Charles Dickens used to walk miles and miles at night around London, as many as twelve to fourteen miles at a time. From restless energy or perhaps to escape a home life of ten children, Dickens formed and refined his locales and characters during these experiences. I'll never forget reading his description of the odious Daniel Quilp.

Low in stature as to be quite a dwarf, though his head and face were large enough for a giant. His black eyes were restless, sly and cunning; his mouth and chin bristly with the stubble of a coarse, hard beard; and his complexion was one of that kind which never looks clean or wholesome.
From Charles Dicken's The Old Curiosity Shop

Something interesting happened in 19th-century England, of which Dickens was a part. Individuals on society's margins who were hitherto treated in literature and art as quite substantial collectively but inconsequential individually suddenly became important, noticeable, even worthy of reverence.

The Parisian scene paintings of Eduard Manet and Dicken's literature featured these colourful, intelligent, striving people—neither good nor evil—but each with a story, a history, a motivation. They were more than an archetype, more than the masses. They were people with personhood.

In the 1870s, photographer, John Thomson (June 14, 1837 – September 29, 1921) and political writer Adolphe Smith Headingley (1846–1924) began a newsletter on London life focused on unskilled labourers. In 1877 they published thirty-seven photographs and stories in Street Life in London.

The "jobs" featured were new, old, overlooked, unofficial and unappreciated, but also substantially necessary given changes in industry and social demands. Everyone featured was generally unskilled (unapprenticed) professions vulnerable to climate, authorities, economics, politics and pure bad luck. As the authors noted: "Politically and socially speaking, our chief difficulty is to dispose advantageously of unskilled labour" implying a social and political duty to the individuals they pictured.

Street Advertising

British energy in advertising has, in any case, the advantage that it gives employment to many destitute individuals. The system of advertising by means of boards, which the men carry on their backs, has proved the most useful. Bill-stickers were described to me as more independent than the board men, less subject to insult, but at the same time not so ambitious and more contented. This is due to the fact that many of them had never done anything else and were, as my informant put it, "born in a paste-can."

"Street Advertising." Learn more.

Thomson and Smith distinguish between stickers and posters but present the job as a significant means of income, even stability: "The pasting of advertisements on the walls and boards must give constant employment in the metropolis to about two hundred men, not to mention the foremen and superintendents who ride around to see that the work has been properly done."

The vivid descriptions of the fishmongers, who retailed fish on the street, also show good luck on which most of their livelihoods relied.

The Cheap Fish of St. Giles's

It has often been remarked that but for our cheap fish supply, the poor people of London would undoubtedly be reduced to the most acute states of starvation. The costermonger is certainly in a position to supply fish at a low price; he need not rent a shop or consume expensive gas... the chief anxiety of his life is to procure a barrow. He must pay eighteen pence per week for the cost of hiring. Like the majority of his class, he does not always sell fish, but only when the wind is propitious and it can be bought cheaply. On the day when the photograph was taken, he had succeeded in buying a barrel of five hundred fresh herrings for twenty-five shillings. He selected about two hundred of the largest fish, which he sold at a penny each, while he disposed of the smaller herrings at a halfpenny.

There is discerning knowledge that the success of this 'industry' supplies the poor of London with their basic affordable protein. Equally, the authors note that the success of the fishmonger relies mainly on the monger's daily ability to procure (and maintain in the face of police raids) a barrow. 

"The Fish Stall at St. Giles." Learn more.

Like today, perhaps the more secure positions are those in government employment like public disinfectors. 

Public Disinfectors

While reducing the general death-rate, our recent sanitary legislation has called into existence a class of men who must of necessity to be daily exposed to the gravest dangers: the public disinfectors. These modest heroes represent the humble rank and file of the army enrolled in the service of science and humanity.

Still, what the disinfectors might have appreciated in job security, they sacrificed in the danger of the job itself: the rigorous cleansing of abodes of contagious, morbid diseases frequently without a scientific understanding of how such pathogens worked.

"Public Disinfectors." Learn more.

The room must be vacated, and the strictest injunctions are given to prevent anyone entering. The clothes worn by the patient and his attendants are left in the room; only then do the disinfectors make their appearance. These men generally wear blouses and leggings to protect their ordinary clothes from the germs of the disease. Thus equipped, they proceed to their destination, dragging after them a capacious hand-cart, which is hermetically closed. They alike disinfect the houses of the poor and the rich... 

