Tales of Mean Streets

by Arthur Morrison

These stories are a brilliant evocatin of a narrow, close-knit community—that of the streets of London's East End in the 1890s. Having lived and worked there, he knew that his East Enders were not a race apart, but ordinary men and women, scraping by perhaps, but neither criminals nor paupers. He chronicled their adventures and misadventures, their wooings and their funerals, with sympathy, humor and a sense of both the tragedies and comedies to be found in the "mean streets, " from Lizerunt's disastrous marriage to Scuddy Lond's plausible but imperfect conversion and "Squire" Napper's quickly dispersed fortune.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, London, Fiction, Victorian

166 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1894

About the author

Arthur George Morrison (1863-1945) was an English author and journalist, known for his realistic novels about London's East End and for his detective stories. In 1890, he left his job as a clerk at the People's Palace and joined the editorial staff of the Evening Globe newspaper. The following year, he published a story titled "A Street", which was subsequently published in book form in Tales of Mean Streets (1894). Around this time, Morrison was also producing detective short stories which emulated those of Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes. Three volumes of Martin Hewitt stories were published before the publication of the novel for which Morrison is most famous: A Child of the Jago (1896). Other less well-received novels and stories followed, until Morrison effectively retired from writing fiction around 1913. Between then and his death, he seems to have concentrated on building his collection of Japanese prints and paintings.

Amongst his other works are Martin Hewitt: Investigator (1894), Zig-Zags at the Zoo (1894), Chronicles of Martin Hewett (1895), Adventures of Martin Hewett (1896), and The Hole in the Wall (1902).

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title describes the contents -- the meanness not only of city and streets but also of characters and the poverty that confines them. These, I think, are stories written by a man who escaped such poverty and looks back on it only with relief that he managed to get out, and perhaps with a fear of falling back that erases generosity. There is none of the lurid and titillating violence and detail of Thomas Burke, nor yet any of the humour, pride and everyday mutual support seen in W. Pett Ridge. Just poverty, meanness, narrowness and desperation. In such depths of poverty these things exist, of course, in abundance. I hate when they are not balanced by the small things that still make lives bearable, humour above all, but I know that fear of poverty not just lying behind you but also lying in ahead and how it can shape your view of the world. These are tales of the working class by one of their own like those of Pett Ridge, and on the same subjects from Edwin Pugh, Somerset Maugham (whose work mostly infuriated me), and Richard Whiteing. All of whom together came to be seen as a new school of English fiction as stated by the introduction on Morrison's life and work. I found another list of Victorian 'slum fiction', which includes all of these titles and many more.

For a taste of daily life, a sense of the streets, this is very good. The stories, too, are beautifully crafted. Always a hidden ugly little twist to make them stand out as far more than just descriptions of everyday life and struggle for survival. This is not surprising given the company Arthur Morrison kept -- though that company was surprising. He worked for W.E. Henley, editor of the National Observer... who was on the crack team of writers forming his team? In addition to Morrison there was Rudyard Kipling, J.M. Barrie, Thomas Hardy, Charles Whibley, H.G. Wells, W.B. Yeats and H.D. Lowry.I can't imagine them all just sitting in the pub after work, but I am enjoying the effort.

Morrison worked under Walter Besant on the newspaper at the People's Palace in Mile End, which endears him to me immensely. He left to become a writer and journalist, wrote detective tales starring Martin Hewitt also published some tales of the supernatural in Cunning Murrrell (1900), and his more famous works, A Child of the Jago, To London Town (1899), and Hole in the Wall (1902).

A street

This street is in the East End. There is no need to say in the East End of what. The East End is a vast city, as famous in its way as any the hand of man has made. But who knows the East End? It is down through Cornhill and out beyond Leadenhall Street and Aldgate Pump, one will say: a shocking place, where he once went with a curate; an evil plexus of slums that hide human creeping things; where filthy men and women live on penn'orths of gin, where collars and clean shirts are decencies unknown, where every citizen wears a black eye, and none ever combs his hair. The East End is a place, says another, which is given over to the Unemployed. And the Unemployed is a race who token is a clay pipe, and whose enemy is soap: now and again it migrates bodily to Hyde Park with banners, and furnishes adjacent police courts with disorderly drunks. Still another knows the East End only as the place whence begging letters come; there are coal and blanket funds there, all perennially insolvent, and everybody always wants a day in the country (19).

Of this street there are about one hundred and fifty yards--on the same pattern all. It is not pretty to look at. A dingy little brick house house twenty feet high, with three square holes to carry the windows, and an oblong hole to carry the door, is not a pleasing object; and each side of this street is formed by two or three score of such houses in a row, with one front wall in common. And the effect is as of stables (20).

