‘sort: see below’: Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 280; West End: Greenwood, Unsentimental Journeys, p. 14; St Giles: Sala, Twice Round the Clock, pp. 264ff.; carpenter’s tools, and outline of pawning: Dickens with W. H. Willis, ‘My Uncle’, in Household Words, 6 December 1851, in Stone (ed.), Uncollected Writings, vol. 2, pp. 367–78.
‘for a consideration’: trickery and sympathy: Renton Nicholson, Autobiography of a Fast Man (London, published ‘for the Proprietors’, 1863), pp. 11, 97.
‘a broken plate’: dolly shops: Dickens, ‘Brokers’ and ‘Marine-store Shops’, in Sketches by Boz, pp. 211–13, A. Mayhew, Paved with Gold, p. 10; leaving shops: Greenwood, Unsentimental Journeys, p. 15; Our Mutual Friend, p. 346; Southwark shop: Anon., ‘Turpin’s Corner’, Household Words, 17, 8 May 1858, pp. 493–6.
‘5 shillings’: Cranbourne Alley: Sala, Gaslight and Daylight, p. 60, Smith, An Antiquarian Ramble, vol. 1, pp. 124–5; Beale, Recollections, p. 20.
‘massive pie sign’: shop signs: Badcock and Rowlandson, Real Life in London, vol. 1, p. 170; Little Dorrit, p. 258; Dombey and Son, p. 88; Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 377.
‘nibbling the cheese’: pub signs: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 96; all others: Smith, Little World of London, pp. 233ff.
‘on the pavements’: Warren’s Blacking: Colton, Four Years in Great Britain, p. 63; ‘Try Warren’s’: R. S. Surtees, Ask Mamma, or, The Richest Commoner in England (London, Bradbury and Evans, 1858), p. 18; use of pavements: Altick, Presence of the Present, p. 232.
‘at any height’: Regency bills: John Thomas Smith, Ancient Topography of London ... (London [no publisher], 1815), facing p. 32, Smith, Vagabondiana, final plate, Leighton, London Cries, facing p. 2, and Thomas H. Shepherd [and James Elmes], London and its Environs in the Nineteenth Century, Illustrated by a Series of Views from the Original Drawings by Thomas H. Shepherd, with ... Notes [by James Elmes], (London, Jones & Co., 1829), facing p. 114, are only a few examples; ‘a fresh supply’: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 5, pp. 33–4; dress: ibid., p. 36.
‘excursion advertisements’: Dickens, ‘Bill-Sticking’, Household Words, 22 March 1851, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 2, pp. 339–50; Mr Guppy: Bleak House, p. 175; Schlesinger, Saunterings, p. 24.
‘any other way’: Southey, Letters from England, p. 51; Egan, Life in London, 158; Old Curiosity Shop, p. 282; ‘seedy personages’: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 55.
‘a bigger impression’: Regent Street: MacKenzie, The American in England, vol. 1, p. 172; ‘animated sandwich’: ‘The Dancing Academy’, Sketches by Boz, p. 299; ‘piece of human flesh’: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 5, p. 37; ILN: ILN, 14 May 1842, p. 16.
‘and even weeks’: the itch: MacKenzie, The American in England, vol. 1, pp. 172–3; bootmaker: Wey, A Frenchman Sees London, p. 207; Mr Falcon: Schlesinger, Saunterings, p. 15.
‘gilding and pictures’: Boz ads: Mark Wormald, introduction to Pickwick Papers, p. xiii; Bardell bus company: Long, ‘Mr Pickwick Lucky to Find a Cab?’; wellington boot: engraving in the Weekly Chronicle, reproduced in Jackson, George Scharf’s London, p. 36; models of houses and steamboats: MacKenzie, The American in England, pp. 73–4; hat, obelisk and gothic windows: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 5, p. 38; Schlesinger, Saunterings, pp. 15, 18–19.
‘whiskers with him afterwards’: auctions: Greenwood, Wilds of London, pp. 152–3; bear grease: Lockwood, Passionate Pilgrims, p. 129, Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 100–101; Nicholas Nickleby, p. 131.
