Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century London

by Oskar Jensen

Overview

Dickensian London is brought to real and vivid life in this innovative, accessible social history, revealing the true character of this place and time through the stories of its street denizens—shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2023

London, 1857: A pair of teenage girls holding a sign that says “Fugitive Slaves” ask for money on the corner of Blackman Street. After a constable accosts them and charges them with begging, they end up in court, where national newspapers pick up their story. Are the girls truly escaped slaves from Kentucky? Or will the city’s dystopian Mendicity Society catch them in a lie, exposing them as born-and-raised Londoners and endangering their safety?

With its many accounts of people like these who lived and made their living on the streets, Vagabonds forms a moving picture of London’s most compelling period (1780–1870). Piecing together contemporary sources such as newspaper articles, letters, and journal entries, historian Oskar Jensen follows the harrowing, hopeful journeys of the city’s poor: children, immigrants, street performers, thieves, and sex workers, all diverse in gender, ethnicity, ability, and origin. For the first time, their own voices give us a radical new perspective on this moment in history, with its deep inequality that bears an astonishing resemblance to our own era’s divides.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781891011429
Publisher:	The Experiment
Publication date:	02/20/2024
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	431,491
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Oskar Jensen is an author and academic with a doctorate in history from Oxford University. He was named a BBC New Generation Thinker for 2022, and his previous books on British and European history have been published by Oxford and Cambridge University Presses. He is currently an arts and humanities fellow at Newcastle University.

Table of Contents

List of Images

Acknowledgements

A Note on the Text

Introduction

1. The Infant
2. The Boy
3. The Girl
4. The Immigrant
5. The Pro
6. The Renegade
7. The Elder

Epitaph

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/19/2024

British novelist and historian Jensen (The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London) delivers a buoyant account of 19th-century London street life. Delving into court and charitable organization records, memoirs, published interviews, and news stories among other sources, he aims to portray “vagabond” lives from their own perspectives, without the upper-class condescension he asserts has long characterized such studies. Organizing his account by life stages, Jensen moves from descriptions of infancy and childhood on the streets (babies were often “borrowed” for a few hours of begging, to elicit more sympathy) to the adult life paths that might lead to a down-and-out existence—among them immigration from abroad, migration from rural areas, old age, and outrunning the law—and the common professions of people living on the streets, including musician, beggar, thief, and hawker. One fascinating chapter describes how some women prospered as prostitutes, a profession Jensen shows was accepted rather than stigmatized. These women formed communities to advise, assist, and support one another, and, in some cases, underwent rigorous regimens of self-improvement and training to become courtesans for wealthy men. Once they’d saved enough money, they were usually able to quit the profession and get married. Jensen’s vivid and crisp recreations of scenes plucked from his archival research reveal his subjects’ canniness and solidarity. Readers will love this. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Oskar Jensen has coaxed out of the archives a vast range of original voices of the street poor of London. With great sensitivity and scholarly rigour, he ensures that, once again, we hear the lived experiences of those who lived and died on the margins of metropolitan life."

Sarah Wise

"Jensen gives these past lives a monument, a dignity and recognition they deserve . . . Jensen is the real deal; I’ve never encountered a historian quite like him . . . For two exquisite days, this book was my best friend."

Gerard DeGroot

"Rescuing these diverse individuals from both the condescension of their contemporaries and the silence of so many historians since, Vagabonds narrates their lives with a sympathy and sensitivity that is often moving—not least because they speak obliquely but powerfully to urban life in our own troubled and unsettled times."

Matthew Beaumont

"Rich in research . . . a telling account."

Martin Chilton

"The stories . . . make for fascinating and sometimes disturbing reading. Jensen weaves them together into a tapestry of pain and misfortune."

Ana Alicia Garza

"Social history as it should be: fascinating, well-written, passionate, revelatory, and deeply humane. Terrific."

KJ Charles

"A very readable and historically well-researched picture of the nineteenth-century poor."

Gareth Stedman Jones

"An elegantly written and vivid account of the people that lived and worked in Georgian and Victorian London. Jensen doesn’t just present these hitherto marginalised figures on the page; like a delightful sorcerer, he brings them back to life."

Tomiwa Owolade

"A vigorous and necessary account made timely by the widening chasm between obscene wealth and dire poverty in our contemporary metropolis."

Iain Sinclair

"A jostling chorus of distinct and previously unheard voices from the streets of Victorian London."

The Wall Street Journal

"Warm, vertiginously wide-ranging, and eloquent all at once, with the breadth and intensity of an academic study but the light touch of a skilled, sympathetic writer who lets every character in it speak for themselves."

Niamh Campbell

"Compellingly written, utterly captivating . . . Jensen’s book is stuffed to bursting with original voices and sources alongside his well-crafted expert analysis . . . every page of Vagabonds rings with the thrum and bass of a city that saw itself as the centre of the world."

Fern Riddell

"Evocative, personal and moving. This book uses first-hand accounts to evoke the streets of 19th-century London. Richly woven with the voices of the city’s poorest and most resilient residents."

Wolfson History Prize judges

"Praise for the UK edition 

“Jensen gives these past lives a monument, a dignity and recognition they deserve . . . Jensen is the real deal; I’ve never encountered a historian quite like him . . . For two exquisite days, this book was my best friend.”—Gerard DeGroot, The Times 

“Rescuing these diverse individuals from both the condescension of their contemporaries and the silence of so many historians since, Vagabonds narrates their lives with a sympathy and sensitivity that is often moving—not least because they speak obliquely but powerfully to urban life in our own troubled and unsettled times.”—Matthew Beaumont, author of Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London

“Compellingly written, utterly captivating . . . Jensen’s book is stuffed to bursting with original voices and sources alongside his well-crafted expert analysis . . . every page of Vagabonds rings with the thrum and bass of a city that saw itself as the centre of the world.”—Fern Riddell, BBC History 

“A vigorous and necessary account made timely by the widening chasm between obscene wealth and dire poverty in our contemporary metropolis.”—Iain Sinclair, author of The Last London 

“The stories . . . make for fascinating and sometimes disturbing reading. Jensen weaves them together into a tapestry of pain and misfortune.”—Ana Alicia Garza, Times Literary Supplement 

“Rich in research . . . a telling account.”—Martin Chilton, Independent

“Social history as it should be: fascinating, well-written, passionate, revelatory, and deeply humane. Terrific.”—KJ Charles, author of The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen

“A very readable and historically well-researched picture of the nineteenth-century poor.”—Gareth Stedman Jones, professor of the history of ideas at Queen Mary University of London

“Oskar Jensen has coaxed out of the archives a vast range of original voices of the street poor of London. With great sensitivity and scholarly rigour, he ensures that, once again, we hear the lived experiences of those who lived and died on the margins of metropolitan life.”—Sarah Wise, author of The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London

“An elegantly written and vivid account of the people that lived and worked in Georgian and Victorian London. Jensen doesn’t just present these hitherto marginalised figures on the page; like a delightful sorcerer, he brings them back to life.”—Tomiwa Owolade, author of This Is Not America

“Warm, vertiginously wide-ranging, and eloquent all at once, with the breadth and intensity of an academic study but the light touch of a skilled, sympathetic writer who lets every character in it speak for themselves.”—Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy"

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