From WolfWikis

ENG 463: The Victorian Period

Brienna Jensen

Introduction

Henry Mahyew's publication Punch ran in print from 1841 to 1992 and again from 1996 to 2002. It was the common equivalent of the Daily Show hosted by John Stewart.

Topics

Class, Tradition, and Money

Class, tradition and money are large segments of reporting done by publication Punch Magazine , or alternately known as The London Charivari , for which London resident Henry Mayhew was co-founder of in 1841. Henry Mayhew was an advocate of the working poor and was supported by groups such as Christian socialists and other revolutionary radicals. Mayhew's collected articles on poverty were eventually published as London Labour and London Poor, (1851). Mayhew's investigation into the plight of the poor revealed the impact that unemployment, starvation and disease was having on the working class.

Class

An excerpt taken from Punch, July 17, 1841, provides insight directly into what Henry Mayhew held as his ideas of class structure, “The noble in his robes and coronet--the beadle in his gaudy livery of scarlet, and purple, and gold--the dignitary in the fullness of his pomp--the demagogue in the triumph of his hollowness--these and other visual and oral cheats by which mankind are cajoled, have passed in review before us, conjured up by the magic wand of PUNCH.”^[1]

Money

Henry Mayhew’s Punch, delivered it’s economical opinions just as heartily as could be hoped for in order to show the mishandling and misguidance of monetary units occurring in the mid 1800’s Europe, “Money has been abundant all day, and we saw a half-crown piece and some halfpence lying absolutely idle in the hands of an individual, who, if he had only chosen to walk with it into the market, might have produced a very alarming effect on some minor description of securities.”^[1]

Tradition

Punch, points out pedigree and the tradition of respecting it on its merit alone, as being something to be openly mocked in public forum. In an article from January 6th, 1883, the issue attacked Lord Wolseley, along with the public’s inclination to preserve his persona and political representation as wholesome. To this effect it is written, “the first notable Wolseley, a 25th cousin in the 3rd degree to the present Baron, saw the ark off and was curiously enough never heard of again…remarkable, even in those remote time, seems to have been the recuperative powers possessed by the family, that a Wolseley is referred to by profane historians as having suddenly appeared among the plagues of Egypt...the same Wolseley is known to have beaten Confucius at Backgammon and founded the 5th Merovingian Dynasty”. Lord Wolseley was associated with the Anglo-Ashanti wars where he applied military pressure in order to procure slaves and gold. Wolseley also was remembered for having made his trip to America in order to form an ally with Robert E Lee and other members of the confederate army, whose sympathies were only to the slave incorporated south.”^[2]

Working Life

Henry Mayhew chronicles working conditions in Victorian England in London Labour and the London Poor (1861), which was published in four volumes. The first three volumes contain biographical sketches of nomadic street people who made their living morally or immorally while living in Victorian London, while the fourth featured sketches of prostitutes and other such socially deviant workers. His writing captured the conditions of their daily life, and he carefully recorded their conversations which later provided descriptive material for writers such as Charles Dickens’ descriptions of London life. In his first volume Mayhew distinguishes what he feels is the only two working classes in society, the wanderers and the settlers; those who live by hunting and those who live by manufacturing. The wanderers, or nomads were those who worked the streets and were their own segment of the working population; the segment focused on by Mayhew’s chronicles. According to Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1, chapter 1, section 5 titled Of the Number of Costermongers and Other Street-Folk; the costermongers or the people who hawked fruits and other street foods, was on the rise in metropolitan London as more of the population of mechanics, servants, innkeepers and other low class workers became unemployed due to dissolution of their positions under the expanding industrial and international market trades:

The number of costermongers, -- that it is to say, of those street-sellers attending the London "green" and "fish markets," -- appears to be, from the best data at my command, now 30,000 men, women, and children. The census of 1841 gives only 2,045 "hawkers, hucksters, and peddlers," in the metropolis, and no costermongers or street-sellers, or street-performers at all. This number is absurdly small, and its absurdity is accounted for by the fact that not one in twenty of the costermongers, or of the people with whom they lodged, troubled themselves to fill up the census returns -- the majority of them being unable to read and write, and others distrustful of the purpose for which the returns were wanted. ^[3]

Mayhew speaks of the tricks practiced by hawkers in order to keep their business steady and profitable as exampled by an orange seller who boils his oranges so that they will go bad in less than 48 hours causing the customer to readily have to buy more oranges. Tricks such as that were common of the market-trade street people. An exert from provides some of Mayhew’s population tally of the working street poor and what different sects and jobs they can be broken down into catagories of. He writes:

Hence, putting these numbers together, we arrive at the conclusion that there are in London upwards of 13,000 street-sellers, dealing in fish, fruit, vegetables, game, and poultry alone. To be on the safe side, however, let us assume the number of London costermongers to be 12,000, and that onehalf of these are married and have two children (which from all accounts appears to be about the proportion); and then we have 30,000 for the sum total of men, women, and children dependent on "costermongering" for their subsistence. But, great as is this number, still the costermongers are only a portion of the street-folk. Besides these, there are, as we have seen, many other large classes obtaining their livelihood in the streets. The street musicians, for instance, are said to number 1,000, and the old clothesmen the same. There are supposed to be at the least 500 sellers of water- cresses; 200 coffee-stalls; 300 cats-meat men; 250 balladsingers; 200 play-bill sellers; from 800 to 1,000 bone-grubbers and mud-larks; 1,000 crossing-sweepers; another thousand chimneysweeps, and the same number of turncocks and lamp-lighters; all of whom, together with the street-performers and showmen, tinkers, chair, umbrella, and clock-menders, sellers of bonnet-boxes, toys, stationery, songs, last dying-speeches, tubs, pails, mats, crockery, blacking, lucifers, corn-salves, clothes-pegs, brooms, sweetmeats, razors, dog-collars, dogs, birds, coals, sand, -scavengers, dustmen, and others, make up, it may be fairly assumed, full thirty thousand adults, so that, reckoning men, women, and children, we may truly say that there are upwards of fifty thousand individuals, or about a fortieth-part of the entire population of the metropolis getting their living in the streets.^[3]

Henry Mayhew’s warning and summation, to the mostly educated middle class audience for which he writes, shows his compassionate and understanding nature to the growing problem of the street people, which until his reports had gone mostly undocumented in Victorian London. His call to public awareness of the growing social employment predicament is exemplified by the following passage, also taken from vol.1 chap.1 sec. 5;

Moreover, when the religious, moral, and intellectual degradation of the great majority of these fifty thousand people is impressed upon us, it becomes positively appalling to contemplate the vast amount of vice, ignorance and want, existing in these days in the very heart of our land. The public have but to read the following plain unvarnished account of the habits, amusements, dealings, education, politics, and religion of the London costermongers in the nineteenth century, and then to say whether they think it safe -even if it be thought fit -to allow men, women, and children to continue in such a state.^[3]

Science and the Urban World

The Urban World

Henry Mayhew addresses the transit sector and the movement of goods of the urban world of Great Britain and the Metropolis in London Labour and the London Poor Volume III,. He looks at the condition of the workers within the system. The carrier/transit system of Great Britain included laborers such as; waggoners, bargemen, sailors, wharfman, porters, railway officials and the like. Mayhew observed that within Great Britain many trades were centered, originated, planned and executed for a vast amount of trades with many nations.

Water ships

The total number of vessels for mercantile use in 1848 was nearly 25,000. These numbers attest to the amount of property being entrusted to the merchant sea-man. Mayhew writes in his article on the mercantile marine, “the returns prove that one fourth of the entire maritime commerce of this country is carried on at the port of London”.^[4] Of the 25,000 ships 1100 of them were steam vessels belonging to the UK. Mayhew says that if all of the steam ships were to be lined up one after the other, bow to stern, the total length would reach a distance of 23 and ½ miles.More concerned with the plight of the workers than the product of the work, Mayhew cites that 1000 lives were lost at sea on average each year, which amounts to 1 out of each 203 people employed in that trade lost their life. Of the vessels belonging to the UK, 1 ship in every 42 would be lost. Increased navigation required the creation of more shipping companies along with ports and piers to accommodate business. Mayhew reports that of all the new piers built on the Thames, between Gravestand and Richmond, the pier at Hungerford is “the most remarkable, as it is erected fairly into the river; and on a fine summer’s day, when filled with well-dressed persons, waiting for ‘their boat,’ it has a very animated appearance”.^[4] Water commerce and travel changed the entire appearance and function of London’s Thames River. Bridges, ports, piers, and tunnels were created in order to facilitate movement of people and cargo and Mayhew’s logs reports details of almost all of them.

