1810s
25 November 1812 Henry Mayhew is born at home in Great Marlborough Street, London, the fifth of twelve children born to Joshua Dorset Joseph Mayhew, a thriving lawyer, and Mary Ann Fenn.
1820s
14 January 1822 begins attending Westminster School, where he remained for five years. Attempts to run away on two occasions, before quitting after refusing a caning from the headmaster.
14 June 1827 – June 8 1828 forced to enroll by his father as a trainee midshipman with the East India Company on board the Marquis of Wellington. Survives the voyage to Calcutta and back, then leaves without completing his training. Following a calamitous spell at his father’s law firm, he is banished from the family home. He joins with his elder brother Thomas and their old school friend Gilbert à Beckett to embark on a career as a satirical journalist and dramatist. Thomas, a law student, is a leader writer for The Poor Man’s Guardian, a revolutionary underground newspaper.
1830s
1831 – 1839 with à Beckett he launches Figaro in London a weekly penny newspaper of radical political satire, which is promoted by The Poor Man’s Guardian. Mayhew’s contributions are published under the pseudonym Ralph Rigmarole. He eventually succeeds à Beckett as editor. The two combine on several other more ephemeral periodicals too, such as The Thief (1832) and The Comic Magazine (1832-33).
11 November – 30 December 1833 imprisoned for debt in Fleet Prison with his brother Thomas.
December 1833 becomes co-owner and manager with à Beckett of the Fitzroy Theatre, a venue for stage farce, burlesque, and operetta.
16 February 1834 Mayhew’s one-act farce, The Wandering Minstrel, opens at the Fitzroy Theatre, still under the name of Ralph Rigmarole. Decades later, Mayhew claims he received only £25 for the sale of the copyright, although it continued to play to packed houses for many decades.
April 1834 Mayhew has the manager of the Fitzroy Theatre arrested for embezzlement, a charge the court dismissed. Weeks later the manager has Mayhew arrested for assault, a charge also dismissed.
July 1834 the Fitzroy Theatre closes, a financial disaster, and à Beckett is declared bankrupt.
23 October 1834 married with a young child, his brother Thomas commits suicide. Though on the verge of becoming a barrister, he is burdened by debts and, the inquest concludes, ‘in a state of temporary mental derangement’.
Late 1835 flees to Paris to avoid creditors. Meets Douglas Jerrold for the first time, also avoiding arrest for debt, as well as William Makepeace Thackeray.
1838 after a period laying low in Wales, returns to London to pick up working as a journalist and dramatist. Also begins to conduct chemistry experiments, with the goal of inventing artificial diamonds.
1840s
March 1841 delivers a series of lectures on The Intellectualisation of the People to the Royal Society of British Artists, in which he argues education should not just focus narrowly on literacy, but the broader personal development of the child. Gains a reputation as a philosopher.
17 July 1841 recruits a coterie of London writers, including Jerrold, à Beckett and Thackeray, to launch Punch, or the London Charivari, a satirical magazine of London life that became a fixture of literary culture, remaining in print until 2002. Mayhew is co-editor with Mark Lemon until 1842, after which he remains as ‘Suggestor in Chief’ until 1846.
January 1842 publishes What to Teach and How to Teach It, a scholarly treatise on education and pedagogy.
20 April 1844 marries Jane Jerrold, eldest daughter of Douglas. The couple settle in Parsons Green, a semi-rural suburb, within close distance of Jerrold in Putney. Their daughter, Mary, is born in 1845; their son, Athol, the following year.
7 July 1845 launches the ill-fated Iron Times, one of many periodical publications trying to capitalize on the ‘railway mania’ and speculates in railway shares.
December 1845 editor of the 1846 edition of George Cruikshank’s Comic Almanack, a role he returns to in 1846, 1849, 1850 and 1851.
16 July 1846 the railway stock bubble bursts, ruining investors and ending the Iron Times. Mayhew files for bankruptcy. His erratic behaviour alienates his Punch colleagues, including Jerrold, and he is fired.
January 1847 begins publication of The Greatest Plague of Life, a highly successful comic novel about a lady’s servant problems. Serialised in six parts with illustrations by Cruikshank, the work is initially anonymous, before being ascribed to the Brothers Mayhew. Under this name, Mayhew writes collaboratively with his wife Jane and younger brother Augustus.
February 1847 failing to gain protection from the Bankruptcy Court, flees to Guernsey with Jane and Augustus, to escape his creditors. From this haven, the three co-author a series of books for the mass market under the Brothers Mayhew name, some comical, some for children plus, in 1849, Acting Charades, a how-to guide to the newly fashionable French parlour game.
