Photography and the Image of the London Poor

The poor in their midst were a race apart, Henry Mayhew assured his readers at the outset of his revelations about London Labour and the Labouring Poor (186–162). Tribes of atavistic nomads, he explained, thrived at the center of civilization:

There are – socially, morally, and perhaps even physically considered – but two distinct and broadly marked races, viz., the wanderers and the settlers – the vagabond and the citizen – the nomadic and the civilized tribes. ¹