on the Body of Capt. L~WSOLI"
was illustrated showing "a lady, wearing a ('~xoaet, stabbing a gentleman, in firll dress,
through the top button of his waistcoat."
Amding to M aw, the narrative began:
WITH surpise we have learned that this aeighbourhood fa a length of
time was amazingly alarmed this day by a crowd of pecqle carrying the
body of Mr. Jams Lawless, to a docta whiie streams of blad
besmared the way in such a manrY.r that tk cries of Murder re-echoed
"' Ibid.. 239. Mayhew reuxw 'This Jack Straw was, I am tola a fine-lodring man, a natural
son of Henry Hunt, the blacking manuf8aurer" (Mayhew, I: 239).
218 Ibid. 238. Mayhew also desaibed the "ExuaOrdinary and Funny Doings in This
Neighbourhood" and "Married Man Caught in a Trap." He also described "a narrative "on a
subject*', the differace between a narrative and a idad being chat "the narrative is fictitious, and
the ballad must be found on a real event, however embellished" (Mayhew, I: 238-239).
"O Ibid Mayhew acuxnpanied this narrative with an illustration of the Murder of Captain La-
(A "Cock"); see Illusbatims of Street Art - No. II.

the sound of ~ o uvoices. s It appears that tk cause of alarm,
aiginated through a caut-ship attea&d with a sdernn promise of
marriage betwen him a d miss Lucy Guard a handsome young Lady of
refined f-s
with the intercourse of a superia minn she lived with her
aunt uho spared neither pain nm cost to improve the talents of miss G.
those seven years past, since the death of ha mother in Ludgate Hill,
Londoa until she was entangled by the Mumps alcurement of M~.L.='
The narrative continued deplaiag "Miss Guard's fall fhn virtue and her &senion
by her betrayer, 'on account of her fortune being small'." James Lawless. a Captain
Lawson, then '*woo6 a wealthy City maiden, and the banas are published" Then 'We
find that the intebded bride learned that Miss Guard, held certain promissory 1-s
of
his, and that she was
to errta an action against him fa a breach of promise,
which moved clouded Eclipse over the extacy of the variable miss Lawless who kmw
Miss G had the leners of his sufficient to substantiate ha claims in a court." The
narrative concluded with Lawson visiting Miss Guard to wkde ha out of her lenas,
but "she drew a large carving-We and stabbed him unrlpr the left breast," The chances
of recovery fa Lawson were small, W e ''the valiant victress" was "adered to submit to
judicial decorum in the nineteenth year of her age." Mayhew concluded that the "mders
and other atrocities fa which this 'cock' had been sponsor, are - I was infmmxi
emphatically - a thuadering lot!" 2"
221 Ibid., 238.
U2 bid. 253; See Appendix for dlustratiaas.

In between numing and standiag patterm, M a w desaibed "anaha species of
patterers. wtm . .. belonged rather to an m a t e class "who walk at such a slow rate
that. though never stationary. they can hardly be said to move." These patterers were
"reciters of dialogues, Litanies, and tk various street 'squibs' upon passing events; they
also include tk public popoumhs of conunctrums, and the 'hundred and fifty popular
song* enumtm." They were c ldy wmxtd with the ''chaunters" who "sing the
comerns of the 'p;lpers' tky vead" 'To ~k a @tical litany, wtdcb ref- to
ecclesiastical matters," a man told Mayhew, that he ''ma& himSeif up," as well as limited
means would permit. as a bisbp!**m 'Our mob ooce thought of start@ a cardinal's
dress. and I thought of wearing a red hat
recalled a m ~ r&ng k
patterer.
"They shod me, sir," he continued 'My shoes I call Pope Pius; my trowsers and braces,
Calaaft; my waistcoat and shirt, Jael Denny; a d my coat, Love
Somaimes
"a dialogue" was of "a satirical nature9* such as tk "Conversation Ween Achilles and
the Wellington Statue," with two lhs in couplet fam preceding "every two paragraphs
of dialogue" seeming "as if they represent the speakers wrongfblly." Amther elderly man
told Mayhew that he worked "Hone's parodies on the Catechism, Litany, St. Athanasius'
Creed, &c. in the streets, after the three co~lsecutive trials and the three acquittals of Hone
*' Ibid., 215.
'24 bid. 236. Accading to Maybew. "It was an old snuggles's mck to sell a sack and give the
keg of contraband spirit placed within it and padded out with straw so as to resemble a sack of
corn Wayhew, I: 239).
'" Ibid., I: 224.
Ibid.

had made tk parodies famous and Hm
popular." "
Strea Recitas were bard to fiad =. but Mayfiew finally faurd an "extrdy good-
lookh~g''~ boy aamed S-e,
with "a soft voice alman like a girl's." " who tdd
Mayhew that he played "ShaLerpeare's tragedies. aad selections from pa%."
Performing with a young male fiiead h "tk most theatrically iaclined aeighbour~~"'
called Wdworth-road, he coacluded: 'The pieces that draw best with the public are, 'The
Gipsy's Revenge,' 'The Gold Digger's Revenge,' "I'k Miser,' 'The Robber.' 'The
7 -233
Felm'aad 'The Highwayman .
')'
(7) Other Vemacujar Voices of London
Mayhew's othar vernacular voices iacluded "street-sellers of stationery - such as
note-paper, envelopes, pens, ink, peacils, sealing-wax, and wafas" as well as "street-
vendas of ahmacs, pocket-books. memxatYhlm ad account-books." rU According to
him they were "hffmive" labouring people u h sold tkir goods with "a simple
"' Mayhew, III: 15 1. Maybear told his readers: ". . . fhough I could always trace them through their
wanderings about the streets, and learn where they had been seen the night befae, still I could
never find one myself' (bid). One Reciter told Mayhew: "I only know about four who Live that
way, and I have heard of the others ban hearsay - not that I have seen them myseif* (Mayhew,
I: 154). Reading in Eustoa-square and Mcxning-uescent, a Blind Reciter "read nothing but the
Scriptures, as 'blind printing,' - so it's sometimes called - has only been used in the Scriptures"
(Mayhew, m: 155).
"9 Mayhew, IH: 151.
"I Ibid. 152.
232 Ibid., 154.

cry'*'j5 - b eyd tkse ''trtnftks [who] camitUte the principal strea-sellers of
literature, or 'paper-wakers,' of the 'pattering' class "=-andwerenotof6'tk
'enterprising' class of street trackma" 23'
"The maprity of them have bgn
mechanics,'* he recocdd, "a in the employ of tradesrtm whoa callings were not
mechanical (as regards handiaafi labour) but what is best described as c~mmeccial; a as
sang bur oat producing; as in the instances of tk large body of 'warehousemen' in the
different depamnem~ of trade."
Mayhew also included 'tbe sellers of odd numbers of
periodicals and brdsheets, and those who vend either playing cards, -aphc
cards. and (at Epsom. Asca. kc.) racing cards" D9 as well as "the veadors of illustrated
cards, such as those embellished with engravings of the Crystal Palace, Views of the
Houses of Parli- as well as the gel- poerry cards." UO "Ihose in the greatest
demand contain representations of tfre Crystal Palace, th outlines of the structure being
given in gold delineation in the deep purple, a mulbeny, of the srmorh aad s him
gelathe." Mayhew's list cuncluded with "tk vvendas of old engravings out of inve-ted
umbrellas, and the hawkas of cdoured pictures in frm~~," "tk old book-stalls and
barrows, and the 'phers-up,' or sellas of old songs pinned against the wall, as well as
'% Maybew, I: 237.
235 md
236 Ibid., 215.
237 bid.
bid., I: 261-
239 Ibid.
hid.

tk veodas of mpmrscript music."
The 'pimasup' a wall song-sellers sold "songs
which they have ''pimd" to a sort of screen a large board, a have anached them. in any
convenient way, to a blank wall; and they differ from the other song-sellers, inasmuch as
that they are not at ail c~~aected with pa-,
and have gwally beerr mechanics, portas.
or savant^".^' A man ftom Harewood Place. Oxfad Stre& i nfh Ma*:
b"Geogally, these dealers know bale of the songs they sell, - taking the printer's wad,
when they purchase. as to 'what was Young boys Qmaaded songs such as "A
Life on r k Ocean Wave", "I'm Afloat", "The's a Gaxi Tinre coming", and 'Farewell
to the Mountain" 2U Mayhew reaxQd that thae was also che "Lag-song sellas" whase
songs were geaerally '3rd to the top of a long pole, and the venda 'cried* the different
titles as k went alcmg." The long-song sellers depaded cm the c ~ and novelty ~ s
of the form in which tky sold their songs. The paper songs, printed on wide paper. ''thre
songs abreast" and about a yard long, fluttered faowing Mayfiew, from a pole l a g
at a distance, 'like huge much-soiled wfiite ribbons." The yard-long paper constituted the
'three' yards of song, although sometimes three slips were pasted together. Long-song
sellers paraded through the summer streets fa a penny with their "three yards of new and
poplar songs." U6 kre was also whistling illy who began his whisthg car= in
New-street, Covent Garden, the young whistling man with "cheeks so hollowed by long
--- --
241 bid., I: 266.
'" Ibid., I: 272.
243 Ibid., 273.
2" bid.
245 Mayhew , I: 221.
244 bid.

whistling. that they appeared idmst to have a rowd piece of flesh scooQed out of the
cemre of each of them" as ad Englads om whistling a&
-
daDdag boysw T he warae
glee-singersu0. Ethiopian saecladas U1, and oegro saezmks *'. Many of Mayhew's
readas must have irltntified with the m t customafy cries: '"'ha! yards a penny! Three
yards a penny! Beautifid songs! Newest songs! Popular Songs! Three yards a pemy!
Song, song, songs!" Sellers of Race Cards aad Lists - like Tom Cole, the Wooden Lzg,
Old Bnunmagem, and Hell-Fire Jack who wae all famous sellers of "secoad editions"
ar later editious of the mxning ard evening newspapers, especial.ly the Globe and
Standard - cried out: "Here's Daling's Correct Card of the Races. - Names. weights.
and cdours of the Riders. - Lmgh of Bridle, and Weight of addle**' b effect. in an
oral culture such as this, it must have been impossible to read London Labour silently all
the way through The street voices of London at tk very least must have been read aloud
248 Ibid, 197.
2'9 Ibid.. 199.
One gleesinger told Mayhew "We have been streec vocalists f a twenty-five years. We sing
solos, duets, and glees, and only at night" (Maybew, m: 194).
ZSI
he of the sereDadets told Mayhew: "Sometimes, when we are engaged fa it, we go to
concert-roans and do the nigger-statues, which is the same as the tableaux vivants. We illusuate
the adventures of Pampey, a the life of a negro slave*' (Ibid, 193).
32
Acco~ding to Mayhew, there were "50 Ethiopian serenaders, and above 250 who Live by balladsinging
alme" (Mayhew, IT: 190).
253
Mayhew, I: 221.

(8) In Condubon: 'Words haunted his work and their history gave dues to
the hidden history of the cmwd9'*
Mayhew's obsession with wads signaled affinities behveen languages and cultures.
Mayhew had travelled to India, was flueat in &man and French, and had expaiermd
fusthand the ''primitive" Indo-European languages of Wa, which spearheaded most of
the actual field of philological nsearch at that
And so k attempted to create an
ethnography and history of the street people of LonQn, and by exteasion, ptzhaps a
history of hwmnkid Maytrew's London Labour was a vast
encyclopedia, a library as well as dictionary of Victaian languages, dialects. and
histories. Fa London Labour was riddled with the Romantic befief that 'We aod meaning
lay in the actual wads of the aiginal, and in the use of heir own language."
As
journalist and autha, Mayfrew was "de-heraized*'. brought closer as a kind of evayman
to his readers, and in the process, LoaQn's '-' cultures wae brought closer aad
were leveled too' London fubour was, in effa a Living testimmy to the historywriting
epidemic that swept Victaian society creating some of the most lasting results in
the field of dommntation and historical technique.Y8
The significance of visual fams of representation in Lunhn Labour was made
possible, in pan, by Mayhew's experience with Punch magazim. Punch itself was an
=* bid., 47.
"* Williams, Karel, footnote 1 1-45.
u6 The fovndatim of the expressive thmy of Ranantic aesthetics was the eightgoth-oeocury idea
that language played a central role in knowledge and power, communicatioa and tbe potentials of
human expression.

urban invention. The illustratd magiizh was a rnicr~~~~rn of the modam city. a hodge-
podge of usefbl aad amusing infixmation - short essays and staies. reviews, potted
wisdom. aphaisms, jokes, cartoons, puzzles, and advertisements. Maeover. the Punch
years had given Mayhew the o9pcxtunity to wark with illustrators who used a more
photographic Illustrated Lonhn News style. These London News engravings gradually
took over the rde of broad sheet woodcuts. causing as new communication mdia aiways
do, a major communication shakeup in Fi-
Street journalism. Along with the
devaluation of the labatring pax axxi the -king-ciass
gerrerally, thae was a marked
devaluation of their artistic life, including their traditional aafts fa, as Walter Benjamin
argued traditional arts aod crafts were rmst directly affected by the developments in
mechanical reptoduction, Yet paradoxically, the selfsame development of mechanical
reproduction. that was the endless multiplication of images, created art fix the masses.
both in mass newspapers such as the Morning Chronicle and periodicals such as Punch,
and mass education which made all these accessible to a new insatiable reading public.
The important implications of such a cultural revolution as this, was that bourgeois
sociexy, this literate, urbanized. individualized hegemonic culture, increasingly
undermiaed face-toface traditional saieties "with its emphasis of extending
relationships."*
And Mayhew Lived on the cusp of tk phaographic revolution. He was
an eyewitness to mid-Victorian history, and as an eyewitness, he was deeply concerned
about the impact of written mil, and visual f m of representation on Victorian society
and cultures. This communication revolution must have influeacsd Mayhew in his
approach to the artistic conventions and innovations he eventually used in his weekly
259 Williams, Raymond, 1957.31; Mobsbarn, 1975.300-302.

London Lobwr as he worked alongside Richard BeardZM Beard, England's fjrst
professional photographer, created xmst of the daguarorype, which were the basis of
London Labour's engravings during the late 1840s."' Each weekly issue began with one
of Beard's woodcuts. usually a woodcut of oae of tk streaselem 262. aad although his
work was done in the studio, he portrayed Mayhew's strtxtfdk sympathetically in their
own social and cultural contexts Mayhew reaunt& biind "Old Sarah's" trip to
Beard's studio:
When conveyed to Mr.Beard's establishment to have kr dagumtxxype
taken, she fa the first time in her life rode in a cab; and then her fear at
being pulled "back'ards" as she tamxi it (fa she sat with her back to the
horse), was almost paintirl. She felt about fa soxmbhg to lay hold of,
and did not appear comfortable umil she had a 6rm grasp of the pocket. .
.. Whilst asceading tk high flight of stah that led to the portraitrooms,
she laughed at every progosal ma& to her to rest. When the
mait was hished she expressed a wish to fael it."
260 see Joyce. Visions of the People, 199 1, 230-255.
Taithe. 1996, 10.
263 Taithe, 1996.96.
264 Mayhew, III: 159. "One canna wak 6Ay yards without pwing scme photogr~phic
establishment1', Mayhew commented as he walked along Bermondsey. the New-Cuk and
Whitechapel-rd It was "in Bermoadsey", Mayhew recalled, "that I met with the first instanae of
what may be called pure photograpby" Mere a Mr.F-1 was "taking sixpenny patraits in a booth
built up out of old canvas, and erected aa a piece of spare ground in a furniture-bdrerls yard"
(Mayhew, IIX: 204). One photographic man told Mayhew: 'The faa is, people don't know their
own faces. Half of 'em have never laoked in a glass half a dozen times in their life, and direaly
they see a pair of eyes and a nose, they fancy they are their own" (Mayhew, IIX: 207). Mayhew had
been told: ".. thae arc near u p 250 houses in hdoo now gating a livelihood taking sixperrny
pntraits" (Mayhew. El:210).

The street fdlr's staies wae Maytrew's m t impatant single satrce of information,
In fact, M a w cdlected tens of hwads of wmds of direct qmctage, and in the
dynamic act of recocding aal histay, his Qcuments challenged the writing of Victorian
'canonical' history. In questioning a "regular scavager" about the histay of the streets.
the scavenger took offeace: "Did I eva hear what str-
were like a thousand years ago
It's nothing to me, but they must have been like what they is now. Yes, the was always
streets, or how was people that has tin ever to get their coals takem to them, sod how was
the public houses to ger their beer It's talking noasense, talking that way, a-asking sich
in awha interview with a dustman (rccanmoded to MayhRu by the
dustman's master), "I was proceediag to mte down what he said when the moment I
opened my note-book and took the pedl in my hand, he started up, exclaiming, -'No.
no! I'll have none of that there wmk - I'm not such a b- fml as you takes me to be -
I don't rlnrbrstand it, I tells you, and I'll aot have it, now that's plain;' - and so saying
he ran out of the room, and descended the entire flight of stairs in two jumps. 1 followed
him to explain, but datunately the pencil was still in oae hand and the book in the
other. and immediately I made my appearance at the door he took to his heels, again with
three akn who sgmed to be waiting f a him there."
In the late 1830s. Statistical
Societies in London and Maachmer, compased mainly of professional men, suppressed
most original interview material such as Mayhew's material in favour of statistical
infcxmation. In the 1840s, however, newspaper investigations became, on their own, a
kind of ehogaphic specialty that culminated in Mayhew's Morning Chronicle surveys.

