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At the turn of the century most Londoners
lived in abject poverty. The overcrowded slums, poor pay and limited access
to educations were in part responsible for the high incidence of antisocial
behaviour; wife-beating, backstreet abortion, infanticide, incest and even
murder.
As the century progressed the government and police interfered more and more in the private lives of the capital's inhabitants, sometimes in their interests, mostly not. With the introduction of conscription in 1916, hundreds of thousands of young men were sent off to almost certain death in the trenches, whilst others, refusing to fight, were treated little better than animals. London was not the easy-going, friendly city that many people would have us believe. You could leave your doors open without fear of burglary, few people had anything worth stealing. With a high number of attacks on foreign immigrants in the First World War and Blackshirt incursions into the Jewish areas of the East End in the thirties, little tolerance was shown to foreign settlers. Unmarried mothers were often thrown out of their parents' homes and forced to scrape a living as best they could. Anybody daring to be different was quickly dealt with as police officers raided homosexual clubs and fought anti-Fascist demonstrators. 'In Darkest London' prostitutes, criminals, backstreet abortionists, strikers and the police give lengthy accounts of their activities in a frank and unsentimental look at London life from the death of Victoria to the outbreak of the Second World War. Please join us. |