London in the Nineteenth Century: A Human Awful Wonder of God

by Jerry White

London in the nineteenth century was the greatest city mankind had ever seen. Its wealth was dazzling. Its horrors shocked the world. As William Blake put it, London was 'a Human awful wonder of God'. It was a century of genius - of Blake, Thackeray and Mayhew, of Nash, Faraday, Disraeli and Dickens. Jerry White's dazzling book is the first in a hundred years to explore London's history over the nineteenth century as a whole. We see the destruction of old London and the city's unparalleled suburban expansion. We see how London absorbed people from all over Britain, from Europe and the Empire. We see how Londoners worked and played. Most of all, we see how they tried to make sense of their city and make it a better place in which to live. Emerging clearly from this eloquent and richly-detailed overview is the London we see about us today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, London, Victorian, 19th Century, Historical, British Literature

607 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Professor of London history

Reviews

[Dave Schoettinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had the good fortune to spend two weeks in London during the early autumn of 2022 and became intrigued by the layout of the city which is somewhat different from the American cities with which I am familiar. I bought this book to indulge my curiosity as to the development of the city. Jerry White did not disappoint me.

The author provides lengthy descriptions of London in the 19th century and the types of people and activities one could find in various sections of town. He uses a broad selection of primary sources including the writings of people, such as Charles Dickens, who lived there at the time.

My 21st century perspective has long included the association of large cities with the economically challenged portion of the population. But White's treatment of the struggles of the unemployed and marginally employed of 19th century London was as depressing as those of any current metropolis. To the extent that there is a plot in this book, it is the gradual improvement in the living conditions of the unfortunate portions of London's population.

White provides an entire chapter on prostitution, which was apparently a widespread enterprise for most of the 19th century. I learned that in the mid-19th century the few blocks near my 2022 hotel would have been visited by at least 100 ladies of the evening each evening. In 2022 I saw lots of young women, but most appeared to be university students, and none of them paid any attention to me. This, I suppose, is progress.

[Jake Goretzki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good and very dense. I lost count of the pages I bookmarked to go back to and streets and novels to follow up. It’s more rigorous and less sentimental than a Peter Ackroyd (not to say that those don’t have their charms).

There was a Crosse & Blackwell factory on Charing Cross Road. Haymarket was full of prostitutes. Music Halls and theatres were too. The hard-up used to be radical. Wentworth Street was the ‘Jews’ Market’. Soho was full of reluctant posh French emigres (plus ca change). I love the hounding that the Duke of Wellington got. I've always wanted to lob a brick through the window of Apsley House (because its man-in-the-pub fame as 'No.1, London' has always irritated me).

Knowing your London social history vastly enriches the experience of daily life here, in my view - you realise you are just another person in a bewildered, century-long parade and you’re never far from a buried revelation. This is the best bit of (social) history I’ve read in ages. Looking forward to reading his 20th century one.

[Jimmie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have 2 family lines that lived in London in this century. I was fascinated to read about their London and what was going on. A large chunk of London was under construction, with more people moving in and London was spreading out too. There was the Chartist demonstrates and the disease and crime outbreaks too. I would think they thought the Salt lake valley was a little bit of heaven. Maybe they did get homesick for their families left behind, and missed the grand parks. Such a huge change for them and it makes me admire them even more.

[Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Londoners in the 19th century would use anything as an excuse to go a bit mad and burn stuff down.
And life in the 19th century was mostly not so nice.

[Renae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting.

[Sophie Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't think this was quite as cleverly structured as the 18th century book, but still a very good read for anyone interested in London or 19th century history.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am amazed that the tube lines were cut then covered over and displaced inhabitants were not found alternative accomodation - they were just turfed out on to the streets in a 'on yer boike' fashion. Also those first tube trains were steam trains - imagine the mess from the smoke and think of the state of your lungs!

My copy was bought new and by halfway, it was starting to fall to pieces; the glossy pages crammed with lovely photographs didn't appreciate being bound up with the paper text pages. Overall it was a tiresome read, however if victoriana pub quizzes are your forte then the wall to wall facts will have you covered enough to win the teddy.

[Stephen Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A marvellous collection - written in themed chapters and time-lined from 1800 to 1899 - covering how London changed during the 19th century. It covers everything from architecture to government, charity and religion to riot and prostitution, homeless children to the wealthy in their perfect, posh streets. The sections on the working class attitude to charity and religion was particularly eye-opening.

Lots of period detail, a terrific eye when it comes to poverty, class and power, and with a great story to tell - very readable and very enjoyable.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

not very interesting.

[Josh Hogan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the most definitive written exploration of London in the nineteenth century (admittedly I haven't read that many, although I'd be surprised to come across a longer, more fully rounded book on this subject), this is a well written and highly informative volume on our capital city at the time when it was the world's greatest city. Known as the new Rome, London underwent a miraculous transformation in this century, in terms of size, population, infrastructure and culture.

Jerry White explores in great depth all the driving forces behind the radical changes which left London a very different city at the end of the nineteenth century. No theme is left unexamined, from the birth of the new police force to the new metropolitan railways, immigration and the ballooning population, the new forms of city government that were needed to run this vastly expanded metropolis.

As with his book on the eighteenth century, in this one White does suffer slightly from a bias towards certain topics that interest him, at the expense of other potentially more important topics. Thirty pages are given over to the growth of the publishing industry in nineteenth century London, while only a few are dedicated to the arguably more era-defining subject of the Metropolitan Board of Works and all its exceptional achievements.