His small-sale interviews were an hpmtant historical collection of the street-fdk's
exmares within single languages as well as differern social languagesm experienced
from within a single ilatid language M a w often recacki tk mas-fdl's
memories as groupings of uttaances, italicizing key pl~as aad sometimes emphasizing
an almost spoken accent. Fa instaace, "'My Little girl began about six, a nitre is the
usual age," a 'Yancy cabinet" wcxler dded
in Mayhew. "Oh, poor little things. " said
the wife,"they are obliged to begin the very minure they can use theirfingzrs at
all. "26g.. . "I've worked more thon a month together, Md the longest night's rest I've had
has been an hour and a quarter; aye, and I've been up three nights a week besides. " . . .
'Why, I stood at this bench" said the wife, "with my child, only ten years of age, from
faur o'clock on Friday mxning till ten minutes past seven in the evening, without a bit to
eat or drink" . . . "Here she burst out into a violent flood of tears, saying, 'Oh, sir. it is
hard to be obliged to labourfhorn morning to night as we do, all of us, little ones and all,
-
-
267 Italians Lived around Lather-lane and Saffron-hill (Mayhew* III: 177). The Italian agan man
told Mayhew: "'I belong to Parma, - to the small village in the duchy. My Eather keep a farm, but
I had three year Id, I think, when he died. There was ten of us altogeder' (bid., 174). The French
hurdy-gurdy player told Mayhew: 'I am Dijon. The vineyard of Cia Nangent is near Dijm. You
have heard ofthat wine. Oh, yes, of cuxse you have!' (bid, 171). A Scottish bagpipe player told
Mayhew: 'My fatber is a Highlander, and was hm in Argyhbire, and there, when he was 14 or
15. he enlisted fa a piper in the 92** (Ibid, 168). A yamg "Qaxen-haired" German told Mayhew:
'I am German and have baen six year in zis country. I was nearly fourtea when I come. I come
firom Oberfeld, eighteen miles firan Hanover' (Ibid, 164). A very handsome native of Bengal told
Mayhew: 'I was bm~ in Calcutta and was Musulman - my parents was Mussulrnan - but I
Christian now. I have been in dis cuatree ten year"' (Ibid.188).
Mayhew's investigative style, his questions and answers, enamaged the ammunicatim of
pre-established themes, whicb regulated or seleaed pertineat topics in everyday discourse. Signs
such as these were invested within the axnplex web of Victorian social values and practices,
which were ultimately traceable to various behavioural genres (Bakhtin, 1986, 123). These genres,
as signs, were thus intertwined within the entire range of affective, moral and emotive Viamian
values (Bakhtin, 1981c[194Ol, 275).
269 Mayhew, 11: 314. The italics are Mayhew's.

and yet not to be able to live by it either. "' 270 Mayhew wove tog-
the mm-folk's
experiences so pmdidly that tkir memaies kan~ the ceata of Mayfrew's own
investigative authority. There were mmmies of ck Crimean "', the Afghan 22,
and tk
Indian war m, mermries of revd~tion~~*, Chartism, th secret life of aristaxatic men 275,
laug)aei', and fagiveaess' "Billy" the aristocratic amsing-sweeps. urged Mayhew
"' A swleeper in Portman Square told Mayhew: "'One of my son's died in the Crimmy, he was in
the 13" Light Dragoons, and died at Scutari. oo the 29' of May' (Mayhew. II: 473). A tan-tcm
Player named Usef Asmaa toid Mayhew 'My braher is thirty-six, and he was in the Crimea, as
steward on b d the Royal Hlydaspes, a steam screw she is"' (Mayhew, Ill: 186).
'7' A streetudesly - a "tall sddierly-1-g man" tdd Mayhew: "'I was in the East India
Company's artillery, 4* crmpsny and 2* httahm. Why. ycs sir. I saw a little of what you may
call 'service.' I was at be fighting at Candahar Bowlinglen, Bowiiag-pass, Clatigillsy, Ghuznee,
and Caboul'" (Mayhew, II: 262).
'73 A bagpipe player told Mayhew T ve served in India and I was at the base of Punjaub. 1848,
and Moultan, 1849. Sir Cdin Campbell crrnmanded us at both"' (Mayhew, ID: 165)-
274 An aaobat told Mayhew "'I was in Paris, tax at the revolutim of 1848, when Philippe
had to nm a. I was in bed, about two o'clock in the morning, when thme that began the
revolutim was coming round - men armed; and they come into ewrybody's bed-room and said,
'You must get up, pu're wanted' I told them I was Englist; and they said, 'It Qesn' t maw; you
get your living here, and you must fight the same as we fight for our liberty'** @layhew, m: 92).
'75 A hackney MBCb driver reminisced about his life with Mayhew: "One night yw sx, sir. I was
called off the stand, and told to take up at the British Coffee-house in Codcspur Street. I was a lad
then, and men I pulled up at the dorx, the waiter ran out and said 'You jump down and get
inside, the Rince is going to drive hisself.'"'
"'I didn't much like tbe notim oa it' be continued,
"'but I didn't exaaly bow what to do, and was gating off my seat to see if the waiter had put
anything inside, for he let down the glass, and just as I was getting down, and had my foot oa the
wheel, out came the Race of Wales. and four a five ratflehahed fellows like himself. . . Well,
sir, rhe Rime drove tbat night to a house in King Street, Saint James's"' (Mayhew, III: 350). He
had further suxies to tell of h d Barryxnore: "'Then me seasm I used to drive Lord Banymore in
his rounds to the brothels - twice a thrice a-week sometimes. He used always to take his own
wine with him. After waiting till near daylight, a till daylight, I've carried my lad, girls and all
- fine dressed-up madams - to Billingsgate, and there left them to healdast at soare queer
place, a to slang with the fishwives"' (Ibid).
276 Mayhew recmjed a cmversatim with a strolling aaor, who was thrust into prism, fa
performing without a license stated:
We were ail in an a wl fright when we found ourselves in the police-cell
that night. . . . 'We were all in our theatrical costumes. I was Hammer, the
auaioaeer, dressed in a lmg white cmt, with the swallow-tails touching

to recad his stories: "'I shodd like y a to ~ put these things down, 'cos it's a fine thusg fa
my character, and I can show my face with any man fa being hoaest, that's me goud
Mayhew was profoundly interested in systems of representation, and the role of the
media in Victorian life. He commented on tk fact that patterm invented a embellished
"avocities which excite the public mid," 2n that 'Vie street-ballad and t l street- ~
mative. Like all pcrprlar -. have ckir influeace on massg of peop1e." a d
the 'pditical charactet and * t of tbe -king-classes appear to me to be a
distinctive feature of the age, and they are a necessary cuusqumce of the dawning
that
intelligare of the mass."
But be was probably unaware that tkse litaiuy genres
profoundly shaped Victaian thinking as did the infamal street genres of ''Punch talk" a
even ''Busiaas calk,'' 2n which was repted to Mayhew by an dd cloths collector.
"'How much is this here"' says the man who c

the Jewish seller. "'I won't give you above half the mnrey. *" "'Half & money, "' cries
the salesman. "'I can't take dat. Vat above tb 16s. dat you offa now vill give you fm it
Vill yau give me eightam Vd, come. give ush your money, I've got ma rent to pay. 9 99283
Regarding "Ptmh talk". the ''shat, dark paforma of Punch" 2Y tdd Mayhew that
"'Bona parlare' mans language; nzum of patter, Yuete munjare' - no food 'Yeute
lente' - no bad 'Yeute bivare' - no drirk I've 'yeute munjare,' ami 'yeute bivare,'
and, what's w;cxse, 'pte lente.' This is better than the costas' talk, because that ain't no
slang at all, and this is a brokea Itaiian, and much hi*
than the casters' lingo. We
know what o'clock it is. besides."
Mayhew's great cdlection of aha area gemes
communicated particular sets of pre-established ttremes as well, such as "murQrs,
seductions, aim. -coos, explaions, alarming accickms, 'assassinations', deaths of public
charactas. duels, and love-letters." X6 Although the fam*ar. i n f i and relatively
flexible sociogenetic structures were seamlessly woven into the entire landscape of
Victcxian affective and maal values, they auld be repressed a lost, potentially
eliminated from uwps of contact by tk cuasensual Victorian society' Mayhew's
representation of Victorian society was not a seamless web, however. It was an urban
"' bid.: Mayhew stated: "[Tbis is still a ma.
*deal." I am assured by me who beg= the
business at 13 years dd, and is now upwards of 60 years of age. The Penicoat-her will always
ask at least twice as much as he means to take] (Mayhew, LI: 29).
Bakhrio's amtributim to the remoceptualizp(ica of Literacy mok plrc around cbe idea that
some of the greatest theoretical discoveries had tab place first, a exclusively, in the conaete
visualizatioa of artistic forms. In other wards, Bakhtin's work c dd be said to be excursions into
the means of representation, whicb enabled the visible, that was, spoken utterances to become
visible as literary genres. Fa Bakhtin, street genres mediated between sociopolitical and ecmanic
life oo the one hand, and language oa the otha. In effect, they were "the drive belts between
history of society and the histcxy of language" (Bakhtin, 1986'65).

wald filled with disparate a d heteroglot manhgs, discoufses, a d symbols culled fiom
a wick variety of written, ad, and visual sources, histmcal periods, and social
experieaces. These meanhgs, discourses, aad symbols were stratified in a spatial main
of mcre inclusive social. political, mi cultural struggles.ag Mayhew was as fascinated
with London's street language as he was with London's spatial seaings. As a result.
London Lobour was created out of a healthy common sense, filled with a love f a
immediate realiflg9 and a clear sense of etymology. What was so important and path
breaking about bndon bur was Mayfiew's sense that London's street-languages were
anything but abstract, rather they w e contexnral, holistic, and me
often than not,
merapharic. Mayhew's recmd of the voices, feelings, a d experieaces of Lordon's
streeddk tint hand, his capacity to bring the ma1 tradition alive fa the first tirm!, was
undrubtedly one of the most sensitive in-depth indicators of chaagiag mid-Victorian
social and cultural practices. By cdlecting aal histay verbatim, he actually staked out
new tenitmyVm like Jules Micklet, the French historian and Maykw's co~ltemp~cary. In
the very act of reaxding dialogue, Mayhew battled his way out of the inherent textual
assumptions about writing into mcxe direct, intense relationships with the people aad
places he described. And in the ead, Lon&
hbour's novelistic elanens "' provided a
'" Mayhew's ~116dous research. documeatatim and wak transfamed his reading of Victoria.
London, which included literacy's msnission, uses and meanings.
See Gardner, 1992, 77.
'' ' Mayhew desaibed a small ehprsccaistic detail about a Regent-Street awing-sarecper: "Once
or twice whilst I was Listening to his statement he insisted upar removing sane dirt fiom my
shoulder, and, on leaving, he by force seized my hat and bushed it - all which habits of atteation
he had coatracted whist in service" (Mayhew, U: 475). Mayhew r ded his first impessims of
the Fantoccini man: 'Wen he paid me a visit, his pearliar erect bearing struck me as he entered.

privileged urban Mntage point fa witmssing saoe of the most mamxable dialogues of
the Victman street-folk without high levels of literacy. Ultimately, Ma*
was looking
fa the ioterstices of history and ~~lemxy, which lay, in part, in an histaid
U-g
of linguistic utlaances in everyday Victaian
We now turn to Chapter 6, 'm Tangled Net: Critical Anthropology, Cultural
Hegemony, and the "Rirnitive/Civilized Debate", which examims several problems
concerning the culhual teasions between the "primitive" street-fdk and the "civiIized"
bourgeois; the dissertation will also lodr at the idea of travel as perfarmance that was
very impommt to Maytrew's urban vision.
He walked without bending his knees. stamped with his heels, and often rubbed his hands together
as if washing them with invisible soap. He wore his hair with the curls arranged in a Brutus, a la
George the Fourth, and his &in was faced up into the air by a high black st* as though he
wished to inaease his stature" (Mayhew. ITI: 60). In Cannabstreet, City, Mayhew recalled that
large "cypbers, scrawled in whitewash on tbe walls and woodwtxk. intimated the different "lots,"
and all spoke of ckmion; the ooly moving thing to be seen, perhaps, was some flapping paper,
t m fran the sides of a roan and which fluwed in the wind" (Mayhew, 11: 293).
'92~ohann Michaelis, the great eighteenth-century Oriental philologist. was also fascinated with
vernacular languages, as 'history Ban below'. Michaelis argued that languages were "an immense
heap of truths and errm of the peapie". They were a special kind of library 'Wexe the discovaies
of men are safe fian any accidents, archives which are proof against fire, and which cannot be
destroyed but with the mal ruin of the people" (Aarsleff, 1967, 146). In The Brief Exposition of
Thoughrs concerning the Origins of Nations, Principally Draun fiom the Evidence of Languages
( 17 lo), Leibnitz also tejeaed Lodre' s semiolic theories, arguing that wds are also signs of
things as well as thoughts. kibitz Weved that there was a natural relatimship between Wings,
sounds and movements of the vocal cads" (Ibid., 88,288). kibitz argueQ as did Bakhtin
centuries later, that doliars must turn to the invisible bonds of language, the ''universal
intermnectioo of things", custom and e m cunmm name in ader to understand the origins of
nations. HiStOCically, he believed that the srnallest details of everyday We, ofren unseen and
unnoticed, were the true and profound causes for things. Mhitz felt that "being the most ancient
of monuments of peoples, before writing and the arts, languages in general best indicate the
cognations and migraticms of peoples" (Ibid., 8692-93). Herder bought sanething new and
synthetic to Gaman Ranantic th- of Language. Fa Herder, language had a -genetic
"altogether inseparable** historical life of its own. In the end, it seems that Herder, Michaelis,

kibitz, Humboldt, Mayhew, and the later Bakhtin Circle, drew on separate h t crmmm
linguistic mces (Ibid, 220).

Chapter 6
The Tsllgled Net: Critid Anthropology, Cultural Hegemony,
and the 'TPrlmitive/Civbed Debate" in Mayhew's London
(1) lntrodurtion
Critical anthropology - as the cultural practice of a comparative, histclcical, and
revolutionary perspective on contemporary Western civilization - also reflects on the
practice of writing as the dominant way that knowledge is productxi in the west. ' And it
cannot fail but argue that Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1 86 1-62)
was, in certain regards, not only a r md of an expanding civilization, but also the
handmaiden of imperialist litaature and Victman ernpire-building. Fa within the
broader domain of literature, writing practices were Wed to bourgeois domination
within modernity because writing, acccxding to Rousseau, was part of a vast and tangled
net of social ad
cultural factas, which predominated during the niaaeenth century.'
From the very lirst pages of Volume I - "Of Wandering Tribes in ~enaal,'" - London
Labour began with the "primitive/civilized debate" and the practice of cultural
hegemony, which was very central to the ideology of Victorian civilization. The term
"cultural hegemony" refers genaally to a complex set of ideas, meanings. and
associations coupled with ways of expressing those mpanings and associations that depict
unequal circumstances and other fonns of domination, In regards to London Labour more
Roseberry, William, "Mam and Culture." In The Polilics of Culture, ed. by Brett Williams,
Washington and -don: Smithsarian Institution Ress, 1991, 19-43,33.
' Rousseau ("On Script," 1%6,24) understood that as written languages especially scripu became
more analytical and mathematical, the variety of spoken languages became inaeasingly mae
homogenous: The mae a people learn to read, the more are its dialects obliterated."

directly. it can be unlPrstood as a s pdc coaceptual weapon used by ninetemh-
century, middle-class intellectuals such as Maytrew to establish cultural supremacy over
other peaples. gpecially London's labouring par and wakmg
In the end.
despite hundreds of interviews with LonQn's nomadic streer fdk, Maybew still
staunchly believed that he was a standard-bearer of an expanding civilization. Fa
accading to Mayhew, even the most "degraded" master scavengers in the act of publicly
cleaning London's byways symbdized in their own small way progress inherent in
Victorian civilization5 Chap~a 6 seeks to examine several historical and cultural
problems conceming the place of "primitive*' people within Victorian culture. These
intardated problems must also be seen within the context of the Menippea
(cornidgrotesque) with its ckply practical and ethical colrerm6 wkein Henry
Mayhew. as the cultural hao. wamked throughout London's uniolown str-
in search
of adventure. For Mayhew's London fabout thus played an impatant role both within
the 'primitive/civilized debate*', and the "aaVliterate debate". which was discussed in
Chapter 5. Chapter 6 examines how these groups and class formations were patterrred as
well as the practice of nineteenth-century travel literature.
Elias, NorbaL Power and Civility, 198249: Hauser believed that the amcept of the civilizing
proctxs itself was an intellectual weapon. But the thrust of Hauser's argument focused on the
points of cultural tension between ranaatic middle-class sentimentahty and aristocratic classicism
using the dialectic of "roman tic imiratiar and oppositim" (The Social History of An, 1985.3: 55).
Mayhew, IX: 205. However. Mayhew believed that the street-folk, in general. were primitive
even in their diets: 'the uneducated palates of the po

