The people in general is ashamed to say how they thinks on their children. It's wretched in the extreme to see one's children, and not be able to do to 'em as a parent ought; and I'll say this here after all you've heard me state - that the Government of my native land ought to interpose their powerful arm to put a stop to such things. Unless they do, civil society with us is all at an end. Everybody is becoming brutal - unnatural. Billy, just turn up that shell now, and let the gentleman see what beautiful fabrics we're in the habit of producing - and then he shall say whether we ought to be in the filthy state we are. Just show the light, Tilly! That's for ladies to wear and adorn them, and make them handsome. [It was an exquisite piece of maroon-coloured velvet, that, amidst all the squalor of the place, seemed marvellously beautiful, and it was a wonder to see it unsoiled amid all the filth that surrounded it.] "I say, just turn it up, Billy, and show the gentleman the back. That's cotton partly, you see, sir, just for the manufacturers to cheat the public, and get a cheap article, and have all the gold out of the poor working creatures they can, and don't care nothing about them. But death, Billy - death gets all the gold out of them. They're playing a deep game, but death wins after all. Oh, when this here's made known, won't the manufacturers be in a way to find the public aware on their tricks. They've lowered the wages so low, that one would hardly believe the people would take the work. But what's one to do? - the children can't quite starve. Oh no! -oh no!"

This book is a collection of Henry Mayhew's letters to the Morning Chronicle, concentrating on those that he didn't later use in London Labour and the London Poor. I had been looking forward to reading it, but the introductory essays were almost enough to put me off, being repetitive and frankly, quite dull.

The first, 'Mayhew and the 'Morning Chronicle', describes Mayhew as being indolent, often in debt and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and not well liked by his colleagues in journalism and publishing. The second, 'Mayhew as a Social Investigator', is repetitive and rather boring, and I was left wondering what slop-work and the sweating trades might be, as the author of the essay didn't bother to define them. However Mayhew comes out of this essay rather better, as although his political opponents keep on denigrating his working methods and findings, he is able to defend himself successfully with the support of the people working on 'London Labour and the London Poor' with him.

But when it comes to the actual letters I found them a much more interesting read, as Mayhew didn't paraphrase what the workers told him, so their authentic voices shine through. In the case of most of the trades covered in these letters, wages have gone down so much over the previous twenty or thirty years, that workmen are earning much less even though they are working much longer hours and even working on Sundays which they used to have off and in many cases their wives and children have to work with them, instead of keeping house and attending school as they used to. Told in their own words, their poverty and desperation comes across strongly, and Mayhew's analysis shows that the increase in poverty should be blamed on increased competition rather than increased population which was the received wisdom at that time. ( )