Victorian London Street Life in Historic Photographs by John Thomson

This book was originally published as Street Life in London in 1877. The photographs aren’t quaint or pretty, but document real people in real places. John Thomson, the photographer, and Adolphe Smith interviewed some of the people in the pictures and wrote sympathetic descriptions of their lives. As is noted in the preface, this is a new perspective on the poor.

The first photograph is titled “London Nomads” and it tells almost the whole story: the wooden caravan ‘home on wheels’ with a couple of kids peeking out the door, adults with worn clothes, tired faces and the bare earth beneath their feet. They wander about, making money when they can.

Perhaps saddest of all is the picture of one of the “Crawlers.” They are generally old women who have fallen into extreme poverty and live sometimes in the workhouse and sometimes in an available doorway. There are many more photographs that make Victorian London come alive for a moment. - Reviewed by Nancy