Turnpike-roads and stage-coaches

In 1818, according to the government report of the turnpikes of England and Wales, as written by Mayhew in Volume III, there were 114, 829 miles of total roads. In 1839, 4500 miles had been added to the resources of the country. Through tedious calculations involving statistics from postal services, aka stamp office, stage coach logs and licensures, Mayhew logs that in the year 1834, of the close approximate 597,159,420 miles traveled on land, 409,052,644 of those miles were the product of stage-coaches licensed to run from London to various other parts of England. As the main mode of travel declined from stage-coaches and increased in rail travel, the number of stage-coachmen and guards employed in 1839 was 2,619 and by 1843 had reduced to 146. Mayhew reported one stage-coach proprietor stating, “Railways are just a bounce-all speculation. People will find it out in time, and there’ll be more coaching than ever; railways can never answer!”.^[4]

Railways

Taken from a report printed by order of the House of Commons, Mayhew reports as of June 30th, 1849, there was 5447 miles of rail lines and 55,968 persons employed by the system, which transported 60,398,159 human passengers in that year alone. In 1849, of those miles traveled by rail users there were a total of 106 fatalities and 112 injuries.

Omnibuses

The most practical and economical modes of London travel, which began July 4th, 1829, was first started by Mr. Shillibeer, as a pair of vehicles which ran a route from the Bank to the Yorkshire Stingo. Mr.Shillibeer was reported by Mayhew to be a naval officer who began in his youth as a midshipman who had progressed into the business of coach building; a trade taught to him by Mr. Hatchett of Long Acre. The fare was one shilling for the whole route and sixpence for the half; and each omnibus made 12 runs each day.

Urban Vagrancy

Another section of the urban environment of London included in Mayhew’s reporting are the London vagrants. He writes, “Some work can be pursued only at certain seasons; some depends on the winds, as, for instance, dock labour; some on fashion; and nearly all on the general prosperity of the country”.^[4] It is at this point that people affected by these changes become reliant on their parishes. To accommodate these people, and best make use of their skills, the establishment of “casual wards” came about. These facilities were the free hostels made available to people in route to other locations in order to find work. A negative side effect of casual wards was the production of a group of people who sought only to use the system without giving anything back into it; mostly compromised of people between the ages of 17 and 25. The number of vagrants relieved throughout Wales and England in 1848 was 1,647,975 with as many as 40, 812 of them sick, bringing great cost upon the residents. The number of metropolitan beggars and thieves increased on the eves of large open air meetings in London. Mayhew notes, “for several days pervious to the Chartist display in 1848, there was an influx of 100 tramps over and above the ordinary quantity, each day, at one union alone in the suburbs of London”.^[4] The different modes of land and water travel made commerce a large part of London’s speedy urban development. It allowed for people and goods to be placed and displaced causing for both negative and positive effects on the culture and population.

Government and the Law

Henry Mayhew portrays the leaders of government as vacant illusions who are concerned more with personal pride and public appearance than they are with issues of the citizens. This is illustrated by Mayhew in the following two examples. The first example is taken from Punch Volume 1 and is a satire of political reporting and reads;

We are in a position to state that just prior to the General Election of 1880, Mr. CHAMBERLAIN was observed standing before a cheval glass, alternatively fixing his eyeglass in the right eye and in the left. Asked why he should thus quaintly occupy his leisure moments, he replied: "It is in view of the General Election. If on the platform any person in the crowd poses you with an awkward question, should you be able rapidly to transfer your eyeglass from your right eye to your left, and fix the obtruder with a stony stare, he is so much engaged in wondering whether you can keep the glass in position, that he forgets what he asked you, and you can pass on to less dangerous topics." ^[1]

The second example is taken from a collection of excerpts from London Labour and the London Poor selected by Mayhew titled, Mayhew’s Characters. The following statement exemplifies that the state of poverty and those who lived within it didn’t even register on the political radar, which Mayhew sought to shed light upon in order to bring their existence into the reality.

“It is curious, moreover, as supplying information concerning a large body of persons, of whom the public has less knowledge than of the most distant tribes of the earth-the government population returns not even numbering them among the inhabitants of the kingdom”(Mayhew xvii).^[5]

It was Mayhew's intent to bring truth and knowledge about the moral and religious condition of London into the public spectrum. Mayhew writes, "If , however, knowledge be power, and if the discovery of evil be half-way towards its cure, then have we a right to expect that our humanitarian and other appliances for the alleviation of misery and the prevention of crime, should at least keep pace with modern developements of socail science"(Mayhew xi).^[6]

Regarding the law of the London Mayhew says that with increase of education and growing intelligence comes increased facilities for the perpetration and concealment of crime. Mayhew asserts that the London criminal gets away with their crime often not because of luck or caution but because of their increased levels of knowledge and skill. He said it was difficult for London to accurately gauge the level of crime because of low conviction rates. Added to the difficulty of convictions Mayhew writes, "the immense difficulty of obtaining direct evidence in cases of criminal prosecution, and the onus probandi that the law, not unfairly, throws upon the accusers, are sufficient to hush up any cases of mere suspicion; so that at present we posses no adequate data by which to gauge the real dimensions of crime, or to judge respecting its insidious growth and power"(Mayhew xii).^[7]

Mayhew's mass of evidence and detail which he gathered with vigorous personal interest in the poor of London render his work invaluable to both legislators, religious officials, and general readers.