White's clear preference for certain topics does in this way tend to let the book down. A more chronological approach to the key events that shaped London in the nineteenth century might have served the topic better than the random distribution of related events and sagas across the different sections of the book.

Luckily, the topic of London in the nineteenth century is so fascinating that even a bad writer couldn't fail to write something of interest about it. For anyone who is keen to know what London was really like in those days, this is probably a good place to start.

[D.E. Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it twice already. Now reading - dipping into again - completely wonderful. A first-rate history of London in the C19th.

[Nickie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Omg finished it after six blimmin months

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Multiple brilliant books on 20th century Britain and London have been published in the last decade or so. This would have made brilliant addition (backwards in time) to that collection, I thought. Alas...

After the first chapter, I thought that perhaps the editor wasn't quite awake when putting the book together. It is basically a long list of London streets that changed in different ways in the 19th century. Impossible to keep track of (especially listening to the audiobook version) everything, even for a Londoner of 12 years. Perhaps the next chapters would be an improvement.

But, turns out that this is what the book is: a chronicle, one big list of events, places, and persons. It is informative, no doubt, but hardly a reading experience. Perhaps this is a case of the author being overwhelmed by the research and just putting in everything interesting. A stark contrast to the finely crafted narratives in the 20th century popular histories.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

c2008. (16) Another book to add to my London collection. As ever, not enough illustrations for my liking but really interesting. Split into chapters such as 'Work', 'Culture' and 'People' -a wide cross section of information and quotes. I wish I had the time to add all the interesting bits to my own compendium of London street names - as there are some interesting facts that I would like to record. Definitely recommended to the normal crew. "Then there were the numerous sellers of animals. A fancy-dog seller did well among 'young ladies' in Regent Street in the mid-1860's

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

IMPORTANT: You must not only love London, but should have a great interest in the Georgian and Victorian Eras to truly enjoy this majestrial effort. With that fair warning, I'll happily admit that I'll be keeping my copy of White's incredible research handy on my shelves. A fine writer, an excellent scholar and teacher, White seems happy delving into details about London that will surprise and inform even the most experienced visitor or researcher. Impressive!

[Hasselhh · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a really interesting book, and the subject matter is presented through thorough research. However, sometimes the sentences become so long and convoluted that you lose the point—and when this happens too often within a chapter, it becomes hard to stay focused.

[Toofan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intresting and informative, though I would recommend a printed or digital version.

[Antipoet · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF about halfway through. I tried, but the lack of overall narrative and total disorganization made it read like a trivia jumble.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This does exactly what good social history should do – it takes us, as much as is possible, into the lives and experiences of everyday Londoners. It is not a history of the rich and powerful, of London as as an Imperial city, or any of the other stories of London that could be told – but of the city's mass of working people and the changes in their conditions of life through London's stupendous growth in the 19th century: a sweeping history from below. White's two oral histories from the 1980s – the Rothschilde Buildings and The Worst Street in North London – are among some of the finest working class histories we have and here he has extended this view to take in the city as a whole.

In places there is too much detail and the narrative is obscured but never lost, and I suspect that knowing London and its spaces, not well but adequately, has given me a better sense of the overall drive of the book than if London's geography was unknown.

White wears his learning lightly, and has a deft hand to use detail and specific cases to tell a bigger story. All in all and allowing for the obscured narrative in places, this is an extremely good instance of using particular instances to tell a more general story.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant, extraordinary evocation of London, street by street, in the 19th century. The research is staggering. White uses the street layout of London to discuss kinds of city life -- religious, political, mercantile, criminal, the demi-monde, and so on -- and it's a conceit that works well because each area of London specializes, as it were, in a particular kind of sociology. White also manages to give a detailed sense of the astounding growth of London, especially during the Victorian period, by discussing (at great length) the growth of the railroads, the underground, housing developments (what the British call 'estates') and so on. It's all here -- the politics, the crime, the public-spirited and selfish attempts to reduce disease, help the poor, and solve the great mystery of how so many people could live so close together without killing each other, especially with no germ theory of disease. A book for the Victorian era specialist or someone with a great deal of curiosity about London history.

[Gianni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed and comprehensive account of life in London across the 19th century. At times this book feels a little bit overwhelming with the amount of detailed information. Not an easy read, but if you want to learn how the capital of an Empire developed from a small town to the largest city in the world, this is the book you should read. Plenty of great period photos too.

[Ayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent biography of the great city in the nineteenth century - what's amazing is how different a place it was in terms of buildings, culture, politics, social fabric and more at the beginning of the century from the end of the century.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been studying London history as a new hobby, and this has been my favorite book so far in terms of content. If I could change one thing, I would ask that the author add more visuals. Maps of the neighborhoods from that time frame would be outstanding. More pictures would be great also.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you know what, it took me over a year to read this book, which is in no way a criticism. It's so densely packed with information that you need to spend time on it to really absorb it. 19th century London is a weird and unique thing and this book captures it perfectly.

[Sarah Harkness · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been reading this on and off for several months - it's well written, very comprehensive, and full of excellent notes and bibliographies

[April · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mentioned as a source by Horowitz when he wrote The House of Silk Holmes novel.

[James Webster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of very interesting detail and very readable. Nineteenth-century London was clearly horrific.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only is White an incredible researcher and historian, but he is also a masterful narrator who vividly describes the nineteenth-century metropolis.

[Cliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating insight into 19th century London. A 'must read' for anyone interested in the history of the capital.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. While it was not as amusing as Liza Pickard's book it still had a lot of interesting information.