Henry Mayhew

He contributed to The Thief, a readers' digest, followed quickly by founding a weekly comic journal – Figaro in London (1831–1839).

In 1835, Mayhew found himself in a state of debt and, along with a fellow writer, escaped to Paris to avoid his creditors.

Mayhew spent over 10 years in Paris, returning to England in the 1850s, whereupon he was involved in several literary adventures, mostly the writing of plays.

These included Douglas Jerrold, Angus Reach, John Leech, Richard Doyle, and Shirley Brooks.

Reflecting their satirical and humorous intent, the two editors took for their name and masthead the anarchic glove puppet Mr. Punch.

[5] He interviewed everyone – beggars, street-entertainers (such as Punch and Judy men), market traders, prostitutes, labourers, sweatshop workers, even down to the "mudlarks" who searched the stinking mud on the banks of the River Thames for wood, metal, rope, and coal from passing ships, and the "pure-finders" who gathered dog faeces to sell to tanners.

He described their clothes, how and where they lived, their entertainments and customs, and made detailed estimates of the numbers and incomes of those practising each trade.

[citation needed] Mayhew's richly detailed descriptions give an impression of what the street markets of his day were like.

The housewife in her thick shawl, with the market-basket on her arm, walks slowly on, stopping now to look at the stall of caps, and now to cheapen a bunch of greens.

Little boys, holding three or four onions in their hand, creep between the people, wriggling their way through every interstice, and asking for custom in whining tones, as if seeking charity.

1870), an author of a number of children's stories published in various periodicals, and of Gladys in Grammarland, an imitation of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland books.

[8] Mayhew's work was embraced by and was an influence on the Christian Socialists, such as Thomas Hughes, Charles Kingsley, and F. D. Maurice.

The often sympathetic investigations, with their immediacy and unswerving eye for detail, offered unprecedented insights into the condition of the Victorian poor.

In the 2012 novel Dodger by Terry Pratchett, Mayhew and his wife appear as fictionalised versions of themselves, and he is mentioned in the dedication.