London 19th century

The greater part of London was plunged into poverty and given over to unrestrained drunkenness... The city was filthy and stinking, there was no sewerage system, slops and excrement flowed through the streets in a wide river.

As the capital of the largest empire in world history, London was an important place. Most British aristocratic families owned property in the city, which was particularly used during the ‘London Season’, a period in the summer when it was common for wealthy people to come to the city for social events such as Trooping the Colour and the races at Epsom and Ascot. Many of today’s great hotels and public buildings began life as the private homes of the wealthy, including the grand Somerset House. Alongside this great wealth, however, there was extreme poverty. We might think of places like Whitechapel in the East End as places of extreme poverty, but in fact slums could be found everywhere, often right next to the homes of the wealthy.

Every day, many new people were arriving in the city, or being thrown out of their slums due to crime or eviction. A flophouse was the Victorian version of a hostel. They usually consisted of one large room where you could pay for a small bed for the night. You could pay extra for some food or, if you wanted to save money, you could forgo the bed and opt for a flophouse instead. A flophouse was a large bench placed against the wall. You would sit on the bench and have a rope tied to your face, which you could hang over to sleep. It was a very cheap option, usually costing just a penny a night. A flophouse left you feeling pretty lousy and was often used by people who were too drunk to go home, so the word became associated with the 'night after tomorrow'.

In fact, London was so dirty due to heavy coal pollution that many Londoners chose to wear black just to hide the dirt. However, there was one place where you could find colour and escapism, and that was the music halls.

Many people in Victorian London lived in desperation. There was an almost constant need for cheap food, and in an era when regulation was minimal or non-existent, this left the poorest vulnerable to food that had been adulterated. Tea could be mixed with ash or even lead to maximise profits for producers. Flour was often mixed with chalk or even lime, which was not only disgusting but potentially deadly. Certain types of meat were also highly suspect, particularly minced meats such as sausages. These were sometimes mixed with breadcrumbs to further stretch the meat – there are some real complaints from the period of sausages turning to toast when cooked. Others were mixed with rotten meat or gristle, which could cause nausea and tasted disgusting.

"The drunken, the dissolute, the outcasts have disappeared from human sight; the more sober and respectable inhabitants of the capital have not yet risen for the day's labors, and the streets are silent as death... Only here and there a policeman stands on a corner, staring boredly into the empty distance of the avenue, and some carousing cat, stealthily running across the street, descends into his cellar...". Then hour after hour London awakens. The first to appear on the streets are the traders heading for Covent Garden, the innkeepers opening their shutters, and the little chimney sweep.

Monmouth Street is home to second-hand clothing shops.