
Henry Mayhew
Henry Mayhew
Born: 25/11/1812 Died: 25/07/1887 Gender: Male Genre: Investigative Journalism Occupation: Social researcher, journalist, playwrightA sometime editor of the satirical magazine Punch, Henry Mayhew was born into a conservative family, but his traditional ideals were called into question in 1849 when he began reporting on the devastating effects on the poor of a cholera outbreak in Bermondsey, south London. Taking the form of verbatim interviews that carefully preserve the grammar and pronunciation of every interviewee, Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor was a ground-breaking work of investigative journalism. In its comprehensiveness and documentary honesty, the work was adopted as a key text by social reformers of all kinds.
Image source: Henry Mayhew after a daguerreotype by Beard © National Portrait Gallery, LondonFeatured works
Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor
Title: London Labour and the London Poor Published: 1851 Format: Prose Period: Victorian Genre: Investigative Journalism Learn moreRelated articles

Cities in modernist literature
The alienated modernist self is a product of the big city rather than the countryside or small town. Katherine Mullin describes how an interest in the sensibility associated with the city – often London, but for James Joyce, Dublin – developed from the mid-19th century to the modernist period.

Juvenile crime in the 19th century
Novels such as Oliver Twist have made Victorian child-thieves familiar to us, but to what extent did juvenile crime actually exist in the 19th century? Drawing on contemporary accounts and printed ephemera, Dr Matthew White uncovers the facts behind the fiction.

Tom and Jerry’s Life in London
The Gentle Author explores Pierce Egan’s 19th-century bestseller, Life in London, in which Tom and Jerry's 'rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis' offer readers a unique glimpse into both high and low urban culture.

Charles Booth’s poverty map of London
Victorian businessman Charles Booth set out to see if poverty levels were exaggerated - and found they were worse. His map shows the patchwork nature of the capital: poor and rich live side by side, much like today. Booth's work helped establish the old age pension, first paid on 1 Jan 1909.