Victorian London Through Time

The Victorian era saw great changes to the nation's capital. This book illustrates the nineteenth-century aspects of London that the Victorians were so proud of: the pioneering public health engineering of Bazalgette's system of intercepting sewers; the magnificent public buildings such as the `new' Gothic Houses of Parliament and Big Ben; the classical and iconic British Museum; the great Natural History Museum; massive new railway termini and railway hotels; and, of course, the world's first underground railway. The book also looks at the less savoury side of Victorian life: public hangings at Newgate, and the world known to Charles Dickens, contrasting scenes of squalor around St Giles to the magnificence of the Great Exhibition, dubbed the `Crystal Palace'. Through an intriguing selection of Victorian engravings and contemporary photographs, this book compares the `world city' that was so imaginatively and confidently developed by the Victorians with today's dynamic, multicultural city of commerce and culture, which so often hits the headlines.