(2) Cultural Hegemony in Mayhew's Lobdon
As we have seen in Chapters 4 and 5, hegemonic culture in bndon Lobour consisted
in the experiences of the street-folk, who did not produce wealth and power. and also had
sharply diminished access to power. Mayhew's folk cultures. for their part, functiod as
a critique of the domination of the Victorian middle-class.' But the subaltern world of
Mayhew's street-folk also normally took fa granted the existence of the frarnewak of
those groups who practiced hegemony. And Mayhew recorded such hegemonic practices.
For events experienced by middle-class Victorians produced fams of ctiscaurse as well
as meanings that were extended apparently successfirlIy to London's street-folk who
could mt have experienced themg In ocha words, the subaltern world of tondon's
street-folk accepted the practices of bourgeois hegemony, even when they challenged
some of irs implications, largely because they had to.' Two ballast heavers. for example.
confided in Mayhew that "they were oppressed by the publican" as well as "the
foreman." 'O Mamva. one of them revealed: "'We are robbed of alI we get by the
foreman and publicans. I was eight years a teetotaler before I went to ballast-work, and
now I am forced to be a drunkard, to my sorrow, to get a job of work"' " " This man
reiterated the constant story of being compelled to drink against his will," Mayhew
recorded, "hating the stuff supplied to him, being kept fa hours waiting before he was
-- -- -- -
'"'Every time the question of language surfaces in one way a the other", Grarnsci argued, "it
means that a series of otbef problems are beginning to emerge: the formation and expansion of the
ruling class, the necessity of establishing closer and formal ties between the leading groups and
national-popular masses, that is of reorganizing the cultural hegemony"' (Gramsci, 198,5,2;
quoted in Gardner, 1993, 232).
8
Ibid.
9
Genevese, 1984.21; quoted in Roseberry, 1991.
lo Mayhew, III: 278.
Ibid., 278-9

paiddbeiagf~dtogacfnrnkwktkrhe~dano."12~newaldadsof
destructive social and ecoaomic pressures also threatend the str-
fdk's ways of life.
For example, they told Mayhew that they had me m~ey ten a twenty years ago than
they had now, and that many occupations seemed to be disappearing by midumtury:
A few years ago the street pie-trade was vay profitable, but it has btxn almost
destroyed by the "pie-shogs" . . . The sale of books by auction in the streets, is now
inconsiderable and irregular. From the historical sketch it appears evident that the
ballad-singer and s e k of today. . . is, hxkk the minstrel having lost caste and
being driven to play cheap. The number of Vermin-Destroyers and Rat-Catchers who
ply their avocation in W has of late years becollle greatly diminished One
cause, which I heard assigned f a this was that many ruinous buildings and old streets
had barn removed, and whole colonies of rats had been thereby extirpated. The
street-sweeping machine therefme, assums an importance as aaother instaace of the
displacement, a attempted displacement, of the labour of man by the mechanism of
an engine."
However hegdc processes were even me
complex. indirect, and problematic
than this. fa understanding the struggle betwea these cultural groups and classes.14
Writers and thinlers, fa iastaace, during the previous mmries, pushed-and-pulled ova
the standardization of the English language with ''tk correspondiog rupproachemenrs,
" bid.. 279.
" Mayhew. 1: 195,295,274,450,23. 22.
l4 William Rosebary argued that *a direct a amneaim between class and culture" implied "mucb
too direct a cooneuion b e m meaning and experience and ignaes the political implications of
cultural insaiptim, the m a r of meaning ban experience in the context of doahation.
Second it ignaes the ambiguous and cmttadictny nature of experierrce itself, which can produce
on 1 y a ccmtradiaay consciousness" (Roseberry. 1991.34; see also Gramsci, 1971,333).

enclosures and s o w ananpced destnrcticm of vernacuiar languages" l5 which
revealed how the dominant educational systexn had hardened into leading groups of
authority. It was not just simply a struggle between oppressors and oppressed. however.
but rather it was a me
complicated process wtrereby the middle-class successfirlly
avoided direct w&ontations with working-class especially in the meas of language and
culture. l6 Mayhew obviously sensed that the battle ova the oral adition was also a battle
over culture. Fcr within this battlegraurd, he staked out his own small claim to history by
recording London's street cultures, their customs, and languages for the very first time.
But in the end, the public wald of Mayhew's strtxt-culture was the place where the
street-folk lost ground by &gas, slowly and unevenly, because they w e largely
divided'' as we have seen in Chapter 5. Increasingly, these kinds of bourgeois hegemonic
practices determined Victorian public social policy and its laws so that in effect to simply
reject Victorian bourgeois culture was really no longer possible. Ihe laws coocerning the
streets of London not only constituted a p owd ally in the multiplicity of cultural
struggles but also constituted, at other times, a powerfbl hegemonic f ad8 Ultimately
the street-folk remained because of practical mcessity, deeply self-absorbed with the
most immediate concans of their own, that is personal day-to-day survival as well as
" Rosebeny* 1991.33. Raymond W i s argued that dinleas and accents, far example, were
rank-ordered in terms of political status and legitimacy. There was, however, no "working-class
speech" in Britain, accocding to Williams,"the oaly class speech in Britain is that of the middle
and upper classes; the remaining variatioos are regiaral" (Williams, 1974, 30).
l6 Lears, T. J. Jackmn, 'The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Roblems and Possibilities." In
American Historical Review, 3 (1990): 567-593, 572.
" Stuart Hall's w k oo "EncodinglDecdng" thinks through linkages tocultural hegemony at the
level of particular social and cultural analysis. Hall argued f a "a canplex structure in dominance"
produced and sustained through linked but distinctive moments in 'pobuctim, circulation,

issues of mobility and freedom, But in tfreir private spaces and private realms of "primary
affections and allegiances in family and aeighbourhood"
these practices proved more
effective in promoting resistance, than did the rational perceptian of class interest as
Raymond Williams has argued. Mayfiew's panerers combined in other words. their own
indigenous cultural leadership with their own sense of prestige and culture. Mayhew
recorded how:
the patterers laugh at telegraph and express trains for rapidity of communication,
boasting that the press strives in vain to rival them - as at a 'hang@ match", for
instance. that the pattaers has the full particulars, dying speech and confission
included - if a cdession be feasible - ready fa the customers the moment the
drop falls, and while the criminal may be struggling. at the very scene of the hanging.
At a distance, he sold it befae the hanging: "if the Times was aoss-examirred about
it", observed oae patterer, "he must confess he's outdone, Wgh he's a rich Times,
and we is pm-fellows." "
Mayhew r8cocded a number of other battles, both public and private, concaning
resistance. outright intimidation, and subordination. Typically, Mayhew found that
bureaucracies wasted his time suppressing or withholding the very information he
required: "Finding my time. therefme, only wasted in dancing attendance upon city coal
officials, I made the best of my way down to the Coal-whippers' Office. to glean
distribution, amsumptim. and reproductim." Each practice retains its own uniqueness and its own
"specific modality, its own forms and conditions of existence" (Hall, 1980, 128).
l9 Williams, Raymoad, 1973. 31.
'O Mayhew, I, 229.

infmtion axxmg tk men ihanselvec." " In an interview. this time. with Loadon's
Dockworkers, Mayhew documented that "om gentleman seemed as anxious to withhdd
information as the oae was to impart it." " Ma*
discovaeb in fact. that the Qpu ty-
superintendent's orders were different with each subcxdinate officer. M a w recorded
that "no answers should be made to any inquiries I might put to them; and it was not until
I had communicated my object to the secretary that I was able to obtain the least
infixmation coacerning even the number of hands employed at different times, a the
armunr of wages paid to thm" " Regarding intimidatinn a lulnpa unwillingly leaked
information to Mayhew that his colleagues intimidated him at wak M a w found that
"only by a series of cross-questionings that any approximation to the truth could be
extracted from him. He was evidently in fear of losing his work a d the tavern to which I
had go= to take his statemem was filled with fa- watching and intimidating him." 24
"We shall be discharged if they know we have told you the truth," several men confided
in ~ a~hew.~ Mayhew revealed some of tk details of che battle for industry control in
the developumts of London's early omnibus industry. He stated that it was "but a series
of struggles and ruimus lawsuits, om proprietor with amher. umil many were ruit~d"~
"Several opposed companies a individuals coalesced or aged," Mayhew discovertxi,
"and these propriaas mw present a unified, and, I believe, a prospaous body." " The
remaining omnibus companies, mw successful and increasingly pow&ul, represeated
Ibid., 111: 234.
'' Ibid., 302.
23 bid.
2' bid.. III: 290.
'5 Ibid., 276.
26 bid.. m: 342.
" bid.

their past struggles and lawsuits as if they were equal and reciprocal. and the praiucts of
history were natural conditions, when in fact they were
Fa his part, M a w
concluded in a maalizing toae - "the proprietors pay their servants fairly, as a general
rule: while. as a g-al
rule. they rigidly exact sobriety, punctuality and cleanliness."
The idea of "culture" is. in any context, vay difficult to grasp, accading to Raymond
Williams. There have been many histmcal changes through which the idea of "culture"
has passed which have eventually influenced its coatempaary meaning. Until the
industrial Revolution, the wad "culture" indicated a process of training animals and
plants, thm by analogy, human beings and the mid Beyond the culture of animals or
crops, there were the brd ategmes'g William argued Tkre was "the general
process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development." 30 k e was also "a
particular way of life, ~ ~~YJNx of a people, a period a a group", which was the basis of a
E.P. Tylor's new and important sense of culture. " Lastly, thae was ''the wmks and
practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity." " There had also been a
widespread association of "culture" with wads such as b'precious" since Mathew Arnold
so to speak of primitive "waking-class culturep* as "culture" has seemed bizarre. To
some, in fact. "waking-class culture is precisely what culture is against." 33
'* Ibid.. 343.
*' Williams, Raymond 1973, 31.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., 80.
" bid.
33 Williams, Raymmd 1974, 29.

But it was not chat the world of writing
which was cenaal to London's
"lower sorts" of whom "tk public had less knowledge than the mc~t distant tribes of the
earth", 35 it was tkir capacity to mime a d retell aaies that comprised the outstanding
part of their everyday lives. In fact, their mimetic practices were very important cultural
threads conmcting imagination and physical perf~~na~l~e together that were being
snapped apart in bourgeois culture. The strtxt-fdk's capacity fa play and delight in their
senses was, in many ways, part of rheir schooling." TO get hdd of soxmthing by means
of its likeness - that is, to copy a imitate through "a palpable, sensuous, connection
between the very body of the perceiver and the paceived" '' - was crucial to London's
sum-folk3' For instance, the half-blind fum-yard player told Mayhew how he learned
his crafi: "'I imitate all the animals of the farm-yard on my fiddle: I imitate the bull. the
calf, the dog, the cock, the hen when she's laid an egg, the peacock and the ass. . . . I
studied from nature . . . and I then imitated them on my in strum en^"' " To teach his
goldfinch to sing, the stout exhibitor of birds and mice confided in Mayhew: "'I whistie
to the bird to make it sing. and then when it sings I feed, and pet, and fondle it. until it
Regarding s mt perfmers, Mayhew recaded that street musicians numbered "1000. and the
ballad singers at 250" (Mayhew, III: 158, 162). Concerning street vocalists, there were "50
Ethiopian serenaders, and above 250 who lived by ballad-singing alone" (Tbid.. 190).
35 Mayhew, 1: xv.
36 Mayhew, IU: 149. A father of two little tight-rope dancers and stilt-vaulters told Mayhew:
'Some people, when they teacb their children fa any enrertainmenf torture the little things most
dreadful. There is a great deal of barbarity in teaching cbildren f a the various lines. It's very silly,
because it only frightens the little things, and sane children often will do mucb more by kindness
than ill-usage' (Ibid.).
37 Ibid., 22.
38 A street-danoa told Mayhew that the ballet aras 'all amic like pantomime; indeed, they cune
under that term. only there's no canic scenes a transfamatioas. . . . Nearly all the popular clowns
are famous for their ballet perfamances* (Mayhew, III: 145). The sueet-dancer personally had
made 'Paul Haring my study, and I try to get to perform with him, for be's the best clown of the
day, and a aedit to wak with* (Ibid.).
j9 Ibid., 161.

gets to sing without my whistling - understanding my motioas."'
The happy fantily
exhibitor reiterated his deague's comments: "It's principally done . . . I may tell you. by
continued kindness and petting, and studying tk name of the creatures."' *' The snake.
sword aad knife-swallowa with the strange ''mehod of gaining his livelihood" stated:
"'It was a mate of mine that I was with that first put me up to sword-and-snake
swallowing. I copied of him. and it took me about three months to learn it."' " Dust-men
loved the perfkrmative life too. Mayhew recalled: "They are aiways f d in the gallery.
and greatly enjoy the melodramas perfocmed at the second-class miKlr themes,
especially if there be plenty of murdering scenes in them. The Gamck, previous to its
being burnt, was a favourite resort of the East-end dust-nm. Since that perid they have
patronized the Pavilion and the City of London," " Beyold its inevitable "great
temptation to drink and such-like,"
perfamative life had its unusual. surprising. and
sometimes subconscious advantages. Whithead, the chimney sweep, escaped Newgate
prison using his great 'perfonnative' skills. A colleague rded how Whithead
"'climbed by the aid of his lrnees and elbows a height of nearly 80 feet, though the walls,
in the ccxna of the prison yard, whae this was done, was nearly of an even surface; the
slightest slip could not have failed to have precipitated the sweeper to the bottom."' "
The street risley with ann muscles "as hlly developed as the gilt arms placed as signs
over the gold-beater's shops' ' told Mayh: "'My brotk Sam can dislodge his limbs
bid., 220.
Ibid.
" bid., 117.
" Mayhew, 11: 176-77.
Ibid.. 95.
45
Mayhew, 11: 353.
Ibid.. 98.

and replace them again; and when sleeping in bed, I very often find him lying with his
legs behind his neck It's quite accidental, and Qne without Irrmwing, and comes natural
to him, from being always tumbling. Myself. I ofien in my dreams. often fiighten my
wife by starting up and fialf throwing a summasault, fancying that I am at the theatre,
and Likewise 1 often lie with my heels against my Wd"' " Walter Benjamin's materialist
formulation on "The Mimeric Faculty," written in f 933, substantiates the street-folk's
kinds of experiences:
Nature produces similarities. Oae has only to think of mimicry [of, e-g.,
insects to leaves]. But the highest talent in producing similarities belongs to
human beings. The gift of seeing similaritis that they psess is merely a
rudiment of the famerly powerful drive to make oneself similar, to act
mimetically. Perhaps there is not one of the higher human firnctions that is
not decisively detamiaed at least in part, by the mimetic capacity."
The practice of mimesis has had a history as well." Mimetic cultures waldwide have
left records that were astonishing in their complexity and diversity; not only were they
very differentiated in their regional and ethnic origins, languages, and occupations, but
" Ibid. Mayhew writes: Tumbling is different fian posturing, and means throwing summersets
and walking m your hands; and acrobating means the two together, with mounting three stcxies
high, and balancing each other. These are the definitions I make*' Waybew, III: 98). Mayhew also
records: ''The prinapal distinction betweeo panrrraimes and ballets is that there are mae
cascabes, and trips, and valleys in pantomime. and noae in ballets" (Mayhew, 1x1: 146).
48 Taussig. Michael. Mimesis and Alterity: A Panicukr History of the Senses. London; New York:
Routledge, 1993, 21. Taussig wrote tbat Benjamin's fascinatim with mimesis stemmed fran two
concerns witb "primitive" culture, one was Otherness a alterity, and the other was the resurgence
of mimesis within mobernity. Benjamin affirmed that mimesis was a central human characteristic
"to become and behave like sanething else" (bid., 19).
'' Even with the street-folk, it was probable that "the gift of producing similyities, for example, in
dances, of wbicb mimesis was the ddest hmctioa, and thus also the gift of recognizing them, have
changed with changing history" (Morse, 1982,266).

also they drew heavily on shared genres, fonns, and contents." During the late
eighteenth-and early -es,
peoples we mw label ''popular cultures" were
labeled the "illiterate and inarticulate", ''the pogulace", and 'e public." These peripheral
cultures were also part of widespread unofficial, ~311~0mmacial cultures. As part of these
customary cultures, London's street-fdk appeared "to live mcxe fully in accordance with
their own mvlaas a d custom," " fdlowing NarbeR Elias.
At the "Vic" gallery, Mayhew noted that working-class audiences wae mved by
''vigaous exercise to any emotional speech" rather than uvduptu~ness of sentiment."
Shrill "wfiistling and the brayvos that fdlowed the czar's perfamance9* coupled with
"'dances and comic songs. bawePn tk piecg, are Wred bdca than anything else." "
Mayhew wrote about 'Wle mimic sensuality of the 'penny gaff". " with its ''deafening
shouts" which accompanied the "comic singer, in a battered hat and the huge bow in his
cravat". There were also "[llads jumping hysterically on girls' shoulders, atd girls
laughing hysterically born being tickled by the youths behind them, every one shouting
and jumping. presented a mad sceme of Wghtful enjoyment." To Mayhew's horror -
whether it was at the "Vic"gallery a the 'Temy Gaff" " - tkse dens were the class-
rooms "whae the guiding morals of a life are picked up." " Whetha it was in the town
or in the country, the same exuberant rituals prevailed during harvest-time in the south of
- - - - - -- -
See Neuberg, Victor. Popular Literature: A History and Guide. 1977; Vicinus, Martha The
Industrial Muse: A Study of Nineteen th-Century Britisb Waking-Class Literature, 1974: Burke,
Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modem Europe, hdoa: Temple Smith, 1978.
55
Penny Gaffs were "shops turued into tempaary theatres" (Mayhew, I: 40).

