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Life today has its problems, but it wasn't so long ago that everyday life in the home, let alone going out to work or simply negotiating public spaces, was fraught with danger. Put a foot wrong and you could be in deep trouble. Walking down a medieval street ran the risk of being doused from above in someone else's slops, or being crushed in a game of mob football in which several hundred took pa... More

Life today has its problems, but it wasn't so long ago that everyday life in the home, let alone going out to work or simply negotiating public spaces, was fraught with danger. Put a foot wrong and you could be in deep trouble. Walking down a medieval street ran the risk of being doused from above in someone else's slops, or being crushed in a game of mob football in which several hundred took part. Hygiene as we know it was non-existent; as a French visitor to a well- to- do 18th century London house observed, 'The sideboard is furnished with chamber-pots and it is usual to relieve oneself, nothing is hidden - I think it is most indecent.' The meting out of law and order leant a brutal and terrible meaning to the concept of rough justice. As late as 1819 people could be hanged in Britain for such minor transgressions as cutting down a tree in any avenue, garden or plantation, impersonating a Chelsea pensioner, or for damaging Westminster Bridge. Disease was an ever-present menace in Victorian streets, especially in overcrowded areas. In 1849 a devastating outbreak of cholera struck central London, and ten years later drought and sewage in the River Thames caused the appalling "Great Stink." Set against this backcloth, history was hazardous indeed, as this absorbing and gruesomely detailed book reveals.

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