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The London Underworld in the Victorian Period : Authentic First-Person Accounts by Beggars, Thieves and Prostitutes
The London Underworld in the Victorian Period Authentic FirstPerson Accounts by Beggars Thieves and Prostitutes Author:Henry Mayhew The first and possibly the greatest sociological study of poverty in nineteenth-century London, this survey by a journalist invented the genre of oral history a century before the term was coined. Henry Mayhew and his collaborators explored hundreds of miles of London streets in the 1840s and 1850s, gathering thousands of pages of testimony from... more » the city's humblest residents. A sprawling, four-volume history resulted; this extract focuses on the criminal class. A classic reference source for sociologists, historians, and criminologists, this highly readable book contains true stories of degradation, horror, and desperation that rival Dickensian fiction.« less