While today’s popular culture gives us an image of Victorian London as Downton Abbey and a world very removed from our own, the truth is rather different. People lived rather as they do now, with the same motivations and drives that permeate our own lives. They worried about their wages, were exploited by their bosses, and enjoyed a drink. Their sex lives were also a world away from being embarrassed by a naked table leg.
The city was changing. Development from Britain’s farming past into its industrial future had created a chaotic scene as the city’s slums filled with factory workers, the centre of the empire showing the vast disparity between rich and poor. This empire of the few is not unusual, and yet perhaps at no time has the gap between the richest and poorest in society been so obvious. Places such as Whitechapel would become notorious for their lawlessness, as desperation and poverty forced the poor into lodging houses and even the workhouse, many turning to drink to shut out the horror of the “dark satanic mills” that now blighted their lives.
With this growing lethal combination of poverty, alcohol, and desperation, all coupled with misunderstood mental health problems and the shock of a rapidly transforming society, it’s perhaps no wonder that violence became an almost daily occurrence in London. However, one bright summer’s day in Hoxton would perhaps show a new level of brutality, and the sun would offer no respite against the carnage for which London was becoming known.