Spring 1849 assisted by Augustus, experiments with electrical lighting and conducts a series of lectures to demonstrate ‘The Mayhew Lamp’. The cost of the equipment proves ruinous. Augustus winds up in debtor’s prison, Jersey, while Mayhew returns to London.
August 1849 The Illustrated News begin serialisation of Fear of the World by the Brothers Mayhew, a semi-autobiographical account of Mayhew’s slide into bankruptcy. Published in 1850 under the title Living For Appearances, Mayhew distances himself from it in the Preface as a ‘railway book’.
4 September 1849 as a cholera epidemic ravages London, The Morning Chronicle prints a series of letters from Mayhew, under the pseudonym ‘Anti-Zymosis’, on the possible causes of the disease and calling for a fully scientific investigation.
24 September 1849 The Morning Chronicle commission Mayhew to write “A Visit to the Cholera Districts of Bermondsey”. Published anonymously, its success leads the newspaper to appoint Mayhew as “Special Correspondent for the Metropolis” for a new “Labour and the Poor” series to explore the condition of the working classes.
November 1849 the national impact of Mayhew’s articles leads to much public speculation on the identity of the ‘Metropolitan Correspondent’. The Manchester Examiner reveals it to be the satirist, philosopher and Punch founder. Mayhew becomes a national figure.
3 December 1849 calls a public meeting of needlewomen to have their voices heard on their working conditions and poverty. The first of many public assemblies Mayhew organizes for London workers and street folk, the format becomes his trademark. He begins to side with the workers condemnation of the prevailing orthodoxy of Free Trade, opening a rift with the editors and owners of The Morning Chronicle.
1850s
October 1850 amid controversy, with counterclaims of resignation and being sacked, Mayhew leaves The Morning Chronicle.Citingpolitical and ideological differences, he takes the dispute public through a series of mass workers meetings. Radical and conservative opinion unite to support him, while The Economist applauds the silencing of his ‘tirades against Free Trade’.
14 December 1850 the first number of the weekly London Labour and the London Poor is published, a continuation of his work on The Morning Chronicle. Priced at two pennies per number and sold in railway stations. Mayhew is joined by his research team from The Morning Chronicle and employs Augustus and George Augustus Sala as assistants.
January 1851 begins serialisation of 1851: or The Adventures of Mr and Mrs Sandboys, a popular parody of the Great Exhibition, with Cruikshank as illustrator. From May, also covers the Exhibition seriously as correspondent for The Edinburgh News. Jerrold dubs it the ‘Crystal Palace’ in Punch, a name which stuck.
18 May 1851 a meeting of London street vendors convenes to protest Mayhew’s characterization of them in London Labour, calling his journalistic integrity into question.
7 June 1851 the first twenty-six numbers of London Labour are repackaged as Volume 1: The Street Folk, with a Preface by Mayhew and dedication to Douglas Jerrold.
23 August 1851 begins concurrent serialisation of Volume 2: The Street Folk and Volume 3: Those That Will Not Work. The latter is largely written by Horace St John combing the British Library for anecdotes on prostitution throughout the ages, leavened with Mayhew’s statistical analysis of criminality in contemporary England and Wales.
June – September 1851 Reynolds Newspaper, a popular left-wing paper aimed at a working-class audience, runs several reviews condemning Mayhew and London Labour.
29 November 1851 launches Low Wages, a new serial detailing Mayhew’s critique of ‘received doctrines of Political Economy’. To eradicate poverty, he proposes a form of communal profit sharing employed, among others, by Charles Babbage in his textile mills.
February 1852 London Labour and Low Wages come to an abrupt halt when Mayhew is taken to court by the printer, George Woodfall and Son, for unpaid bills. The last number of London Labour appears 21 February, ending mid-sentence. With only Volume 1 published, Volumes 2 and 3 are abandoned unfinished.
March 1852 delivers lectures in Newcastle and Edinburgh on The Hidden Life of London using voices, stories, and illustrations sourced from London Labour, the first of several stage series.
18 September 1852 The Illustrated London News publishes his account of a balloon flight over London.
2 February 1853 Mayhew returns to public prominence, employed by The Crystal Palace Company to lead a national campaign for Sunday opening, so that the working classes can visit on their one day of leisure when the Exhibition reopens on a new site in South London.
24 February – 21 July, 1853 imprisoned for debt in Queen’s Bench Prison; Jane Mayhew in poor health. Appeals to the Royal Literary Fund for assistance and is granted £50.
1853 – 1855 leaves England for Paris, then Germany with his family, settling in Coblenz on the Rhine. While in Germany, his publisher, David Bogue, encourages him to write children’s books on science and travelogues on the Rhine valley.
