The best of times, the worst of times

Originally a project for Luton Museums Service at Wardown Park Museum to accompany gallery exhibits showing contrasts in Victorian childhood. Rather than offering fictional tales here I rely directly on interviews from Henry Mayhew’s ‘London Labour & the London Poor’ to speak about the lives and work of real children (and adults) in the teeming mid nineteenth century city. Mayhew and Charles Dickens worked together, both as journalists and social reformers, so many of the former’s subjects appear recognizably as (sometimes composite) characters in the latter’s novels. Dickens' prose works best read aloud - so I also give themed short dramatic readings from some of Dickens' novels to illustrate the link between the two.

Children do connect especially with their Victorian counterparts - from the child crossing sweepers and gymnastic tumblers of the Haymarket (who combine as Little Joe in Bleak House) to the Thames foreshore toshers and mudlarks and the labourers on the Capital's dustheaps.

They also enjoy being shocked by the real worst jobs in the world  - most especially the miserable life and desperate, disgusting labour of the Purefinder...

Women’s Institute and social history groups tend to prefer the struggles of the dollymops and daywalkers of the Strand: Many of these prostitute women’s interviews were probably conducted by Mrs Mayhew (rather than her husband) who taught herself the American Short Hand in order to keep accurate records.

I am also currently developing a presentation as a workhouse visitor, looking at changes in Poor Law Relief with the growth - and iniquities! - of the Union Workhouse system.

More conventional storytelling also draws on Dickens, referencing haunting short stories of the modern age such as the The Signalman.  Those with sufficiently strong nerves can also hear tales of the Indian Mutiny: the truly brave may even decide to discover the Secret of the Monkey's Paw...

I have also recently researched and developed an oral biography of my partner’s great, great, great grandmother: Anna Maria Jeary (aka Mrs Rudd) This indomitable Norfolk woman played a vital - if unsung - role in Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s Great Sewer Work for London; fiercely embraced The Married Women’s Property Acts and battled the Chinese tongs in Clerkenwell  - hand to hand when necessary! She terrified her children and grandchildren and unnerves me a little, even in her photograph...