‘his wet things’: shop bells: Phillips, Wild Tribes, p. 97; tailors: Badcock and Rowlandson, Real Life in London, vol. 1, pp. 530–31; Pickwick Papers, pp. 431–2; coffee rooms: Hudson, Munby, p. 85; Great Expectations, p. 446.
‘early dinner-beer’: delivery boy’s dress: Frank Bullen, Confessions of a Tradesman (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1908), p. 22; Pickwick Papers, pp. 417–18, 424; Kentish Town newspaper: Yates, Recollections, p. 28.
‘in St Martin’s Lane’: ILN, 2 June 1854, pp. 562, 564.
‘spoil – spile’: Pickwick Papers, pp. 131, 163; Bleak House, pp. 278, 422–3.
‘Menshun Ouse’: Badcock and Rowlandson, Real Life in London, vol. 1, p. 457; Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 140–41, and Hollingshead, My Lifetime, vol. 1, p. 49, agrees with him here; location names: Tuer, Old London Street Cries, pp. 70, 73.
‘had all vanished’: Edwin Drood, pp. 254–5; ‘Metropolitan Miss’ and upper-class gent: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 5; Trollope, What I Remember, p. 49.
‘clothes get tight’: the Stilton: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 5; costers’ backslang: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, p. 23, and Mayhew and Binny, ibid.
‘Oliver Twist (fist)’: rhyming slang: Mayhew and Binny, ibid., Hayward, Days of Dickens, pp. 16–17; novel: A. Mayhew, Paved with Gold, p. 70.
‘Romany for speak’: Mayhew and foreign languages: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 6; Dickens, Oliver Twist, pp. 79, 29; Romany: Mayhew and Binny, ibid.
‘your poor feet’: 1830s catchphrases: Hayward, Days of Dickens, p. 17 and Vizetelly, Glances Back: vol. 1, p. 103; 1860s catchphrases: Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 41–2.
‘Hookey estates from’: ‘Do you see any green’: Hayward, Days of Dickens, p. 17; A Christmas Carol, p. 129; David Copperfield, p. 307.
‘cocking a snook’: Pickwick Papers, p. 405; Old Curiosity Shop, p. 365.
‘a dancing girl’: bands: Mayhew: London Labour, vol. 3, p. 159; types of organists in the following three paragraphs: Smith, Curiosities, pp. 2–15.
‘extremely unusual’: Hudson, Munby, p. 276; Stabbers’s Band: ‘An Unsettled Neighbourhood’, Household Words, 11 November 1854, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 3, p. 243.
‘in such circumstances’: ‘The Streets – Night’, Sketches by Boz, p. 77; Hudson, Munby, pp. 157–8; Joseph Johnson: Smith, Vagabondiana, facing p. 33; sailor with child: Jackson, Scharf’s London, p. 56; sailors: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 53.
‘brazen instruments’: Robert Seymour, Seymour’s Humorous Sketches..., with text by Alfred Crowquill (2nd edn, London, Henry G. Bohn, 1866), sketch 22; Leech and Dickens, cited by John M. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 42.
‘with the quality’: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 3, p. 44; ‘An Unsettled Neighbourhood’, Household Words, 11 November 1854, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 3, p.243; Punch’s summer holiday: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 3, pp. 45–7.
‘and Christmas pantomimes’: puppets: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 61; Sanger, Seventy Years, pp. 12–13, 18, 50; subjects for peep-shows: Sanger, and Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 3, pp. 88–9.
‘to Queen Victoria’: bear: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 3, p. 72; Sanger, Seventy Years, p. 54; Happy Families: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 3, p. 179, Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 67; exhibitor to Queen Victoria: ILN, 29 August 1842, p. 237.
‘a funny dance’: ‘Hal. Lewis, Student at Law, ‘The Street-Conjuror’, in Meadows, Heads of the People, vol. 1, p. 275, Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 3, pp. 90ff., 98, 104, 107, 110, 117, Smith, Little World of London, pp. 6–7.