England. Whistling Billy recalled: '"Sometimes, whm tfre last load of the day was going
home . . . they'd make me ge8 up to tfre top of the load and then whistle to them. they
was all merry."'-
"' The men d women used to sleep in a kind of barn. among the
clean straw,"' he recalled '"And afta the --shops
had closed . . . they'd say to me,
"Come up to the dose and give us a tux!,"' and they'd come outside and dance in the
open air. f a they wouldn't la them have no d e s m matches. "* ''
Broad1 y-speaking, the street-folk's "primitive" range of m;mners and customs were
copulating. inflicting pain on animals a oSha human beings. All customs came unda
siege, falling sway under ''civilized" starrdards of Victman delicacy ard self-contro~.~~ At
one pint, Mayhew numed to his readers with a question regarding entacaiament. 'What
notions can the young female fam of marriage and chastity," he queried "whm the
penny theatre rings with applause at the perfmnance of a
wbw sole poiat turns
upon the pantomimic imitation of the umestrahxi indulgence of the most c mpt
appetites of mr nature"
Mayhew lectured his readers that 'Vie first step must be to
provide them with wholesome entenainment," which "would really lift them out of the
moral mire in which they are wallowing." In the process of thinking through his
59 see Kasson, 1984, 144-5. Mayhew's omnibus drivers were ordered "to maintain order in their
vehicles, and to observe that the passengers place themselves so as not to inmode one another.
They are not to take mae persons than they are autharised to carvey, which number must be
notified in the interim and on the exterior of the omnibus." Furthermore, Mayhew recounted that
they were farbidden "'to admit individuals who may be c!nmk, or clad in a manner to disgust a
annoy the aha passengers; neither must they admit dogs, or suffer persons who may drink, sing
a smoke to remain in the carriages; neither must they carry parcels which. &om their size, a the
nature of their amtecrts, may incanmode the passengers" (Mayhew, III: 341).
Mayhew, I: 40.

"civilized" solution, he t u d very briefly to the cultural discussion about how taste was
actually developed within cultures: 'We faget how we ourselves were originally won by
our emotions ", he recalled But thea he quickly returned to his '"primiti~e/civilized'~
analysis. He concluded philosophically: "We exact too much of the paor - because we.
as it were, strive to make true knowledge and true beauty as forbidding as possible to the
uneducated and unrefined, that they fly to theif pmy gaffs . . . their gambling grounds
far pleasures which we deny them, and which we, in our arrogance, believe it is possible
for them to Q without." ''
Mayhew's attitudes wae commonplace. Douglas Jerrdd wrcUe to a friend praising
'%hose thoseeilous revelations of the infettl~ of misery, of wre~chednass, that is
smouldering under w fe&"
adding, with typical self-reproach, "we know mthg of
the terrible life chat is about us. - us, in our smug respenability.'"
Fa all Jarold's
sympathy and respectability, Hobsbawm was right. 'The massive contempt of the
'civilized' fa the 'barbarians' (who included the bulk of labouring porn at home) rested
on this feeling of demonstratad superiority ... the poor, like the outa barbarians, were
talked of as though they were mt properly human at all."
While middle-class
Victorians like Jerrold decried "buttoned-up respectability" on the home fiont, on the
public front the middle-class school system formalized techniques for repression
CiOmiIUtioII, and physical control." "Yet why should a society," Hobsbawm continued,
"dedicated to an economy of profit-making competitive enterprise, to the efforts of the

isolated individual, to equality of rights and opportunity and freedom, rest on an
institution which so t d y denied all of tkse"
It was aot quite that simple: in the first place, bourgeois hypocrisy was not simply a
lie. Mare broadly speaking, bourgeois morality became wuking-class morality as 'the
masses of the 'respectable' wakingclasses" " thmselves rumnly and hesitatingly
adopted the values of tk hegemonic culture." For th tiae between Loadon's dominant
bourgeuis and subordinate labamng poor and waking-class cultures was not an
i-able
border but was rather a permeable memhrm which was interpenetrated
with multiple contradictory voices. But so were the baders betwtsm the labouring poor
themselves. The smx&ras,
M a w recaded, consicked the death huntas to be "the
lowest grack in the ma&." The patterers considaed themselves to be "the aristocracy
of the streas," 'O ('Vr mountebank of old descended from his platfarm into the sneas -
but without his music. his clown or his dress" 71) while, at the same time, they considaed
the waking chimoey-sweeps "as the lowest ader of walas." " Conscious of &'their
mental superiority," the pattaers looked down "upon the costmgers as an inferia
body, with whom they object either to be classed or to associate. The scmn of some of
the pattaers fa the mere msters is as profound as the contempt of the piclcpocker for the
pure beggar." " Patterers wae hardly "bred to a strea life." "This constitutes andha Line
66 Hobsbawm, 1975,237.
67 Ibid., 235.
bid.
69 Mayhew, I: 235.
70 Mayhew. I: 216.
" Ibid., 214.
" Mayhew, 11: 361.
73 Mayhew. I: 21 1.

of demarcation between them iuxi the costenmwrgers." In fact, they w e called "aliens."
Mayhew recocded, ratha than "natives of the strtx~." 'Ihqr had a ''propensity to lapse
from a civilized into a nomad state - to pass from a settler to a waada" Yet fa all their
intellectual acurnen Mayhew was "inclined to think that they are less impressionable and
less susceptible of kindness than the costers whom they despise" and that any "attempt to
befiiend them is almost sure to be met with distrust." 7*
As capitalist-style modernization invaded - however uaevenl y - everyday life in
London, the street-fdk's customary social bonds and inatid impdses proved more
effective. in some cases, in promoting resistance than the rational perception of class
in~sest.~' Their secret
met places." secret rituals,7s and secret slq
'9
represented a Sefies of related social, @tical,
economic, and spiritual mzinhgs, which
collectivety promoted resistance. Ln fact, these "primitive" fcxms of practice or cultural
marks profmy critiqued Victman concepts of civilization, sociay, and culturem
The stret-fdk's collective sense of the immediate, for example, like their collective
passion fa
junk and second-hand things, was intimately and despcratdy connected not
74 Ibid.. 213.
75
LaCapra, Daninick. "Bakhtin, Marxism and the Carnivalesque," In Rethinking Intellectual
History, 1983, Ithaca and Loadoa: Camel1 University Ress, 29 1-324.
'' Mayhew. I: 18-19.
Ibid., 17.
78
Ibid., 20-21; Maybew reaxdeb: The coslermongers strmgly resemble the North American
Indians in their carduct to their wives" (Mayhew. I: 43).
79 Ibid., 23: see Mayhew's rcfard of the "patters's" b'vocabulary of their talk to eacb abet" witb
such words as "Crabshells" fa "Shoes," "Blufl' fa "An ex-" md "Flam" fa "A Lie"
(Mayhew, I: 217). Furthermore, the "cant a slang of the patters is not the cant of the
costermonger, but a system of their own" (Ibid., 218). Strolling Aaors a "mummers" also had
their own siang, for instance, "Nanti. his nabs is a kteva haner" meant "No, he's a bad sort."
(Mayhew, m: 139).

with philosophy. but with the here-and-now of life on the streets. Fa Maytrew,
"costamongers, like all waodaing tribes, have geaaally m fclresight; only an
exceptional few are provident." " Accustomed to "an almost immediate return" fa his
outlays. Mayhew recocded that a costermonga distnrsted "any r m e a contingent
profit."
Mayhew believed that the problem was cultural and that it began with
accuinuation of children:
.. the streets teach them, fm the most part - and in greater a lessa degrees. -
acuteness - a precocious acutemss - in all that concerns their imrrwiiare wants,
business, a gratifications; a patient eadwance of cdd and hunger; a desire to obtain
money without waking fa it; a aaving fa th excitement of gambling; an
imdinate love of amusement; and an irrepressible repugnance to any settled inincbr~try.~~
A taste f a the imrrwtiate also revealed itself in the meet-people's delightful sense of
humour as well as a taste for the absurd:
0, yes, I've heard of God; he made heaven and earth; I never beard of his
making the sea; that's another thing; and you can best learn about that at
Billingsgate. (He seemed to think that the sea was an appurtenance of
Billingsgate.) Jesus Christ Yes, I have heard of him. Our R-
Well, I
only wish I could redeem my Sunday togs &om my u~cle's.~
8 1
Mayhew, I: 57.
8' bid.
83
Mayhew, I: 24.

Thus Mayhew's attempts to ascertain knowledge about religious experiences often
became "the ocfasim for repanee" which affirmd "an imudiate i d cornen"
according to Maxwell. Among the paaerers ("'the aatmcal hucksters of hardware at fairs
and other places"), their teal talent, Mayhew believed, lay "'in their ready adaptation of
accidental circumstances to the plrposes of their busiaess, which betrayed a modicw of
wit far bey& that which falls to che share of 'low ~~nvYfians'.*~ ' A pafama
of Pmch commesned on the street-fdk's changing attitudes to humour: 'Everybody's
funny now-a-days, and they like comic bushs. They won't listen to anything sensible
or semhmntd, but tky wants f-.' O7 Even in tiny situations, in talking with
Peter, the tom-tom player's friend, fa example, Ma*
reputed that "wtm I attempted
to repeat after them one of their Indian songs, they both burst: out into uproarious
merriment. "
Beyond the taste f a humour and imnwtiacy, Maytrew was also fascinated with the
street-folk's taste f a wanrlrrinp. Ma*
realized that the relationship W een
"muscular irritability begotten by continued wadtring" and the taste for a nomadic life
made any satled hawker "sigh afta the pafect libaty of the caster's 'roving Life'." "
The sweeper's "habit of going about in searching of their employment has, of itself." he
recaded, "implanted in many of them the wandering propensity peculiar to suw
&I
bid,. I, 22.
Maxwell, 1973,98.
86
Mayhew, I: 214.
g7 bid., 151.
Mayhew, 1II: 185,
89 Mayhew, I: 44.

people."
Tk same typical attitude was revealed in tk streetsejler of gold and silver
fish when questioned about the roving Life. "'Yes, I like a street life," he tdd Mayhew.
"1'11 teIl you the plain truth, fa I was put by my father to a papastationer, and I found I
couldn't bear to stay Moms. It would have killed me."' Everywhere Ma- turned
he elicited this same sense of pmniumt physical and mental restlessness. Seen in tanns
of constant physical and mental changes, the street-wie were a living embodiment of
London.
At certain poims in Lodm Labour, Mayhew's theory of street-life began to o~en
out. UnQr 'We pressure of built-in ambivaleaces" " Mayhew's theay of the streets (as
we have seen in Chapm 4) became a tentative theory of culture as he grappled with
larger social questions about nomadic culture as an acceptable way of We. Aithaugh
Mayhew recounted stories about how degrading roving life could be," he admitted that
the nomadic way of life - f a all its profound struggles and differences, was deeply
attractive. "Strange to say, despite its privatious, its dangers, and its hardships." Mayhew
observed, "those who have o m adopted the savage and wamkzhg mode of life, rarely
abandon it." Furthamore, "various missionaries who have visited nomad races have
found their labours utterly unavailing, so long as a wandering life continued, and have
succeeded on bestowing the elements of civilization, only on those compelled by
c i r c u to ~ adopt a settled habitation" ' Mayhew one told a rnening of ticka-of-
leave men:
Mayhew, 11: 364.
91 Ibid., 279.
92 Maxwell, 78.
93
Mayhew, 11: 352.
94
Mayhew, I: 2.

I know that as a class you are distinguished mainly by your love of a roving
life. . . . Continuous employment of a uxmotonars nature is so irksome to
you. that i dately you engage in it you long to break away from it . . . -
Sociery, however. expects that yau wish to better yourselves, you will at once
settle down as steadily as it Qes, and immediately mafm to all its notions;
but 1 am satisfied that if anything effectual is to be done in the way fa
reforming you, Society must wak in consonance and not in antagonism with
your nature. in this ~ O Iit appears S to me that the great outla for you is
street trading, where you are allowed to roam at will by restraints not
incongenial to your habits aad fceliog~.~'
In this meeting, Ma-
attempted to recognize the street fdk's nomadic ethics
within the hegemoaic &mads fa casual lab. "Regularity of habits are incompatible
with irregularity of income; innPPri. the very conditions necessary fa the fmtion of
any habit whatsoeva are, that the act cx thing to which we are to become habituated
should be repeated at frequent d regular intervals." % Mayhew wondered in the end,
whefhtx all LoDdwas mi-
fn have the built-in potential fa being street-folkg7 "We
are taught to regard all those who objat to wmk as appertaining to the class of natural
vagabonds; but whae is the man among us that loves labour' queried Mayhew. "For
work ar labour is maely that which is irksome to perform, and which every man requires
a certain amount of renumaation to induce him to perfm" Wanderlust was seen by
95
Mayhew, XII: 432; see also I: 214.
96 bid., 309.
97
Mayhew, I: 320.
98
Mayhew, II: 5.

Mayhew from a Mam. more f ' perspective -"mt as a basis for
ethnological classification so much as a characteristic of the human race, including, of
course, hadollas from all walks of life" " Maykw amcluded sympathetically: 'The
vagrant dispositions ard tastes of lads, and it may be. now and thm sanewhat of a
reckless spirit of adventure. which in our days has far fewer fields than it once had is
another cause why a street-life is embraced." For lads "'have been Lnown to run away
from even cornfixtable homes through the mere spirit of restlessaess; and sometimes they
have done so. but not perhaps uada the age of Mace"
Mayhew's fim-hand study of
a representative group such as this revealed to his middleclass re&
what it could be
like to live a mmadic existence on the streets of Londoa. Rimitive street Life embodied,
according to Maxwell, "dreams of fieaim, reconciling an environment that 'assassinates
you with reality,' and an individual seasibility that wants alenness and mobility." lo'
Primitive street life embodied, accocding to Mayhew. a life "without a care. without a
purpose - with a perfect sense of fkcbm, and a firll enjoyment of the open air in the
day. and the wild Liceme of the lodging-house society at night." I"
By dissening the
cultural life of London's sneet-people, Mayhew collsoli&ted their cultural place in the
imaginative and histaical life of Victorian London despite his own conflicting personal
feelings about nomadic ways of life and British civilization.
Mayhew's movements back and fonh been economics and culture. searching for
99 Maxwell, 1971,100-101.
lo' Mayhew. I: 102. The street people also had freedom born laxes [fmm which] Ley are
blessedly exempt. They are called upon to defray merely the trifling duties oa their tobacco, her,
tea, sugar, coffee" (hiayhew, Il: 3).

authentic 'off the beaten track' places ia ~ordoa'" left an Wble mark on London
Lobour as well as otkr Victorian writers i nflud by hidw such as his cmteqmary.
Charles Dickens. who. at one level. also brilliantly pmrayed mimaic ~ultures.~"
Dickens' shift to the inside wald was not so much a shift into the protected private
family wald that reinfad these images of the 'primitive*, the poor, the ethnic outsick
as dregs living outside of official bourgeois culture, as it was a shift towards an inner
"Other'' public where rites of passage such as birth, family life, and death remained
largely public affairs. Dickens ' "Other" world critiqued the outside bourgeois world fiom
within such as the Venmings. in Our Mumi Friend, who were the nouveau-rick in
their brand-new house in brand-new quarters of Landoa Dickens and Mayhew both
attempted to redeem forgotten peoples. They ammpted to redeem the illiterate, and in an
extended sense, the primitive and unknown Mayhew kept the act of reading about
London perfamative. The idedogical creation UILfdded externally betweer! his readers
and himself. Discussing city smells. f a instance, Mayhew stated that '2ondon denizens"
were basically "unconscious of tk fact" that the streets of London "smell of dung like a
stable-yard" In fact, he realized that "familiarity with streets of crowded traffic d eab
the sense to he perception of their actual condition" IM
Using familiar images to
augment his written texts, he referred directly to "tk cchlmney-sweep carr[ying] the
implement of his calling on his shoulder, in the way shown in tfre daguerr80type which I
have given" lo' and "the milkmen's garland (of which an engraving has been given)." 'On
'03 Buzzard, 1993, 6.
104
Mayhew, I: 102,
lo' Dickens seemed to transcend the Englisb novel: at me lev& the novel could be understood as
the 'inward-turn of the culture of danesticity' within itself @ran carversations with Dr. Zaslove).
'" bid., 367; see Appendix.

