All of the horrors are there, described not by a dispassionate historian keeping a professional distance in his reporting, but in eyewitness accounts of and interviews with people living in appalling conditions.

You don’t want to LIVE down there!” everybody said, with disapprobation writ large upon their faces. “Why, it is said there are places where a man’s life isn’t worth tu’pence.” They looked me over with frank curiosity, as though I were some sort of a strange animal, and then ignored me utterly for the rest of my wait. Then Johnny Upright himself arrived, and I was summoned upstairs to confer with him. And day by day I became convinced that not only is it unwise, but it is criminal for the people of the Abyss to marry. They are the stones by the builder rejected. There is no place for them, in the social fabric, while all the forces of society drive them downward till they perish. At the bottom of the Abyss they are feeble, besotted, and imbecile. If they reproduce, the life is so cheap that perforce it perishes of itself. The work of the world goes on above them, and they do not care to take part in it, nor are they able. Moreover, the work of the world does not need them. There are plenty, far fitter than they, clinging to the steep slope above, and struggling frantically to slide no more.Sir: Pardon the liberty I am taking, but having read what you said about poor women working fourteen hours a day for ten shillings per week, I beg to state my case. I am a tie-maker, who, after working all week, cannot earn more than five shillings, and I have a poor husband who hasn’t earned a penny for more than ten years” (157).

You can’t do it, you know,” said the human emporium of routes and fares at Cook’s Cheapside branch. “It is so–hem–so unusual.”

IT WILL OPEN PEOPLE’S EYES

Drunken women fighting! It is not nice to think of; it is far worse to listen to. Something like this it runs – The condition of the East-end of London embodies a ghastly problem, not yet solved, though sedulously mitigated as far as may be. NO PRACTICAL SOLUTION But how long does the rush season last, in which you receive this high wage of thirty bob?” I asked. And I, five,” his companion added, turning gloomy with the memory of it. “Five days once, with nothing on my stomach but a bit of orange peel, an’ outraged nature wouldn’t stand it, sir, an’ I near died. Sometimes, walkin’ the streets at night, I’ve ben that desperate I’ve made up my mind to win the horse or lose the saddle. You know what I mean, sir–to commit some big robbery. But when mornin’ come, there was I, too weak from ‘unger an’ cold to ‘arm a mouse.” Actually make a man a criminal against ‘is will,” said the Carpenter. “‘Ere I am, old, younger men takin’ my place, my clothes gettin’ shabbier an’ shabbier, an’ makin’ it ‘arder every day to get a job. I go to the casual ward for a bed. Must be there by two or three in the afternoon or I won’t get in. You saw what happened to- day. What chance does that give me to look for work? S’pose I do get into the casual ward? Keep me in all day to-morrow, let me out mornin’ o’ next day. What then? The law sez I can’t get in another casual ward that night less’n ten miles distant. Have to hurry an’ walk to be there in time that day. What chance does that give me to look for a job? S’pose I don’t walk. S’pose I look for a job? In no time there’s night come, an’ no bed. No sleep all night, nothin’ to eat, what shape am I in the mornin’ to look for work? Got to make up my sleep in the park somehow” (the vision of Christ’s Church, Spitalfield, was strong on me) “an’ get something to eat. An’ there I am! Old, down, an’ no chance to get up.”

A lull; apparently one combatant temporarily disabled and being resuscitated; child’s voice audible again, but now sunk to a lower note of terror and growing exhaustion.According to Michael Shelden, George Orwell‘s biographer, the English writer had read London’s book while in his teens and greatly inspired as can be seen in Down and Out in Paris and London and the Road to Wigan Pier. I put my hand under his shirt and felt. The skin was stretched like parchment over the bones, and the sensation produced was for all the world like running one’s hand over a washboard. The hansom pursued an aimless way for several minutes, then came to a puzzled stop. The aperture above my head was uncovered, and the cabman peered down perplexedly at me.

But he grinned and shook his head, and though I had made a good bargain, I was unpleasantly aware that he had made a better one. Belfast Telegraph (2016) ‘Hundreds gather to pay respects at funeral of homeless woman Catherine Kenny who died on Belfast's streets’, 23 March 2016, available: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/hundreds-gather-to-pay-respects-at-funeral-of-homeless-woman-catherine-kenny-who-died-on-belfasts-streets-34565983.html (accessed 7 April 2016). But when the dawn came, the nightmare over, you would hale you home to refresh yourself, and until you died you would tell the story of your adventure to groups of admiring friends. It would grow into a mighty story. Your little eight-hour night would become an Odyssey and you a Homer.Given that this is the major book that, nowadays, is quoted from and remembered with regards to East End poverty at the dawn of the 20th century. As I was about to remark,” he went on steadily, “it is unprecedented, and I don’t think we can do anything for you.”