British historian Oskar Jensen combs through hundreds of late Georgian and Victorian primary and secondary accounts to document the stories of London's poor through their own voices. What emerges is a buzzing world of the working classes, diverse in gender, ethnicity, ability, origin, and occupation. There's two-year-old Susan Mosely, kidnapped by an older woman because beggars with children are treated with more sympathy. There's John James Bezer, a seven-year-old who's elated to find a job as a street deliveryman--working seventeen hours a day. And there's Joseph Johnson, a Black ex-sailor who's famous for singing sea songs outside the Tower of London with a model ship balanced on his head. The stories in Vagabonds form a moving picture of people in poverty and a reminder of the power of the human spirit--but also of the suffering begotten by a society divided into rich and poor. Jensen's assiduous work results in a meticulously accurate portrait of the visceral sights, sounds, and smells of Dickensian London, offering us a vibrant new perspective on the streets and their lives. Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2023
London, 1857: A pair of teenage girls holding a sign that says "Fugitive Slaves" ask for money on the corner of Blackman Street. After a constable accosts them and charges them with begging, they end up in court, where national newspapers pick up their story. Are the girls truly escaped slaves from Kentucky? Or will the city's dystopian Mendicity Society catch them in a lie, exposing them as born-and-raised Londoners and endangering their safety? With its many stories of people like these who lived and made their living on the streets, Vagabonds forms a moving picture of the real Dickensian London. Piecing together contemporary sources such as newspaper articles, letters, and journal entries, historian Oskar Jensen follows the harrowing, hopeful journeys of the city's poor: children, immigrants, street performers, thieves, and sex workers, all diverse in gender, ethnicity, ability, and origin. In their own voices, they give us a vibrant new perspective on this moment in history, with its deep inequality that bears an astonishing resemblance to our own era's divides.
London, 1857: A pair of teenage girls holding a sign that says "Fugitive Slaves" ask for money on the corner of Blackman Street. After a constable accosts them and charges them with begging, they end up in court, where national newspapers pick up their story. Are<