‘day-trippers obeyed’: Cackler Dance: Sanger, Seventy Years, p. 60; the ‘it forms’ man: Sala, Gaslight and Daylight, p. 62; profile cutters: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 3, p. 210; pavement chalkers: ibid., vol. 3, p. 214; street boys tumbling: A. Mayhew, Paved with Gold, p. 92; riverside boys: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 233; Greenwich children: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 139.
10. LEISURE FOR ALL
‘the masses out’: Anthony Trollope, The Warden, ed. David Skilton (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998), Chapter 16, pp. 210ff., itemizes Mr Harding’s dispiriting day; St James’s and Green Parks: Susan Lasdun, The English Park: Royal, Public and Private (London, André Deutsch, 1991), pp. 126, 129.
‘risen to 461’: fifty squares: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 6, p. 194; 200 squares: Leigh’s New Picture (1839 edn), p. 221; 461 squares: White, London in the Nineteenth Century, p. 71.<
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‘centuries of growth’: Leigh’s New Picture (1819 edn): p. 259, 1839 edition, p. 221; greenery visible: Henry W. Lawrence, City Trees: A Historical Geography from the Renaissance through the Nineteenth Century (Charlottesville, VA, University of Virginia Press, 2006), p. 179.
‘and middle class’: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 6, p. 199.
‘around central London’: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, pp. 59–60.
‘over his horse’: ‘Leicester-square adventurer’: ILN, 7 January 1860, p. 3; Bleak House, p. 356; Reynolds and Hogarth: ILN, 11 January 1868, p. 42; Savile House: E. Beresford Chancellor, The Squares of London, Topographical and Historical (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1907), pp. 167ff.; foreignness of Leicester Square: Smith, Antiquarian Ramble, vol. 1, pp. 119–20; gas explosion: Halliday, Great Stink, p. 175; George I: Beale, Recollections, pp. 41–2.
‘their great trays’: Belgrave Square villas: Charles Knight (ed.), London, vol. 6, p. 194; Pantechnicon: Leigh’s New Picture (1839 edition), p. 222; Berkeley Square occupants: Chancellor, The Squares of London, p. 20; Pardon, Routledge’s Popular Guide, lists Thomas’s Hotel as still there in 1862, p. 46; ‘clatterings’: Mrs Gore, Cecil, or, The Adventures of a Coxcomb (London, Richard Bentley, 1841), vol. 3, p. 214.
‘landowner’s revenue’: Nash, cited in Dyos, Exploring the Urban Past, p. 82.
‘rus in urbe setting’: the three paragraphs on the development of Regent’s Park: Arnold, Re-Presenting the Metropolis, p. 39, J. Mordaunt Crook, London’s Arcadia: John Nash and the Planning of Regent’s Park, Fifth Annual Soane Lecture ([n.p., no publisher] 2000), pp. 4–14, J. Mordaunt Crook, ‘Metropolitan Improvements: John Nash and the Picturesque’, in Fox (ed.), London – World City, pp. 77–96, Terence Davis, The Architecture of John Nash (London, Studio, 1960), pp. 9–16, Anne Saunders, Regent’s Park: A Study of its Development of the Area from 1086 to the Present Day (Newton Abbot, David and Charles, 1969), passim, Anne Saunders, The Regent’s Park Villas (London, Bedford College, 1981), passim, and White, London in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 23–6, 73–4.
‘of great magnificence’: Wheaton, Journal of a Residence, p. 222; Henry Vizetelly, Glances Back, vol. 1, p. 27; MacKenzie, The American in England, pp. 169–71, 176–7.
‘until 1857’: Lasdun, The English Park, pp. 124–5, 128–9, 149–65. The purchase of Primrose Hill: Lasdun says the land (fifty-eight acres) was bought for £300; according to Saunders, it was a land swap with the owners of the land, Eton College, in which the college acquired more land in Windsor.
‘to have attended’: Victoria Park: Winter, London’s Teeming Streets, p. 164; carriage driving: Wey, A Frenchman Sees London, pp. 162, 165; Wyon, Journal, BL Add MS 59,617; ILN, 8 September 1855, p. 287, 17 May 1856, pp. 527, 615, 13 September 1856, p. 265.
‘street from Westminster’: Nash, cited in Rodney Mace, Trafalgar Square: Emblem of Empire (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), pp. 23–9, 31–46, and Tambling, Going Astray, p. 31.
