The Bridge of Sighs (poem)

Although Thomas Hood (1799–1845) is usually regarded as a humorous poet, towards the end of his life, when he was on his sick bed, he wrote a number of poems commenting on contemporary poverty.

The poem describes the woman as having been immersed in the grimy water, but having been washed so that whatever sins she may have committed are obliterated by the pathos of her death.

Sisterly, brotherly, Fatherly, motherly   Feelings had changed: Love, by harsh evidence, Thrown from its eminence; Even God's providence   Seeming estranged.

The poem was widely anthologised and frequently illustrated in books of Victorian poetry, including an etching by Sir John Everett Millais in 1858.

Paintings inspired by the poem included Augustus Egg's Past and Present (1858; Tate, London), Abraham Solomon's untraced Drowned!