There follows a categorisation of who lives on such a street, not noisy, loud troublemakers marching to Hyde Park or factory girls living a little further out of the city, instead on this street are the people too proud to ask for charity, the men work in the docks or the gasworks, maybe the shipbuilding yards. Two families live in each house, possibly a lodger.

In a time before clocks and alarms for the common man, there is this (reminds me of EP Thompson writing about clocks and time):

Every morning at half-past five there is a curious demonstration. The street resounds with thunderous knockings, repeated on door after door, and acknowledged ever by a muffled shout from within. These signals are the work of the night-watchman or the early policeman or both... (21)

And then a description of the mayhem, the waves of male workers, school children, children carrying their fathers lunches down to the docks or gasworks, their return, the return of the men. Every day except Sunday.

Nobody laughs here--life is too serious a thing; nobody sings. There was once a woman who sang--a young wife from the country. But she bore children and her voice cracked. Then her man died, and she sang no more. (24)

And this:

Yet there are aspirations. There has lately come into the street a young man lodger who belongs to a Mutual Improvement Society. Membership in this society is regarded as a sort of learned degree, and at its meetings debates are held and papers smugly read by lamentably self-satisfied young men lodgers, whose only preparation for debating and writing is a fathomless ignorance. For ignorance is the inevitable portion of dwellers here: seeing nothing, reading nothing, and considering nothing.

Where in the East End lies this street? Everywhere. The hundred and fifty yards is only a link in a long and a mightily tangled chain--is only a turn in a tortuous maze. This street of the square holes is hundreds of miles long. That it is planned in short lengths is true, but there is no other way in the world that can more properly be called a single street, because of its dismal lack of accent, its sordid uniformity, its utter remoteness from delight. (28)

From this street all of the stories grow, as much as anything can grow in the environment so described. Everything stunted, petty, brutal mean. For many there is some compassion from the author -- distinctly in contrast with lack of compassion and the hatred of anyone getting above themselves from the rest of the neighbourhood, which often hastens their brutal end.

The exception is the fallen woman -- there are these terrible descriptions from a story of a streetcar to Bow Bridge (otherwise a fascinating little glimpse into early public transportation):

In the midst of the riot the decent woman sat silent and indifferent, her children on and about her knees. Further along, two women ate fish with their fingers and discoursed personalities in voices which ran strident through the uproar, as the odor of their snack asserted itself in the general fetor. And opposite the decent woman there sat a bonnetless drab, who said nothing, but looked at the decent woman's children as a shoeless brat looks at the dolls in a toyshop window.

A man by the door vomited his liquor: whereat was more hilarity, and his neighbors, with many yaups, shoved further up the middle. But one of the little ones, standing before her mother, was pushed almost to falling; and the harlot, seeing her chance, snatched the child upon her knee. The child looked up, something in wonder, and smiled; and the woman leered as honestly as she might, saying a hoarse word or two. (62)

This is also noteworthy for use of one of my favourite words 'stramash', meaning fight. I always thought it was scottish, but perhaps was once as common down South?

'The Red Cow Group' describes an eager young anarchist (I am fairly certain police provocateur along the lines of The Secret Agent) willing to teach men how to make bombs and tell them where to put them but loathe to do anything himself -- he is demolished in the most satisfying way by a group of working class boozers.

There are the Nappers, who come into a little wealth and of course it goes to their heads and inspires a discourse on fashion and the East End's class geographies:

Mrs. Napper went that very evening to the Grove at Stratford to buy silk and satin, green, red, and yellow--cutting her neighbors dead, right and left. And by the next morning tradesmen had sent circulars and samples of goods. Mrs. Napper was for taking a proper position in society, and a house in a fashionable part--Barking Road, for instance, or even East India Road, Poplar; but Bill would none of such foolishness. He wasn't proud, and Canning Town was quite good enough for him. This much, though, he conceded: that the family should take a whole house of five rooms in the next street, instead of the two rooms and a cellule upstairs now rented (131).

There are stories that show the desperation of the great Dock Strike of 1889, the promise of boxing as one way of escape, the mix of the criminal and the decent, the explosiveness of violence and the pervasiveness of poverty. I wonder what it was exactly that brought Morrison back to to write these stories.

[Jarvo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book I've owned for a mere 8 years, feels brand new. Fascinating collections of stories about working class and underclass life in the East End in the late C19th. Everyday stories of poverty, hunger, drunkenness and prostitution, some of which feel dated, others might have been written yesterday. Leavened by a vain of black humour. Its interesting, rather than of exceptional literary merit but I'd be tempted to read more by Morrison.

