Like her previous books, this book is the product of the author's passionate
interest in the realities of everyday life - and the conditions in which most
people lived - 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, e.g.
Peter Jones, 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.


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