Published in 2006 (first published 2005)
6 hours and 39 minutes
Liza Picard was born in 1927. She read law at the London School of Economics and was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn, but did not practice. She worked in London for many years in the office of the Solicitor of Inland Revenue until she retired in 1987. She now lives in Oxford. Picard is also the author of the critically acclaimed Elizabeth’s London, Restoration London and Dr. Johnson’s London.
What is this book about?
From rag-gatherers to royalty, from fish knives to Freemasons: everyday life in Victorian London.
Like its acclaimed companion volumes, Elizabeth’s London, Restoration London and Dr Johnson’s London, 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.
