Victorian London: The Tale of a City
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Picard, Liza, PUBLISHER: St. Martin's Press, To Londoners, ong>theong> ong>yearong>s to were ong>yearong>s of dramatic change and achievement. As suburbs expanded and roads multiplied, London was ripped apart to build railway lines and stations and life-saving sewers. ong>Theong> Thames was contained by embankments, and traffic congestion was eased by ong>theong> first underground railway in ong>theong> world. A start was made on providing housing for ong>theong> "deserving poor." ong>Theong>re were significant advances in medicine, and ong>theong> Ragged Schools are perhaps ong>theong> least known of Victorian achievements, in those last decades before universal state education. In ong>theong> Great Exhibition managed to astonish almost everyone, attracting exhibitors and visitors from all over ong>theong> world. But ong>theong>re was also appalling poverty and exploitation, exposed by Henry Mayhew and oong>theong>rs. For ong>theong> laboring classes, pay was pitifully low, ong>theong> hours long, and job security nonexistent. Liza Picard shows us ong>theong> physical reality of daily life. She takes us into schools and prisons, churches and cemeteries. Many practical innovations of ong>theong> time--flushing lavatories, underground railways, umbrellas, letter boxes, driving on ong>theong> left--point ong>theong> way forward. But this was also, at least until ong>theong> s, a city of cholera outbreaks, transportation to Australia, public executions, and ong>theong> workhouse, where children could be sold by ong>theong>ir parents for as little as 12 and streetpeddlers sold sparrows for a penny, tied by ong>theong> leg for children to play with. Cruelty and hypocrisy flourished alongside invention, industry, and philanthropy. Buy Now