The People of the Abyss

[Bulldog]

Several writers have tried to capture the wretched living conditions that the desperately poor in the East End had to face during the late Victorian period. Perhaps none succeeded as well as the American writer, Jack London. His classic book “The People of the Abyss” along with its original photographs can now be viewed online. Here’s the website:

http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/

Enjoy...

Bulldog

[ChrisGeorge]

Several writers have tried to capture the wretched living conditions that the desperately poor in the East End had to face during the late Victorian period. Perhaps none succeeded as well as the American writer, Jack London. His classic book “The People of the Abyss” along with its original photographs can now be viewed online. Here’s the website:

http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/

Enjoy...

Bulldog

Thanks for posting this URL, Bulldog. You are correct: anyone who wishes to fully understand the dreadful living conditions in the East End should read Jack London's classic exposé of those conditions in The People of the Abyss.

Chris

[c.d.]

And for those of you who are simply a fan of Jack London (as I am), a google search will bring up information on his controversial death. Some have suggested that it was a suicide. He was in extreme pain and an overdose of morphine, accidental or deliberate, may have contributed to his death.

c.d.

[George Hutchinson]

POTA - Best book ever. End of discussion.

PHILIP

[harry]

When a person writes of individuals standing sleeping on a rope stretched across a room,it seems more a case of fiction than fact.

[George Hutchinson]

^ Harry - care to expand? Your post is ambiguous. Are you saying it is almost too hard to believe, or that you actually do NOT believe it?

PHILIP

[miss marple]

The sleeping on a rope is true, Harry, not fiction. It was an alternative, if you lacked the fourpence for a bed.
I would suggest, that you do some background history reading on conditions in Victorian London. All newbys should at least have Henry Mayhew as a background reference, first hand reportage of the life of the working class and criminal underworld. 1860s plus of course Jack London and Charles Booth.All of which are contemporary accounts.
Miss Marple

[harry]

Philip,
I say both,because the feat is impossible.I have yet to hear of anyone that has accomplished it.
Miss Marple,
As my grandfather was born in the mid 1860's,and his life and mine overlapped by nearly 30 years,and my father and mother were born before the turn of the twentieth century,as were many aunts and uncles,I do not need to read authors of that time,to get a fair idea of what it was like.Have you seen anyone standing sleeping,draped over a rope?

[Natalie Severn]

Dear Chris George,
It is too easy,in my opinion,to cite Jack London and Booth as the most reliable source material on the East End in Victorian times-1888 etc.They were both remarkable and compelling chroniclers and Booth especially has left us a clear account of the dire poverty a third of the East End faced at that time.
But there have been many more people who are acknowledged experts and academics researchers into those times such as Professor Jerry White,[Rothschild Buildings,Life in an East End Tenement Block 1887-1920], Iain Sinclair, [London: City of Disappearances/ White Chappell,Scarlet Tracings] ,Patrick Wright,[A Journey Through ruins,The Last Days of London ].
These writers have at various times and in various books questioned Jack London"s emphasis on the "pervasive" horror of it all ,noting that though he and Booth may have lived among the poor of Whitechapel in Victorian times they were both essentially middle class Victorian male "outsiders" whose writing was from a specific experience as "observers" whose own internal perspective had been coloured by their nurture ie the aspirations and desires of their own class.This is even ,as may be the case with Jack London,the writer rejects his own class and its comforts to write on the East End from an "inside" as HE experiences it, and even if,as Jack London does ,he writes with compassion and imaginative empathetic understanding.Booth was certainly objective,in reporting his statistics, but he did not speak of the dialectics that were in operation within the largely Jewish /Irish communities whose level of income/poverty he recorded.
A read through "East End 1888" and" East End Jewish Radicals"by William Fishman,quoting from various historical political accounts in the radical press as well as conventional press sources,reveals another side to the story which tells of the vitality, collective enterprise and the immense,informal support networks among many ordinary men and women without which many more would have died of starvation.Much was being done by East Enders themselves to try to change things as well as philanthropists such as the Rothschilds being engaged in huge slum clearance and new building works, which began prior to 1888.

But hey---Harry says more in a phrase than any of us------in short "Were you there?"

[George Hutchinson]

Hi Harry.

With all due respect, you are using subjective opinion as historical revisionism.

PHILIP

[John Bennett]

But hey---Harry says more in a phrase than any of us------in short "Were you there?"

No.

Jack London was. And Charles Booth & his assistants. Frederick CHarrington. And Henry Mayhew. And plenty of others were there too.

Not meaning to put down their superb works, but Jerry White, William Fishman, Iain Sinclair and Patrick Wright most certainly weren't.


That of course, doesn't mean to say they don't know what they're talking about.

[John Bennett]

George Orwell, from Down and Out in Paris and London:

"The Twopenny Hangover. This comes a little higher than the Embankment. At the Twopenny Hangover, the lodgers sit in a row on a bench; there is a rope in front of them, and they lean on this as though leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet, cuts the rope at five in the morning. I have never been there myself, but Bozo had been there often. I asked him whether anyone could possibly sleep in such an attitude, and he said that it was more comfortable than it sounded - at any rate, better than bare floor. There are similar shelters in Paris, but the charge there is only twenty-five centimes (a halfpenny) instead of twopence."

[smezenen]

Yes Harry it is possible to sleep standing with your upper torso draped over a rope it can also be done in a sitting position this is the more prefered method and is actually quite comfortable. I have fallen asleep in that position many times when i was assigned as an airborne soldier and awaiting a jump from a crowded aircraft.

[Sam Flynn]

Philip, I say both,because the feat is impossible. I have yet to hear of anyone that has accomplished it.

... you obviously haven't seen commuters snoozing on their feet whilst holding onto a rope or a rail in a subway train. The practice of "sleeping on/over the rope" in doss-houses is attested-to several times by independent authors.

[Robert]

The Penny Press, Minneapolis, Dec 21st 1895 and The St Louis Globe-Democrat, Nov 14th 1886.