Download Victorian London: The Life of a City, 1840-1870 AudioBook Free
Like her previous books, this book will be the consequence of the author's passionate curiosity about the realities of everyday life - and the conditions in which most people lived - frequently overlooked of history books. This era of mid Victorian London has a huge selection of subjects : Victoria's wedding and the place of the royals in popular esteem; how the inadequate lived, the underworld, prostitution, crime, prisons and transportation; the general public utilities - Bazalgette on sewers and road design, Chadwick on pollution and sanitation; private charities - Peabody, Burdett Coutts - and workhouses; new terraced housing and transport, trains, omnibuses and the Underground; furniture and decor; families and the positioning of women; the prosperous middle classes and their new shops, e.g. Peter Jones, Harrods; entertaining and servants, food and drink; unlimited liability and bankruptcy; the rich, the marriage market, taxes and anti-semitism; the Empire, recruitment and press-gangs. The time starts with the closing of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons and ends with the first (steam-operated) Underground trains and the first Gilbert & Sullivan. All of the splendours and horrors of Victorian life will be vividly recalled.
