Subtitled, "A Cyclopaedia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work."<br /><br />"The history of a people from the lips of the people themselves .. their labour, earnings, trials and sufferings, in their own unvarnished language, and to pourtray the condition of their homes and their families by personal observation of the places ..." "My earnest hope is that the book may serve to give the rich a more intimate knowledge of the sufferings, and the frequent heroism under those sufferings, of the poor ..."<br /><br />Henry Mayhew was a social researcher and journalist; he compiled a four volume work in minute detail on the lives of the poor in London, of which this is the first volume, published in 1851.<br /><br />(Peter Yearsley)<br /><br />Notes:<br />1 The reader has attempted different voices to separate the interviewees from the narrator, but makes no claim to the accents being appropriate to the speakers.<br />2 Very
