The Victorian World
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The 19th Century Abyss
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"Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper; every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three ~ fruit and ‘sweetstuff’ manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red~herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back; a bird~fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a ‘musician’ in the front kitchen, a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one ~ filth everywhere ~ a gutter before the houses, and a drain behind ~ clothes drying, and slops emptying from the windows; ... men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing."
Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 1839 on St Giles Rookery
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"Those who wish to search London for gross examples of overcrowded dwellings may find them in the centre, or in any one of the four outskirts. Soho, St. James's, Westminster, and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, can lay no claim to purity in this respect; and that part of Westminster known as Tothill Fields is notoriously one of the greatest offenders. In the west there is Knightsbridge, rendered filthy and immoral by the presence of its large military barracks, with Chelsea, and Brentford; in the south there are Lambeth, Walworth, embracing Lock's Fields, and the Borough, with its notorious Kent Street; in the north there is Agar Town, built on a swamp, and running down to the canal in every stage of dirt and decay, with Somers' Town, Kentish Town, and Camden Town, each contributing its share to the general mass of misery; and in the east there are St. George's, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, and overgrown Shoreditch."
John Hollingshead, Ragged London in 1861
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"How much is conveyed in those two
short words ~ 'The Parish!'
And with how many tales of distress and misery, of
broken fortune
and ruined hopes, too often of unrelieved wretchedness
and
successful knavery are they associated!"
Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 1839 on The Victorian Parish
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Specific Victorian Links
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Click on Florie's photo to return to page 2 of "Jack the Ripper"
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Click on Charles Dickens' photo to visit the "Old Curiosity Shop"
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Background Image is
"Liverpool Customs House"
by John Atkinson Grimshaw, British
artist, 1836-1893