HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

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.