'Street Life in London' (1877)

[Coromandel]

Warning: don't look at this unless you have an hour or two to spare!

'Street Life in London' by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith 'with permanent photographic illustrations taken from life expressly for this publication'. was published in 1877. The text is full of fascinating detail of everyday life. Each short chapter is illustrated, with photographs pasted in. Thanks to the LSE you can download it, complete with photos, as a very large PDF file (about 68 MB) via a link given here:

https://
archives.lse.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=Catalog&id=SR+1146

Here are the chapter headings, with brief notes on some of the photos, especially where I've spotted names of the subjects:

- London nomades, p.1 (photo shows William Hampton's caravan, Battersea)
- London cabmen, p.4
- Covent Garden flower women, p.7
- Recruiting sergeants at Westminster, p.9
- Street floods in Lambeth, p.12 (photo taken outside rag store of Mr Rowlett)
- Public disinfectors, p.16 (photo taken 'in the yard adjoining the Vestry Hall, close by Ebury Bridge' and includes Mr Dickson, 'Inspector of Nuisances for the Parish or Union of St George's, Hanover Square')
- Street doctors, p.19 (photo of 'a vendor of cough lozenges, and healing ointment')
- Street advertising, p.22
- Clapham Common Industries, p.24 (photos of 'Photography on the Common' and 'Waiting for a hire', showing the son of Mr Laurence, one of two men who 'let out donkeys for riding' on the Common)
- "Caney" the clown, p.27 (photo shows "Caney" at work caning a chair)
- Dealer in fancy-ware, p.30
- The temperance sweep, p.33 (photo is of John Day, born in Lambeth, son of a road mender)
- The dramatic shoe-black, p.37 (photo of Jacobus Parker, a.k.a. Rumty)
- "Tickets", the card-dealer, p.39 (photo of "Tickets", a Frenchman who touts for business for a sign-writer)
- The old clothes of St. Giles, p.42 (photo shows 'a second-hand clothes shop in a narrow thoroughfare of St. Giles . . . called Lumber Court')
- A Convicts' Home, p.45 (photo taken in Drury Lane showing Mr Baylis with 'Ramo Sammy', an 'old Indian', 'the tam-tam man')
- The "wall worker", p.48 (photo includes a -- Cannon, 'son of a boot and shoemaker', who had formerly been a shoemaker himself but later had to resort to 'wall working' to make a living (hanging advertising boards on railings))
- Covent Garden labourers, p.51 (photo shows a group of labourers employed by Mr Dickson, florist)
- Halfpenny ices, p.53
- Black Jack, p.56 (page 56 is missing from the scan); photo of 'Black Jack' (who sold coke in the winter in the Battersea area) with his donkey
- The cheap fish of St. Giles's, p.58 (photo of Joseph Carney, costermonger)
- Cast-iron Billy, p.61 (photo of William Parragreen, or 'Cast-iron Billy', driver for the London General Omnibus Company)
-Workers on the "silent highway", p.64 (photo of watermen)
- The street fruit trade, p.67 (strawberry sellers?)
- The London boardmen, p.69 (photo of sandwich-board man)
- The water-cart, p.72 ('a fair specimen of the modern water-cart')
- "Mush-fakers" and ginger-beer makers, p.73 (mush = mushroom = umbrella)
- November effigies, p.77
- "Hookey Alf" of Whitechapel, p.79 (photo of a group including Hookey Alf a.k.a. "Ted Coally", who had lost his left arm after falling from a ladder at the Whitechapel coal wharves)
- The "Crawlers", p.81 (the photograph here has been published elsewhere since, and shows a child in the care of 'Scotty', one of a group of beggars often to be found 'huddled together on the workhouse steps in Short's Gardens')
- Italian street musicians, p.85
- The street locksmith, p.88
- The seller of shell-fish, p.90 (photo of a whelk man, who had formerly been a greengrocer but had lost his customers after smallpox broke out in his house; his two sons died)
- Flying dustmen, p.93
- Old furniture, p.96
- The independent shoe-black, p.98

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[Colin Moretti]

Having downloaded the book and had a very quick browse I can't wait for a quiet period to read it properly.

For obvious reasons I shall read two chapters with particular interest, Halfpenny Ices and Italian street musicians

Many thanks

Colin

[Mutley]

If you want to read the book on line rather than downloading it you can do so from the The Dictionary of Victorian London site.

My family were a very colourful part of street life during this period so I shall find it rather interesting.

Thanks Coromandel