Alone and unseen, they remove, one by one, all the clothes, bedding, carpets, curtains, in fact, all the textile materials they can find in the room, carefully place them in the hand-cart, and drag them off to the disinfecting oven. This is, of course, a dangerous operation, as the dust it occasions, which falls on the men, or is inhaled by them, must be loaded with the zymotic particles that engender epidemics.

The increasing need for new jobs and positions was changing fast during this period, and jobs becoming were skilled, trained, and based on experience: a true modern workforce. Most people featured in Street Life were not, however, part of a professional trade and survived as the result of daily hard work, intelligence, and individuality, like an omnibus driver in London known as "Cast-iron, Billy.

"Cast-iron Billy." Learn more.

Cast-Iron Billy

William Parragreen, known as "Cast-iron Billy," may be said to have commenced life with the whip in his hand. With an inborn aptitude for the procession, he took to the road early... "Forty-three years on the road and more, and, but for my rheumatics, I almost as 'ale and 'early as any gentleman could wish."

Or the well-known (we would imagine) and well-respected William Hampton, a London nomad whose drive, character and independence would never be extinguished by mere education!

London Nomades

In London, there are a number of what may be termed, owing to their wandering, unsettled habits, nomadic tribes. The class of Nomades with which I propose to deal makes some show in industry. these people attend fairs and markets and hawk cheap ornaments or useful wares from door to door.

The accompanying photograph, taken on a piece of vacant land at Battersea, presents a friendly group gathered around the caravan of William Hampton, a man who enjoys the reputation among his fellows of being "a fair-spoken, honest gentleman." He matured in total ignorance of the arts of reading and writing, like other families of hawkers, William Hampton is, for all that, a man of fair intelligence and good natural ability. "Education, sir! Why what do I want with education? Education to them what it has makes them wusser.

"London Nomades." Learn more.

The life-story of "Tickets," the card-dealer that is most detailed, sentimental and even wistful, illustrates the empathy and embellishment of Smith's writing. Tickets - his real name is never given, he's only referred to as "Tickets."  - began life in Paris, made yet another start in New York and then, due to a terrible case of "nostalgia," for home, moved back to London and became lost to the tide of other emigrants.

"Tickets," The Card-Dealer

Tickets comes from Paris. He began life in the capacity of a linen draper's assistant in the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin. Unprotected by friends or recommendations, he was treated with suspicion by everyone, and his solicitations for work elicited no response. At last, he was compelled to leave his modest lodgings for a still cheaper accommodation of a common lodginghouse.

But maybe, Smith suggests, he could have been more.

"'Tickets,' The Card-Dealer." Learn more.

Thomson's photograph of "Tickets" is the most portrait-like in the book, it is close-up, indoors and shows "Tickets" working at painting bills or 'tickets' (thus this name). He is intent, his gaze is heavy; one imagines Cezanne painting him.  He is lost chance, a possible hero, hope for what could be.

The most powerful section, however, is "The Crawlers", which begins with the arresting line: "Huddled together on the workhouse steps... these wrecks of humanity.

"The 'Crawler.'" Learn more.

The "Crawlers."

Huddled together on the workhouse steps in Short’s Gardens those wrecks of humanity, the Crawlers of St. Giles’s, may be seen both day and night seeking mutual warmth and mutual consolation in their extreme misery. As a rule, they are old women reduced by vice and poverty to that degree of wretchedness which destroys even the energy to beg. They have not the strength to struggle for bread and prefer starvation to the activity which an ordinary mendicant must display. As a natural consequence, they cannot obtain money for lodging or for food.

The crawlers exemplify George Orwell's poverty; a poverty that annihilates the future and reduces a body to its needs and wants. 

Under such circumstances, sound sleep is an unknown luxury, hence drowsiness from which they are never thoroughly exempt. This peculiarity has earned them the nick-name of' dosses," derived from the verb to doze, by which they are sometimes recognised. The crawlers may truly be described as persons who sleep with one eye open. Those who seem in the soundest sleep will look up languidly at the approach of a stranger as if they were always anticipating interference of some sort.

Crawlers are people who "beg from the beggars." Among all the characters collected by Thomson and Smith, they are the ones closest to absolute annihilation. And yet, almost cruelly, they detail how these individuals have moments of sublime opportunity: a night's sleep indoors, a rare meal. Smith tells the story of "Scotty", who could read and write and would not condescend to the workhouse. "If only she could obtain a decent set of clothes," Smith writes hopefully, "Scotty may once more resume work."