ABSTRACT
In the 1880s and 1890s, the two most important cities at the core of the world economy were loci of political struggle. In London and New York, skilled and unskilled workers, trade unionists, ward heelers, precinct captains, district bosses and sundry roughs, the disreputable, the respectable and the residuum (‘not a class, but the drift of all classes’), both men and women, stood in defence of their turf.1 They picketed work sites and squatted tenements, parks and public places, organized vigils, formed gangs and neighbourhood clubs, sometimes bursting riotously out of place, or marching in processions and parades, ‘dramatizing the power they still lack[ed]’, trying to capture – at times symbolically, at others quite literally – hitherto inaccessible sites of power (Berger 1968; Marston 1989).2 Through placed struggles and in movement across neighbourhoods and districts, what Peter Hall economically described as ‘the evils of 19th century cities’ (Hall 1996, 7) became matters of political contention; stakes of struggles were created and the structuring of urban power became more visible (Hall 1996, 7).
