The seven curses of London

The author surveys urban poverty and vice in Victorian London, concentrating on neglected children, infant-selling and baby-farming, the hardships of working boys, and the social milieu that produces juvenile and professional thieves. He describes street life, the market in children, methods by which youth are drawn into crime, the haunts and classes of thieves, and the difficulties of reform after prison. Interspersed are case studies and moral argument about responsibility, preventive measures and the limits of charity, culminating in practical proposals and warnings about the cyclical nature of poverty and criminality.