Jackson - Daily Life in Victorian London

Table of Contents

A

[advertising boards, vans: Punch , 1850]

B

[Niagara Rocking Bath, advertisement: Pick Me Up , 1891]

[Bloomerism cartoon: Punch , 1851]

[Bloomerism cartoon: Punch , 1851]

C

[crinoline cartoon: Punch , 1856]

[cycling cartoon: Punch , 1882]

D

[one-legged sweeper: London Labour and the London Poor , 1851]

E

F

[baked potato man: London Labour and the London Poor , 1851]

G

[early cigarette lighter, advertisement: Pick Me Up , 1891]

[gin palace: Punch , 1860]

H

I

J

[gory posters: Punch , 1888]

K

L

[crowded lodgings, during Great Exhibition: Punch , 1851]

M

[servant-mistress relations: Punch , 1853]

[London water: Punch , 1850]

N

[female convicts, Brixton gaol: Criminal Prisons of London , 1862]

O

[a bus stop: Punch , 1876]

P

['gay' women, ie. prostitutes: Punch , 1857]

Q

R

[rollerskating: Punch , 1876]

S

[ballet girls, smoking: Pick Me Up , 1891]

[street conjurer: London Labour and the London Poor , 1851]

T

U

V

W

X

Z

Introduction

This anthology has one simple goal: to give the reader a flavour of 'how life was lived' in Victorian London, through the words of the Victorians themselves. It is not a comprehensive study; but I have revisited an archive of ten years' reading and research nineteenth century diaries, newspapers, magazines, memoirs, guidebooks in an attempt to include as many diverse aspects of Victorian life as possible. There is, I must admit, a certain bias in my choice of material: I concentrate on the poor and middle-class. Queen Victoria is glimpsed at a distance, in Hyde Park; MPs and members of the aristocracy appear as the patrons of charities; but this is a book about the everyday.

Some of these excerpts make for rather grim reading: the graphic account of a botched back-street abortion; the plight of homeless children, abandoned by their parents; the fever-ridden slums of Jacob's Island. Crime is also to the fore: attempts at blackmail; the rise of the 'hooligan' in Lambeth; the vicious malice of the 'vitriol thrower'. Likewise, it is impossible to neglect the scourge of prostitution in the capital, albeit with one rare instance of a 'soiled dove' who 'made good'. I have, therefore, included a few gratuitous doses of quirky Victoriana, to leaven the mix: advice on keeping pet squirrels; the invention of the snail telegraph (the supposed power of 'escargotic vibration'); how to make tooth powder (with the obligatory drop of cocaine).

I also focus on street life. Hence you will find articles about the giant 'advertising vans' which blocked major thoroughfares; races between rival omnibus companies; the wall painters who engaged in 'guerilla advertising'; the delights of Victorian fast food (sheep's trotters, anyone?). This book, at its best, should provide a vicarious form of time travel. The reader will feel, I hope, that they have walked the streets of Victorian London and, having read the more intimate passages how to remove bed-bugs; tips on wet-nursing; dire warnings against 'secret vice' that they have also glimpsed behind closed doors. Some things herein may appear quaint complaints against the immorality of the 'can-can'; disdain for women practising 'bloomerism' (ie. wearing trousers); the unlikely forfeits demanded by parlour games but they all throw a revealing light on the distinctive mores of the time.

I hope, too, that a few things will surprise and astonish, to the extent that they seem almost unbelievable (although, rest assured, this work contains no fabrications). Have you ever heard of the enterprising showman who started his 'Jack the Ripper' chamber of horrors in Whitechapel, within weeks of the 1888 murders ? Or the peculiar safeguards afforded by corsets? Or the bar-maids who worked in Underground stations? Or the first (and last) Mesmeric Hospital established in London?

It may seem presumptuous to call this an extraordinary anthology; yet it is the extraordinary details of daily life in the 'Great Metropolis' that continue to fascinate me. My only wish is that the reader may share my enthusiasm.

Lee Jackson

Advertising bills

In the year 1836 we were living in King Street, St. James's, opposite St. James's Theatre. Trafalgar Square was then being laid out, and the area was surrounded by an immense hoarding, which, notwithstanding minatory notices of "Stick no Bills," and "Bill-Stickers, Beware," was continually plastered over with placards relating to all kinds of things, theatrical and commercial, and at election time with political squibs. There were in those days no bill poster advertising-contractors. The bill-stickers were an independent race, whose main objects in life were first, to get a sufficient number of bills to stick up, and next, to cover over the placards pasted on the hoardings by their rivals. Thus the perpetually superposed bills led to a most amusing confusion of incongruities. If you tried to read, say, six square yards of posters, the information was conveyed to your mind that Madam Malibran was about to appear in the opera of Cockle's Pills; that the leader for Westminster was the only cure for rheumatism; that Mr. Van Amburg and his lions would be present at the ball of the Royal Caledonian Asylum; and that the Sun evening newspaper would contain Rowland's Maccassar Oil, two hundred bricks to be sold at a bargain; and the band of the Second Life Guards would be sure to ask for Dunn's penny chocolate at the Philharmonic Concert, with Mademoiselle Duvernay in the Cachuca.

George Sala, London Up To Date, 1895

Advertising boards

FEW men who earn their living in the streets are better abused and more persistently jeered at than the unfortunate individuals who let themselves out for hire as walking advertisements. The work is so hopelessly simple, that any one who can put one foot before the other can undertake it, and the carrying of boards has therefore become a means of subsistence open to the most stupid and forlorn of individuals. These facts are so self-evident that the smallest street urchin is sensible of the absurd picture presented by a full-grown man carrying an advertisement "back and front" all day long. The boardmen have therefore become a general butt, and it is considered fair play to tease them in every conceivable manner. The old joke, the query as to the whereabouts of the mustard, has now died out, and it is considered better sport to bespatter the "sandwich men" with mud, or to tickle their faces with a straw when the paraphernalia on their backs prevents all attempt at self-defence. While the street boys indulge in these and various other practical jokes, omnibus conductors also relieve their feelings as they pass by kicking at the boards.

John Thomson and Adolphe Smith,

Street Life in London, 1877

Ques. What is the regulation size of boards which are permitted to be carried about the public streets?
Ans. 20 inches in breadth and 32 inches deep.
Ques. What is the distance that must be kept between each man carrying advertisement-boards?
Ans. 30 yards.
Ques. Where must the boards be carried?
Ans. In the carriage-way, clear of the kerb.

Police Duty Catechism and Reports, 1903

Advertising vans

Sir I am a banker. Like most of my profession, I have my town-house in Belgravia, and my villa at Roehampton, and I ride daily to my counting-house in the city. I am a fat man and am recommended horse-exercise.
The Strand, always a crowded thoroughfare, became disagreeably so when omnibuses were permitted to ply there. The wood pavement next assisted in making it nearly impassable; and now a third plague has arisen which promises to block it up altogether.