Charles Dickens' England: 10 Photos that Capture Street Life in London in 1877

John Thomson was a pioneering Scottish photographer with a flair for adventure and travel.  In 1862, he decided to visit Singapore, and this would start a 10-year period of photographing the cities and people of the Far East. He returned to England in 1872 to find that his experience quickly made him an expert not just on Asia, but also photography.  In the following years, he would give hundreds of public lectures and his work would be published far and wide.  

Not content with his body of work, John reached out to Adolphe Smith, a rabble-rousing journalist he'd met years before.  Together they embarked on producing a monthly magazine called Street Life in London.  The project focused almost entirely on the "others" of London, and thus became one of the first examples of social documentary photography.  

Here are some of our favorites from the collection, which you can find in full at the LSE Digital Library.  Note:  John had a flair for not just photography, but also writing, so we're including some of his captions with the photos.

Flower saleswomen in Covent Garden in 1877. 

Some additional commentary from Mr. Thomson:  "How different is the Covent Garden of to-day, with its bustle and din, its wealth and pauperism, its artifices, its hot-house flowers and forced fruit, its camellias with wire stems, its exotics from far-off climes, to "the fair-spreading pastures," measuring, according to the old chronicle, some seven acres in extent, where the Abbots of Westminster buried those who died in their convent. In those days vegetables were not only sold here but grew on the spot; and the land, now so valuable, was considered to be worth an annual income of £6 6s. 8d., when given by the Crown to John Russell, Earl of Bedford, in 1552."

Ginger Beer sales.  This is by and far one of our favorites from the collection, namely when paired with Thomson's words of why sales were so brisk on Sunday morning:

"At Clapham Common - where the accompanying photograph was taken - Hampstead, Greenwich, Battersea Park, etc etc, on a broiling summer's day, there is a great demand for light, refreshing drinks, and more than £1 may be taken during one day by those who have a sufficient supply of ginger-beer with them, or some friend who can bring a fresh stock in the course of the afternoon. In ordinary times, however, twenty shillings a week net profit is considered a very fair reward for selling ginger-beer in the streets. Apart from the very hot days, and the pleasure-g rounds around the metropolis, the best time and place for the sale is near the closed public-houses on a Sunday morning. The enormous number of persons who have spent their Saturday evening and wages in getting lamentably drunk, come out in the morning with their throats parched and are glad of anything that will relieve the retributive thirst from which they suffer. Ginger-beer, under these circumstances, is particularly effective in restoring tone and mitigating the consequences of intemperance; and these are facts which readily account for the large sales effected on Sunday mornings."

Italian Street Musicians.  Thomson helped the general public that many of the Italians who occupied the streets of London were actually making a better living than they were as laborers in Italy.  He shares:

""Italians, sons of peasants, agricultural labourers, and others who might lead respectable lives in their own country, prefer to come over to England where they are sometimes treated as mere beggars.They find that a beggar in England is richer than a labourer in Italy; and if he be not equally prosperous it is because he is not equally abstemious and economical. The Italian, therefore, migrates with the knowledge that he may rely on the generosity of the English, and that, if he only receives as much as many of the English poor, he may hope to save enough to buy himself a farm in his own country."

"The class of Nomades with which I propose to deal makes some show of industry. These people attend fairs, markets, and hawk cheap ornaments or useful wares from door to door. At certain seasons this class 'works' regular wards, or sections of the city and suburbs. At other seasons its members migrate to the provinces, to engage in harvesting, hop-picking, or to attend fairs, where they figure as owners of 'Puff and Darts', 'Spin 'em rounds', and other games."

"The accompanying photograph, taken on a piece of vacant land at Battersea, represents a friendly group gathered around the caravan of William Hampton, a man who enjoys the reputation among his fellows, of being 'a fair-spoken, honest gentleman'. Nor has subsequent intercourse with the gentleman in question led me to suppose that his character has been unduly overrated."

By far the saddest of the photos, this one captures what locals called "Crawlers", which meant homeless street people and beggars.  Thomson helped people understand that in many cases, these people weren't "crawlers" out of choice, but simply unfortunate luck or circumstances.  Thankfully he captured this woman's story...

"Some of these crawlers are not, however, so devoid of energy as we might at first be led to infer. A few days' good lodging and good food might operate a marvellous transformation. The abject misery into which they are plunged is not always self sought and merited; but is, as often, the result of unfortunate circumstances and accident. The crawler, for instance, whose portrait is now before the reader, is the widow of a tailor who died some ten years ago. She had been living with her son-in-law, a marble stone-polisher by trade, who is now in difficulties through ill-health. It appears, however, that, at best, "he never cared much for his work," and innumerable quarrels ensued between him, his wife, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law, a youth of fifteen. At last, after many years of wrangling, the mother, finding that her presence aggravated her daughter's troubles, left this uncomfortable home, and with her young son descended penniless into the street. From that day she fell lower and lower, and now takes her seat among the crawlers of the district."

A woman with the fruit cart going through the residential streets.  Mr. Thomson's commentary on this photo really adds some flavor:  

"The season for strawberries, the most delicious of English fruits, has ended. This delicacy was brought in numberless barrow- loads to the doors of the poorest inhabitants of London. The familiar cry, "Fine strawberries. All ripe! all ripe!" is silenced for a season by sounds less welcome. The fragrance of the ripe fruit wafted by the summer breeze from the coster's cart as it passed through the alleys, is replaced by less grateful odours - by the normal atmosphere of over crowded neighbourhoods, by the autumn taint of animal and vegetable decay, which invests the low-lying districts of London."

 A chimney sweep and his son in downtown London.  You can see on their faces how difficult the work (and their lives) were.

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