Voices of Victorian London

History is written by historians, and the voices of ordinary people rarely feature. But this unique collection of interviews from the middle of the nineteenth century allows their voices to be heard.
The journalist Henry Mayhew tramped the streets of London interviewing working people; this Hesperus selection from his work London Labour and the London Poor shows how they coped with the ups and downs of health and illness while continuing with the daily trial of scratching a living and feeding their
families. The people Mayhew met showed remarkable resilience and a surprising sense of humour about their lot in life. Jonathan Miller, theatre director, writer and doctor, writes an
introduction giving the social background to what Mayhew called the ‘undiscovered country of the poor’.

Henry Mayhew (1812–87) was a Victorian journalist who set out to investigate the economics of London trade through interviews with working people. He was a friend of Charles Dickens, and some of his interviews, published in a national newspaper, influenced Dickens’ creation of characters in his novels.

Jonathan Miller is a British theatre and opera director, broadcaster, author, doctor and historian of medicine. He lives in London.