[Richie Kercenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Morrison was born into the skilled working class. His family was not far from the unemployed, illiterate, half-starved sort of individuals which he often portrayed in fiction. Tales of Mean Streets is a crafty collection of sketches reworked into short stories and published individually in many local and national papers before being collected in one volume. The stories are filled with a meanness and desperation way too realistic, and reflecting the author's proximity of such atmosphere and surroundings. Morrison's close interaction with poor people had allowed him to understand and portray them in a manner not only faithful to their true circumstances, but also critical and commentary in regard to the evils he sought to atone.

Lizerunt:
Morrison's collection was publicly banned due to the reviewers' objection to Lizerunt and its termed "shocking" ending, which was nothing but an honest reflection of a pathetic reality. This opening story follows the progress of Elizabeth Hunt, a poor girl belonging to the East End life. At 17, Lizerunt is employed in a pickle factory, and considered to have been too late in marrying. For such reasons, she hurriedly marries a young man named Billy Chope. The latter is unemployed, brutal, and dependent on his mother. After their wedding, the same violent treatment is extended to the young wife even during the days of her pregnancy. Billy's mother eventually dies from heart failure caused in a large degree by the cruelty of her son. The latter, upon finding that his economy was jeopardized by the loss, forces his wife into a life of prostitution.

Thus, the tale brings to the fore the dreadful conditions of the lower classes with a strong emphasis on the circumstances of women who suffered a great deal more than their male counterparts.

The plot also highlights the concept of alienation in the midst of the lower classes. Among these people, all values were inverted. Anyone who kept clean was considered arrogant. Ignorance had driven people to regard anyone who could read as a suspect character. And women allowed their men to beat and abuse them, revolting against any interference like that of the medical student who attempted to shield Elizabeth from the physical abuse of her husband only few hours after the birth of their child.

Lizerunt enumerates in its plot the main evils which spread freely among the lower classes adding to the difficulties and hardships of the people. Such evils include ignorance, high birth rates, and the lack of moral guidance.

Without Visible Means:
This one is a brief story which follows the progress of ignorant and destitute men thrown out of work by the Great Strikes of 1888. Their march reflects the scant education of the lower classes, for the men proceed naively with neither maps, nor provisions for their journey.

The moral degeneration of the lower classes is again emphasized through the theft of Joey Clayton's tool bag by his own friend. The story ends with a pitiful recommendation to commit the unhealthy man to the workhouse; a grim fate shared by thousands at the time.

To Bow Bridge:
This is more of a sketch than a story, for it gives an account of a tram journey from one county to another. Most of the passengers seek but an extra hour of drinks since the pubs in their county close at 11 while those of their destination do not shut doors before 12. The motive thus stated reflects the insensitiveness and the numb state of the lower classes, who being reduced to dire poverty, only sought to escape reality by means of drink and similar narcotics.

That Brute Simmons:
This seemingly funny tale of a man named Simmons stands as a reflection and example of the unhappiness resulting from incompatible marriages. Simmons had married Hannah, who was the widow of Bob Ford, a sailor supposedly drowned in sea. For years, Simmons had virtually borne the whims of a wife who had forced him to do house chores and wear rags until one day the spell was broken as Bob had reemerged to claim back his wife. Bob had attempted to extract money from Simmons, but the latter refused and having found the means to break loose from his moral obligation at last, allowed his wife to reunite with her former husband. The reunion, however, was never achieved, for the latter had escaped comically through the window, and Simmons was mistaken for a deserter.

Behind the Shade:
The story is a gloomy brief sketch of two women, namely Mrs. and Miss Perkins who, having lost their main breadwinner, had attempted to keep up appearances and tried several courses to sustain themselves and keep a roof above their heads. Their pitiful attempts end in a tragic death caused by utter destitution.

Three Rounds:
The story is an intense and vivid description of Neddy Milton's quest for money in a state of utter destitution caused by unemployment and poverty. Prize fighting in inns was one of the desperate outlets which the poor lads of the time had sought in their wretched states of penury.

In Business:
The story is an analysis of the outcomes of ignorance and social prejudices among the poor. Ted Munsey inherits a 100 pounds from a deceased uncle, and finds himself thrown by his wife into the domain of haberdashery. Mrs. Munsey embarks in such a line of business driven by the mere desire for belonging to the shop-keeping class. Her stubbornness and ignorance in the matters of business lead the family to ruin. At the end of the tale, Ted sacrifices himself and takes the financial calamity upon his shoulders to save the rest of the family.

