The Victorian City

by Judith Flanders

  ‘treated as mendicants’: footnote: William Kitchiner, The Traveller’s Oracle; or, Maxims for Locomotion: Containing Precepts for Promoting the Pleasures ... of Travellers (London, Henry Colburn, 1828), vol. 2, pp. 78–9; Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 637; Schlesinger, Saunterings, p. 5.

  ‘cockade in your hat’: livery: Zachariah Allen, The Practical Tourist ... (Providence, RI, A. S. Beckwith, 1832), vol. 2, pp. 250–51, Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Costume, pp. 182–5; Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 487.

  ‘control the horse’: descriptions, benefits and drawbacks of carriages and cabs: Thrupp, History of Coaches, pp. 82–3, 118, William Bridges Adams, English Pleasure Carriages; Their Origin, History, Varieties ... (London, Charles Knight, 1837), pp. 240–43, Ross Murray, The Modern Householder: A Manual of Domestic Economy in all its Branches (London, Frederick Warne and Co., [1872]), pp. 456ff.

  ‘of the hood’: lack of noise: Adams, English Pleasure Carriages, p. 241; number of street lights: John Hollingshead, Underground London (London, Groombridge, 1862), p. 199; mailcoaches’ lighting: Edward Corbett, ‘Colonel late Shropshire Militia’, An Old Coachman’s Chatter, with some Practical Remarks on Driving, ‘by a semi-professional’ (facsimile of 2nd edn [first published ?1894], Wakefield, EP Publishing, 1974), pp. 46–7; hansom’s light: A. Mayhew, Paved with Gold, p. 110.

  ‘one with a light’: carriage lamps: Kitchiner, Traveller’s Oracle, vol. 2, p. 100, and O’Dea, Social History of Lighting, pp. 76–7, which also contains the ‘harvest moon’ quote; Queen Victoria in Paris: ILN, 8 September 1855, pp. 308–9.

  ‘something altogether different’: Corbett, Old Coachman’s Chatter, pp. 46–7.

  4. IN AND OUT OF LONDON

  ‘glared away’: Nicholas Nickleby, pp. 89–90.

  ‘hours straight’: Dickens’ trip to Yorkshire: Ackroyd, Dickens, p. 265.

  ‘o’clock at night’: post-chaises and system: Hayward, Days of Dickens, p. 84; guidebook: Leigh’s New Picture of London (1819 edition), pp. 419–20; Pickwick Papers, pp. 122–5.

  ‘the mail moving’: decoration and running of mailcoaches: Hayward, Days of Dickens, pp. 76–80; dress: Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Costume, pp. 239–40.

  ‘at a gallop’: MacKenzie, The American in England, vol. 1, p. 118, 128–9.

  ‘per mile inside’: Little Dorrit, pp. 203–4; fares: Hayward, The Days of Dickens, p. 80.

  ‘of burning joy’: this paragraph and the next: Thomas de Quincey, The English Mail-Coach and Other Essays (London, J. M. Dent, 1961), pp. 17–18.

  ‘coaches were late’: Pickwick Papers, p. 306; twelve miles an hour: Calvin Colton, Four Years in Great Britain, 1831–5 (2nd edn, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1836), pp. 54–5; coach names: Thomas Burke, Travel in England, from Pilgrim and Pack-Horse to Light Car and Plane (London, T. Batsford, 1942), p. 92; brass clock: Lockwood, Passionate Pilgrims, pp. 45–6; London–Brighton refund: Burke, Travel in England, p. 100.

  ‘called the Flyer’: Martin Chuzzlewit, pp. 141, 174; David Copperfield, p. 123.

  ‘and to locals’: Trollope, What I Remember, p. 5; Bleak House, p. 74.

  ‘fire being stirred’: mouldy-looking room: ‘Early Coaches’, Sketches by Boz, p. 161; Pickwick Papers, pp. 432, 469.

  ‘only bare boards’: booking procedure: Hayward, The Days of Dickens, pp. 76–80; tipping: Colman, European Life and Manners, vol. 1, p. 142; 1837 capacity: Bradfield, Public Carriages, p. 30; mailbags and benches: Trollope, What I Remember, p. 34.