‘the front lawn’: lion: Knight (ed.), London, vol. 6, p. 207; description from text and images in E. Beresford Chancellor, Lost London: Being a description of Landmarks which have disappeared pictured by J. Crowther circa 1879–87 ... (London, Constable, 1926), pp. 30ff.
‘an open piazza’: except where noted, this and the next eight paragraphs are derived from: Allen, History and Antiquities of London, vol. 5, pp. 291–2, Fox (ed.), London – World City, pp. 94ff., Mace, Trafalgar Square, pp. 126ff.
‘a cold plunge’: Ely Place and its jurisdiction: my thanks to Lee Jackson for pointing this out; ‘Roman’ pool: Clayton, Subterranean City, p. 21.
‘of his scheme’: footnote: the architectural historian is John Summerson. I thank Jonathan Foyle for alerting me to this, and for his views of the project.
‘bare-headed’: the Nelson monument: Felix Barker and Ralph Hyde, London as it Might Have Been (London, John Murray, 1982), pp. 65–70 (it is they who thought that the mermaids were playing water-polo), Mace, Trafalgar Square, p. 65; Nelson’s hat: Smith, An Antiquarian Ramble, vol. 1, p. 135; footnote on statues apart from the empty plinth: Mace, ibid., p. 111.
‘a clean one’: Sala, The Hats of Humanity, Historically, Humorously and Aesthetically Considered ... (Manchester, James Gee, ‘Hatter’, [?1880]), pp. 16–17; Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 796; doctors’ boys: Sala, Hats of Humanity, pp. 15–16; man leaving prison: J. Ewing Ritchie, Days and Nights in London; or, Studies in Black and Gray (London, Tinsley Brothers, 1880), p. 267; paper caps: Cunnington and Lucas, Occupational Costume, pp. 86–7; Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 225.
‘Landseer was about’: artesian wells: ILN, 24 August 1844, p. 119; 29 March 1845, p. 199, and 14 March 1846, p. 174; bathing in the fountains: A. Mayhew, Paved with Gold, p. 85; Nelson’s column and granite arrival: ILN, 2 July 1842, p. 121; arrival of statue: ibid., 4 November 1843, p. 288; reliefs, and non-completion: ibid., 23 October 1858, p. 380, 17 March 1860, p. 251.
‘that was that’: unveiling: Hudson, Munby, pp. 236–7; lack of ceremony: ILN, 2 February 1867, pp. 111–12.
‘outdoor sitting room’: Boucicault: Illustrated Times, cited in Lynda Nead, Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London (London, Yale University Press, 2000), p. 99.
‘by the waiter’: Dickens, ‘London Recreations’, Sketches by Boz, p. 120; the Eagle: ‘Miss Evans and the Eagle’, Sketches by Boz, p. 269; Highbury Barn: ‘Anonyma’, London by Night, pp. 77ff.; Little Dorrit, p. 417.
‘main attraction’: Pickwick Papers, p. 614; Hornsey and Epping: Archer, The Pauper, the Thief, and the Convict, p. 22; vans: Colman, European Life and Manners, vol. 2, p. 78; vehicles and types: Sala, Looking at Life; or, Thoughts and Things (London, Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1860), pp. 189–90; the Welsh Harp: White, London in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 266–7.
‘river excursion’: tea gardens south of the river: [G. A. Sala], ‘Sunday Tea-Gardens’, Household Words, 10, 30 September 1854, p. 147.
‘by the tide’: Dolphin and Swan taverns: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 233; swimming match: ILN, 14 July 1849, p. 23; cholera deaths: ibid., 28 July 1849, p. 55; rowing matches: ibid., 24 July 1852, p. 62, for the Thames Watermen’s Royal Regatta; others reported: ibid., 2 July 1842, p. 115, 8 July 1843, pp. 27–8, 4 July 1846, p. 9, and passim; championship of the Thames, ibid., 22 September 1860, p. 269; Astley’s clown: ibid., 28 September 1844, p. 193.
‘financial resources’: Yates, His Recollections, pp. 106–7.