He referred to "drawings of the princes in the Arabian Nights Entertainments" as well as
the b'welI-known engraving by Hogarth," of ''the enraged musicia&' [which] is an
illustration of the persecutions inflicted in olden times by this class of street performers,
and to the illustrations of modern caricaturists we have had numerous proofs, that up to
the present time the nuisance has not abated" '09 Mayhew's descriptions and
characterizations ma& it very easy fa the reader's ear, eye. and hand - and sometimes
even the nose, by association - to grasp tfie wald he portrayed.
(3) '%Searching for the Primitive":
Mayhew's London Lubow as Documentary Travel Adventure
As a documentary travel adventure of London's street-folk London Labour belongs
to the genre of the narrative. whose categories it shared. Following the histotian Roger
Chartier. "narratives of fiction and narratives of history share the way they make their
'characters' act, the way they construct temporality, and the way they conceive of
causality."110 Thus within this narrative framework, Mayhew created a descriptive travel
ethnology or adventure quest that focused on "publish[ing] the history of a people, fiom
the lips of the people themselves - giving a literal description of their labour, their
lo8
bid., 370. Mayhew took ethnographic notes during a night at rat-killing: "I amved at about
eight o'clock at the tavern where the performances where to take place. I was too early. but there
was plenty to occupy my leisure in looking at the curious scene around me, and taking notes of the
habits and conversation of the customers who were flocking by" (Mayhew, 111: 5).
lW Mayhew, III: 159: While at the bar waiting for the rat-kiiling to begin, Mayhew referred to
more secretive kinds of representation too: 'Over the fireplace were square glazed boxes, in which
were the stuffed forms of dogs famous in their day. Re-eminent among the prints was that
represen ring the 'Wonder* Tiny, 'Eve pounds and a half in weight,' as he appeared killing 200
rats. This engraving had a singular look, from its having been printed upon a silk handkerchief
(Mayhew, In: 6). Among visitors to the rat-killing, some French men "'made their interpreter
translate to them the coarents of a large placard hung upon a hatpeg, and headed - 'EVERY
MAN HAS HIS FANCY. RAmG SPORTS IN REALITY* (bid.).

earnings. heir trials. and their sufferiags in rheir own ''unvarnished" language." "' His
romantic flight into his own interim world combined with his obsession with Londoa as
the particular architectural centapiece, all famed part of the travel narrative's aesthetic
legacy. " Yet it seems that. in the end. oal y though his anthropdogical fieldwak was
some of tk encycl~c holism of travel fa education prrposes really
London &ur
can be understood as a Romantic transcultural genre within the
history of British emgire-building. Romamicism' s intelltxtual mascurrents and its
pameable bcxders has played a crucial part in shaping how bndon Labour prruayed
modenrity itself through the practice of travel liter-
Following in the tradition of
Cook and Rousseau, Mayhew did not simply bring Romantic ickas to bear on his subject
matter; he also constructed it from within his own travel encoumas. M aw's adventure
plot, as a central part of the Menippea's characteristics, todc on tk anthropological
character of a colonial adventure story, which also formed part of the larger philosophical
idea of provoking and testing a truth114 London Labour. in tams of the pursuit of history
itself, was still "cMnmaaded [ia part] by an intention and a principle of truth, that the past
history has taken as its object is a reality exumd to discourse, and that knowledge of it
can be verifid" *I5 In effen. it was part of Mayhew's obsession with collecting facts.
This obsession seems to have begun with Mayhew's Morning Chronicle letters when he
"' Staffad 1984, xxi.
11' Stagl. 1990. 328.
I15
Chartier, 1997, 8. de Cemau wrote: ". . . hisuxians need to ponder the trutb status of historical
discourse - and they need to think of tlm uuth status . . . as the result of establishing relatims
among data arranged by the operation of knowing" (de Cmu. 1984.45).

stated that his voution was '20 collect facts ami to register cpiniolls." "6 Mayhew's facts
were "so extraordinary," he argued in his Preface, 'that the traveler in the undiscovered
country of the pax must, liLe Bruce, until his staies are corrobaated by afier
investigators, be content to lie uoda the imputation of telling such tales, as travelers are
generally s u m to delight in" FuRhermcxe, he argued, that "in every instance the
author and his adjutas have sought to undastate, and mast assuredly never to exceed
the tnrth" In fact, Mayhew claimed that 'Umgh checks have usually been adopted the
people have been mostly found to be astoaishiagly cars in theif s m ,- so
much so in&&, that the attempts at deception are certainly the exceptions rather than the
rule." 'I7
Mayhew's fact-finding mission was fiaught with danga. After the closing of the
docks. one of Maw's guides took him to "orre of the largest lodging-houses in the
neighbouthad," "' wkre Mayhew told the propridar that "he wished to publish the
state of the dock-labouras in the newspapers, on which the man burst into an ironical
laugh." "Inrlppn_ tk young man who had brought me to this house had warned me of its
dangerous character before I went," documented Mayhew. "At last the landlad flung the
door wide open and shouted from his clenched teeth, 'By G-!
if you ain't soon muzzled,
I'll crack your b-y
slcull opea fa you!' And so saying, he prepared to make a rush at
116
Morning Chronicle, Letter II, Thmpsaa and Ym, 1971, 105. In Amrs to Correspondenfs,
Mayhew wrofe that he endeavoured "to discover the several phenomena of labour with a view of
arriving at the laws and circumstances affecting and cartrdling the operations and rewards of the
labourerf* (Answers, no. 10, 15, February* 1851, quoted in KWis, 1973,240). Also in London
Labour, Mayhew examined a mass of maps and mbles, fa example, relating different variables
with crime (Mayhew, IV: 45 l-5W, 503).
'I7
Mayhew. I, Preface, xv.

me. but was held back by the youth who had brarght m to tk place." 'I9
RegardiDg 'Me
comings and conditions of the Qck-labourers of tk mtropdis," Mayhew noted: "I
would rather have pursued some mare system~ic plan in my iquiries; but in the present
state of igmxance of the poa, system is impsible. I am unable to generalize, aot being
acquainted with the particulars; fm each day's investigation brings me inciderrtally into
contact with a means of living u-ly
unknown among tk well-fed ponion of soeiety.7*'3
AnoWr of Mayfiew's overt coaceits was the mtion of time travel among LoaQn's
"primitive savages". Titx~ travd e r i thz admpoiogical idea of differe~lt stages of
human developmat ceexkhg sirnultarrcvusly in different cultures. A history of time
travel within a history of travel, like a history of d~ adventure mvd, can be mtkmtrrul
as a history of competitive coexisting styles. These styles samths r6cu~ed cx merged
tog-
like urulcmgrouad streams, drawing oa very dd sauces yet always bringurg a
sense of tlewness. Despite maja shifts in cultures, travel perfamaoces like adventure
noveis showed striking umtinuitia, fa since the days of Herodaus, travel had been
consciously written about axxi practiced as an art fam. Maewer, travel first became the
object of public discussion in many European countries betwen the fifteenth- and
eighteeath-ceaTuries as one peregrinundi and 1 'an & voyager.
True travelling
(peregrinan, that is part of arte peregnitandi, changed one's abode for the sake of
education and the pursuit of usehl knowledge, and was opposed to aimless and useless
rambling (vagan.lP Travellers w m no longer religious pilgrims travelling towards the
New Jerusalem, they were now time-travellers of a different kind Often they were
"' Ibid. 306.
Iz0 Ibid., 301.
"' Alder, 1989, 1367-8.

European travel-writers and explorers wtro chumad tkk own increasingly
secularized mhmtadbg of human experience on thk joutbeys of conquest, for tky
believed that they travelled from the centres of intellectual thought through permeable
borders into the primitive margins of the =Id's
gmgraphical frontiers.
During the late eighteenth-cenhuy, great voyages of discovery such as the voyages of
Captain Jams Cook, changed tk cultural d geographic hnizons in which men and
women lived, and fa some adventurers - it was literary a travel adventwas
- tk wcrld of empirebuilding grew brosda and semhgly limitless. 'l la Histoire &s
navigation aux terres australes (17561, Charles & Brosses maged one of the earliest
secular dreams of western scientific explaatim within the factual travel narrative. In
1764 - shortly afta Gemge III's ascension to tb throne - the British government
commissioned its navigatas to make mveries in the Southan Hemisphere using de
Brosses' gemd fiamwakl" "In tk beginning," wmte & Brosses. "la us think of
nothing but geography, of the pure desire to discover, of acquiring new lands and novel
inhabitants fa the univ~rse." It was a cammonplace that European explorers strugged
to find ways of literary and visual expression that did justice to the novelty of the material
circumstances they emamtesed Their struggles and conceits were found in the preface
to every important voyage of discovery published between the middle of the eighteenth
and niweenth centuries. lZ6
12' It was Hawkswath. Cook's edim and armpilor. who stated that the most meaningful
definition of discovery fa his time included travel.

One of Maw's overt conceits was the notion of timetravel among London's
"primitive savages". This mion of time travel fdlowed the Freach anthropdogist,
Joseph Degaaodo. whose mmmirs were written for Baudin's voyage to the South
Pacific. Unda the auspices of the Societe &s Observateurs & I 'Homme(I 800).
Degerando created the first printed mahoddogy far ethnographic fieldwak'". and it is
within this comext that he wrote:
Here, since the development of ["primitivep* J passions and of intellectual
faculties is much me
limited, it will be much easier for us to mate their
nature, and determine theit fbmhmtal laws. Here, since diffaent
geoaatioas have exercised only the slightest influeace on each orher, we
shall in a way be taken back to the first periods of our own history. The
philosophical traveler, sailing to the ends of the earth, is in fact travelling in
ti=;
he is exploring the past; every step k males is the passage of an age.
Those unknown islands that he reaches are f a him the cradle of human
society. '"
The connection benkr~en non-fiction travel bociks ad their cultural milieus has been
studied recently by scblars such as Charles Batten (1 978) and Barbara Staffad (1 984)
with her focus on the aesthetics of scientific discovery. Tkir work reveals non-fiction's
capacity to reproduce astonishing, exotic, and unknown facts through literary and
"' Degerando. Joseph-Marie. Cmsideratians sur Ies diverses methodes a suivre dam l'observation
des peuple savages, Paris, 1800; see Stagl, 1990,326.
Consider(~lions. 1800' The British anthropologist, Evans-Ri tchard reminded us that
Degerando's techniques, like Mayhew's following him, included research over a long period: a
knowledge of the native mgue; panicipatim of the life of tbe people being studied; sampling;
careful checking of infcxmatim; tbe conducting of systematic inquiries and the keeping of
systematic notes; the cdlectioo of vernacular texts; p dim in the use of terms; and the study of

scientific collveariaos. Staffad's studies have been particularly importaat in describing
the aesthetic charactaistics of a body of European non-fiction travel literature forged
during the secoad half of the eighteemhcenwy. This includes "on-the-spa regaters"
Like Wiarn Hamilton who ma& first-hand reports of the enrption of Vesuvius in 1779.
Staffad, in other wads, searched fa the common linkages between visual and verbal art,
and the empirical sciences.
M a w has some interesting and important aacestors. Earlier travel writers had
joined education together with pleasure in a narrative format but in 1783, with W i
Gilpins's Observations on the River Wye (1783), mm-fiction travel reading became
simply picturesque entatainmeat about hwne ami foreign places. When Gilpin rec~~ded
his journey &om Ross-on-Wye on the Wye Riva to Bristol by way of Tintern Abbey and
Chepstow. he used drawings tog-
with his text to capture a growing middle-class
interest in unknown places and people. Gilpiu explained that people travelled for various
reasons: "to explore the culture of soils; to view the curiosities of art; to survey the
beauties of nature. . . and to learn the manners of men; their different polities, and u mk
of life."
Gilpin's theory of the picturesque, which &scribed the geaeral principles of
nature. was designed to arouse an audience's emotions to the beauties of the sublime
while training the inns eye to gather infixmation. By the time Captain Edward Burt
published his Lettersfrom a Gentleman in the North of Scotlund, and Dr-Johnson
published his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), the discourse about the
known and unknowa, education and pleasure had shifted dramatically. Now the m t
obscure corners of the wald open to investigation included m only the remote Southern
every aspeu of social life.
Gilpin. 1783. 1.

Hemisphere but also the mst remote and unhnwn places next dm. And by the time
Robert Southey published his Letters Written during a Shon Resihce in Spain and
Portugal (1794). the discourse of the autobiographical b o had become integrated with
other travel accounts. The writer's memoirs of his own experiences increasingly h e the
factual burden of tk book1W as we have seen with Ma*
more than My years later.
At the end of the eighteenth-century, travel narratives became increasingly separated
. .
either into informative guidebodrs a purely entertaunng travel bodts. Voyages of
discovery were inaeasingly overshadowed by m, -projecting,
cx
autobiographical joufheys. 13'
Starke' s twcwdume Travels (1 802). an imponant
documentary travel hybrid rambling fiom facts to opinions to commentaries on classical
texts, set important precedents f a
travel handbooks such as
Mayhew's London Labour. Starke had borrowed from an earlier travel convention, a
series of letters such as Addison's Lettersfiarn Italy (1701) and Smdlett's Travels
through France and Itdy (1766), which were probably the best eighteenth-cenrury
English travel guides available befae the rise of the Mmay and Baedeker in the
ninaeenth-~ennrry.'~~ Murray and Baedeker were a brand-new phemmena in travel
literature. They became symbols of unerring predictability fa a m travellers by
implementing techniques fa standardization, reknt.kss updating procedures, and their
authorial vision. In effect, they became litaary icons. They crystallized the tourist's
European vision, holding out the dream of cultural mastery - as Mayhew was about to
do - through symbolic contact with special places, unknown peoples, and material
13' Batten, 1978, 24.
l3' Staffix4 1984,442-3.
13' Buzard 1991,67-8.

cultures. As a traveller into unknown places, Mayhew becm a mythic figure. an icon
that was detmnined by, and in turn, helped to deterarine the ways mdern nation-states
such as Eagland regresented culture to tkmselvcs.'"
The practice of travel writing was one of the litaary f m most heavily laden with
imaginative and emotional emergies, and the mass tourism that it fostered became a key
cultural practice of modw westan societies. The word "tauism"'Y, wbich describes an
essentially modern movement, is coiaed roughly in 18 1 1, and the tourists who followed
were embl-tic
of cautiousnas en ntasse. They* of course, eventually femade whde
regions in their imagd3' Adjectival combinations such as " tcnuist-cr~ -haunted, -
mobbed, -ridden, [and] -trockkn" described in the OMord English Dictionary wae
symptomatic of ti^ sad fate of every locale that became a popular tourist attraction
According to the OED. the word "tourist" was a synonym fa the word ''travella" by the
late dghteenth-catury. In one of the earliest entries of the OED's first edition, Samuel
Pegge wrote: "A Traveler is now-a-days called a Tourist." '" What was the idedogy of
the traveller The idea of the traveller s d to exemplify the characteristics of
originality and im@m&mx plus bolcimss and gritty endurance unda all wnditions
(being uue to the etymology of "travel" in the wad %avail"). Tourism, by comparison.
exemplified what the travel writer. Paul Fussell. called "the security of pure
134
Conveying the idea of a circular journey, the word "tourism" also had a gentler amnotation
than the word "travel", which stemmed ftan the wad ''travail" (Brendon, 199 1. 1 1 ).
135
Mayhew recaded that on July 4, 1829, "Mr. Shillibeer's first annibus ran Erm Charing-am
to Greenwich, and that the charge for outside and inside places was the same. . . . Mr. Shillibeer
then established himself as a builder of English carriages, a demand f a which bad sprung up after
the peace, when the current of English travel was directed suongly to France" (Mayhew, lII: 330).
137
Ibid., 3.

