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London Labour and the London Poor

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London Labour and the London Poor

By: Henry Mayhew
Narrated by: David Timson
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About this listen

London Labour and the London Poor is a rare and fascinating insight into the lives and struggles of the 19th-century poor. Written by journalist and reformer Henry Mayhew, a founder and editor of the satirical magazine Punch, it collects hundreds of testimonials from the lower strata of Victorian society. We encounter street entertainers, 'pure finders', cabinetmakers, gingerbread sellers, 'screeve-fakers', swindlers, and burglars. We hear accounts from toshers finding items in sewers, people attempting to train pigs to dance, and witness the sale of everything from gilt watches and chickweed to needles, dog collars, and eel soup. It is a remarkable work, said to have inspired the socially conscious fiction of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, who described it as 'a picture of human life so wonderful, so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances own they never read anything like to it'.

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Public Domain (P)2018 Naxos Audiobooks 19th Century Classics Europe Great Britain Modern Poverty & Homelessness Social Sciences World England Witty Fiction
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Fascinating and well written. Should be required reading for all economists. Sets out in detail how the increase in production does not necessarily bring about a more contented and less poverty-stricken population- (during the period of the author, quote the reverse).

Fascinating and well written

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