Comments on: Mayhew’s Street Traders

By: Susan

Susan — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 18:35:36 +0000

I love Mayhew, and have recently become fascinated with Arthur Munby, who also interviewed working women — office workers as well as milk sellers, servants, prostitutes, milliners, and mudlarks in London, and fisherwomen and women coal-miners and workers. He was also a friend of Dante Rossetti and Ruskin, so his social circle was quite diverse. Derek Hudson’s Munby: Man of Two Worlds is filled with quotations from Munby’s diaries, and those of his secret wife, housemaid Hannah Cullwick.

By: Julia

Julia — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 22:18:28 +0000

What wonderful stories and images – they truly evoke the atmosphere of 19th century Spitalfields. I was particularly interested – no, fascinated – in the words of the rhubarb and spice seller as one of my 3rd great-grandfathers was a Moroccan Jew, also from Magadore, although he was, according to the censuses of 1841 and 1851, a jewellery hawker. His wife, my 3rd great-grandmother, was Spanish-Portuguese. Both were members of the Sephardi congregation at Bevis Marks. To also see the sketch of what he might have looked like was amazing! Thank you so much for sharing this. Julia

By: Rod

Rod — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 19:02:01 +0000

Maybe I should not fret too much when my train is late

By: Caroline Murray

Caroline Murray — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 17:39:42 +0000

I was interested to compare/contrast Mayhew’s picture of the long-song-seller with the earlier but similar image on this reissue of Childs ‘Ballads’: http://bit.ly/2aJtC1Z. Presumably many of Mayhew’s subjects were the latest street traders in a long line which your excellent ‘Cries of London’ so vividly portrays, but Mayhew’s notes of these traders’ own accounts of their lives add another dimension.

By: Helen Breen

Helen Breen — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 11:17:51 +0000

Greetings from Boston,

Excellent stories and etchings. Agree with your assessment:

“Yet his work transcends the tragic politics of want and deprivation that he set out to address, because the human qualities of his subjects come alive on the page and command our respect.”

I did stop by the Bishopsgate Institute that you refer to so often when I was in London in June. Amazing place. Thanks for this wonderful piece…

By: Hilda Kean

Hilda Kean — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 10:22:03 +0000

I am pleased that amongst those you have chosen to highlight are people working – in various ways – with animals. Although Mayhew is a key work for social historians of the nineteenth century too often conventional historians ignore these animals . I am personally quite fond of the pure finder collecting dog faeces for the tanning trade in Bermondsey…

By: Caroline Bottomley

Caroline Bottomley — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 08:10:36 +0000

wonderful stories

By: Jennifer Tann

Jennifer Tann — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 07:01:05 +0000

My website is one of my other ‘lives!

These are wonderful images – so very clear. Ive just been writing a book on working children in the past:sweeps to slaves or some such title depending on what the publisher thinks and quarried Mayhew extensively. But your research is far more in depth about Spitalfields . I celebrate it.

By: Valerie-Jael

Valerie-Jael — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 06:35:59 +0000

Every picture tells a story indeed. Those people had very hard lives. Valerie

By: Janet M

Janet M — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 02:23:06 +0000

I love Mayhew, he had the drive to record these stories that would otherwise be lost, and allows us a glimpse of the past.