while mdern travel. fa its p a reinfaced certain existing social privileges in civilized
societies. Fa imamx rmdern travel reinfaced the nuion that northern European men,
like the British writers Ma*,
J d d , Dickens, and Thackmay, were especially suited
for hlly reatized acculturation. and that their highly&veloped sensibilities were
umnaected to 8~01~)rnic pressures. In reality, what these systems of cultural privilege
masked were differences of economic mxesity. Piare Bmdieu called this intanalized
system "dispositions" cx hubifus, which prepared Victmans, like Maybew, for the
creation and appropriation of cultural goods. Modan tourism, in effect, converted
diff-
ways of acquiriDg the knowledge of culture into diffaems of mture.'"
Travel writers often d e w their territaies using cumparative strategies that
included violent cultural contrasts and coafrantations, and Mayhew's use of these
strategies in his Menippea was no exception. Maykw's acculturation seemed to be a
constellation of cultural practices created through different cultufal contact zones in the
history of British empire-b~ildiag.'~~ And there were dangas attached Mayhew wrote:
I parted with my guide arranging to be with him the aext Sunday at half-past
one. We met at the same time, and set out on our way to the ckap lodging-
house. ... We dived down a narrow court ... At length we reached the
lodging-house. It was night wkn I first visited the place, and all now was
new to me. ... Entaing the kitchen, we found it so hi1 of smoke that the
sun's rays, which shot slanting down through a broken tile in the roof, looked
like a shafi of light cut through the fog. . .. On the form at the end of the
138 For a disarssim m the amcept "habitus", see Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 1977,
esp. chapters 2,4; Distinctioa: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, 1984.68.
Rau. Mary. Larire. Imp.ria1 Eyes: Travel Wlirng and Transcul~uration, Routiedge: hQn
and New Yak 1992. Ran's aim was to clear the way f a mae histmdy complex, politically

kitcb was ane whose squala a d wretchedness productxi a feeling
approaching awe. ... I never W d so gaunt a picture of famine, to this day
tk figure of the man haw me.'"
Mayhew's kinds of inrrPr-city adventures brmght a vivid experiemial m i o n to
cultural ideas. Travel koes like him appropriated cultural artefacts aod social
arrangements through the give-and-take of reciprocity, and within this very subtle
framewak, discovered freedom of movement. In fact, male adventure heroes, like
Mayhew a even Jams Cook befae him, faged advennrres out of the stuff of borda
crossings, somaimis within their own cities.
in 1841, as Mayhew launched Punch mag-
amtM Cook - this time, Tho-
Cook Travel - developed amth institutional wing of British global pditics. Cook's
dramatic car-
and reputation stressed two intawoven themes: the global evolution of an
interlocking, caxdinateri system of travel institutions and travel conveations that
profoundly shaped mass tourist experieoces.'" When Thomas Cook made a highlypublicized
trip around the wald in 1872-3, the global ambitions of aganized tourism -
which exteaded Maybew's journeys into the unhnwn - seemed guaranteed, so that by
the time of Codr's son's death in 1899, the "Cook's Tour" was commonplace from New
respcmsible accounts of cmtempaary global interactions.
140
Mayhew, III: 313.
'" B w 4 1993,48. Thanas Coalr and his sm, James Masam Cak, * Unis~d to royalty,
transported the British navy up the Nile, arranged the aavel of maharajas and pilgrims, [and]
invaded the new world" (Breodon, 1991.2-3). hdon carmen, "fcx the most part greengrocers.
hay and ccxn dealers, baks, beershop-lreepers, chandlers, rag-and-me shopkeepers, a
dairymen", todc pleasure excursions in vans that held %an twenty to thirty grown persons*' to
Hamptoa Cam The other favaPite resorts were "High Beach, Epping Faest, and Rye House,
Hertfordshire" (Mayhew, III: 362).

York City to New South Wales.'42
Mayhew's emotional affinity, willingaess. and tdaance to Listem, and sometimes be
persuaded by the saeec-fdlr's way of life, brought a tantaliPng new dimmion to
Victorian history. Mayhew was a self-empowered explaer interested in the exchange of
information. His freedom of movement, coddated by his writings, emwed that other
mid-nhmmth- bourgeois male travellas also had the to travel through
Lordon's back streets, br-s,
slums, and alleys. Himun3farb remiods us that
it was not until th fifties that his "unknown country" hame ahmt tm well
known in waks wtme very titles are oftem evocative of Maykw: Thomas
Beames, The Rookeries of bndon (1850); C.M.Smith, Curiosities and
London Life (1853); Joha Garwood. The Million Peopled City: cx, One-Half
of the People Made Know to the Other ffalf(1853); Geage Godwin,
London's Shadbws (1854) [and Town Swamps and Social Bridges (1859)l;
Watts Phillips, The Wild Tribes of London (1855); M. AS. Barber, The
Sorrows of the Streets ( 1855); J.E. Ritchie, The Night Side of Un&n ( 1857);
John HoUingshead, Ragged bn&n (1 86 1 ). Adaptations fiom Mayhew also
appeared on the popular stage. B. Johnstone's How We Live in the World of
Lanhn and J. Elphinstone's London Lobour and the Lorrdon Poor; or, Wunt
and Vice Made Their Debut in 1854 and both wae later revived.'"
14' him me^, 1973. See Godwin's Tom Swyunps. 1972[1859] which developed sane of
Godwin's sense of the actual causes and breakdowns in Victaian society. His swamps comprise
na only me, poverty, disease, sickness, superstition, overaowding, and pollution but also "that
fateful swamp", drink The son of a Kensingtoa architect and edita of 7Be Buifdkr, Godwin's
system of social "bridges" amounted to the voluntary estaMishrneot of virtually the whole of the
institutional in6ras9uarrre required by a complex urban society such as Mayhew's Victorian

Travel writas aeed to be the first to tread the unknown. This unkown included
geographical as well as linguistic frontiers. Mountains and rivers, wbich were cmce
believed to be insunaountable, were now COCLSiQred to be exhilarating fkontiers of
discovery. By 1790, the wad fa ballcon flight - aperience - becam synonymous
with the word "e~paimau*'.~' Sixty-five years later, wbea Henry Maykw flew skyward
gazing ova. Loadoa's "dense campy of sIIldte" '" during the writing of 7he Gnat
World of London, he relived the wads of Pierre Bathdm the eighttmth-cahq French
meteorologist: "If. . . these: citcumnavigations are so strange . . . so practical in pushing
back the &ontias of scieoce through the comparison of exotic objects . . . is it psible
for us to believe that those umkWea above our earth, and in the vast stretches of the
atmosphere, could be any less instructive aad capable of piquing curiosity"" In tarm
of Lundon Labour's ''prmtive/civilized debate", the advance of modanity
(rnodenrization) and British civilization deQeaded very much on a continued sense of
anxiety, instability, and inauthenticity. Tk concern of mdans for naturalness, nostalgia,
and the search fa authmicity in everyday life were not merely casual and somewhat
bohemian, though harmless attachments to the souvenirs of destroyed cultures and dead
epochs. Rather they appeared to be components of the dominating spirit of empire-
building and grounds for its unifying
For many of Mayhew's
generation of writers, certain forms of authenticity or reality were imagined to lie
elsewhere in orher cultures and other historical periods, and in purer perfotmative
hdon.
I" Staffad, 198422.
Himmelfarb, 1984.566, footnote 5. quoting Mayhew and John Binny 1968.9.
'06 S taftad, 1984. 24-5.
IJ7 bid., 1976, 3.

lifestyles. Within the domain of travel litaature and travel practices, the emphasis
certain human sensibilities began to c-e
over the eighteenh and nhtemuh centuries.
Rather than the human voice and hearsay, eyewitness observation gairwl ground as
disunuse and imitation is gradually supplanted." accocding to the Amaican art
historian, Barbara Staffad
Because travel perfamance lent itself to dramatic play with the boundaries of the
self. London Labour could be ~ S t O Oas d a pafoc~lliitive ground for explaing
Maykw's sense of"Cktrerrress"
within the context of British civilization. Like otha
nine&-century
Romantic travellers, M a w sought out travel adventures that
conltirmed the nation of the self as the seat of all human sensibilities. Through the
Menippea, Ma*
created himself as the protagonist a unkmwn self in everyday
Victorian Ladon life. Accading to the social histman of art, Arndd Hauser, there is
"no product of modan art, emotiooal impulse, impasion a mood of modern human
beings, which does not owe its sensitivity, exuberance and ulltestraiaed, unsparing
exhibitionism to romanticism."
bn&n Labour's unrestrained exhibitionism focused
on hm&nts homeless,lM asylums,lS1 lcides and mur~ks.~~~
scandals, eccentric
behaviours and speeches,lS3 but in doing so, the cost was high. Mayhew collided with
worldly evil at its basest; as he writes: "I have been everywhae - seen everything which
14* Staffad, Barbara. Voyage into Substance. Art, Science, Nature and the IIlusPated Travel
Accounf l760118N, 1984,454.
'49 Hauser, 1985, 3: 166.
150
Mayhew, III: 417.
Is' Thampsan and Ym, 1971,168-176.
1 S t
Mayhew, EX: 428.
The Ucuze-cat'* was very charYraistic of the Meaippean satire; see Mayhew. I: 254.

maybe a gentleman should mt" lY
(4) Ethnographic Practices - Mayhew's Idea of" thetive".
Although Mayhew's obsession with oral cultures was unusual within Victorian
s o ~ i a his ~ Obsession , ~ ~ ~ with primitive cultures was commonplace. part of a critical. but
elusive undercurrent in western civilization. Mayhew's own ethnographic experiences
coupled with his references to Pritchard and Smith, brought a "civilized" analysis to the
largely unconscious, yet historical fact, of "primitive" cultures within Victorian
civilization. HistoricalIy, the notion of the "primitive" lay behind all post-Enlightenment
thought after the French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau; the notion of the
"primitive" implied a certain way of existence and benchmark of history, and contained
within it its own self-critique. Realizing that there were contradictions inherent in the
transition from primitive or kin-based societies to civilized a political societies,
Rousseau set himself a dual parallel task concerning critical anthropology. He set out to
understand what "natural" precivilized humanity was like as a human possibility and to
understand as well his own civilized existence. lS6 According to the Amaican
anthropologist, Stanley Diamond, critical anthropology can be defined as
. . . the comparative, historical, and revolutionary perspective on
contemporary Westem civilization, impelled by certain conditions that have
become acute under monopoly capitalism. They are: socioeconomic
alienation and exploitation; imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism; the
lSd Humpherys, 1977, 198. K. Williams called it ''dirty journalism": "the British Sunday
newspaper mix of rhetorical condemnation and salaciws detail" (Williams, 1981, 267).
15s
Mayhew, I: 1. Himmelfarb wrote: " . . . only Mayhew applied [the expression, wandering tribe]
to such Lmdm street-folk as street-performers, street-sellers, sueet-hbourers, and the like"
(Himmeifarb, 1984, footnote 44,568).
Diamond, 1985, 176, 1 12.

hyperuophy of state power, of bureaucratic and technocratic aganization;
the isolation and atomization of the person (and the concomitant growth of
the "masses"); the degradation of the symbolic dimasion of human
experience; the loss of cultures and languages; the quantitative and
qualitative shift in war - all in all. wbat Vico might have recognized as the
new barbarism. Is'
In establishing the "primitivp/ciMT paradigm, R m u "' compared primitive
and civilization cultures with these wads:
Savage man and civilized man Mix so much at th bottom of tkir bearts
and in their inclinations, that what umstitutes tfie suprem! happiness of the
one would reduce the other to despair. The first sighs fu nothing but repose
and Liberty; he desires only to live, and to be exempt fiom labour . . .
Civilized man_ on the other hand, is always in motion, perpenrally sweating
and toiling, and racking his brains to find occupations still m e labdous: he
continues a drudge to his last minute; nay, he courts death to be able to live,
a renounce life to acquire immatalj~."~
Befae Rousseau, Montaigne s a M westan civilization as well in his political
essay, "On Cannibals." He compared his own Renaissance civilization with the
aboriginal life of the Brazilian Tupinabama:
See Rousseau. 1%5[1755], 244.
Is9 Rausseau's "Ibc Essay oa the Origin of languages" talcen together with the Discourses on the
Origin of Incqurrlity (1755) and the Social Conrrucf (1762) provided a scathing indictment of
eighreenrh-century thought.

I should say to Plato that it is a nation wherein there is no manner of traffic, no
knowledge of letters, no science of numbers, no name of magistrate or of political
superiority; no use of servitude, riches or poverty; no contracts, no successions, no
dividing of poperties, no employments, except those of leisure; no respect of
kindred. except for the common bod; no clothing, no agriculture, no metal, no use of
wheat or wine
Edward Burnett Tylm, the fa-
of modan anthropdogy, in his Researches into the
Early Hislory of MDnkjnd ( l86S), also brought fresh insights to the relatiomhip betweea
oral, written, and perf'tive arts. 'Tk i&al savage of the eightemth century may be
held up as a living reproof to vicim and fiivdous Lanbon;" wrae Tyla, "but in soba
fact, a LonQner w b should attempt to lead the atrocious life, which the real savage may
lead with impunity and even respect, would be a criminal only allowed to fdow his
savage models during his short intavals out of goal." 16'
Using the rich ethnographic
literature of Catlin, Humbddt, Kde, Mayne, Brad, and Burton, Tyla criticized the
impact of alphabetic cultures on pictographic cultures, observing that ''tk art of picturewriting
sooa dwindles away in all COUIltries whea wad-writing is iabraiuced." '" He
speculated that tbe English had begun to despise spoken languages because of theif
increasing depxhx 0x1 reading and writing. He also postulated the argument that
alphaberic literacy probably interfered with Victaian cognition resulting in an inability to
throw off "h rigid covering that the Engltshman wears over his face like a tragic mask"
163
The eighteenth-century co~lcept of the "good savage", acccxding to Diamonb was
''I Tyla, Edward. Researches into the Early History of Mankind Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press. 1964[1865], 31.

transformed into the nkteenth-amtury
of the "inferiff savage." These kinds of
images reflected a sMt in the concept of the b'primitive", as the r m t i o n of various
forms of humanity was progressively denied during tk nhtemth-cahq.'" Maykw's
continual representations of Lonckm's street-fdk as "kathen, beasts. animals, barbarians.
dunghap. [ad] pestilence'* '" carried "a more pmrhrl. Pld very diffaenr message" '"
than his plea for undastanding and heIp fa them, accading to Himmaarb. Yet in spite
of Mayhew's ambivalent attitudes toward primitive cultures such as Loadan's sum-fdk.
the cultural markers of "the primitive" have remabd an imptam critique of westan
societies and cultures.
Mayfrew launched his raciaUcultura1 argument against such primitive cultures at the
vay beginning of Lortdon Labour. Drawing directly on the early nimteenth-century
ahndogy of Drs. James Cowles Pritchard and Andrew Smith.'" he argued that there
were 'two distinct and broadly marked races, viz., th wantken and the settlers - the
vagabond and the citizen - the nomadic and the civilized tribes." James Pritchard was a
Bristol physician, Christian oppomznt of slavery aod leading British anthropologist. He
used the "primitive/civilized dichotomy" to argue firstly that all races were divided into
wanderers and settlers, but that "each civilized a settled tribe" had generally "some
wandering horde ilvermingled with, and in a measure. preying upon it."
In his
Researches into the Physical History of Man (18081, Ritchd argued that "we may with
'63 Ibid., 44.
'64 Diamond, 1987, 101.
16' Himrnelfhrb, 1971, 329.
'66 Ibid.. 329.
16' Ibid., 118.
168
Mayfrew, I: 1-2.

a high degree of probability draw the infer-
that all the different races into which the
human spcies is dividsQ originated from ocle fimily." '" Furthmmxe, k argued that
the comparative study of languages revealed the unity of the human race:
The permanency of languages is a remarkable fact in the history of mankind.
and it appears to be more coastant in propation to the adv-
of
society. Among civilized nations who have arrived at the knowledge of
lenas. the variation of dialect is very slow. ... Oral dialects are much more
variable than writZen oms. ... Yet among nations which have made some
progress in the arts of life axxi have become pastad a agricultural, we have
remarkable htances of tk pestmation of languages during a great length
of time. ... The use of popular songs and recitation attracts the attention of
the people to the elegance and accuracy of pronunciation. Tbe idiom thus
becomes rmdeled and established without the use of let&!d1
Drawing specifically on Dr. Pritchard' s phrezmlogical arguments, Mayhew argued
that M e were "three principal varieties in the fmn of the head and other physical
characters" within t he "two distinct and broadly marked races." The most civiLized
races possessed "oval or elliptical" shdl formations while hunters and gatherers wae
"mostly distinguished by the term "prognarhous", iodicating a prolongation a extension
farward of the jaws" while pastaalists had "broad lozenge-shaped faces . . . and
169
bid., I: 1.
Stepan, Nancy. The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800-1960. 1982,2.
'I bid., 2; Stepan argued that until "Ritchard's death in 1848, British racial science was
'Ritchardian' (1982.43).

