Spitalfields: gang violence, 372; housing, 182
Spitalfields Workhouse, 216
spittoons, 356 & n
squares: built, 260–2; planted, 261; purpose and use, 261–4
stagecoaches: carry mail, 91–2; numbers, 39; offices used by streetsellers, 152; routes and schedules, 90; see also coaches; short-stagecoaches
Stamford Brook (river), 200
Stanley, Edward Henry, Lord (later 15th Earl of Derby), 276, 336
Staple’s Inn, 32
steamers: on Thames, 65–9, 276–7
Stirling, Edward, 406
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 105
Strand: developed, 269–71; housing, 182
strawyards, 197
street cries, 134–5, 149–50, 283 & n
street lighting, 53–5, 88
street pumps and standpipes, 209–10, 210
street traders: buy from householders, 147–8; dress, 145–6; earnings, 141, 243; equipment and transport, 150; favoured selling locations, 142, 151–2; of matches, 159–60, 160; and poverty, 160–2; of prepared food and drink, 281–8; seasonal, 142–3; services, 148; and shopkeepers, 151–19; temporary, 161–2; transport methods, 22; ubiquity, 140
streets: amusements and recreations, 304–7, 318; building of, 60–1; names and numbering, 57–8, 201; noise, 149; parish maintenance, 56; pavements (footpaths), 38–9; pedestrian areas, 39; professional entertainers and musicians, 252–9, 253; public ceremonies and celebrations, 308–12, 315–17; surfaces, 33–8; voices, 247–8, 251; see also roads
suicide, 418–22
Summerson, Esther (character, Bleak House), 95, 157, 204
Sun Fire-Office, 174
Sundays: legislation on, 376; markets, 135–6
Surbiton, 105
Sutherland, George Granville William Leveson-Gower, 3rd Duke of, 121, 343
sweeps see chimney sweeps
Swell’s Night Guides, The, 404–6, 412
Swills, Little (character, Bleak House), 356
Swiveller, Dick (character, The Old Curiosity Shop), 288, 303, 357
Syon House, Chiswick: lion from Northumberland House relocated to, 268
Taglioni, Marie, 98n
Tait, William: Magdalenism, 396, 418
Tale of Two Cities, A (CD), 381, 393
tallymen, 163
Tartar, Mr (character, Edwin Drood), 423
taverns, 242
Tayler, William, 51, 215, 365
tea gardens, 274–5
Temple Bar: heads of traitors displayed, 381, 390; marks entrance to City, 7; narrowness, 46–7; relocated, 7n
Temple gardens, 226 & n
Ternan, Ellen (Nelly), 6–7, 406
Thackeray, William Makepeace: attends public execution, 385, 389; on coach and rail travel, 101; and Great Stink (1858), 223–4; on lounging at the Pantheon, 237; The Newcomes, 362–3; Pendennis, 359; Vanity Fair, 174
Thames, river: Dickens’s preoccupation with, 423; embankment, 225–8, 227; excursions and leisure trips, 276–7; fishing, 126; as highway, 64–5, 67; regattas and rowing competitions, 275–6; and sewage control legislation (1858), 225; sewage disposal, 206, 209, 223; stairs and landing places, 65–6; steamers, 65–9, 276–7; suicides, 421–2; tea gardens, 275; water quality, 206; watermen and ferries, 65; see also bridges
Thames watermen: Royal Regatta, 275
theatres: entrance charges, 352 & n; fires, 326, 330–1; popular, 278; as sites for food selling, 288; women attend, 347, 401, 403–5
Tigg, Montague (character, Martin Chuzzlewit), 286
Times, The (newspaper): on Braidwood’s funeral, 119; on demolishing poor housing, 188; on importuning women in street, 402–3; letter from slum-dwellers, 194–5; on pillory, 383; price, 154; reports indecent assaults on sentries, 414; supports Hyde Park protestors, 377; on treatment of the poor, 170
tinderboxes, 158–9
tinkers, 148
Todd, Sweeney, 285
toll gates see turnpikes
Tom-all-Alone’s (slum area, Bleak House), 49, 187, 195
Tom’s Coffee-House, 359n
Tooley Street: fire (1861), 111–17, 112, 327
Tothill Fields prison, 172, 383
Tottenham, Mrs (of Berners Street), 17, 19
Tower Bridge, 65
Town Improvements Clauses Act (1847), 191
Tox, Miss (character, Dombey and Son), 85, 288
toys, 152–3
Tozer, Fire Engineer, 117
Traddles, Tommy (character, David Copperfield), 31n, 295
traditions and celebrations, 320
