Henry Mayhew

Henry Mayhew (1812–1887) was an English journalist, playwright and social investigator. The son of a London solicitor, he ran away from the law, wrote farces for the stage and in 1841 was one of the founders of Punch, which he briefly edited. In 1849 and 1850 he wrote a series of letters for the Morning Chronicle on the London poor, interviewing street-sellers, laborers and the destitute and transcribing their words; expanded, these became London Labour and the London Poor (1851–62), four volumes that remain the richest record of Victorian working-class life. He also wrote novels, travel books and a biography of the young Humphry Davy, and died in obscurity.