HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

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.).