Volume I, The Metropolitan Districts
Author: Henry Mayhew
Preview
Beginning with Henry Mayhew's “A Visit to the Cholera Districts of Bermondsey”, the reputed catalyst for the series, Volume I of the Labour and the Poor series runs to 18 letters. Letters to the Editor begin to appear, showing the reaction from the public starting to build. Read More »

Volume II, The Metropolitan Districts
Author: Henry Mayhew
Preview
Volume II of the Labour and the Poor series runs to 18 letters. Henry Mayhew's investigations lead to many Letters to the Editor pouring in at this stage of the series. He investigates dock labourers, houses of refuge and asylums for the poor, vagrants, beggars, and boot and shoe makers. Read More »

Volume III, The Metropolitan Districts
Author: Henry Mayhew
Preview
The third volume of the Labour and the Poor series contains 20 letters covering merchant seamen, ragged schools, and street showmen and performers. Letters to the Editor continue to appear. Read More »

Volume IV, The Metropolitan Districts
Author: Henry Mayhew
Preview
The concluding Metropolitan District volume contains 26 letters and sees Henry Mayhew investigating the various workers in wood along with the transit of the metropolis, dressmakers, tanners and finally the London markets. The investigation continues on around the country. Read More »

Volume V, The Manufacturing Districts
Author: Angus B. Reach
Preview
Angus B. Reach’s evocative investigation takes us to the heart of the Industrial Revolution, inside the factories and mines and into the homes of the working classes in the Northern and Midland counties of England. Read More »

Volume VI, The Rural Districts
Author: Alexander Mackay & Shirley Brooks
Preview
Volume VI of the Labour and the Poor series sees Alexander Mackay and Shirley Brooks entering the rural districts as part of The Morning Chronicle's investigations. The regions traversed include the South Eastern, South Western and Eastern counties of England. Read More »

Volume VII, The Rural Districts
Author: Alexander Mackay & Shirley Brooks
Preview
As Alexander Mackay and Shirley Brooks continue their investigations on behalf of The Morning Chronicle, Labour and the Poor Volume VII takes us into the Northern and Midland counties and further explores the South Eastern and Eastern counties of England. Read More »

Volume VIII, Wales
Author: Unknown
Preview
Fuelling the steam-powered factories and feeding the furnaces of Britain. This was Wales in the mid-nineteenth century, rich in coal, copper, iron-ore, and lead. The Morning Chronicle’s “Special Correspondent” takes us into the mines and works and into the lives of the workers and their families. Read More »

Volume IX, Birmingham
Author: Charles Mackay
Preview
Birmingham in the mid-nineteenth century was a manufacturing powerhouse. Thousands of workshops were turning out a vast range of goods, supplying the nation and the world. Everything from massive steam engines to minute buttons were made here and it was almost a given that if it was made in metal, then it was made in Birmingham. Charles Mackay visited in 1850. Read More »

Volume X, Liverpool
Author: Charles Mackay
Preview
Liverpool, the major Atlantic port of the United Kingdom, fed the textile industry’s voracious appetite for cotton shipped in from the southern United States and was the principal port for emigrants about to embark on a new life in the New World. Charles Mackay guides us around this bustling port city, through the docks, onto the emigrant ships and into the back streets. Read More »

Agriculture and the Rural Population Abroad is our next series of books and will be available soon. Published by The Morning Chronicle following their Labour and the Poor investigations in the mid-nineteenth century, correspondents including Angus B. Reach and Shirley Brooks were sent to investigate the rural populations of France, Belgium, Denmark, Galicia, Poland, Holland, Southern Russia, Asia Minor, Syria, and finally Egypt. Read More »