The documentary provides a record of the lives of the impoverished and working-class people living in Victorian London through the writings of the English journalist, Henry Mayhew. Using actors dressed in costumes of the day and speaking in dialect, it offers a remarkable portrait of Victorian streetlife. Mayhew's interviews, enacted in this film, provide quotidian details of the lives of London's poor. It is appropriate for high school students interested in European history, the history of science, and urban history.

• Westminster bridge
• anonymous
• buffoonery
• defective
• fortitude
• genteel
• mechanic
• mites
• parochial
• perforations
• prosperous
• puerile
• wag

1. Why did journalist Henry Mayhew interview poor and laboring people in London? What did he hope to learn from these interviews? What can scholars of today learn from these interviews?

2. Why did some people become scavengers in London? What did the scavenge for?

3. Describe family life among London's poor in the late nineteenth century.

4. What did the poor know about Christianity? What were their religious beliefs? Why did Mayhew ask about religion?

5. Why was the microscope such a popular attraction?

6. What did the poor and working people think of the rich? Do you think their descriptions of the rich were accurate?

7. Why did the street clown keep his occupation a secret from his neighbors?

8. In what ways are the poor living in American cities today different from London's poor in the late nineteenth century? In what ways are they similar?

1. Compile a series of interviews with people on your block or in your neighborhood. Try to capture their speech patterns and to describe their gestures and environment.

2. Choose a character from the documentary-- the street clown, the new milk seller, the queen's rat catcher, or another-- and write a story about that person's life. Describe his or her daily activities, religious beliefs, home, and family.

3. Henry Mayhew's interviews provide a window through which we can see Victorian London. Write an essay in which you describe streetlife in London. How did the poor survive? What did the poor think about the rich? What was the economic, political and social setting?