Customer Reviews

The Victorian Underworld

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Readers of British social history might enjoy this work. The first half ("Crime") draws very heavily--perhaps too heavily--from the works of 19th-century writer Henry Mahew. (Oddly, the Amazon listing shows Mahew as co-author, but he is not listed as co-author in the book itself.) We're treated to a detailed description of slum living conditions, criminal scams of the era, cheating on horse races, early pornography, and prostitution. A variety of detailed narratives give the book a personal touch; it's not dry reading. The most astonishing tidbit in this book is that in Victorian London, there was a ratio of one prostitute for every ten adult males!

The second half of the book ("Retribution") covers the jails of the era, police corruption, hangings of wrongly convicted people, and the workings of the court system, spiced with a variety of narratives about actual people. On the other hand, the most irritating feature of the book is that the index lists only names of persons, not topics.

When historians create their tomes they glorify and even fabricate information in order to make their nation appear as prolific as possible. "Victorian Underworld" is a view of this era of Britain's history that is rarely, if ever, exhibited. It is an overview of the conditions of the underclass, of which, in all contemporary nations are the largest portion of the population. "Victorian England" concentrates on the manner in which the bulk of the population, the 'commoners' either lived their lives or the obstacles the public endeavoured to avoid. The writing style is as enticing as grand fiction which brings an air of titillation to this factual documentation of history.

What a relief to sit comfortably ensconsed in a different century! The author points out the cruelty of everyday life under the reign of Queen Victoria and the futility of the struggle to survive. It should be a lesson to all of us nowadays when we complain about the tough life we have to endure.We have come a long way! While the narration certainly is very interesting, it also seems curiously flat and without a lively soul. Maybe that stems from the fact that much of the book has a few sources only and just seems to copy them. Also, the back and forth of the time frame makes it somewhat incoherent. It would have helped a great deal to include a few maps of London.

Thomas evokes Dickens repeatedly in the book, including images from Sketches by Boz, and comparisons of some of the criminals he describes, or the communities in which they lived, to passages from Bleak House or Great Expectations (other comparisons can certainly be made, between the prison in Pickwick Papers, for example, and those described in the book). I found that Victorian Underworld particularly evoked Quincunx, and suspect that Charles Palliser may have referred to some of the same sources when he was working on that novel.

Victorian Underworld is an enjoyable read, gripping as all "true crime" stories can be, and educational, and it sheds light on important works of fiction as well, so there are many audiences for the book.

It weaknesses stem primarily from the fact that it necessarily concentrates on the most visible sorts of crime. There is therefore a lot about prostitution, and a lot about spectacular frauds and bank robberies that captivated the Victorian press, but almost nothing about crime by poor people against poor people, which must have been taking place as well.

AS AN AVID VICTORIAN FAN I FOUND MYSELF HYPNOTIZED BY THE SWIRL OF HISTORICAL DRAMA.