Everyday Life in Victorian London explores the daily lives of adults
and children, aristocracy and middle classes, working poor and the
'submerged tenth' underclass.
It shows the different faces of London, with its many extremes and
contrasts - by day and by night; busy and peaceful; ugly and beautiful;
safe and dangerous. It looks at the River Thames and its importance; the
City, West and East Ends; at work, leisure, health, hospitals,
education, food, clothes, housing, shops and markets, transport and
infrastructure, public services, crime, the police and prisons,
immigrant communities, and important events such as the Great Exhibition
of 1851 and Queen Victoria's golden and diamond jubilees.
Everyday life in Victorian London will be explored at three levels -
above ground (views from hot air balloons), at ground level, and below
ground (the sewage system, the underground railway and cemeteries). A
central theme is the rapid growth in population throughout the century
due to immigration from the countryside and abroad, and the resulting
expansion into 'The Monster City'.
The final chapter describes London at the end of the century with
improved transport, newly embanked Thames, sewage system, housing for
the poor, public buildings, hospitals and prisons - a transformed
capital of a great empire and the embryo of the London we know today.
