Mayhew

Yesterday I read quite a lot of  Mayhew interviews with the London poor. It made fascinating and very moving reading. Victorian values were very cold and unforgiving, as was Mayhew himself. He usually blamed most of the people's poverty on their 'immorality', which of course was much more expedient than looking at the real causes. He voices his opinions in a way that is both shocking and unprofessional to the modern reader. We should not forget, however, that Mayhew was a man of his times.