No stone left unturned

Dickens, the inspiration and source for this book, was addicted to walking the London streets at night. A man who felt uneasy in the countryside without a pavement beneath his feet, he was said to know the mean streets of London better than any cabbie. His skill was to write about the city in his own time, describing the world of the London poor as if they had never been seen before. Dickens realised that to understand London, you need to know how to read the street. That is the idea behind Judith Flanders’s new book.

Like Dickens, Londoners walked everywhere. In 1866 an estimated three-quarters of a million pedestrians poured in to work each day, a thick line of black-coated clerks tramping the streets. The city created a constant, crashing roar, making it hard to hear, even indoors. Street sellers — coster-mongers (veg, fruit and fish), match boys and girls — brought their stuff to you: there was no need to seek out a shop.