The Crawlers
If I want to stay involved with what I’m reading, I need more than a listing of facts presented in a dry, vertical ascension to knowledge. As a reader, I want to walk alongside the writer taking in all the writer describes and perhaps making connections I otherwise might not have considered.
I recently read an essay by a Victorian journalist, who wrote about the poor in London, mostly women known as “The Crawlers.” What struck me about the piece, aside from the physical descriptions of squalor on London streets were the sketches of individual women trying to survive either alone or with small children, children who were watched in shifts by other crawlers as their mothers went to menial jobs. Then there were heart-breaking descriptions of women who shared stale bread and stale tea leaves on the steps of a workhouse on a filthy, disease-ridden London street. As I read this one essay, published in a 2014 book called Dirty Old London by Lee Jackson, I felt as if I were walking in the underbelly of 19th century London and while repulsed by the descriptions, I felt compassion for these Crawlers.
Here’s a link to the sketch essay about “The Crawlers”
I recently read an essay by a Victorian journalist, who wrote about the poor in London, mostly women known as “The Crawlers.” What struck me about the piece, aside from the physical descriptions of squalor on London streets were the sketches of individual women trying to survive either alone or with small children, children who were watched in shifts by other crawlers as their mothers went to menial jobs. Then there were heart-breaking descriptions of women who shared stale bread and stale tea leaves on the steps of a workhouse on a filthy, disease-ridden London street. As I read this one essay, published in a 2014 book called Dirty Old London by Lee Jackson, I felt as if I were walking in the underbelly of 19th century London and while repulsed by the descriptions, I felt compassion for these Crawlers.
Here’s a link to the sketch essay about “The Crawlers”
