HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

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,