‘dinner at Greenwich’: Barry dinner: ILN, 6 July 1850, p. 3; Crimea dinner: ILN, 12 August 1854, p. 131.
‘wedding breakfast’: Dickens dinner: Michael N. Stanton, ‘Dickens’ Return from America; A Ghost at the Feast’, Dickensian, Autumn 1991, p. 148; Our Mutual Friend, pp. 313, 649.
‘day on the river’: Princess Alice excursion and footnote: Ritchie, Days and Nights in London, pp. 197ff.; Dickens’ excursion: Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life (Harmondsworth, Viking, 2010), p. 316.
‘flagrant evils’: number of fairs and fair-days: Leigh’s New Picture (1819 edn), pp. 176–8; (1839 edn), p. 120.
‘and nothing else’: Bartholomew Fair: Thomas Frost, The Old Showmen, and the Old London Fairs (London, Tinsley Brothers, 1874), pp. 214ff., Henry Morley, Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair (London, Frederick Warne & Co., [n.d.]), pp. 375ff., Badcock and Rowlandson, Real Life in London, vol. 1, pp. 528–9, Grant, Sketches in London, pp. 289ff.; last days in 1848: ILN, 9 September 1848, p. 150.
‘draw the crowds’: Greenwich Fair in this and the next two paragraphs from: Masson, Memories, pp. 145–7, Smith (ed.), Gavarni in London, pp. 76–80, Grant, Sketches in London, pp. 289–317, Hawthorne, Hawthorne in England, pp. 172–5; footnote on roundabouts: Sanger, Seventy Years, p. 16.
11. FEEDING THE STREETS
‘or a tea’: David Copperfield, p. 153.
‘of their lodgings’: hot-eel sellers: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 160–2; whelk sellers: ibid., vol. 1, p. 164, and their call
s, vol. 1, p. 76.
‘steadily declined’: Pickwick Papers, p. 294; Mayhew on oyster selling and in footnote: London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 75–6; Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 71.
‘over a meal’: wink men: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, p. 76; footnote on American tourist: James N. Matthews, My Holiday: How I Spent it ... in the Summer of 1866 (Buffalo, Martin Taylor, 1867), p. 197; cabbage plants, chickweed and cresses: Smith, Cries of London, pp. 7–8.
‘potatoes – right away’: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 173–5.
‘was not profitable’: economics of muffin men: Greenwood, Wilds of London, p. 184; caps: Bennett, London and Londoners, p. 44.
‘piemen even further’: description of piemen, and economic reasons for decline: Smith, Curiosities, pp. 202–5; Pickwick Papers, p. 252.
‘manner of a pieman’: Pickwick Papers, p. 294, David Copperfield, p. 314, Martin Chuzzlewit, p. 284.
‘around their necks’: Greenwich Fair: Sketches by Boz, p. 140, and Smith (ed.), Gavarni in London, pp. 78–9; fried-fish sellers at Epsom: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, p. 166.
‘had arrived’: Smith, Little World of London, pp. 51–2; hoboys: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, p. 85;
‘for a meal’: Sunday excursionists: elder wine: ibid., vol. 1, p. 189; peppermint water: ibid., vol. 1, p. 191, and Sanger, Seventy Years, p. 57; curds-and-whey and rice milk: Mayhew, ibid., vol. 1, pp. 192–3.
‘mashed turnip’: Sanger, Seventy Years, p. 57; ‘coolers’: Mayhew and Binny, The Criminal Prisons, p. 41; hokey-pokey men and ingredients: Tuer, Old London Street Cries, pp. 58–60.
‘repeat performance’: dress and wooden frames: Bennett, London and Londoners, pp. 43–4; sticks: Sekon, Locomotion in Victorian Britain, p. 18; Old Curiosity Shop, p. 331; ‘The Streets – Night’, Sketches by Boz, p. 75.
‘with a pewter-pot’: Nicholas Nickleby, p. 228; Dombey and Son, p. 143; Miss Tox’s location is not pinpointed, but on p. 144 it is in the West End, although not a good house – ‘think of the situation!’ says Miss Tox, surely implying it lies in Mayfair.
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