19^th Century: Plum Duff

In the aftermath of a deadly outbreak of cholera in the poorest boroughs of London in the summer of 1849, Henry Mayhew, an English social researcher and journalist, started to write a full and detailed description of the industrial poor throughout England for the Morning Chronicle. Two years later the series of articles were compiled into a four-volume work titled London Labour and the London Poor.

It is one of the most beautiful works on social histor