The good old days
Subtitle: crime, murder and mayhem in Victorian London
By: Gilda O'Neill
Edition: Large print ed.
Publisher: Windsor
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Bath
Language: eng
Number of pages: 322
ISBN-13: 9781405617406; 9781405617413
Subjects: Social conditions; Large type books; Crime; History
Description: Were things really better in the good old days? The nineteenth century was a time when there were not only massive gulfs being created between the upper, middling and working classes, but there was also a growing awareness of the existence of an even more impoverished underclass a terrifying demi-monde of criminals, tarts and no-hope low lifes. This was the layer of ruffians' identified by social investigators such as Charles Booth and Henry Mayhew. The extent of those class divisions and consequent poverty meant that it could honestly be said by commentators of the time that the mores, lives and even language of the poorest in society were less familiar to their more privileged neighbours than those of the inhabitants of what was known then as darkest Africa'. However, this unfamiliarity certainly didn't prevent a certain amount of experimental visiting a kind of poverty tourism known as slumming - by toffs who chose to risk their safety for the thrill of mixing with the roughs in the taverns, music halls and case houses down by the docks. But they had to take care. Uniformed gangs would hold their street' in violent clashes with opposing mobs, and foreign seamen who had jumped ship would set up home near the river, close to the massive wealth hidden behind the high, blind walls of the bonded warehouses, and everyone knew about the alien hoards' propensity for making a living from thievery, opium, and whores...Gilda O'Neill's powerful exploration of the teeming underbelly that was to be found in the fog-bound streets, rat-infested slums, common lodging houses, boozers, penny gaffs and brothels in the heart of the greatest empire that the world has ever seen brings to life the real working class London of Victoria's reign.
Notes: Originally published: London: Viking, 2006.

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: 1.; title: Street crime, juvenile delinquents and the garrotting panic -- -- 2.; title: Youth crime, low entertainment and other alarms -- -- 3.; title: Victorian substance abuse -- -- 4.; title: The sex trade, porn, vice and baby farmers -- -- 5.; title: Murder most foul -- -- 6.; title: 1888 -- Jack's reign of terror -- -- 7.; title: Con men, tricksters, clairvoyants and frauds -- -- 8.; title: The good old days, indeed : dissent and revolt -- -- 9.; title: Police, policing and criminal types.