London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City

(Paperback)

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Description

In 1888 London was the capital of the most powerful empire the world had ever known, and the largest city in Europe. In the west a new city was growing, populated by the middle classes, the epitome of 'Victorian values'. Across the city the situation was very different. The East End of London had long been considered a nether world, a dark and dangerous region outside the symbolic 'walls' of the original City. Using the Whitechapel murders of Jack the Ripper as a focal point, this book explores prostitution, poverty, revolutionary politics, immigration, the creation of a criminal underclass and the development of policing. It also considers how the sensationalist 'new journalism' took the news of the Ripper murders to all corners of the Empire and to the United States. This is an important book for those interested in the history of Victorian Britain.

Reviews

Drew Gray's book is a fine addition to the literature on urban history at a time when we were learning to live in large communities and experimenting with different ways of doing so. -- History Today
A scholarly work, drawing on a wide range of sources, but it's also very readable. It provides a welcome and sensible counterbalance to the endless titles about ripperology' with its focus on the grim realities of life in London's poorer quarters at the time. -- Your Family Tree
Wisely, however, Gray does not attempt to solve this most famous of all cold cases. But he does illuminate the shadows of Victorian London by placing the murders into a fascinating historical context of sensationalist newspaper reporting, social problems and inadequate policing. The result exemplifies the best kind of academic publishing: authoritative, intelligent, and well-written. -- PD Smith * The Guardian *
[London's Shadows] is well-researched and accessible, making it a welcome addition to this existing historiography. Both Gray and Faber highlight the tremendous social cost of industry that contemporaries recognised but could not remedy. Though the streets of London may be cleaner and the slums replaced by modern redevelopments, the then-and-now approach of London's Shadows offers a stark reminder that poverty, deprivation and inequality are as problematic today as they were in the 1880s. -- Kaye Jones, Reviews in History
In this eminently readable book, Drew Gray casts light on the underworld of Victorian London Gray tells a good story, covering much familiar territory but also introducing new evidence from court records. -- Hugh Clout, University College London * Cercles *

Author Bio

Drew D. Gray is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Northampton, UK. He is the author of Crime, Prosecution and Social Relations.