  ‘of your Ride’: Kitchiner, Traveller’s Oracle, vol. 1, pp. 162–3.

  ‘at the same time’: coachmen’s salutations: Heman D. D. Humphrey, Great Britain, France and Belgium: A Short Tour in 1835 (NY, Harper & Brothers, 1838), vol. 1, p. 24; Pickwick Papers, p 570.

  ‘course of a day’: Pickwick Papers, p. 362–4.

  ‘his own nephew’: greatcoats and Brighton coach: Yates, Recollections, pp. 32–4.

  ‘to the reader’: the ‘Taglioni’: Corbett, Old Coachman’s Chatter, pp. 75–6; [Jonathan Badcock and Thomas Rowlandson], Real Life in London, or, The Rambles and Adventures of Bob Tallyho..., 2 vols (London, Jones & Co., 1821), vol. 1, p. 12.

  ‘mitigate the cold’: Constable: cited in Burke, Travel in England, p. 95; forward versus backward seating, and ‘calefacient’: Kitchiner, Traveller’s Oracle, pp. 164–5, 167; open window: Pickwick Papers, p. 674.

  ‘prepared oilskin’: [Thomas Hughes], Tom Brown School Days, ‘by an Old Boy’, (Cambridge [?MA], Macmillan & Co., 1857), pp. 82–3; Frederick von Raumer, England in 1835: Being a Series of letters Written to Friends in Germany ..., trans. Sarah Austin (London, John Murray, 1836), vol. 2, p. 94; Xavier Baron (ed.), London 1066–1914, p. 235, suggests that these are not in fact letters at all, but were written by von Raumer for publication; Pickwick Papers, p. 676.

  ‘appearance dead’: Nicholas Nickleby, p. 116; Martin Chuzzlewit, pp. 723–4.

  ‘left off raining’: Dickens travelling for the Morning Chronicle: Forster, Life, vol. 1, p. 247.

  ‘with some difficulty’: W. Outram Tristram, Coaching Days and Coaching Ways (London, Macmillan and Co., 1888), p. 13.

  ‘positively understated’: possible accidents: Corbett, Old Coachman’s Chatter, pp. 48ff.; Pickwick Papers, p. 725; ‘I do verily’: Forster, Life, vol. 1, p. 79.

  ‘passing, or past’: ‘Dullborough Town’, in All the Year Round, 30 June 1860, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 4, p. 140. The SER was the South-Eastern Railway, which ran from Folkestone to Dover from 1844, and to London from 1850.

  ‘is secure’: Thackeray, ‘De Juventute’, Roundabout Papers (London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1869), pp. 73–4; Pickwick Papers, p. 107; Dombey and Son, pp. 289–90.

  ‘over twelve miles’: Dickens, Preface to 1847 Cheap Edition of Pickwick Papers, p. 762; exasperated commuter: Barker and Robbins, History of London Transport, vol. 1, p. 66; Schlesinger, Saunterings, pp. 169–70; 160 million rail journeys: White, London in the Nineteenth Century, p. 79; railway to Sydenham: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 181; afternoon concert trains: ibid., p. 187.

  ‘Victoria at six’: Railway Regulation Act: H. J. Dyos, Exploring the Urban Past: Essays in Urban History, ed. David Cannadine and David Reeder (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 89; shunted trains: Justin McCarthy, Reminiscences (London, Chatto & Windus, 1899), vol. 1, p. 1; Ludgate Hill to Victoria: Dyos, ibid., p. 89.

  ‘later with gas’: second- and third-class carriage descriptions: Wey, A Frenchman Sees London, pp. 278–9, Burke, Travel in England, p. 117, and John Hollingshead, My Lifetime, 2 vols (London, Sampson Low, Marston, 1895), vol. 1, p. 50; Beale, Recollections, p. 10; second-class carriage description: Daniel C. Eddy, Europa, or, Scenes and Society in England, France, Italy and Switzerland (Boston, N. L. Dayton, Higgins & Bradley, 1856), pp. 42–3; accommodation train price: Revd John E. Edwards, Random Sketches and Notes of European Travel in 1856 (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1857), p. 35; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (London, George Routledge & Co., 1854), p. 21; lamps: Gloag, Victorian Comfort, pp. 161ff.; seats and light: James M. Hoppin, Old England: Its Scenery, Art, and People (New York, Hurd and Houghton, 1867), pp. 2–3.

