Here is a most enjoyable and illustrated treatise for the reading pleasure of discerning ladies and gentlemen of scholarly persuasion. [li]
http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/streetlifeinlondon
Ah, I’ve been wanting to read something exactly like this for months, but I didn’t know how to go about asking or searching for it. Thank you!
This is quite interesting, and I adore the pictures.
"He honestly owned his restless love of a roving life, and his inability to settle in any fixed spot. He also held that the progress of education was one of the most dangerous symptoms of the times, and spoke in a tone of deep regret of the manner in which decent children were forced now-a-days to go to school. 'Edication, sir! Why what do I want with edication? Edication to them what has it makes them wusser. They knows tricks what don’t b’long to the nat’ral gent. That’s my 'pinion. They knows a sight too much, they do! No offence, sir. There’s good gents and kind ‘arted scholards, no doubt. But when a man is bad, and God knows most of us aint wery good, it makes him wuss. Any chaps of my acquaintance what knows how to write and count proper aint much to be trusted at a bargain.’"
- a snippet from "London Nomades" of Street Life in London, 1876-7, by Adolphe Smith and John Thomson