London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics) (3 page)

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 Country
(University of Georgia Press, 1977; Caliban Books, 1980). It contains a very full bibliography of books and articles by and about Mayhew.

For Mayhew’s connection with
Punch
see A. A. Adrian,
Mark Lemon, First Editor of ‘Punch
’ (OUP, 1966).

Dickens and Mayhew

The picture of Mayhew as an actor in one of Dickens’s amateur productions may suggest a closer relationship between the two men than has hitherto been suspected. Certainly Dickens was influenced by Mayhew’s work. See F. R. and Q. D. Leavis,
Dickens the Novelist
(Chatto & Windus, 1970; Penguin, 1977). See also H. S. Nelson, ‘Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend” and Henry Mayhew’s “London Labour and the London Poor”’, in
Nineteenth-Century Fiction
, XX (1965), pp. 207–22.

About Mayhew

There is an admirable listing of articles in Anne Humpherys’s biography. One of them, however, seems indispensable, being the first, so far as I know, to submit Mayhew’s work to the scrutiny of a socio-economic historian: E. P. Thompson, ‘The Political Education of Henry Mayhew’,
Victorian Studies
, Vol. XI, no. 1 (1967), pp. 41–62.

Working People: Their Life and Experience

In the course of his work Mayhew reproduces the life stories of many of the people he met. They are prime examples of working-class autobiography, and since historians have only recently turned their attention to this theme, the following book may be useful in assessing the validity and value of such material:

David Vincent,
Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth Century Working Class Autobiography
(Europa, 1981; Methuen, 1982).

Two recent books emphasize the importance of Mayhew as a social investigator:

James Bennett,
Oral History and Delinquency: The Rhetoric of Criminology
(Chicago University Press, 1981). Chapters 1 and 2 deal with Mayhew’s Investigations.

Raymond A. Kent,
A History of British Empirical Sociology
(Gower Publishing Company, 1981).

Mayhew’s London

Three books are of especial value in tracing locations in Mayhew’s work:

Anon.,
The Pictorial Handbook of London
(H. G. Bohn, 1858). Now somewhat scarce, but a definitive view, with a folding map of the London that Mayhew knew so well.

Peter Cunningham,
Hand-Book of London Past and Present
, 2nd edn (1850; reprinted by EP Publishing, 1978).

H. A. Harben,
A Dictionary of London
(Herbert Jenkins, 1918).

‘
Mayhewiana
’

Two books are worth recording of Mayhew’s association with them.

Anon.,
London Characters
(Chatto & Windus, 1870). In 1874 there appeared a second edition, whose title page announced: ‘By Henry Mayhew and Other Writers’. This edition was bigger than the first and contained new material by Mayhew. A third, identical edition appeared in 1881. Since Henry Mayhew was a well-known journalist, it seems unlikely that his name would have been omitted from the first edition if he had contributed to it. What probably happened was that the publishers used his name and incorporated material by him to promote sales of the book.

Augustus Mayhew,
Paved with Gold, or The Romance and Reality of the London Streets
(Chapman & Hall, 1858; reprinted by Frank Cass, 1971). Henry Mayhew was involved in the writing of the first few chapters of this novel. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne (‘Phiz’), it is an interesting work, with some of its best episodes set in the kind of milieu that Mayhew described in
London Labour and the London Poor
. Parts of it convey a strong sense of the reality of street life, which perhaps demonstrates the closeness of collaboration and discussion between the brothers Mayhew.

Vol. IV of
London Labour and the London Poor
was partly written by Henry Mayhew. The following writers also had a share in this volume:

THE REV. WILLIAM TUCKNISS, B.A.
(1833–64): Graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford (B.A. 1858); Chaplain to the Society for the Rescue of Young Women and Children.

BRACEBRIDGE HEMYNG
(1841–1901): Barrister and author of popular novels; the creator of Jack Harkaway, whose adventures were first published in 1871. He spent some time in America.

JOHN BINNY:
I have been able to discover nothing about Binny.

ANDREW HALLIDAY
(1830–77): Writer of popular fiction; contributor to
Cornhill Magazine
and
All the Year Round
.

In the Preface to the first volume of bound parts of
London Labour and the London Poor
Henry Mayhew acknowledges the help of two collaborators. One is
RICHARD KNIGHT
(‘late of the City Mission’) and the other
HENRY WOOD
(‘who may be considered as one of its authors’).

Mayhew’s text presents no difficulties. I have used the 1865 four-volume impression published by Charles Griffin & Co., Stationers’ Hall Court, from which illustrations used here are also taken. The extracts are grouped according to volume, and the page reference to the 1865 edition is given for each. A few new headings have been introduced and a few of Mayhew’s headings re-positioned in order to lend coherence to the selections presented here.

Money

I have not attempted to ‘translate’ the old-style cash values in Mayhew’s text. The following is a guide to their conversion into modern terms.

£1 and 1 shilling (£1 1s.) made 1 guinea.

10 shillings and 6 pence (10s. 6d.) made half a guinea.

The following coins were also in use:

He went along the Strand, over the crossing under the statue of Charles on horseback, and up Pall Mall East till he came to the opening into the park under the Duke of York’s column. The London night world was alive as he made his way. From the Opera Colonnade shrill voices shrieked at him as he passed, and drunken men coming down from the night supper-houses in the Haymarket saluted him with affectionate cordiality. The hoarse waterman from the cabstand, whose voice had perished in the night air, croaked out at him the offer of a vehicle; and one of the night beggar-women who cling like burrs to those who roam the street at these unhallowed hours still stuck to him, as she had done ever since he had entered the Strand.

Anthony Trollope,
The Three Clerks
(1858)

Three o’clock, and half-past three, and they had passed over London Bridge. They had heard the rush of the tide against obstacles; and looked down, awed, through the dark vapour on the river; had seen little spots of lighted water where the bridge lamps were reflected, shining like demon eyes, with a terrible fascination in them for guilt and misery. They had shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in nooks. They had run from drunkards. They had started from slinking men, whistling and signing to one another at bye corners, or running away at full speed. Though everywhere the leader and the guide Little Dorrit, happy for once in her youthful appearance, feigned to cling to and rely upon Maggy. And more than once some voice, from among a knot of brawling or prowling figures in their path, had called out to the rest to ‘let the woman and the child go by!’

Charles Dickens,
Little Dorrit
(1857)