  ‘were City commuters’: range of commuting: Freeman and Aldcroft (eds), Transport in Victorian Britain, p. 144.

  ‘to this loop’: the development of railway stations in London and the ideas in this paragraph: Susan Ryley Hoyle, London Journal, ‘The First Battle for London: A Case Study of the Royal Commission on Metropolitan Termini 1846’, 8: 2 (1982), pp. 140–41.

  ‘a mean structure’: Euston: Jackson, London’s Termini, pp. 20–24; King’s Cross: Jackson, ibid., p. 67; London Bridge: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 97.

  ‘parcels office’: Euston: Jackson, ibid., pp. 26–7; Bibles: Hippolyte Taine, Notes on England, trans. W. F. Rae (London, Strahan, 1872), p. 15; booking tickets: Forney, Letters from Europe, p. 38.

  ‘brick wall’: reserving seats, place for luggage: [R. S. Surtees], Hints to Rail
way Travellers and Country Visitors to London, ‘by an Old Stager’ (London, Bradbury and Evans, 1851), pp. 7–8; luggage vans: Fitzroy Gardner, Days and Ways of an Old Bohemian (London, John Murray, 1921), p. 15; checking tickets: at Waterloo: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 21; at Euston: ibid.; at London Bridge: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 139; Wey, A Frenchman Sees London, p. 279.

  ‘speeding up’: Dickens, Bleak House, p. 211; Wyon, Journal, BL Add MS 59,617, 16 November 1853.

  1861: THE TOOLEY STREET FIRE

  The main narrative of the fire has been drawn from newspaper reports, in particular Birmingham Daily Post (which reprinted the Observer’s eyewitness accounts), 24 June 1861, Daily News, 24 and 25 June, 1 July 1861, Lloyd’s, 7 July 1861, Morning Chronicle, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28 June, 2 July 1861, Morning Post, 27 and 29 June, 9 July 1861, and Standard, 26 June 1861. The only exceptions are: Munby quotations: Hudson, Munby, pp. 100–101, except the people salvaging fat, which is cited in Rick Allen, ‘Observing London Street-Life: G. A. Sala and A. J. Munby’, in Tim Hitchcock and Heather Shore (eds), The Streets of London: From the Great Fire to the Great Stink (London, Rivers Oram Press, 2003), p. 208; the fat on the river as far as Erith: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 85; funeral of Braidwood: Morning Chronicle, 1 July 1861, The Times, 1 July 1861.

  5. THE WORLD’S MARKET

  ‘cabbages and turnips’: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, p. 81.

  ‘Borough market’: Bedford Estate development: W. J. Passingham, London’s Markets: Their Origin and History (London, Sampson Low, Marston [1935]), p. 63; the market’s appearance in 1829: Celina Fox (ed), London – World City, 1800–1840 (London, Yale University Press, 1992), p. 296; Piazza Hotel and Floral Hall: ILN, 10 April 1858, p. 367, 15 May 1858, p. 483.

  ‘cart in front of them’: waggoners’ dress: Christobel Williams-Mitchell, Dressed for the Job: The Story of Occupational Costume (Poole, Blandford Press, 1982), p. 66; Bob: Smith, Curiosities, pp. 112ff.

  ‘with a breastwork’: ‘crowd, bustle, hum’: [William Moy Thomas], ‘Covent Garden Market’, Household Words, 175, 30 July 1853, pp. 505–11; dress: Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Costume, p. 148; divisions of produce sellers: Charles Knight (ed.), London, 6 vols (London, Charles Knight, 1841–4), vol. 5, p. 141; Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 696.

