Victorian London - 1877

PowerPoint Show by Andrew

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In1877, Scottish photographer John Thomson collaborated with journalist Adolphe Smith to document the lives of London’s urban poor.

Their project, Street Life in London, was released in monthly installments and later as a single volume.

He combined documentary images of street vendors, beggars and other workers with interviews, essays and reportage, which explored poverty as a sociological problem to be studied and alleviated.

A street vendor and shoeshine.

Friends enjoy a beer outside The Wallmaker, a public house.

A fruit vendor.

People in front of a rag shop in Lambeth, London, where the Thames annual tidal overflow causes hardship to the locals.

A man waits for fatigued or adventurous promenaders in a London common to approach him for a donkey ride.

A shellfish stall owner sells oysters and whelks.

Public disinfectors sanitize the streets after an outbreak of smallpox.

A fancy ware dealer sells ornaments from his barrow.

Flower women selling bouquets at Covent Garden market.

An Italian harpist entertains local children on the street.

A "secondhand" furniture shop.

A water cart.

"Caney" the clown weaves cane strips into the seat of a wooden chair.

A dining room for ex-convicts. The owner, left, speaks with Ramo Sammy, a local Indian drummer known as the "tam tam man."

A shoeshine boy at work.

A locksmith mends locks at his stall.

Barge workers on the Thames.

A chimney sweep and his assistant.

A man wears a sandwich-board advertisement.

"Mush-Fakers" and ginger beer makers with their cart.

A street vendor sells halfpenny ices.

A horse-drawn hansom cab.

A sign painter at work in his studio.

An omnibus driver known as "Cast-Iron Billy."

Bill stickers paste placards advertising Madame Tussaud's waxworks museum.

Costermonger Joseph Carney sells fresh herring from his barrow in the street market between Seven Dials and Five Dials in London.

A vendor sells cough lozenges.

Porters with boxes of plants at Covent Garden market.

British army recruiting sergeants outside a public house at Westminster.