Agencies for the suppression of vice and crime in London

Ranked proportionate to influence

1. Curative (radical): Origin of evil found in corruption of human heart and it’s entire alienation from God. Religion is the only influence that can purify the fountainhead from which all thoughts flow. The most powerful levers for all humankind is the Word of God

2. Preventive (obstructive): Removal of peculiar forms of temptation; chiefly drunkenness Promote all such measures that remove hindrances to the development of virtue especially through the founding of Temperance Associations.

The National Temperance Society 1842- seeks to advocate their cause through distribution of publications and holding lectures and meetings. Also important provisions of the Common Lodging-Houses Act, passed in 1851, under Lord Shaftesbury, promoted more social and sanitary reform by bringing legal action against housing in violation of laws.

3. Repressive and Punitive (compulsory): Seeks to diminish the influence of crime, or curtail its power through the application of legal provisions in order to protect society from infractions of its rights and to retrain and intimidate the criminal.

The Society for the Suppression of Vice, est. 1802, to curtail the promotion and distribution of lectures or printed material concerning lust and other demoralizing entertainments.

The Associate Institution, formed in 1844, forced and improved the protection of women and children who otherwise would have been perversely exploited.

4. Reformative (remedial): Includes all measures which effect external change of character and render those who are viscous and depraved, honest and respectable members of society. Reformatory and Refuge Union, est. 1856, diffuses information about current institutions and lobbies for the establishment of new facilities. There are upwards of 50 institutions for incarceration and reformation of the criminal, capable of holding a combined 4000 persons of both sexes. Of these, nine institutions were for the juvenile criminals, and two for vagrants. Many of these institutions were funded privately and supported by the earnings of the inmates. One class of institutions used the Prodigal Son method of reformation, using God’s love and Christian kindness and the way to reintegrate a criminal to society. The other class of institution has a same end goal, but has methods of restraint and rigorous discipline to affect reform. Mayhew will personally lean to the Christian appeal arguing that this is the only way a true external and internal change has come about.

All of the above information regarding the London agencies against vice is taken from Volume IV of The London Labour and The London Poor ^[7]

House, Food, and Clothes

Kinds of Shelter

According to Mayhew it was the out of work domestic worker who was most at risk for being “swept into the current of crime”. Many of them are women who are coming from various parts of the kingdom seeking employment with nothing to return home to if their efforts for employment are not fulfilled in the metropolises. Mayhew asserts, “many of these women are orphans and friendless and wholly destitute of resources in London, they are moreover inexperienced, unsuspecting, and ignorant of the snares and temptations that surround them, it cannot be a matter of surprise that the reports of all the London penitentiaries should bear witness to the fact, that a large majority of fallen women who are received originally came from domestic service”(Mayhew xxvi).^[7] The Female Home Society (then in operation 24 years), provided a safe home for respectable female servants out of place or seeking situations. There are four homes in all, and they are visited regularly by Christian ladies with a service weekly by the Chaplain.

Kindred to the above institution is The Female Aid Society, established in 1836, which had the missions of; providing safe homes for female servants seeking situations; trains young girls for service and who are in need of proper guardianship; and a home for women who are tired of living a sinful life.

Other institutions for accommodation, temporary relief, and permanent benefit are^[3]:

The National Guardian Institute

The Marylebone Philanthropic Servants Institution and Pension Society

The Provisional Protection Society

The General Domestic Servants Benevolent Institution

The Servants’ Provident and Benevolent Society

Various homes, refuges, and asylums for the utterly desititute^[3]:

The Field Lane Night Refuges- 31,747 lodgings in one year to persons of both sexes otherwise at risk of crime or death

The Dudley Stuart Night Refuge, founded by Lord Dudley Stuart in 1852, provides for the destitute during the winter. Accommodated 95 persons in two warm, spacious apartments. This charity admits those to whom everyone else has shut the door. Upwards of 8000 men, women, and children were helped the previous winter.

The Houseless Poor Asylum-is the oldest refuge in London, was opened to those in London who found themselves unemployed and thrown into the streets during the winter months. Accommodations for 700, and since the opening 1,449,047 nights’ lodgings and 3,515,951 rations of bread have been supplied.

