ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century London was a place of firsts and superlatives: the capital of the first industrial nation; the largest and richest urban agglomeration in the world; the first city with extensive mass suburbanisation, to name but a few. It was also a city of contrasts which could be seen in the extremes of wealth and poverty; in dynamic, successful industries alongside declining ones; in people at leisure and those locked in the most menial drudgery; and in new architectural and civil engineering wonders next to acres of dilapidation.