  ‘around their necks’: subsidiary sellers: Thomas, ‘Covent Garden Market’; basket sellers, and perambulating sellers in the next paragraph: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 82–3; dress: Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Costume, p. 148.

  ‘and dust protection’: porters’ knots: Lucas, Occupational Costume, pp. 367–8, De Marly, Working Dress, p. 88.

  ‘indoors only in 1849’: [Dickens and W. H. Willis], ‘A Popular Delusion’, Household Words, 1 June 1850, in Stone, Uncollected Writings, vol. 1, pp. 113–22.

  ‘hours of being caught’: destruction of Thames fisheries: Parliamentary Select Committee report, 1810, in Passingham, London’s Markets, p. 46; deliveries: Dickens and Willis, ‘A Popular Delusion’.

  ‘switched to oilskin’: Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Costume, pp. 148, 328ff.; ‘almost fashionable’: Dickens and Willis, ‘A Popular Delusion’; Our Mutual Friend, pp. 208–9.

  ‘or to costermongers’: drinks, ‘swallow you up else’, and bummarees: Sala, Twice Round the Clock, pp. 12–13, 16, 19–23; auction: Dickens and Willis, ‘A Popular Delusion’.

  ‘confounded the senses’: Oliver Twist, p. 171.

  ‘jolt of the vehicle’: numbers of animals: Alec Forshaw and Theo Bergström, Smithfield Past and Present (London, Heinemann, 1980), p. 54; access roads: Greenwood, Unsentimental Journeys, p. 18; Wheaton, Journal of a Residence, pp. 285–6.

  ‘or sieves’: size of Smithfield: Passingham, London’s Markets, p. 8; Carlyle’s estimate: Thomas Carlyle to Alexander Carlyle, 14 December 1824, Carlyle Letters, vol 3, pp. 217–22; [Charles Dickens and W. H. Wills], ‘The Heart of Mid-London’, Household Words, in Stone (ed.), Dickens’ Uncollected Writings, vol. 1, pp. 101–11.

  ‘long as possible’: [Dickens], ‘A Monument of French Folly’, Household Words, 8 March 1851, in The Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 2: The Amusements of the People and Other Papers, ed. Michael Slater (London, J. M. Dent, 1996), p. 328.

  ‘amok regularly’: ‘A Monument of French Folly’, p. 330.

  ‘in the journals’: Dombey and Son, p. 128; ‘The Heart of Mid-London’, p. 110.

  ‘with wet dirt’: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 27–8.

  ‘hides or meat’: new Smithfield: Passingham, London’s Markets, pp. 10–12, and Daniel Joseph Kirwan, Palace and Hovel: or, Phases of London Life ..., ed. A. Allan (first published 1870; London, Abelard-Schuman, 1963), p. 128; Leadenhall: ibid., p. 78; Dombey and Son, p. 778.

  ‘be a nuisance’: John Weale, London Exhibited in 1852 ... (London, John Weale, 1852), pp. 610ff.

  ‘as the child’: ice cream and poultry at Hungerford: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, pp. 232–3; reconstruction: Thomas Allen, The History and Antiquities of London, Westminster and Southwark, and Parts Adjacent (London, Cowie & Strange, vols 1–4, 1827, vol. 5, 1837), vol. 5, pp. 286–7; Dickens and the cherries: John Payne Collier, An Old Man’s Diary, Forty Years Ago, ‘for strictly private circulation’, in 2 vols (London, Thomas Richards, 1871–2), p. 15.

  ‘gory to the elbows’: Lumber Court and Newport markets: Weale, London Exhibited, pp. 610ff.; number of barrels: John Hogg, London as it is, Being a Series of Observations on the Health, Habits, and Amusements of the People (London, John Macrone, 1837), p. 222; Greenwood, Unsentimental Journeys, p. 23.

  ‘to six people’: Clare market: Phillips, Wild Tribes, p. 78; street with tripe boiler: George Godwin, London Shadows: A Glance at the ‘Homes’ of the Thousands (London, George Routledge, 1854), p. 62.