The House of Charity- takes in persons of good character in distressed situations, who for various accidental reasons require assistance. Nearly 3000 people have been accommodated for an average period of a month.

Clothes

Family and Social Rituals

Henry Mayhew's Character's^[6] is a book compiled of 42 individual character's whom Mayhew encountered during his street interviews with the common and poor local London residents. One such character account is about "happy "families," which is quoted by Mayhew as being, "the assemblages of animals of diverse habits and propensities living amicably, or at least quietly, in one cage" (Mayhew 299). Poor local residents would gather animals, which naturally would have an opposition to one another, and would put the animals together in a living environment where they co-existed. This co-existence became a street show when these animal "happy families" were put into cages and brought out into the public for viewing. These displays were used metaphorically by Mayhew to represent the overcrowded London streets and living environment of those house their. Families of the poor adapted like the animals shown in the cage.

Education

Health and Medicine

Holidays, Sports, and Recreation

Recreation:

Reading for recreation became popular in the Victorian. Sally Mitchell writes that, “high-speed presses, cheap wood-pulp paper, machines for typesetting, new means for producing illustrations, railways to send printed material quickly all over the country, and the steadily growing number of people who were literate enough to read for pleasure encouraged the publication of newspapers, magazines, and novels at every price and for every taste”^[8]. (Mitchell 233). Henry Mayhew contributed to the popular reading trend when he teamed up with Ebenezer Landells to create Punch [4]in 1841. In the first edition the editors of Punch make it clear to readers that they aren’t providing cheap laughs to make a buck. Punch becomes popular by using satire and sarcasm to bring issues of hot debate to the presses and into the hands of the Victorian reader, “The noble in his robes and coronet--the beadle in his gaudy livery of scarlet, and purple, and gold--the dignitary in the fulness of his pomp--the demagogue in the triumph of his hollowness--these and other visual and oral cheats by which mankind are cajoled, have passed in review before us, conjured up by the magic wand of PUNCH” ^[1].

Sally Mitchell writes how Victorian novels were standardly written in three volumes, each being large and usually with the reader having to wait some time before the following volume came into distribution ^[8]. An article contribution in Punch titled “A Railroad Novel” makes commentary against the three volume novel, “I was much amused the other day, on taking my seat in the Birmingham Railway train, to observe a sentimental-looking young gentleman, who was sitting opposite to me, deliberately draw from his travelling-bag three volumes of what appeared to me a new novel of the full regulation size…"Why," thought I, "should literature alone lag in the age of steam? Is there no way by which a man could be made to swallow Scott or bolt Bulwer, in as short a time as it now takes him to read an auction bill?.. Suddenly a happy thought struck me: it was to write a novel, in which only the actual spirit of the narration should be retained, rejecting all expletives, flourishes, and ornamental figures of speech; to be terse and abrupt in style--use monosyllables always in preference to polysyllables--and to eschew all heroes and heroines whose names contain more than four letters” ^[1]. The writer goes on to describe his intended new invention of a three volume book that could be fit into a carrying size novel, which would be readable in the short train ride. Attached to the end of the writers stated novel modification he includes for Punch a copy of his own novel; it is 3 paragraphs long with three images separating the volumes. Mitchell explains how novels were expensive and libraries which contained them were private and implemented rental fees. Therefore, it was middle and upper classes who had the greatest accessibility to literature.

Religion and Reform

Morality

England and Empire

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4} The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1,July 17, 1841, By Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Tom Taylor, Shirley Brooks, Francis Cowley Burnand, Owen Seaman.[1]
2. ↑ The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 84, July 17, 1841, By Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Tom Taylor, Shirley Brooks, Francis Cowley Burnand, Owen Seaman.[2]
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4} Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor. Vol.I. 1861. Griffin, Bohn, and Co., London. University of Virginia Library, VA. 8 Feb. 2007 [3]
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4} Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor. Vol.III. Frank Cass and Co. Limited, London. 1967.
5. ↑ Mayhew, Henry.Mayhew’s Charactors.Ed.Peter Quennell.Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, London. 1967.
6. ↑ ^6.0 6.1 Mayhew's Characters,</u.By Henry Mayhew. 1967.London: Hamlyn Pub., Group Ltd.</li> <li id="_note-London_Labour_IV">↑ ^{7.0 7.1 7.2} Mayhew, Henry. <u>London Labour and the London Poor. Vol.IV. Frank Cass and Co. Limited, London. 1967.
7. ↑ ^8.0 8.1 Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996