This book is the product of the author's passionate interest in the realities of everyday life so often left out of history books.
This period of mid Victorian London covers a huge span : Victoria's wedding and the place of the royals in popular esteem ; how the very poor lived, the underworld, prostitution, crime, prisons and transportation ; the public utilities - Bazalgette on sewers and road design, Chadwick on pollution and sanitation ; private charities - Peabody, Burdett Coutts - and workhouses ; new terraced housing and transport, trains, omnibuses and the Underground ; furniture and decor ; families and the position of women ; the prosperous middle classes and their new shops, such as Peter Jones and Harrods ; entertaining and servants, food and drink ; unlimited liability and bankruptcy ; the rich, the marriage market, taxes and anti-semitism ; the Empire, recruitment and press-gangs.
The period begins with the closing of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons and ends with the first (steam-operated) Underground trains and the first Gilbert & Sullivan.
