Endless poverty on the streets of London in 1873-1877

Between 1873 and 1877, Scottish photographer John Thomson, along with journalist Adolph Smith, documented the lives of London's urban poor.

The results of their work, entitled "London Street Life", were published every month in parts, and later came out in one volume. Documentary photographs of street vendors, beggars and other street dwellers were combined with interviews, essays and reports that perfectly showed poverty as a sociological problem that needs to be studied and ways to combat it should be found.

The project was one of the first examples of social documentary photography and set the tone for photographers and fighters against social inequality and injustice of the next century, such as Jacob Rees and Lewis Hine.

(Total 33 photos)

Source: mashable.com

Vegetable seller.

Street procession in honor of Guy Fawkes Night.

Street vendors and a shoe shiner.

A man is waiting for bored passers-by to offer them a ride on a donkey.

Street photographer.

Oyster street vendor.

Seller of expensive jewelry for such streets.

An Italian harpist entertains local children.

Water carrier.

Dining room for ex-prisoners. Diner owner (left) talking to local Indian drummer Ramo Sammi.

Cheap ice cream vendor.

Gypsy caravan at a stop near Notting Hill.

Used furniture store.

Flower girls in Covent Garden market.

A poster poster advertises an exhibition at Madame Tussauds.

Wandering craftsman and ginger beer makers.

A shoe shiner at work.

People in front of a junk shop in Lambeth, where the annual flooding from the River Thames causes a lot of trouble for the locals.

Friends enjoy beer.

A begging woman was paid to look after a child.

British Army recruiting sergeants at the entrance to the tavern.

A local merchant sells herring.

Bus driver known as Cast Iron Billy.

Sign artist at work in the studio.

City disinfectors clean the street after a smallpox outbreak.

Chimney sweep and his assistant.

Two wheel taxi.

Lock master.

Advertisement in 1877.

Workers on the barge.

Porters with baskets of plants.

Dealer in cough medicine.