The Red Cow Group:
This story can be read as a satirical representation of the radical and anarchist groups of the time. The plot involves a drunkard group from the Red Cow Bar with a young anarchist named Sotcher. The latter preaches freedom from despotism through destruction, and instructs his ignorant companions in the art of making nitroglycerine.
Ironically, the group turns against its master, and the latter proves to be a first rate coward. Consequently, they decide to sacrifice him in their first explosion, which ends comically in little more than a firework and a fine for drunkenness against Sotcher.

On the Stairs:
The story begins and ends on the stairs where two women exchange their views upon the state of a dying son. The lad's mother mirrors the backward thinking caused by ignorance and rigidity of a people who favor spending money on what they termed "descent burial" than invest it in medicines and actual remedies.

Having taken pity on the dying young man, the medical assistant in attendance advances five shilling to the woman so that she can buy the needed restorative liqueur. What he did not know was that his colleague had done the same thing the day before, which puts the emphasis upon the misplaced charity of the bourgeois towards the slums dwellers. The latter group's sole system of values was not only inversed, but based on the quest for money regardless of the cost be it moral or otherwise.

Squire Napper:
This is a comical sketch of the events following the inheritance of a man named Napper to the sum of 300 pounds. Prior to that, Napper was a respectable paver. His ignorance in money matters, however, had lead him to squander the sum on drinking and other trifles. The inheritance leaves him poorer and more wretched than ever.

A poor Stick:
The story is a psychological analysis of a poor man named Robert Jennings. Robert is a kind and loving husband who complies with all his wife's desires and whims. The latter is portrayed as a woman of remarkable beauty, but no moral respectability. Not only does she neglect her duties in regard to her house and children, but she also cheats on her husband and eventually leaves him.
Robert nurses his sadness in denial in spite of all the red flags and his own sister's warnings. When his wife leaves him at last he is overwhelmed and borders on insanity.
Besides being a study of the psychological state of a deceived husband, the story emphasizes the moral degeneration of the age especially in the midst of the lower classes where temptation is high.

A Conversion:
The story follows the comical career of one Scuddy Lond in the art of thievery and the life of crime. The young man sticks to a fraudulent existence and is only repentant when caught in the act. At the end of the story, Scuddy ventures into church and is moved to tears by the sermon. Once he emerges into the street again, however, his first act is to steal from an old saleswoman.

In spite of its comical tone, the story points to the inadequate social order which was concerned with saving the poor's souls but left them in the streets to starve. Morality would not flourish among half-starved people who are dragged by hunger and destitution into a life of sins and crimes.

All that Messuage:
The story is that of Jack Randall who embarks naively upon the prospect of buying a house to become a landlord. What Randall and his wife did not know, however, was the amount of the additional expenses and taxes they were to expect. Having spent all their money in the purchase of the house, the pair had found themselves in tremendous financial difficulties heightened by a tenant who refused both paying his rent and leaving the house. Randall and his wife were utterly ruined because of their ignorance.

The other pillar of the story is the prejudice and narrow-mindedness of the lower classes. Randall was believed to be a rich man the moment he had acquired the title of landlord. His son and friends asked him for money then turned sharply against him when he could not meet their expectations. His tenant too had deemed him a thieve extracting money from the poor lodgers. The poor in the East End were so alienated from the outer world but also from one another so that every man could only attend to his own needs and desires not caring what became of his fellow sufferers.

[Budge Burgess · Rating 3 out of 5]

A depressing series of cameos of 19th century, London East End working class life, the poverty of deprived lives and truncated expectations. Interesting, but not to be read if you're sitting on the roof of a tall building or have a loaded gun somewhere in reach. It's not Dickens though you can see the influence.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

A street--
*Lizerunt--
*Without visible means--
To Bow Bridge--
That brute Simmons--3
*Behind the shade--
Three rounds--
In business--
The red cow group--
*On the stairs--
Squire Napper--
A poor stick--3
A conversion--
All that messuage--

