London Labour and the London Poor

The article London Labour and the London Poor was written by Henry Mayhew and published by the newspaper Morning Chronicle in 1850. Originally, it was published in three volumes in the newspaper but later it was compiled into book form. Actually, it was written to be "a cyclopaedia of the industry, the want, and the vice of the great Metropolis" (Douglas-Fairhurst and Mayhew 3). Mayhew interviewed a lot of working people in London in order to document their state (Douglas-Fairhurst 1). It was his overall goal 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" (Douglas-Fairhurst and Mayhew 4). To do so, Mayhew interviewed different people on different topics to eventually categorise them. He also described his observations like the clothes, the living environment, and the habits. The detailed end product contains over 2 million words and can be seen as one of the most ambitious attempts to early sociology (Douglas-Fairhurst 1).

Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. "London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew". The Guardian, 16 Oct. 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/16/rereading-henry-mayhew-london-poor. Accessed 19 Mai 2021.

Douglas-Fairhurst, R. and Mayhew, H. London Labour and the London Poor (Oxford World’s Classics) (Illustrated Aufl.). Oxford University Press, 2012.