Trafalgar Square: constructed, 56, 267–71, 273–4; statues, 272 & n
Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich, 276–7
traffic lights, 45
trampers, 164–6
transportation (penal), 179, 386n
Traveller’s Oracle, The, 86n
Tristan, Flora, 192 & n, 408 & n, 418
Trollope, Anthony: Castle Richmond, 38; Phineas Redux, 85; The Warden, 260, 295; The Way We Live Now, 78
Trollope, Thomas, 95, 184
Tuckniss, Revd William, 397
Tulkinghorn, Mr (character, Bleak House), 187
turnpikes and toll gates, 40–4, 43
Twist, Oliver (character, Oliver Twist), 30, 180, 183, 194, 198, 386
Tyburn (place), 202
Tyburn (river), 200, 202
typhus and typhoid, 215 & n
umbrellas: selling, 140–1
Underground railway (the tube): beginnings, 76–9; station names, 73n
undertakers, 215, 221–2
Vaccination Act (1840), 213
Vagrancy Acts: (1822), 414; (1824), 168
Vauxhall Bridge, 64
Vauxhall pleasure gardens, 43
Veck, Trotty (character, The Chimes), 157–8
Veneering, Mr (character, Our Mutual Friend), 85
venereal diseases, 400
Vestris, Mme (Lucia Elizabeth Mathews), 405
Victoria Park, 267
Victoria, Queen: accession (1837), 6; assassination attempts on, 313; birthday celebrations, 365–6; celebrates end of Crimean War, 309; changing public attitude to, 311–15, 316; coronation, 311–12; criticises Greville’s diary, 311n; inherits money from Neild, 312–13n; reaches majority, 365; visits burntout Covent Garden theatre, 331; at Wellington’s funeral, 343; withdraws after Albert’s death, 314, 316, 365
Victoria railway station, 106n
Victoria Street, Westminster: built, 188–9
violence, 370–1
‘Visit to Newgate’ (CD; article), 418
Vizetelly, Henry, 29, 266, 382
Volunteer Corps, 251
Waight, William, 133
waiters: earnings, 298n, 299
Walbeck, Miss (prostitute), 413
Walbrook (river), 200
Walker, Dr George, 219, 221
Wallis, Henry: The Death of Chatterton (painting), 422
Walter (character, Dombey and Son), 305
‘Walter’ (pornographer), 55 & n, 401–2, 408n, 409–12
Wandle, river, 200
Wandsworth Bridge, 65
Ward, Ned: The Secret History of London Clubs, 404
Warren’s Blacking Factory, London, 3–4, 153, 185
Warrior (ship), 218
watchmen: call time and weather, 32, 33n; and knocking-up, 22–3; replaced by police, 377
water: domestic supply, 23, 209–11, 210; drinking dangers, 200; quality deteriorates, 206; for road cleaning, 51–2, 52; see also artesian wells
water pistols, 152
watercress sellers, 141–2, 145
Waterford, Henry de la Poer Beresford, 3rd Marquess of, 361 & n
Waterloo, battle of (1815): celebrations, 364
Waterloo Bridge, 64, 226, 419, 420
Waterloo railway station, 106
Waterman Company, 68
watermen (cabstand), 80 & n, 81–3
watermen (Thames), 65–6
Waterworks Clauses Act (1846), 209
Watts, Isaac, 220n
weddings: favours (posies of flowers), 315n
Weed, Thurlow, 174
Wegg, Silas (character, Our Mutual Friend), 144
Weller, Sam (character, Pickwick Papers), 10, 81, 185, 231, 247, 248, 282, 285, 301
Weller, Tony (character, Pickwick Papers), 94, 101
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of: decline and death, 335–6; and development of Trafalgar Square, 271; finances, 336–7; funeral, 261n, 310n, 323, 336–46; memorial arch and equestrian statue, 307 & n
Wellington, Kitty, Duchess of (née Pakenham), 336
Westbourne (river), 200, 202
Westminster: housing, 182; working poor, 188–9
Westminster Bridge, 45, 64
Westminster Medical Society, 217
Westminster Pit, near Tothill Fields, 348
Westminster Workhouse, 167
Wey, Francis, 108
Wheaton, Revd Nathaniel, 38, 55
whelks, 282–3
Whitbread’s brewery, 54
White Horse Cellars, Piccadilly, 95–6, 98
White Swan public house, Vere Street, 381 & n, 414
Whitechapel: slum area, 182; Workhouse, 180
Whitecross Street: housing, 182; market, 136; prison, 75
Whitefriars, 270n
Wild Boys of London, The (serial), 225
Wilfer, Bella (character, Our Mutual Friend), 28, 277
Wilfer, Reginald (character, Our Mutual Friend), 26, 296