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fairly pointless

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across the works of Morrison while I was doing background reading for my job interview. He wrote "realistic" novels and short stories about poor people in the East End. When I started to read I realised this was "Eastenders" for the late Victorians. One big soap opera about people who had less money and were more criminal and immoral than you were. He be-friended a vicar in the area who believed that the poorest were irredeemable and should be put in single sex concentration camps and be left to die out. Unfortunatly this attitude tends to come through in a lot of the stories. His characters don't seem like real people with real problems, but rather he writes like they were a sub class of human. While there is a lot of poverty and misfortune in the stories it seems like most of the people's problems result from them being gulliable or making stupid descisions and you got the impression that they were slightly to blame for their own poverty. However, there was one story that was pure brilliance. To Bow Bridge is a story about a trip on a 19th century night bus. For anyone whose taken a modern night bus in London it was brilliant to read and see how so little changes! Here were people trying to hurry to the next part of town where the pubs stayed open an hour later so they could keep drinking a bit longer. There were fights, someone throwing up, girls giggling, the people coming home from work, a woman out to late with her kids. It was a beautiful little slice of life that was captured and really rang true. I wish there had been more observational stories like this and less of the poor people are a subclass. Not all the other stories were as that bad, but overall it left you with a feeling that people were poor because they were stupid or bad. There were a few exceptions to this, one was about a woman and her mother who lived together running a school, that had no children and were hated by their neighbours for assuming airs, but eventually starved to death with no one realising they were hurting. To Bow bridge is availble as an etext here (as is the rest of the stories) http://www.artintheblood.com/mh/means... I am still interested in reading other books by Morrison.

[Lizixer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although Morrison's characters live and die around the East End of the late Victorian period, many of these people's lives and problems are still recognisable and being experienced by poor people in today's Britain.

These are not stories of an idealised working class but people whose grinding poverty and lack of prospects result in hopeless, disappointed lives. Be it the young woman who drifts into an abusive relationship with a violent man, the young starving man trying to get a break by boxing, the mental breakdown of a man abandoned with young children or the mother and daughter who die living a life of genteel starvation, we can recognise that their tragedies result from the poverty of their lives.

Even those who get a break by coming into money find themselves failing - the 'spend, spend, spend' mentality, the failed business or, in a weirdly relevant story for modern times, the amateur buy to let landlord who is ruined by lack of understanding of what he is doing, bad tenants and finally a 'friend' of the mortgage lender ready to buy back cheaply what has cost the old man his money and health.

There are some clever observations of working class life including a Friday night on the bus across the river to get a late drink or a night out at the fair. Some of the characters are unpleasant and utterly without shame. Morrison seems to have no time for those ideological or religious movements operating in the East End at the time. The Church is a ridiculous place that redeems no one, the Anarchist is revealed by the proletariat to be cowardly and lacking in all conviction, the Trade Unionist is a vile bully setting thugs on an old man rendering him unable to work and sent to the workhouse while sub-letting the old man's property and thundering on soap boxes against evil landlords.

Morrison is a lively writer, not afraid to confront the sexual and violent world of his characters but this isn't a moralising set of stories. He shows you their lives, he leaves the characters where they are. The rest is up to you.

[Nathaniel Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This street is in the East End. There is no need to say in the East End of what.

An essay followed by 13 stories, Tales of Mean Streets paints a depressing yet vivid picture of East End life at its worst. This post-Dickensonian (in setting; not in prose) London, with its want of morality and respect, is depicted to make one laugh on one page and shudder at the next. The stories may be fictions but the analysis of outcast urbanism is astute enough to warrant further study.

This book makes it easy to imagine how such villains as Jack the Ripper managed to sprout from the cobblestones and commit atrocities, both in the home and on the streets, yet elude capture or even recognition due to the foul nature of their surroundings.

I had to start this book twice. In August I read through Lizerunt, but time got away from me and I began again some months later. I don't remember what that was.

I give it 3 stars, though my fondness for this book tempts me to give it 4. This is not significant literature and did not contribute notably to my worldview, but rather leisure reading; and for that, it can be somewhat tedious in places. I don't recommend it to anyone with no existing knowledge of 19th century London life.

[Frederick]

I found a Modern Library edition of this with an introduction by H. L. Mencken. I'd never heard of Arthur Morrison. I've read a few pages. The focus is on London's East End. It was written in the 1890's and is pretty stark. Orwell certainly would have been aware of this author. If Mencken's introduction (written in 1920 or so) is any indication, this book was as well-known in 1894 as ANGELA's ASHES is today. The first few pages describe rows and rows of houses looking more like prisons than homes. The lives are hard. I'm also thinking this had an influence on DUBLINERS. It's a series of descriptions of particular people who inhabit the area. I'll update this review when I've read the whole book.

[Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of stories from the mean streets of London's East End. Many of the stories reminded me of O'Henry. Although Morrison paints a more vivid picture of despair and this is especially true in the first story. But he also writes stories with humor and warmth as well.

A short but excellent collection of stories.