Publisher's Synopsis
The street is the social arena that we share above all with our forebears. Now, as then, the street forces the rich to rub shoulders with the poor, the housewife with the prostitute, and the pick-pocket with his mark. The juxtaposition can be mundane or startling and the streets have fascination and horror for both modern Londoners and their predecessors in the seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries. In The Streets of London historians bring to life a variety of the peoples and behaviours which could be found in those streets, with insights into questions such as: How did you find your way in a badly mapped London without formal addresses? What graffiti would you come across? From brawls to duels, what form did street fighting take? Who were the men and women caught having sex in public? Where did they find a safe (or not so safe) spot for their dalliances? Has the London cabbie changed at all? What do trials at the Old Bailey tell us about street crime and shoplifting? Was there a criminal class and where did criminals meet and live? How did the homeless live?