  ‘from birth to death’: William Waight: Health of Towns Association, The Sanitary Condition of the City of London ... with the Sub-Committee’s Reply ... (London, W. Clowes, 1848), p. 16; St Giles slaughterhouses: [Henry Morley], ‘Life and Death in St Giles’, Household Words, 13 and 18 November 1858, p. 526; ‘cattle-driving, cattle-slaughtering’: ‘A Monument to French Folly’, p. 331.

  ‘sold it wholesale’: [R. H. Horne], ‘The Cattle Road to Ruin’, Household Words, 14 and 29 June 1850, pp. 325–30.

  ‘and fire-wood’: types of lighting: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, p. 9. ‘great jets’: Phillips, Wild Tribes, p. 78; ‘primitive tubes’: Sala, Gaslight and Daylight, pp. 260–2.

  ‘Here’s your turnips’: St Luke’s: Greenwood, Unsentimental Journeys, p. 10; Bethnal Green: Greenwood, Wilds of London, p. 32; New Cut: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 9–10.

  ‘trailing behind’: Wright, The Great Unwashed, pp. 208–15.

  ‘meagre and unwashed’: the women without bags: ‘Rough Sketches of London Life’, ‘II: The Brill’, Church of England Temperance Magazine, 2 April 1866, p. 102; church bells: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 11–12; Whitecross market: Smith, Curiosities, pp. 250ff.

  ‘Saturday-night heads’: barbers: Wright, Some Habits and Customs of the Working Class, pp. 219–23; Nicholas Nickleby, pp. 780–81, 784.

  ‘to paper mills’: the Exchange: Smith, Curiosities, pp. 250–56; breaking and turning: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 368–9, vol. 2, pp. 26–7; wholesale market: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 40.

  ‘military suppliers’: admission, and subsidiary markets: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 368–9, vol. 2, pp. 26–7.

  ‘the cheapest shops’: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, p. 369, vol. 2, p. 35.

  ‘horses and manure’: smell of Rag Fair: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 39; quantities that horses eat: Asa Briggs, Victorian Things (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1990), p. 415; Pickford’s, coal deliveries, and lack of quantifiable data: Thompson, ‘Nineteenth-century Horse Sense’, pp. 60–81; footnote on pub names: from ‘The Signs of the Times’, in Smith, Little World of London, pp. 129ff., alth
ough it is troubling that there is no information about how, or when, or why, this list was compiled.

  ‘at a great rate’: this paragraph and the next: Diana Donald, ‘“Beastly Sights”: The Treatment of Animals as a Moral Theme in Representations of London, c.1820–1850’, in Dana Arnold (ed.), The Metropolis and its Image: Constructing Identities for London, c.1750–1950 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1999), pp. 60–62, Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, p. 181, Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 20, Wheaton, Journal of a Residence, p. 128.

  6. SELLING THE STREETS

  ‘something outdoors’: number of street sellers: the discrepancy is noted in White, London in the Nineteenth Century, p. 198. It is to be expected that this trade, carried out by the very poor, would be difficult for the authorities to quantify, and in any case Mayhew’s statistics are notoriously unreliable (see, among others, Gertrude Himmelfarb, ‘Mayhew’s Poor: A Problem of Identity’, Victorian Studies, 14 (March 1971), pp. 307–20); one out of every 150: the census gives a population of 2,363,341 in London in 1851.

  ‘Humrellars to mend’: income: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 54–5; housewives in the rain: Smith, The Little World of London, p. 90.; umbrella sellers and repairers: Smith, Curiosities, pp. 68–71.

  ‘4d a day’: ‘a full market hand’: A. Mayhew, Paved with Gold, p. 73; Hackney markets: Greenwood, Wilds of London, p. 183; general details of trade, and next paragraph: Greenwood, Unsentimental Journeys, pp. 118ff.

  ‘lettuces and onions’: number of stalls: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, p. 6; costers’ carts: ibid., vol. 1, pp. 26–7; Lamb’s Conduit Street: Hudson, Munby, p. 227.

  ‘o’clock at night’: costers’ boys: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 33–4; their schedule: ibid., vol. 1, p. 36.