London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) Read Online Free Page A

Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age
(Faber, 1984) the author, Gertrude Himmelfarb, discusses in the first of two projected volumes the problem of poverty as it was defined between 1780 and the 1840s. My own feeling is that Mayhew saw what he described at first hand – it was a reality of daily life – and for this reason his evidence, however critically we examine and evaluate it, remains inevitably more compelling than extended theoretical discussions of the word ‘poverty’. In a sense, the detachment from reality implicit in the debate about terms allows a comforting neutrality to both participants and spectators. Mayhew, on the other hand, still has the power to disturb us, and this, I believe, is a major reason for the continuing vitality, popularity and even relevance of his work.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
    Works by Mayhew
    London Labour and the London Poor
: 1852 edn, 2 vols.; 1861–2 edn, 4 vols.; new impression of 1865, 4 vols. The two latter editions are identical as regards text. Priority of issue, however, can be established by the imprint. The earlier one was published by Griffin, Bohn & Co., Stationers’ Hall Court. Bohn went out of business in 1864, and the later imprint is Charles Griffin & Co., Stationers’ Hall Court.
    The Criminal Prisons of London
(1862). Mayhew’s co-author was John Binny. Although I have not used material from this volume, it should be considered with the four volumes of the previous title as completing Mayhew’s survey of the metropolis. Both titles – five volumes in all – were reprinted by Frank Cass in 1967–8.
    There have been several volumes, issued by various publishers, of selections from Mayhew. The best of them is
Henry Mayhew: Selections from London Labour and the London Poor
, chosen with an introduction by John L. Bradley (OUP, 1965). The 40-page introduction is excellent.
    The
Morning Chronicle
    So far as the
Morning Chronicle
letters are concerned, three volumes of selections have been published:
    E. P. Thompson and Eileen Yeo (eds.),
The Unknown Mayhew
(Merlin Press, 1971; Penguin, 1973). The editors contribute an 85-page introduction divided into two roughly equal sections, ‘Mayhew and the
Morning Chronicle
’ by E. P. Thompson, and ‘Mayhew as a Social Investigator’ by Eileen Yeo. Both are essential reading for an understanding of Mayhew’s work.
    Anne Humpherys (ed.),
Voices of the Poor
(Frank Cass, 1971). There is some overlap between the contents of this title and those of the preceding one. Both, however, are worth looking at. Anne Humpherys’s introduction is brief but illuminating. The volume also contains a contemporary picture of Henry Mayhew playing the part of Knowell in Charles Dickens’s amateur production of
Every Man in his Humour
.
    P. E. Razzell and R. W. Wainwright (eds.),
The Victorian Working Class
(Frank Cass, 1973). The importance of this book lies in the fact that for the first time letters (not by Henry Mayhew) about the condition of the poor in various parts of England are reprinted from the
Morning Chronicle
. Although letters about London are included, those from other areas predominate.
    All the letters to the
Morning Chronicle
by correspondents from outside London are currently being published by Frank Cass in eight volumes. The editor is Jules Ginswick. The following have already appeared: Vol. 1, Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire; Vol. 2, Northumberland and Durham; Vol. 3, The Midlands. The remaining five volumes are scheduled for publication as follows: Vol. 4, Liverpool and Birkenhead; Vol. 5, Birmingham; Vol. 6, Midlands, Northern Counties; Vol. 7, South-western Counties; Vol. 8, Eastern Counties, South-eastern Counties.
    There is also a six-volume paperback edition of
The Morning Chronicle Survey of Labour and the Poor: The Metropolitan Districts
, with an introduction by Peter Razzell (Caliban Books, 1983).
    Biography
    The standard biography of Henry Mayhew is Anne Humpherys,
Travels into the Poor Man’s