Oh the humanity. I once heard a commentator say that, weeping in shock, not for himself but for the lives lost as a burning Hiddenburg came crashing to Earth, in smoke and in flame. And he was moved to speak in this way, hopelessly trying to express his own shock and awe, as words seemed to fail. Only they did,nt. His words have echoed down the decades, a coda for the sense of enormous shared cultural grief we can at times share, for there is not surely one of us who has not at some point bemoaned our wretched state, or witnessed the fallout from hubris, when we grasp all too infrequently that;"There, but for the grace of God, go I."That is one of the many emotions I felt as I read through Sarah Wise The Blackest Streets. As whole marginalised populations were squashed into Victorian slums not fit for purpose. As though there were ever such a thing as a viable slum. Its terrifying and heart breaking in wildly unequal measures.Its investigative, for such, but grasps at fistfulls of thorny nettles and strips away
Most of the book takes place in an area of London, around Bethnal Green known as The Old Nichol. Known as one of East London's roughest, and thats saying something, areas, it was not a place for the fool hardy to go for a dander. Theres no beast so fierce as man, and when that same man becomes hungry and desperate, well you better watch out. By cruel neccessity many who lived there turned to criminality, a not uncommon response. There were those who had, others who had not and many,many who would never have anything at all, hanging on to life by the spindliest of threads. People would sell anthing, including each other, for the pennies that could save one from the most cruel penuary. Dickens merely scratched the surface, the reality of life for the poor owed nothing to heavenly hosts. The war in heaven was long over and those who fell to Earth had mastered the building of class trenches, where the daily grind recognised no age or gender in its war on the poor.
This is not for the faint of hurt, this record of unprecedented cruelty and predation. this history of exploitation, how landlords charged impoversihed families to live in filthy locations never intended for human habitation. Sunless underground thorough fores intended for easy passage became chambers where human suffering sweltered in a fever of lice and vermin. As below, so above with overcroded unsanitary tenements with humans sharing space with their animals, not pets but lives stock, pigs and chattel. Take a dive below the blackest streets, you will scarce believe what you learn to be the truth. That in an an empire of afluence and historically unprecedented wealth its saddening to hear so much of it was based on cruel exploitation.
Twas ever so.
