Rookery: The Brutal Reality Behind the Dickensian Myth

London, 1849: The Smell Before the Coffins.

​Forget the flickering gaslight and the "lovable rogues" of Charles Dickens. In ROOKERY: The Filth, the Fear, and the Lie of Victorian London, the fog is stripped away to reveal a brutal forensic reality.

​Using parliamentary papers, sanitary commission reports, and sworn testimony, this investigative history performs a "post-mortem" on the Victorian slum. From the ankle-deep sewage of Jacob's Island to the lethal overcrowding of St. Giles, discov...