Wilkins, William, 271
Willesden Fire Brigade, 328
William IV, King: anniversary of death, 311; coronation, 335, 364; reign, 5; statue, 272n
window-shopping, 237
Winsor, Frederick (born Winzer), 53–4 & n, 363
Wiseman, Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Stephen, Archbishop of Westminster, 321 & n
Wombwell’s Wild Beast Show, 278
women: entertainments and amusements for, 347; importuned in street, 402; in places of public entertainment, 347, 401, 403–4; and pubs, 350; street musicians, 255; and suicide, 418–19; walking, 28; working, 155; see also prostitutes
wood: as road surface, 36–7
workers: affected by weather, 164; temporary and seasonal, 162–5; unskilled and skilled, 163; see also street traders
workhouses, 167, 169–72, 180–1 & n, 214n
working hours, 28–9
working men: lifestyle, 23–4
Worms, Henry, 386n
Wright, Thomas, 23–4, 291
Wyatt, M.C.: statue of Wellington, 307
Wyon, Leonard, 27, 267, 311, 368, 376
Wyon, May, 376–7
Yardley (partner of James Cook), 414
Yates, Edmund, 64, 97, 296, 299
Yokel’s Preceptor, 402, 404, 416
1. Benjamin Robert Haydon’s Punch, or May Day (1829) encompassed the entire world in a painting he originally intended simply to entitle Life. On a corner of the New Road (now the Euston Road) a Punch and Judy show, left, amuses both rich (in the shape of the two horsemen behind) and poor (the crossing-sweeper, centre, and the barefoot apple-woman on the pavement). Right, chimney sweeps celebrate Mayday in traditional fashion, with their ‘Queen’ dressed in her best, and a Jack-in-the-Green wearing his wicker frame covered by greenery and May flowers. Haydon depicts every stage of life from cradle to grave: a baby is held up to watch Punch; a wedding party, identifiable by the favours in their hats, comes out of St Marylebone Parish Church; at the rear a funeral passes, identified by the ‘weepers’ the coachman wears around his hat. City and country folk are represented by the farmer, centre, with his dog, and the police officer; the honest (the policeman, the sailor and the guardsman, whose uniform indicates he is a Waterloo veteran) and the dishonest (the boy picking the farmer’s pocket) mingle on the canvas as in the streets.
2. Ludgate Circus, by Eugène Louis Lami (1850), above, shows a traffic ‘lock’, or jam, when the mass of unregulated street transport was brought to a dead halt. To the left and right are omnibuses, with a costermonger’s cart centre front. The conductor, or cad, stands on his step at the back of the bus on the left; his comparative height makes clear how low-ceilinged and cramped the bus interiors were.
3. Pool of London from London Bridge, by William Parrott (1841), shows how small the passenger steamers were that chugged up and down the river every dozen minutes or so, making the Thames a great commuter highway.
4. George Scharf, a German lithographer who spent his entire working life in London, illustrated scientific journals by day. But street-life in London was his passion, and he walked the city by night and by day, sketching endlessly. Betwen 6 and Seven O’Clock morning, Sumer (his English spelling remained erratic), shows, top row, second from right and bottom row, third from left, a milkman and a milkmaid, and bottom row, right, a dustman with his cart. The small boy, fourth left, top row, may be a muffin seller: his white clothes and flat cap suggest it, although he carries a deep basket rather than the more usual flat covered tray, and the object in his right hand does not appear to be the muffin-seller’s bell.
5. & 6. A Peep at the Gas Lights in Pall Mall, Thomas Rowlandson, above. Awestruck Londoners come to gaze at the first gas streetlights, which appeared in 1807. Meanwhile coal fires, population growth and climate combined to create the legendary ‘London particulars’, or pea-soup fogs, below, in George Cruikshank’s Foggy Weather (1819).
