By Chris Anderson
Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1849-1851) let the street folk tell their own stories. To read them today is to step back in time. It followed on from a series Mayhew wrote for the Morning Chronicle, after he resigned, or they fired him (recollections differed). Mayhew continued his work via London Labour, a weekly serial reissued in a single volume every 6 months. Each issue came with one or more illustrations, engraved from daguerreotypes commissioned from Henry Beard. Like the text, they are strikingly real.
St Bride Foundation has five trays of London Labour woodblocks. How did they arrive? Mayhew’s London Labour came to an abrupt halt when the printers, Woodfall, took him to court for unpaid bills. They seized his assets and continued selling London Labour until Mayhew’s supporter, his publisher David Bogue, bought the copyright from Mayhew in 1855. He and Mayhew were on the verge of relaunching the series in 1856 when Bogue’s death ended their plans. His executors sold the London Labour copyright to Griffin & Bohn in 1861. They reissued the serial, to great success, expanding it to 4 volumes with material from other writers and a fair chunk lifted from Mayhew’s work on the Morning Chronicle.
This is the version of London Labour which has come down to us today. Mayhew himself only produced one full and two incomplete volumes. When the Griffin archive was passed onto St Bride Foundation in 1973, the assets included the woodblocks (which is a mystery, as they sold the copyright of London Labour to Maxwell in 1871).i Mixed together are blocks for Mayhew’s engravings and those added by Griffin in 1864. Those labelled in London Labour as ‘From a daguerreotype by Beard’ were created under Mayhew’s eye between 1849-1851 (eighteen used in volume 1, ten in volume 2 and one in volume 3). Each has a real person and story associated with it.
The first block is an iconic portrait of Mayhew himself, which appeared on the frontispiece of the first volume of London Labour in June 1850.
The first to appear in the London Labour serial, however, is of a costermonger, archetypal street folk who lived by hawking fruit, vegetables, and household staples. In the first issues of London Labour Mayhew focused on their culture and views as much as their way of work. His guide among them was William Clapham, astride his cart in the serial’s first engraving.
What became of him? He died in 1881, The Illustrated Police News obituary, noting he had become a member of several temperance societies, remembered:
an aged costermonger, well known for more than half a century in the alleys of Turnmill-street, Clerkenwell […] a kind of patriarch among the costermongers of central London. Mr. Henry Mayhew obtained from him statistics for his ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ and an illustration of Clapham and his donkey formed the frontispiece. Lord Shaftsbury and other notables have paid visits to his humble dwelling in Fryingpan Alley
Illustrated Police News, Saturday 5 February 1881
The sole block drawn from a daguerreotype in volume 3 is of Sarah Chandler, or ‘Old Sarah’, a blind street musician who played the hurdy gurdy. Mayhew first met Sarah in 1850 when he was writing for the Morning Chronicle. The image, first used in the Griffin version, must have been created for Mayhew but left unused when Woodfall halted the original serial.
Sarah and Mayhew had become friends. She visited his house for tea once a week, and he visited her in hospital when she fell ill.ii What became of her? In 1852, soon after Mayhew’s London Labour ended, she was hit by a cab and died days later from her injuries.
i. St Bride Library, Griffin papers, agreement dated 30 November 1871.
ii. Jenna M. Hardman, Curious conversations: Henry Mayhew and the street-sellers in the media ecology of London Labour and the London Poor, Journal of Victorian Culture, vol. XX (2021), pp.1-10.
Chris Anderson is an independent London historian. He wrote the first full biography of Henry Mayhew in 2018. London Vagabond: the Life of Henry Mayhew is available exclusively on Amazon. He also runs walking tours of Mayhew’s London. For more details see https://londonlabourlondonpoor.com/
St Bride Foundation 