A bit of the “other side” of London life in 1851 ................. stories from Henry Mayhew

"Of the thousand millions of human beings that are said to constitute  the population of the entire globe, there are – socially, morally, and perhaps even physically considered – two distinct and broadly marked races  viz., the wanders and the settlers-the vagabonds and the citizen – the nomadic and the civilized tribes.”*

Detail of a Costermonger

And with that Henry Mayhew plunges you in to the London of 1851.

The original accounts appeared first as articles in the London daily press, were then published under the title London Labour & the London Poor in 1851.

And just over a century later my edition of Mayhew’s London was issued, bought by mum and long ago passed to me.

Here are descriptions of what he called the “Street Folk” ranging from the “life of a Coster-lad," "the Dredgers or “River Finders” and the “Bird Catchers.”

Along the way there are detailed descriptions of the area like the London Street Markets, the language of the Coster mongers and much else.

So armed with Mr Mayhew’s guide I would happily have been able to know that “Flatch” was a halfpenny “Cool the esclop” meant “Look at the police” and if I was told the beer house was “Kenneteeno” it would have been stinking while the chap in the corner who was “Flach Kanurd” would have been drunk.

The Kitchen Fox Court Gray's Inn-Lane

What makes the book just that bit more fascinating is that it came out in the year 1851 which means that it is possible to crawl over the detailed census records matching his descriptions with the streets, courts and “dark places” that made up this bit of London.

If I am honest I have neglected Mr Mayhew over the years, spending my time on the equally unforgiving streets of Little Ireland, Deansgate and Angel Meadow in Manchester.

But with long summer days ahead, I rather think I shall leave the computer and sit in the garden with this slice of mid 19th century life form the city where I was born.

That said my edition according to the editors “has been designed for the convenience of the general reading public [and much] interesting material including all the longer passages has been sacrificed.”  
And that has meant the “contents of the entire fourth volume on prostitutes, thieves, swindlers and beggars have been omitted in entirety.”

Ah well you can’t have everything. Although just last week that has been sorted as our Saul has got me the full edition.

Location, London 1851

Pictures; the Kitchen Fox Court Gray’s-Inn- Lane and the London Costermonger, from London Labour & the London Poor 1851

*Henry Mayhew, Introduction, London Labour & the London Poor 1851,

A bit more of the “other side” of London life in 1851

"The first rats I caught was when I was about nine years of age. I ketched them an Mr Strickland’s a large cow keeper, in Little Albany –street, in Regent’s park.”  

Now if you wanted a pretty colourful way of being invited into the life of a nine year old on the streets of London this is as good as you can get.

It comes from observations of Henry Mayhew whose descriptions of London life appeared first as articles in the London daily press, and were then published under the title London Labour & the London Poor in 1851.*

And the rat catcher Jack Black was just one of hundreds Mr Mayhew interviewed.

Just over a century later my edition of Mayhew’s London was issued, bought by mum and long ago passed to me, and for Christmas our Saul bought me a new edition.

All of which I like because of that sense of continuity.

And like so many books which reported on the conditions of the working classes in the 19th century it has a direct relevance to BHC because although the scheme began almost a full twenty years after Mayhew began publishing his accounts, many of those who walked across his pages will have had children and some of those might have been migrated.

Now that is not to suggest for one minute that most of the people he wrote about were feckless or bad parents merely that his stories show those Londoners on the very margin and by extension could represent the urban poor in any one of a dozen British towns.

And that makes his book compelling reading because there is no doubt that a full two or three decades after its publication a lot of the descriptions in London life could be replicated.

I have no idea what happened to Jack Black who went on to tell Henry Mayhew “at that time Little Albany –street, in Regent’s park was all fields and meaders in them parts  and I recollect there was a big orchard on one side of the sheds I was only doing it for a game ........... When a rat bite touches the bone, it makes you faint .... in a minute and it bleeds dreadful.”

What is interesting is that amongst all the gruesome details of rat catching Mr Black revealed that at the age of 15 he had got interested in birds and during his conversation he gave a series of renditions  of different bird songs.

On one level we shouldn’t be surprised but it does challenge that picture that many have of the urban poor in the middle of the 19th century.

And that is all I am going to say, other than that it is a fascinating read.

And one I shall return to ... again and again.**

Location; London

Picture; the Boys Crossing-sweepers,  from London Labour & the London Poor 1851

*Henry Mayhew, Introduction, London Labour & the London Poor 1851

**A bit of the “other side” of London life in 1851 ................. stories from Henry Mayhew, 
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-bit-of-other-side-of-london-life-in.html

The skip ……. a man with a van …… and tales of recycling ….. with a nod to the dustman, shore man and sewer hunters

 There is a lot to be said for the recycling man with his van.

