No stone left unturned

Dickens, the inspiration and source for this book, was addicted to walking the London streets at night. A man who felt uneasy in the countryside without a pavement beneath his feet, he was said to know the mean streets of London better than any cabbie. His skill was to write about the city in his own time, describing the world of the London poor as if they had never been seen before. Dickens realised that to understand London, you need to know how to read the street. That is the idea behind Judith Flanders’s new book.

Like Dickens, Londoners walked everywhere. In 1866 an estimated three-quarters of a million pedestrians poured in to work each day, a thick line of black-coated clerks tramping the streets. The city created a constant, crashing roar, making it hard to hear, even indoors. Street sellers — coster-mongers (veg, fruit and fish), match boys and girls — brought their stuff to you: there was no need to seek out a shop. Entertainment was improvised by urchins, and the streets were places to eat as well: fast food such as puddings and pies, hot potatoes and hot eels could all be bought there.

The very poor, whom Dickens observed so acutely on his night walks, eked out a living by sweeping crossings, picking pockets or selling watercress — the watercress girls, who bought their produce at the market at 4 a.m. and walked the streets until 10 p.m., were the most marginal of the street-sellers. But the homes of the poor were disappearing from view. Victorian slum clearance flattened the ramshackle, overcrowded alleys and courts in districts such as Seven Dials or St Giles, creating wide, clean, safe streets which delighted the middle class.