7. Dozens of warehouses along the southern riverbank were destroyed in the Tooley Street fire of 1861. In the centre is the London Fire Engine Establishment’s river-engine, while sightseers take up any available viewing station, whether along the north shore, in small boats or on London Bridge.
8. Covent Garden Market (c.1829), by Frederick Christian Lewis. A market had been held on this site for two centuries, but only in the 1820s, when this was painted, were permanent structures built to house the sellers. Here the canopy is only half-built, and the central area remains open, with makeshift stalls on the right.
9. Hungerford Stairs, by George Shepherd (1810), shows the pre- Embankment shore, now covered by Charing Cross station. Fourteen years after this was painted, The Old Fox pub on the right had become Warren’s Blacking Factory, where the child Charles Dickens laboured. On the left was the fictional location of the ‘dirty, tumbledown public house’ where the Micawbers lodged in David Copperfield before they emigrated to Australia.
10. The great dust-heaps that Dickens describes in Our Mutual Friend were not the product of a novelist’s imagination: here, at Battle Bridge (now King’s Cross), in 1837, a single heap is painted, towering over the nearby houses and the district’s market gardens. Although the artist only shows one, Battle Bridge was home to many rows of such heaps.
11. The great projects of the industrial age were often built by low-tech means – manual labour. Here, in 1825, George Scharf sketched the workers building the new Fleet sewer. Vic
12. One of the world’s earliest photographs, c.1841, by Fox Talbot, captured the building of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. St Martin-in-the-Fields is to the left, with the new Morley’s Hotel (where South Africa House now stands) behind the column. The statue of George IV, left, is already in place, but the rest of the square is still a wasteland behind the advertisement-laden hoardings.
13. & 14. Scharf carefully documented the many buildings that were about to be destroyed when, in 1830, the new London Bridge was re-erected 60 yards upriver from its old site. As well as memorializing the old, he also recorded the workers creating the new, giving singular view of their clothes and construction methods.
15. Scharf also painted the chimney sweeps dancing on their Mayday holiday. Here he shows the ‘Queen’ with her attendants. She holds the spoon into which, traditionally, donations were dropped, while behind her the Jackin-the-Green in his beehive of foliage follows along.
16. Scharf drew the northwest end of the St
rand in 1824, shortly before it was razed to create an access road to the new Trafalgar Square. Before the London Fire Engine Establishment was formed in 1833, fires were the responsibility of individual insurance companies, and the Sun Fire Office’s man, wearing the Sun’s red-and-gold uniform, directs his men pumping away at the green engine behind him. The Strand was one of London’s busiest streets, yet even here the paving was erratic, with a pile of loose paving-stones visible beside the lamppost.
17. The funeral car of the Duke of Wellington. The carriage itself was bronze, and the canopy, seventeen feet high, had to be lowered en route, to allow it to pass under Temple Bar. (A trial run was carried out in the middle of the night to make sure the weight and height of the vehicle would not cause it to topple over, or stick in the mud – which it did, briefly, only once on the day.) On the carriage were the duke’s many military honours, the collection dwarfing the red coffin at the top. This over-lavish display in 1852 was a turning point, and popular taste subsequently embraced less elaborate funerals. Vic
18. Greedy Old Nickford Eating Oysters, by William Heath (late 1820s), left, caricatures the owner of Crockford’s, an upper-class gambling-den, as the devil, swilling at a tub as rooks, symbolizing the young men being ‘rooked’, or cheated, fly towards him as he calls out to ‘Brother Mace’, mace being slang for a swindler. At bottom right, the oyster shells have been arranged to form a grotto, of the type children built on the first day of the oyster season, when they called out, ‘Please to remember the grotto’ as passers-by gave them pennies.
19. Upper-class men also amused themselves at animal-baiting. Here, in this 1821 watercolour, a tethered bear is set upon by terriers, and wagers are laid as to how long each one will last.
20. The caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson depicted two men in the pillory at Charing Cross, in 1819, by the equestrian statue of Charles I, which still stands on the south side of what is now Trafalgar Square. The man under the statue appears to be about to throw something, while the woman, centre front, in green, bends down to gather mud for the same purpose. Spectators watch from nearby windows, and also the rooftops. After 1816, the pillory was used only to punish perjurers, and the crowds – and violence – diminished. The punishment itself was discontinued after 1830.