Victorian Britain witnessed urban growth unprecedented in human history. Nowhere was this more evident and alarming than in London, whose population grew from about 850,000 in 1800 to just under 5 million by 1890. The social costs of such rapid growth were paid in large measure by children of the poor and by women.

By 1850 over half of London's children were in the work force in order to keep their families from starvation, some beginning to work at the age of 5. In the building trades, they worked 52 hours a week in winter and 64 in summer. Domestic servants worked 80 hours a week year round.

Some children who couldn't find employment became "toshers"- scavengers who fought off rats in London's foul and collapsing sewers. Then there were the "mudlarks," who nourished themselves on scraps of bread from garbage heaps or on meat left on discarded bones.

Girls of 7 and 8 tramped the streets as vendors of watercress. Many would become tramps in another sense, moving on to a less reputable but ...

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