 | London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 |  |
PREFACE.
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The present volume is the first of an intended series, which it is hoped will form,
when complete, a cyclopædia of the industry, the want, and the vice of the great
Metropolis.
It is believed that the book is curious for many reasons:
It surely may be considered curious as being the first attempt to publish the
history of a people, from the lips of the people themselves — giving a literal
description of their labour, their earnings, their trials, and their sufferings, in their
own "unvarnished" language; and to pourtray the condition of their homes and
their families by personal observation of the places, and direct communion with
the individuals.
It may be considered curious also as being the first commission of inquiry into
the state of the people, undertaken by a private individual, and the first "blue
book" ever published in twopenny numbers.
It is curious, moreover, as supplying information concerning a large body of
persons, of whom the public had less knowledge than of the most distant tribes of
the earth — the government population returns not even numbering them among
the inhabitants of the kingdom; and as adducing facts so extraordinary, that the
traveller in the undiscovered country of the poor must, like Bruce, until his stories
are corroborated by after investigators, be content to lie under the imputation of
telling such tales, as travellers are generally supposed to delight in.
Be the faults of the present volume what they may, assuredly they are rather
short-comings than exaggerations, for in every instance the author and his
coadjutors have sought to understate, and most assuredly never to exceed the
truth. For the omissions, the author would merely remind the reader of the
entire novelty of the task — there being no other similar work in the language by
which to guide or check his inquiries. When the following leaves are turned over,
and the two or three pages of information derived from books contrasted with the
hundreds of pages of facts obtained by positive observation and investigation,
surely some allowance will be made for the details which may still be left for
others to supply. Within the last two years some thousands of the humbler classes
of society must have been seen and visited with the especial view of noticing their
condition and learning their histories; and it is but right that the truthfulness of
the poor generally should be made known; for though checks have been usually
adopted, the people have been mostly found to be astonishingly correct in their
statements, — so much so indeed, that the attempts at deception are certainly the
exceptions rather than the rule. Those persons who, from an ignorance of the
simplicity of the honest poor, might be inclined to think otherwise, have, in order
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given in the present volume, and to perceive the extraordinary agreement in the
statements of all the vast number of individuals who have been seen at different
times, and who cannot possibly have been supposed to have been acting in concert.
The larger statistics, such as those of the quantities of fish and fruit, &c., sold
in London, have been collected from tradesmen connected with the several
markets, or from the wholesale merchants belonging to the trade specified — gentle-
men to whose courtesy and co-operation I am indebted for much valuable informa-
tion, and whose names, were I at liberty to publish them, would be an indisputable
guarantee for the facts advanced. The other statistics have been obtained in the
same manner — the best authorities having been invariably consulted on the subject
treated of.
It is right that I should make special mention of the assistance I have received
in the compilation of the present volume from Mr. Henry Wood and Mr. Richard
Knight (late of the City Mission), gentlemen who have been engaged with me
from nearly the commencement of my inquiries, and to whose hearty co-operation
both myself and the public are indebted for a large increase of knowledge. Mr.
Wood, indeed, has contributed so large a proportion of the contents of the present
volume that he may fairly be considered as one of its authors.
The subject of the Street-Folk will still require another volume, in order to com-
plete it in that comprehensive manner in which I am desirous of executing the
modern history of this and every other portion of the people. There still remain
— the Street-Buyers, the Street-Finders, the Street-Performers, the Street-Artizans,
and the Street-Labourers, to be done, among the several classes of street-people;
and the Street Jews, the Street Italians and Foreigners, and the Street Mechanics,
to be treated of as varieties of the order. The present volume refers more parti-
cularly to the Street-Sellers, and includes special accounts of the Costermongers and
the Patterers (the two broadly-marked varieties of street tradesmen), the Street
Irish, the Female Street-Sellers, and the Children Street-Sellers of the metropolis.
My earnest hope is that the book may serve to give the rich a more intimate
knowledge of the sufferings, and the frequent heroism under those sufferings, of
the poor — that it may teach those who are beyond temptation to look with charity on
the frailties of their less fortunate brethren — and cause those who are in "high
places," and those of whom much is expected, to bestir themselves to improve the
condition of a class of people whose misery, ignorance, and vice, amidst all the
immense wealth and great knowledge of "the first city in the world," is, to say the
very least, a national disgrace to us.
| London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | |