In Strange Company, 1874; James Greenwood (1832–1927) was an English social explorer, journalist and writer, who published a series of articles which drew attention to the plight of London's working poor.

His brother Frederick,[3] the then editor of the Gazette, prompted Greenwood to dress as a tramp and check into a workhouse incognito, a ruse unknown to English journalists before then.

Greenwood's account, "A Night in the Workhouse", dispensed with the Victorian practice of sanitising stories for publication, presenting a brutal picture.

Serialized in the Pall Mall Gazette on 12–15 January 1866, it caused a public outcry, established Greenwood's credentials as an investigative journalist and social commentator,[4] and helped to build up his brother's magazine.

[6] They lived communally but in poor conditions, in "nests" made from hollows in banks and ditches and covered in furze branches.

[6] In the 1870s, William James Orsman (1838–1923), a Methodist minister, invited Greenwood to tour the Costermongers' Mission, which heightened his interest in London's labouring classes and poor.