pyramidal slrulls." lZ
Although phre~l~logy is remembaed Goday only as an antiquated
methai of reading people's characters from the contau of their slrulls, Nancy Stepan, an
historian of science, reminded scholars that its theaetical foundation asserted that
anatomical and physiological characteristics were directly 1i.W to xxmW behavia.
The Victorians's obsession with phrenology IinLevi tog-
a theay of pimitive
behaviouristic psychology with locajized brain functions. Accading to Stepan. the
Victorians divided the human race into four basic psychological types: "The "nervous"
was distqushd by a large brain, deiicate health, and emacia; the "bilious" was w ked
by harsh features sad firm muscles; the "sanguiae" was charactaized by large lung
capacity and mothate plumpness; and the 'lymphatic" had rcuaded f m and heavy
countenance." '" Fwtkmxe, Stepan argued that British scim supportad Ritchard's
approach, which included comparative philology and ehnography. Until the 1850s.
comparative studies of languages and customs as well as travellers's accounts gave
scientists and writers tods to suppt their argumnt that physically and psychologically
the world's races were united into om human species. '" Mayhew's wanderiag tribes
were culnrrally as well as physiologically varied:
. . . from the habitual vagrant - half-beggar, half- thief - sleeping in barns,
tents, and casual wards - to the mechanic on tramp, obtaining his bed and
supper fiom the track societies in the different towns. On the way to seek
'73 Stepan, 7. Stepan focused on the majar stages in the development of a scientific discoufse on
race by exploring images of race in western science.
Stepan, 45. Stepan wrote: uNonetheless, by the 185k the shifl6rom the earlier ethnographic,
monogeoist, historical and philosophical traditim to a more amsavative, anthropological, and
polygenist apprOBCh to human racial diversity and human history had advanced quite tar in
Britain." See W ge W. Stocking, Jr., in Race ,Culture and Evolution: Essays in the Hisrory of
Anrhropology, 1968, 14, who called race "a cbxteristically ninemmth-century phenomenm".

wak Between these two extreLneS there are several rmliate varieties -
consisting of pedlars, showmea, harvest-nwr- a d all that large class who
live by eitha selling, showing, a doing something through the camtry.
There are, so to speak. the rural nomads - not cmhng their wanderings to
any one particular locality. but ranging often from one end of the land to the
other. Besides these, there are the urban and suburban wanderas. . . . Such
are, in the metropolis me
particularly, the piclcpockets - the beggars -
the prostitutes - the sum-sellers - the street-pafm - the cabmen -
the coachmen - tk watchmen - the sailas and such
Dr. Andrew Smith, a South Afiican medical Qctff, brought a different historical and
comparative perspective to Mayhew's initial argument. In 1837, Dr. Smith returned from
Capetown to London to organize an exhibition in the Egyptian Hall far his South African
natural history cdlection It is quite possible that Mayhew may have seen Smith's
exhibition We he was edita of Figaro in Lonhn. Smith had taka three colonial
outposts in Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Malta befae 1821 wkn he began his first
government assignment documenting the customs of the South African tribal pqles. In
1828, he gamed information Erom the major chiefs living along the lower reaches of the
Orange River. Three years later, he published "On the Origin and Histay of the
Bushmen"(l83 I), which Mayhew may also have read Smith's Orange River journey was
only a prelude, however, to his most importam expedition during 1834-36 into South
Afiica's inrerim. Here he consolidated important government inf'tion about the
hwn tribes such as the Matabili, Griquas and Baka, and the unknown tribes of the
175
Mayhew, 1 : 2.

Makaka. Bapiri and ~plaka."~ Smith used the 'primitive/civihd" debate as a pladclrm
to argue that every tribal people who became a respeaable caste submitting to social laws
including the rights of propeaty and recipocal social duties, were surrclunded by hordes
of vagabonds and outcasts Erom their own community. The Finns had their Lam, Smith
argued, a wild predatory tribe, who mght tk Qsert like Arabian BeQuins, the Kafirs
had theif Bushmen as well as Fingoes or wandefers, and the Bushmen have tkir Soaquas
or Hottentot paupers.1n Smith's "civilized" fascination with the "primitive" was nx new
however. In 1810, two years befae M a w was born. the Hotteatot Venus (Sartje)
arrived at the Egyptian Hall m e the Cook collection was stmixi Following Sanje, in
1822 the Jess family fiom Lapland arrived, then in 1824 the Venus of Scuth America, a
Baocundo Indian fim Brazil. nnmed Tom Maris arrived In
in 1840, when George
Catlin, the American painter, arrived in Loadon, Victorian interest in the fate of North
-can
tribal peoples was already over-publicized by pirated editions of Jams
Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Inside the Egyptian Hall hung
Catiin's paintings,
hded patraits of fq-eight tribal chiefs along with two
hundred ocha paintings of prairie sceaes of the Upper Missouri, tribal villages, buffalo
hunts, ball-plays, dances and religious cermes. Catlin reaxded in his Notes of Eight
Years ' Travels amongst Forty-Eight Different Tribes in America (1 840) that he painted a
vanishing Nmth American tribal history.lm In 1845. two Bus-
children were
exhibited tog-
with rare varieties of ~JE Monkey Tribe from Port Natal. Then, me
'76 Lye, Willilm F. (ed). Andrew Smith's IocPnal of his expedition into the Inferior of Sou&
ficd 1834-36. An authentic narrative of navels and disa,veries, the manners and customs of the
Native tribes and the physical nature of the camtry, 1975.
In
Mayhew. I: 1.
17' Altick, 1978, 271.
Ibid.. 277.

Bushmen arrived, fdlowed by Zulu Kaffirs, Aztec Lilliputians, and Pygmy Eanhmen, by
the late 1850s. tk surge of tkse exhibitions was om.'"
Having set out his own cultural histay fa his readas, which is so central to the
literary habitus of the Menippea (comidgrotesqlle), Mayhew now Nnred to catain
raciaYcultural problems he saw within Victorian society. He laid out "a series of facts of
the uanost social impatance" to explain anomalies in the present state of society.
M a w stated that wamhers and Setflers were distinct in physical, mxal, and
intellectual -cs;
that tky each possessed a cWEaent, t,liar form of heab; the
wandering races had particularly developed the jaws and cheek-boaes of the face while
the civilized races had &doped tk head b-.
Furthmme, each civilized tribe had,
in genaal, a "wandaing k de attached with a diffaent language intent on hiding their
lives fiom them. Mayhew also ma& a scathing colnment on the meet fdk's capacity to
work: they possessed, he argued, "nothing but what they acquired by depredation fiom
tfie industrious, provident, and civilized portion of the community." Mayhew COntiOUed
to focus on what he considered to be stnking "points of coincicbce": "That we, Like the
Kafirs. Fellah, and Fii, were surrounded by w e g hordes - the "Sonquas" and
the bFingoes" of this country - paupers, beggars, and outcasts" that "have remained thus
long unnorid" He consolidated his raciaVculnual pition with this final intrahctory
statement for his readas:
Let us therefoce, before entering upon the subject in haad, briefly run ova
the distinctive, mxal, and inteilctual features of the wandering tribes in
general. The nomad is . . . distinguished fiom the civilized man by his
repugnance to regular and continuous labour - by his want of providence in

laying up a stae fa the firm - by his inability to perceive mmapences
ever so slightly removed fkom immediate apprehension - by his passim for
stupefying M s a d roots, and wtren psible, for intoxicating f-
liquors - by his extraordinary sensibility to pain - by an imrmkate love of
gaming, frequently risking his own personal libaty upon a slnnf e cast - by
his love of libidiaous dances - by the pleasure he experierrr~c in witnessing
the suffering of sentiem creatures - by his delight in warfare and all perilous
sports - by his desire fa revenge - by the lcmea~~s of his notjom of property
- by the absence of chastity among women, and his disregard of female
horn - and lastly, by his vague sense of religion - his xu& idea of the
Creata, and utter absence of all appreciation of the macy of the Divine
Spirit. . . . Strange to say, despite its privations, its dangers, and its hardships,
those who have o~ce adopted the savage and wandering mode of life, rarely
abandon it.'"
In conclusion, London Labour documented an incredible variety of Loldon's
"primitive" street perfamas and errtertainas including acrobats, jugglers, conjurers,
clowns. jestas, vaulters and e~hibitors.'~ Was it possible that Mayhew's fascination with
modern huxnanist philology had, in its own small way, dealt a s d blow to the mirrretic
art of memory that he discovered in London's streedok Was it also possible that
I82
Maybew, III: 62-3. Mayhew writes that the Fantocinni man performed befae nobility as we11
as crmmoaers. The Fantocinni man perfarneb befae "the Barmess Rolhchild's, next to the Duke
of Wellingum's, and LiLewise the Baron himselt, in Grosvenor place . . . and half the nobility in
England" oa the me hand, and cm the streets, he begins with a woman hornpipe dancer, "Grimaldi
the clown, who does tumbling and posturing, and a comic dance*', the enchanted Turk, the Indian
juggler named Ramo Samee and winds up with a scene in Tom and Jerry. see Fabian, 1993-8
regarding the impact of Literacy on performative characteristics.

Mayhew's obsession with static encyclopedic categories was antitktical to the
streetfolk's culture that translated movement into mmq Tke was no Qubt that the
bodily repression, immobiIization. a d control that came with famalizad schooling and
literate practices brarght aht a loss of the "pr~ce~siwexperieatial*' a perf'tive
ground of being. Furthamae, a certain sense of -t,
which accompanied
reading practices, ultimately shaped attitudes and habits in baurgd ethnographers like
Mayhew. This sense of di-
probably limited his capacity to ask critical
questions about the Victoriarr practices of reading a d his own loss of senswusaess. An
ethnography of perfocmative cultural practices of everyday Life d d provide a needed
corrective to such autonomous views m cultural literacy and the ''ptimitive/civilized
debate". Travel fix M a w was a complementary and cornpensatmy way of life entirely
separated from the urgent demands of everyday "civilized*' Life. Travel as culnue
increasingly became a kind of cuut of human appeal where men like Ma*
found
inner respite from tk sacrifices of living in modam iadusaial societies. '" Perfamed as
art as well as politics. travel for Hemy Maw, as the metropolitan mespondent fa
the Morning Chronicle and the later Lonbn Mour and the Landon Poor, became a
critical means of wald making aod self-fashioning.lu
see R Williams, Culture and Society, 1780-1950, l983[1958].
Hauser, 1985, 168-9.

Chapter 7
"Reading9' beyond Henry Mayhew a d London labour
and the Landon Poor
Henry Mayhw's London labour and the London Pmr (1861-62) combines a culturalhistorical
vision of mid-Victaian London as it moves towards a nhmxnth-cmtury mass culture,
and a sociological reality that forms itself spatiany out of the mythdogical jungle of nature.
Mayhew's compulsion to restore wtrat was perceived as myth - in every sense as a lost sense of
total order - was a finmion of an age marked by extreme cultural upheaval througtwut Europe.
Mae specifically, in Maykw's case, bae was the actuality of capital and property as it
relentlessly imposed itself onto the imaginary spaces of Loacbn and the casual labarring poor, in
particular, which gave this protaypical modam city its distinctive symbolic character. As the city
became a phantasmic place of bureaucracy, cormmmication, and urban developmen, it was
important fa Mayhew to reconstruct the lives of London's str~et-folk fa his r-s,
as life
lurched unevenly towards modanity. The creative impulse fa M a w was not only to provide a
stadpoint from which he could create a paoaamic overview of the city, but also to theorize
about what conflicts and contradictions he was experiencing first-hand
In a very profound sense, bndan Labour was Victorian oral histay "as it happens". In the
public squares, people wae represented as voices saturated with emotion - accented nomadic,
and camivale~qlle. ' Oratorical speech genres were an essemial part of the reads's ability to read
Although Mayhew recmded a great deal about nrmldic people he recocded only a few details about their
nomadic architecture. Fa example, traveling circuses or canvas theatres perfamed at the Albion,
Whicechapel, and in Museum-street, opposite Dnrry-lane as well as "Douglass's travelling ShaLespearian
Saloon" with "(...sanes fram Sbalrespear's plays all around the fhn~t. and it's the most spleadid cmcern
on the rOBd)". Mayhew recmded how a travelling theaoe was e r e 'As soar as it was break of day we
begun getting up the booth, and being short-handed it todr us till three o'clock before we was ready. Fust
we had to measure our distances aod fix the parade-waggas. Then we planted our king pde m the me in
the center, then we put our back-pole m the are near the parade; then we put our ridge at tap, and our siderails;
and then we put our side-ridges, and sling the rafters. Then we roll the tilt up, which is fa the root,

London Labour, as if they were there, so to speak The "maMiterate debate" examirwl in Chapter
5 discussed Mayhew's loveaffair with tk vernacular oral tradition. Mayhw's obsession with
recording their memmies firsthand - and f a tk first time - became om of the mom sensitive
indicators of Victaian culture. and his approach to language became one of nirrRetmh-century
England's mo6t impataat rehtatioos of eighteenth-cencury thinLing about languages. Yet. in
spite of a resurgence of imerest in coatempaary aal histay, Mayfiew's hn&n Labour has
suffered from a long-term decline in prestige. The decline in oral history's status, in philclsoQhica1
thdcing as well as the use of tbe grotesque were thre main teasoas I account fa here fa
Mayhew's hmdiate loss of constituency ard eventual lack of dirm sucesms. By 186 1,
statisticians and economists recud that the belief in philosophic truth 'has coded off to such an
extent that neither the public mx the academies any long= like to receive a welcome wuks of
this kind, except as products of pure schdarship a historical curiosity." Crucially. in terms of
the camivaYgrotesque, interest in London &&our waaed as London Luhur was eventually listed
only among the comic genes a was interpreted by readers as a peculiar f m of satire targeed
at its readers, which it still is today.
Reading Victorian London: Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) and London Lubour and the bndon
Poor (1 86 1-62) has examirwi werd interrelated problems coacerniag the cultural-historical
context of Victorian London Reading Victoritan London: can also be uxkstcmd as a study of
media history, that is the history of communication. Mayhew's 'cyclopaedia' combined
philosophical discussion, travel documentary, the fantastic, and novelistic prow, all in one literary
genre that I name the Menippean satire as an example of this genre. Mayhew used "a loosely-
and it gets heavy with dirt, and we haul it up to the top and unroll it again and tasten it again; then we fix
the sides up, with shutters about six feet square, whicb you see cn the top of the travelling parade-carriages.
We fixes up the theatre and the seats we take with us"' (Mayhew, IKI: 204).
' Hobsbawm 1975,251.
Bakhtin, 1968,46.

jointed narrative form" relying on "tk frse play of Wectunl fvry and tk kind of humorous
obswation tht pmduces caricature*' ', which, of cume, focused on the carnivakscpe.
Maw's mveiistic pose revealed a perfamative way of life. a d in revealing the street-fdk's
mimetic way of life, it waked against tk grain of tk middle-class temkrq to provide realism
without the mimesis of the mveL6 But as mvelistic prose. it also did so as a patchwak-style. as a
"subvasive combination of fantasy. learning, a d ~~c
think@", ' f a Mayhew 'strutted
his stuff' intellectually. He grappled with intelltxtual thms and attitub, piling than up as well
as digressing upoa an eocyclopedic mass of inf'm about rrrvlrrr aad its pmpk
OV-g
his scholarly targets with "an avalanche of tkir own jargon". ' His Morning
Chronicle investigation was a search f a a pladarm, a vantage point fkom which to unQrstand life
as it really was. Ln orher wads, it was a master mative fa sacred travel writing as well as
investigative repating. What was nrost impanantly at issue k e was a aew relation of the author
to his work, fa at the literary level, London Labour was a genre of the carnivalesque that turned
London's solid, Victorian, middle-class wald upside down. But even though there is a case fa
this, the Menippea may still be a problematic gertre fa today's readers looking at Mayhew's
bn&n Lobour, especially if the Menippea is urulcrstood as a satire in the traditional sense. For
what this dissertation is doing is stretching tk bclunds of histcxical imagination in regards to the
Menippea in order to include impataat amtexts and debates of Maykw's time, which we know
existed, but are considered separately Erom Maybv, if at all.
' Frye, 1973,309.
bid.
See RJ.Cru- Charles Dickeru and Early Victorian Engkmd. Pitman. 1949; AHookham. The
Literary Career of Henry Maybed', MA, Birmingham University, 1%2. Oocasidy Mayhew is also
interpreted as a poteatial inspiratim fa Charles Dickms's WOI~
Relihan, 1993, xx.

