HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

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.