The Seven Curses of London

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S. Rivers and Company, 1869 - 461 pages
"To certain squeamish readers this useful and well-written volume will prove an unsavoury book; and even to those who have the nerve to witness agony and explore the lurking-places of crime, it will occasion no ordinary sadness and sense of repugnance. Redolent with the unwholesome smell of ill-drained alleys and over-crowded dwellings for the poor, it resounds in every chapter with the cries of violence and the mutterings of woe ..." [review of The Seven Curses of London from the Athenaeum, 1869] James Greenwood (c.1835-1927) was one of eleven children, born to a Lambeth coach trimmer. His elder brother Frederick, initially apprenticed to a publishing/printing firm, became a writer and editor; and it was under his brother's guidance that Greenwood wrote an article entitled 'A Night in a Workhouse' (pub. Pall Mall Gazette, 12-15 January 1866). This was a ground-breaking piece of undercover reporting, in which Greenwood spent the night in a 'casual ward' disguised as a pauper. In the style of the period, the article was anonymous, with Greenwood bestowing on himself the soubriquet of 'The Amateur Casual'. The article's exposé of maladministration and wretched conditions - and the exotic manner in which the information was gathered - sealed the author's reputation overnight. Greenwood would continue to expose various aspects of London 'low life' for several decades, writing for the Pall Mall Gazette and then the Daily Telegraph. Many of these were anthologised into book form, but The Seven Curses of London was written as a single campaigning work, designed to stimulate debate about the manifold evils which beset the urban poor. It is not, however, a simple tract and the book includes many of the staples of Greenwood's distinctive style of journalism, including investigative reporting and interviews.
 

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Page 216 - for the first offence be grievously whipped, and burned through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about...
Page 408 - Dont waste your time at family funerals grieving for your relatives: attend to life, not to death: there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, and better.
Page 308 - Any person who in any public place or at any public meeting uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace or whereby a breach of the peace is likely to be occasioned, shall be guilty of an offence.
Page 166 - Cheepe, in the manner aforesaid, to the pillory, and let him be put upon the pillory, and remain there at least one hour in the day; and the third time that such default shall be found, he shall be drawn, and the oven shall be pulled down, and the baker made to forswear the trade in the city forever.
Page 450 - Where the husband of any woman is beyond the seas, or in custody of the law, or in confinement in a licensed house or asylum as a lunatic or idiot, all relief which the Guardians shall give to his wife, or her child or children, shall be given to such woman, in the same manner and subject to the same conditions, as if she were a widow.
Page 216 - Taxation of every Inhabitant, Parson, Vicar, and other, and of every Occupier of Lands, Houses, Tithes Impropriate, Propriations of Tithes, Coal Mines or saleable Underwoods in the said Parish...
Page 307 - Metropolitan-Police district, wherein provisions, liquors, or refreshments of any kind shall be sold or consumed (whether the same shall be kept or retailed therein, or procured elsewhere...
Page 308 - Every common prostitute or nightwalker loitering or being in any thoroughfare or public place for the purpose of prostitution or solicitation, to the annoyance of the inhabitants or passers-by,
Page 278 - crystal circle* of Cremorne to flicker in the thousand gas-lights there for the gratification of the dancing public only. On and around that platform waltzed, strolled, and fed some thousand souls — perhaps seven hundred of them men of the upper and middle class, the remainder prostitutes more or less prononcées.
Page 26 - ... where adults of both sexes, belonging to different families, are lodged in the same room, regardless of all the common decencies of life, and where from three to five adults, men and women, besides a train or two of children, are accustomed to herd together...

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