HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

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.