Henry Mayhew is best known today for his four-volume survey of London street life at mid-century, London Labour and the London Poor (1851-1852; 1861-1862), the best and perhaps the only extensive glimpse available of this fascinating underside of Victorian life. In his own day, however, his reputation rested primarily on his investigation of the exploited pieceworkers in London's skilled and unskilled trades. He wrote these articles as the metropolitan correspondent for the Morning Chronicle from late 1849 through late 1850. The value of all his surveys is in the number and scope of the personal interviews Mayhew conducted with his subjects. In his decision to seek out these interviews, to rely on the information gleaned from them to project a picture of "Labour and the Poor" in London at mid-century, and to print as many full-length interviews as space and time would allow, Mayhew was unique as a social investigator...