The debate over "primitivdavilized" cultures in
travel genres, the
practices of a new aspect of cultural hegemony, aad Mayhew's fasciaation with wandaing tribes
in the midst of civilhd LooQn are examined in Chapter 6. M a w 's 'Zordon'* became a
literary icon and London Labour became his travel documentary, descriptive, explaatay,
argumentative, and compulsive. In other wads. Mayhew held out dreams of cultural masteq
through contact with unknown ptxple d places fa tourism. as we have come to know it. As a
document, Lon&
Labour was a documeatary dection striving to articulate fams of cultural
uanscendeace- In &kt, Maykw anempts to overcam the discoatiauity of moderaity by
incorporating increasingly urban fragments imo unifled experiem~.~ Such was Mayhew's
attempt to crystallize tk "ttaJrist's" vision of reality by creating a fascinating but nevertheless
synthetic museum of tk Inid
Chaptez 4 examines LAlaQa's urban spaces within the wider context of a developing new
mass culture. Bazaars are linked architecturally, of course, with the simultaaeous development of
London's railways, exhibitions, conservatories and markis places, but histmcally what was the
relationship between England's bazaars a d tk earlia ocie.mil bazaars. if any 'O Lady
Montagu's Leners fiom the Orient ( 1784) gives us a possible gihpe of it. Montagu's Letters
'O The exchanges, bazaars and marketplaces did na wcaostitute nemsary phases9* of the arcode's
development, aaxdiag to Geist (Thc Arcude, 1983, 12.2428-9). Nevertbeiess, the &velopment and
growth of the bmar began in England, na continental Europe, with Lmdon's seventeenth-century Royal
Exchange. Laadon's Royal Exchange (1566-681, a capy of the Antwerp Exchange, was built by Sir
Thomas Gresham. (Fineberg, B.,'Tbe History and Design of Shopping Arcades," thesis, Regimal College
of Art, Mancbester, 1953, 17). Destroyed by the Ftre in 1666, it was recarstnrcted then &molished again
in 1838, and finally rebuilt in 1840. Tbe Ex- Excbange (1676) was built further to the west near the later
hwther Arcade possibly revealing the social trend to move westward toward Comt Garden. Uoben
Southy's tenersfrom England (1807) described the Exeter Exchange as a hwac "Exeter Change is
precisely a bazaar, a sort of street under cover a large lmg room, with a row of shops on either hand, and a
thoroughfare bemeen them" (Southey, R, Trawl Lircrorure, 1807; quoted from Alisoa Adburgham. Shops
and Shopping, 1800-1914, Imdar, 1964, 18). Walter Benjamin. the Gaman literary philosopher, was the
first scholar to recognize the arcade as a nineteenth-ceablry phenomenaa, a world in miniature. Benjamin
believed that the Parisian arcades were the prototypical city space of the nineteenth-century, but it was the
Engiish oriental-style bezaafs rather than the Parisian arcades where the crucial spadal formatioo of the
modem public sphere took place.

describe Istanbul's bazaars as "supab buildings, fillad with beautifid covered passages. most of
which rest on pillars."" 'hey are nll wdl mninained" s h e w . "Each busbss has its
own hall, w!xre the merchaaclise is presented in the same ada as in the New Exchange in
London. The bedestm a jeweler's hall dispiays so many treasures and such an abuadaace of
diamonds and precious stones that olle is practically blhkd. .. The embroidaer's hall is also
magoificent Visitors moe fa
as well as fa bushss." l2 Mayhew's Loadon
bazaars saved its retail made. They were built into existing sites. They possessed several
entrams and exits to cliffixem meas, but wae m tramitid spaas iike rbe arcrdes. '-' Pahaps
London's bazaars, instead of its arcades, were the crucial spacial famation of tk rrrodaa public
sphere as tk am reading public was the mad sodPl focmatioa l4 Englads reading public -
' Montagu, Lady Mary, Lrnerslfiom the Orienr, 17842nd Editim, 1%2 192. Geist has suggested hat
eighteenth- and nineteenthceatury travel doamrents helped to shape the development of the Eastern bazaar
in England.
'' Montagu, 192.
l3 The Soho Bazaar (1816), in the northwest caner of Sobo Square, was designed oa two levels like the
Exchanges, the Western Exchange (1817) opened between Bmd Street and the Burlingtaa Arcade, the
Queen's kaar located in Word Sueet burned down in 1829; The Pantheon (1722), originally built by
James Wyatt, as a winter "Ranelagh", eventually became a theatre, and in 1834 in the hands of Sydney
Srnirke, it became Lmdcm's mast famous bazaar. The BaLer Street bazaar was located in Portman Stre&
The Pantechnicm (1830) was an auaioa house oa Moatcanbe Street near Belgrave square; the Lowther
bazaar located across ban the Lxlwther Arcade was famous fa the Cosmorarna, the Magic Cave, the
Cosmorama; St. James's bazaar (1832) lay between King Street and St. James's S K There ~ was also
Ponland bazaar (Langham Place), Crystal Palace lxuaar (Oxfad
-
Street), Corinthian txu!aar (Argyle Street),
S t..Paul's bazaar (StPaul's Churchyard), and the Royal Lmboa bazaar (Liverpool Street) ( 7k Arcade,
1973,49,51; A History of Building Types, 1976, p. 262). Ricbard Knight's Curiosities of London described
London's bazaars as "an adapuuioa Erom the East, the true principle of which is tbe classification of trades.
Thus, Paternoster Row, with its bocb; Newpart Market, with its butcher shags; and Monmwth Street with
its shoes, are more properly bezaars than the miscellaneous stalls assembled under aver, which are in
London designated by name. Exeter Change was a great cutlery and the row of attaneys' shops in
the Lard Mayds Couxt Office, in the secoad Royal Exchange, was a kind of legal bazaar, the name of
each attorney being inscribed upon a prujeaing signbawd Tbe Crystal Palace of 1851 and the Great
Exhibition of 1862 were also vast assemblages of busan" (Knight. Richard, Curiosifies of london, 1850
(). 40, entry on bazaars). Tbe New Exchange, built in 1608 by the Earl of Salisbury, ran south f3an the
Strand and the Exeter Exchange, built in 1676, ran parallel with, and north of, the Strand, but firrther west,
The Lowther Arcade built in 1829-31 by H.E.Kendal1 had 11 hays and glass roof danes, and was
demolished in 1902 (Geist, 1973.35, 12; see Pevsner. A History of Building Types, 1976,264).
l4 Geist following Benjamin argwd that the arcades were the precise dreaming collective in tbe nineteenthcentury,
but perhaps in England it was the beuaars and marketplaces directly that were the precise
architectural collective, the precise spacial formatioa of in nineteenth-century England

for novels, tauism, and magazines - was tk most significant socializiag event of the n i w
century as the time fm read& and the xxmey fa spedhg changed radically. Compared to the
30-shilling novels, serialhid novels now cost but a few pennies pa issue, which revealed how
rapidly times had changed. Novels, in f~
bound the g m o a s , sexes, and classes togetha.
and comics like otha popllar magazines did likewise as novels and comic books truly kame
consumable codties fa tbe very first time16
What is the possible significance of rehteapreting Ma- using iaterdisciplinary m,
coafe~f~, and approacks London kahur md f k London Poor has been examined as a case
study of the complex connections betwea~ Victorian nrgdal and matRial evezyday Life. In other
words, as a Imus fa human activities, this dissertation has focused on sevaal imponant ways
that might help explain the development of m>dern western cities by focusing on tk cultural-
historical dimensions of Victorian Laadon " f a Mayhew created the m st impressive survey of
labour and of povaty at mid-catury that still exists today.'' Stmd, the dissertation has argued
that the literary structure of Lortdorr Labour can be seen as a Menippean satire (carnival/
grotesque) with its semingly chaotic juxtapositions of genres and themes. which can now be
accounted for from this literary perspective. Thirdly, it bas argued that London Labour must be
seen, not only spatially, but also in its m >vm through time. Transitoriness was futxhmmtal to
the Victorians, and hdu~alizatioa fa its p a causal a perceptual crisis due to the speeding up
of time and the increasing fragmentation of waking and living spaces. Simultanecusly with the
development of mdam inhLctry, JEW kinds of Space were born with new kinds of ~nsmrction.
16
Accoeding to KunzIe. the comics - and the farces that go with it - were instimtimalized in England to
civilize the cIasses that were all too proae to videace, and yet ironically, arly sixty years later, the comics
themselves were accused of causing the self-same videmt behaviour; see Kunzle, 1979.333.
l7
Katznelsm, 1992, ix.
18
Thompson, E.P., 1971, 23.

Concurrently with new levels of dislocation, in certain commercial sections, the dmad fa new
kinds of buildings such as railway staticms, large-scale marlret halls, large glassharses, and
exhibition halls Mped to bring about tkse new kids of a&mSics
ad new W of
constiction. There was, in orha wads, m precedent for the llew lrinlc of buildings that
needed exteasive unintmupted floor space for Loodon's wer-ending stream of ~ l dIron
g
represented more than just iron balconies, howeva: "In iron, an artificial building material makes
its appearance f a tk 6rst tim in in history of architectllre," -ding
to Walter Benjamin, "it
undergoes a development that acderates in the course of the century. The decisive breakthrough
comes when it emages that the locomotive, with which experhems have been ma& sioce the
end of the tweaties. could only be used on iron rails." "
Railway design used the first prefabricated iron compommts, which were the faerunner of
the steel girda. Paxton's 21 fame, as cme of England's most imponam architects, was virtually
based on the fact that i~ "created the [modern urban] method of pre-fabrication - members to
standard sizes, production of these on manufacturers' premises a d
n
only assembly on site. '
Based on these indusuial principles, Paxton's Crystal Palace was built in six month's time in
London it was desigaed on "a 24-foot module9* using "about 3 3.000 iron columns, 2.1 SO iron
l9 Dixon and Mutbesius, 1978,94.
20
Benjamin, Walter. Refleczions, Translation by Edmund Jephcott, New Yark: H arm Brace Jovanovich,
1978,147.
" Sir Jaseph Paxtm's (1803-1865) wak included the Great Stove in Chatsaronh (1836-1840). the CrystaJ
Palace, Hyde Park, LmQa (1850-51), design of the Crystal Palace, New York (1851), Crystal Palace,
S ydenham (1852-1856), and project tian the Great Vianian Way (1855). Paxtm also designed Italian and
Tudor villas, Norman amages and mock Elhklm cumtry houses.
'' Systematic begi~nings d line poductjm appear in band methods. even befoe the beginning of
mechanizatioo in England The Book of Trcrdcs. a source bodr of 1804. gave a clear acoount of this early
form of assembly b e at the navy victualling ace in word (The Book of Trades. or Library of the
Usefil Arts. Loah, 1804, pp. 107-8; quoted in Siegiried Giedim. Mechanitarion Takes C o d . A
Contribution to Anonymous History. W.W.Nortoa & Canpany: New Yak, 1969.87).

girders, 372 roof beams. 24 miles of gutter. 250 miles of sash bar a d 293.635 glass pan&." ''
Technically faras metals, first cast iron then wrought iron. and then stael, began well befae
1800, but its real pdeatial culminated in the 1850s with tbe coas~uction of a number of Crystal
Palaces - Paxton's I85 1 Crystal Palace being the first. which was disassembled, then rebuilt in
1852-4 at Sydenham wke it was e~e~ltllally destroyed by fire in 1936.~
In Paxton's hands, his earlier horhouses fa agriculture, coc~st~cted out of the self-same iron
and glass as the railway stations, became hotbus fa architacnrre because it was in these kinds
of utilitarian buildings that Mayhew's oew mass culture pdtf'
Tk geeahouse's
prefabricated capabilities, - aad many of tkm were Paxton's - evemually allowed far tk
development of vasta. rmre caaplex unbrolren spsog " as thy have becoare today. T ky were
one of the primary spatial rmdels f a all Victcfian architecture: 'iron halls' became warehauses.
factories and wakshogs, covered marketplaces, railway stations, axxi arcades but they wae more
than this. They were also cdlective dream-machhs - panaamas, museums, marketplaces,
apartments, and railroad expressed complex bodily processes with 'w architectural dream.
scaffdded upon it." 27 Tk Victorian escape into dreams. utopia, aad even madmss disguised the
same feelings of chaos and homelessness against which th EnJightennrent had fought so hard
against." Yet sirmlraneously. this very ''suspension of roocedaess" " was a form of liberation,
and a critical aspect of Mayhew's urbanized fdk-culture, because their culture can be seen as "a
" Ibid.. See also 7ie Cry~l Pahe Exhibition, 1970. pp. xx-xxii.
" Hitch- Henry Russell, Architecture: 19th and 2lkh Centuries, Middlesex: Penguin. 1 %3 [1958], 125.
115, 126.
" Buck-Morse, 1982,272.
28
Hauser, 1985.3, 174, 181.

form of aati-culture, an aaoj-pactice, a Libeating escape fmm &cia1
instimtions." " Maykw's
pwtchinellos, fa example, exposed t t c01lVemioaal ~ mask of life though the carnivalesque; in
effim, his street people were 'life's wrrnaskers who do not belag to any social categary, but
exist in homeless. dm- opposition to rhcm"
In dux wordr. Mayhew's nomadic characters
parodied civihd, bourgeois pattans of thought and bebaviout in captivating and yet
carnivalesque ways.
Mayfiew's adveantres into unhmMl space were thus objects of literary consumptiar. He
went to the markaplace to supposedly just red the life and times of Ladon's strm-fdk, but
in reality, with his idea already in h d in 1849, Mayhew, thflaneur, went to the Morning
Chronicle offices as a reports "'to fiml a buyer" 32 as well as an audieace. Readers uxresporded
directly with Mayhew through tk newspaper, as we have seen Ad the Wvidual bourgeois who
fdt the need to comment publicly on issues of &ate
Lnew that a letter sent by him to the offices
of the Morning Chronicle 'hit the stnxts' completely on tk strength of his sranrting as an
individual alone." Hae was a divase audience of imasecting geaaatioas and social classes that
was created by this growing literate, Victorian popular culture, which, in turn, was part of the
European bourgeois self-image. Fa tk popular classes fell under the influence of this dominant
bourgeois culture because it was, in a sense, the only culture that operated as such The very
construction of a standard oatioaal language and the very processes of writing aad schooling
belonged, in fact, to them Intaspersed throughout London Labour's pages was Richard Beard's
'' bid. When Rabelnis Md His World MiLbnil Bslrbtin's first book to be published in English, appwd in
1968, the autha was unknown in the west. Today* Balchtin (1895-1975) became widely known in the
humanities generally f a his "language obsession" as tbe scholar, Michael Holquist called it (Bakhtia, 1984,
p. viii): "bis fundamental roots in fdk culture with carnival as its indispensable canpoaent insists that art is
oriented towards cammwicatioa, that is human behaviour is cammunicaticm and that it is always 'goaldireaed"'.

photography. It was a new Lind of communication techmlogy. whkb potdally uadarnined the
uniqueaess of Maytrew's onetime portraitures of London's street-fdk. Victman artisrs, writms,
and journalists were fmd, in effect, to speed up their creative work compering head-on with
photographas, faster printing pesses, aad fasta communicati~~~ techndogy.
As far as the fam of the Menippea was directly coacerned Mayhew probably adaped it to
his own uses because of its capacity to reach a less-educated audieace who were certainly less
intelleaully commined than k was. In dialogue with his audience, Ma*
probably realized
that its humrous characteristics, narrative quality, and ability to turn tbe W e rmrld-upside-
down would po-y convey his ideas to his r-s. ''Reading" a -tury city such
as London is difficult, yet nevertheless, it mant that Mayhew's auclience was irnpiicated in a
crisis of perception and repraentatim of vast social, political, a d cultural changes, f a Queen
Victoria's LonQn (1 837- 1901) was probably tbe nmjt dramatic, pdotypical setting f a
grappling with the develqment of an all expanding, market-based, capitalist economies. During
the twentieth-century, historians, socidogists, literary scholars, and anthr@ogists
have
elaborated upon some of the m t distinctive features of city life. Districts such as industrial parks
have acquifed special fbctioos. Geographical sectms have become mare polarized with class
divisions. Nei@cwhmds have lost their significance: people can live very close togetlux but at
a great distance socially from each other. Communication technology has increased secondary
relationships while perhaps helping to mdembe primary ones. The media has taken the place of
the church, and custom has given way to style and stardom, But it was Engels, who was the
faremost nimttmh-cenhuy pi-
to W "shapes on the ground - the physical form which the
evolving city took - aod the shapes in society".Y Future analysis of the city iacluding its
cultures and languages, and of a Manrist analysis of the city in particular, could be widerred if
scholars seriously included Maytrew's London b hur Md the London Pmr in their discussim.

Although the lessons that Mayhew taught wae eventually negated., a were at best. rnadequate -
creating an autha, who was incapable of uaderstanding all that k had experienced - a careful
reading of May-
can reveal how M ars might incorparate ttre city, its spaces and its
communication pattern into their social theories. Fa Mayhew's street-people embodied
Victorian city-life, and they cauld well be the beginning of a new level of media and cultural
inquiry into Loncbn's life and times.
-- -
'* David Cannadine, 'RCsidCDtiP1 Differentiatiop. in Nineteenth Century Towns: Fmm Shapes m the
Ground to Shapes in Society", in James H. Jobnsoa and Cdin G. Podey (eds.), The Structure of Nincteenrh
Cenrury Cities. h dm: Croan Helm, 1982,235; Kabnelsoo, 154.

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APPENDIX

Seleaioas of Xllusmuims
Fram London Labour and the b h n Poor, Vdume I, II. and Ill

THE 6TREET-8TATIONER.

GCENE IN PETTIOOAT-LAK&

. -
. .
THE LONDON 6WEEP.

THE LONDON DUSTMAN.
Dosr Hor! Dm HOI!
[Crr -t nu-j

A VIEW IN ROSEMARY-LANE.

f UNCH86 SHOWMEN.
t-rCWlrpL1

GUY FAWGES.