I say man, but there is more than one, and as like as not it will be a woman.

Some come quietly in the early morning while others will announce their presence with a loudspeaker alternating between bursts of music and the cry, “fridges, old boilers, pipes and assorted scrap”.

For those like me who were born in the first half of the last century, it brings back memories of the Rag and Bone Man who travelled the streets with a horse and cart and called for “any old iron” or whatever took his fancy.

Then like now it was a one-way trade in which you disposed of the goods, which he accepted and later would sort out and sell on.

As a form of recycling, it worked and does so again.

So early yesterday morning the man with the van stopped outside Sidney the skip, rooted round, picking out a sink and a couple of kitchen cupboards.

Being a discerning sort of chap, there were items he discarded having first pulled them out, inspected them before throwing them back.

Nor will he have been alone.  One skip close to us was visited three times one morning, with a different team calling the following day, when the skip was again almost full.

Now none of this is new, and a quick flick through the past will reveal the extent to which people of the mid-19th century made an even more precarious living from other people’s rubbish.

They were on the margins of poverty and garnered an income from sifting through the left behinds.

So, my Mayhew* written in the first half of the 19th century picked over occupations like the dustman, shore man and sewer hunters, all of whom found value in the valueless.

Shore workers worked the sewers, in “gangs of three and four for the sake of company, and in order to better defend themselves from the rats …… [finding] great quantities of money – of copper money especially; sometimes they dive their arm down to the elbow in the mud and filth and bring up shillings, sixpences, half crowns and sovereigns. **

Even more central to London life were the dustmen who carted away the dust and ash from the capital’s homes.  

Mayhew estimated that the consumption of coal in the metropolis was, 3,500,000 tons per annum which in turn created a vast mountain of ash and cinders, and as ever where there was muck there was money. 

Like everywhere that money was made by a handful of contractors while the dirty work fell to those they employed.

These men carried the ash to the dust yards where an army of labourer’s sifted through the rubbish which threw up oyster shells, old bricks, old boots and shoes, old ten kettles, as well as old rags and bones.  None of which could be recycled into brick making but ended up as hard core for new buildings or new roads.

While old shoes were sold to London shoemakers who used them to stuff between the in-sole and the outer one, leaving the rags and bones to be disposed of at the marine-store shops. ***

It is a story which is worth a deeper study, but for now I think I will just reflect that the passage of 170 or so years has left our man with his van marginally better off.

We shall see.

Location; London 1851, Chorlton, 2021

Pictures; The London Dustman, and View of a Dust Yard, London, 1851, and skips I have known giving up their treasures, Chorlton, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Henry Mayhew, London Labour & the London Poor 1851London Labour & the London Poor 1851

** Mayhew page 330

*** ibid Mayhew page 350

Of the street sellers of Ices and Ice Cream .... and the day in 1851 when Mr. Mayhew got it very wrong

Now when I want to fall back into the London of the 1850s, there is no better source than the observations of Henry Mayhew whose descriptions of London life appeared first as articles in the London daily press, and were then published under the title London Labour & the London Poor in 1851.*

They are a fascinating insight into how the poor lived and worked, and chief amongst these were the street sellers, and these I have already written about.**

And so as I have become interested again in the manufacture and sale of ice cream in the 19th century I turned to Mr. Mayhew, who for once didn’t quite get it right. 

"I have already treated of the street luxury of pine-apples, and have now to deal with the greater street rarity of ice creams.

A quick-witted street seller – but, not in the provision’ line- conversing with me upon this subject, and said: ‘Ices in the streets! Aye, and there will be jellies next and then mock turtle, and the real ticket, sir.  I don’t know nothing of the difference between the real thing and the mock, but I once had some cheap mock in an eating house, and it tasted like stewed tripe with a little glue.

You’ll keep your eyes open sir, at the Great Exhibition; and you’ll see a new move or two in the streets, take my word for it.  Penny glasses of champagne, I shouldn’t wonder.

Not withstanding the sanguine anticipation of my street friend, the sale of ices in the streets has not been such as to offer any great encouragement to a preservation of the traffic”.

Alas Mr. Mayhew didn’t include pictures of the ice cream sellers, so I have fallen back on The Baked Potato Man, and the London Coffee Stall.

Location; London in 1851

Pictures; The Baked Potato Man, and the London Coffee Stall, 1851 from  London Labour & the London Poor 

*Henry Mayhew, Introduction, London Labour & the London Poor 1851

*London Labour and the London Poor, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/London%20Labour%20and%20the%20the%20London%20Poor