Henry Mayhew

Henry Mayhew (* November 25, 1812; † July 25, 1887 ) was an English social researcher, journalist, playwright. He was committed to social reform.

Mayhew founded together with Mark Lemon, the satirical magazine Punch. Better known he is through his extensive publications, including statistical, studies on the position of the lower social classes, the working class, the lumpenproletariat and the artisanal petty bourgeoisie, all of whom lived in poverty in London. Mayhew describes the poor on an unusually respectful of his time type - although he falls passages, in the typical pejorative rhetoric of the Victorian bourgeoisie.

Publication history of Mayhew's poverty reports

His first poverty reports Mayhew wrote a series of articles for the Morning Chronicle ( October 1849-December 1850 ). However, after a dispute with the publisher, he left the newspaper, started his own business and began his famous Slumreportage London Labour and the London Poor. First, ( December 1850-February 1852 ), she appeared in the form of cheaper Quart books that could be bought for two or three pence on the streets or in bookstores. About ten years later (1861 ) there was a new edition in book form.

Reaction of the London poor in London Labour and the London Poor

Some members of the lower classes were with the way she described Mayhew in his report, do not agree. A group of street vendors joined in the spring / summer of 1851 against the journalist and founded a Street Trader 's Protection Association.

Publications

• London Labour and the London Poor. 1851
• The Mormons, or Latter-day Saints. 1851
• The Rhine and its Picturesque Scenery. 1859
• The lower Rhine and its picturesque scenery: Rotterdam to Mayence. Routledge, Warne & Routledge, London 1860 ( Digitized edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf )
• The Upper Rhine: Mayence to the Lake of Constance. Routledge, Warne & Routledge, London 1860 ( Digitized edition )
• German Life and Manners as Seen in Saxony at the Present Day: with an account of village life, town life, fashionable life, domestic life, married life, school and university life, etc., of Germany at the present time; illustrated with songs and pictures of the student customs at the University of Jena. 1864

• Anne Humpherys (ed.): Voices of the Poor. Selections from the " Morning Chronicle " " Labour and the Poor " (1849-1850), London 1971.
• Bertrand Taithe: The Essential Mayhew. Representing and Communicating the Poor. Rivers Oram Press, London 1996.
• E. P. Thompson (ed.): The Unknown Mayhew. Selections from the Morning Chronicle 1849-50. Harmondsworth et al 1984.

Other sources

• Edmund Yates: His Recollections and Experiences. Richard Bentley and Son, London 1884.