May 1855 Bogue buys the copyright of London Labour for £100, securingthe intellectual ownership with plans to revive the series with Mayhew.
January 1856 returning to London, Mayhew writes an expose on insurance fraud for Bogue’s weekly newspaper, The Illustrated Times. Together they launch a monthly periodical, The Great World of London, intending to explore all classes of London society. Initially, Mayhew conducts investigations of London’s criminal prisons and culture. Delivers a lecture series, Curiosities of London Life, at the Royal Polytechnic.
March – April 1856 revives his mass meetings approach, first calling a meeting of prisoners on parole, the Ticket-of-Leave men, then of uncaught villains, the ‘Swell Mobsmen’. Attendance is by signed invitation only and the police are expressly excluded, though the press welcomed.
7 June 1856 star speaker at a rally by the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Capital Punishment. His speech, in which he revealed he had witnessed public hangings, is issued as part of a pamphlet in support of the cause.
19 June 1856 invited to give evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee on criminal transportation based on his prison research for The Great World of London and growing reputation as a criminologist.
September 1856 organizes a successful weekly concert series for working people.
October 1856 suffers an unspecified health crisis that leaves him unable to speak or work. His doctors diagnose ‘softness of the brain’ and order complete rest. He retreats to Cornwall for a month.
17 November 1856 Bogue, his long-time supporter, dies suddenly. Plans for the re-issue of London Labour and continuation of Great World is suspended.
27 January 1857 Mayhew convenes a mass meeting of ex-convicts at the request of a government minister to hear their views on transportation. The meeting nearly derails when he is harangued by one of the audience for exploiting them; a Times editorial on the gathering condemns Mayhew in the same terms.
February – March 1857 following an unsuccessful court appeal to have an ex-convict arrested, details of threats to ‘garrotte’ him and extortion are exposed in public. Mayhew draws his association with the London underworld to a close.
March 1857 unsuccessful bid to become Liberal candidate for Southwark.
April 1857 first number of Paved with Gold, a serial novel by the Brothers Mayhew with Augustus, using the material they had gathered under Bogue for the abortive London Labour relaunch. Mayhew abandons the project after the fifth number, leaving Augustus to complete it alone.
April 1857 embarks on another lecture tour across Britain, The Oddities of the London Streets, using material from London Labour and Great World. This is followed the same year by another, more elaborately theatrical tour called Curious Conversazione,in which Mayhew impersonates the characters from the streets, including a costermonger, Jewish clothes trader and Punch & Judy man, complete with costumes and props. Scripts for the latter are sold as souvenir booklets. Press reviews are mixed, some praising his uncanny flair for impersonation, others damning his loss of journalistic credibility.
8 June 1857 Douglas Jerrold, Mayhew’s father-in-law, dies. Dickens and Thackery are among the pall bearers at his funeral.
September 1857 another stage show, Punch on the Platform, is planned, featuring song and dance routines, written and performed by Mayhew. He suffers a breakdown on stage on opening night in Brighton after spotting his disapproving father in the front row.
December 1857 Mayhew signs an agreement with Bogue’s Executors to complete both London Labour and The Great World of London by the following summer, with a proviso that they can commission others to complete them under his name if he fails to deliver, so preserving the value of his brand.
20 January 1858 Mayhew’s father dies, bequeathing almost nothing to him. His brothers, however, inherit enough to retire in comfort.
1860s
January 1861 copyright of London Labour and The Great World of London sold by Bogue’s executors to Griffin and Bohn for £1000. They immediately reissue London Labour in serial and volume form. Volumes 1-3 are published and marketed under Mayhew’s name, as is a new Volume 4, the content commissioned from other writers, which follows the next year. Mayhew is not involved, Griffin invoking the proviso in his agreement with Bogue’s executors to publish them under his name.
1861- 1863 returns with his family to Germany, settling in Eisenach, Saxony, to research and write two books, one a children’s book, dramatizing the boyhood of Martin Luther, the other a two-volume analysis of German life and customs, which frequently descends in a diatribe. It is also a highly personal diary of his unhappy life in Germany. In the Preface to German Life and Manners he acknowledges his wife for the first time as the ‘‘sleeping partner’ of the firm’ of Mayhew.
January 1863: The Great World of London is re-packaged by Griffin and sold as The Criminal Prisons of London.
1863 on returning to London, Henry and Jane Mayhew separate amicably.
January – February 1864 covers the Schleswig-Holstein Crisis, a war between Denmark and Prussia, as Special Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph. Based in Copenhagen, his reports firmly support the Danish cause.
Summer 1864 attempts to form an ‘Anti-Punch League’ and launch a rival to his old colleagues, without success.
1865 second printing of the four volumes of London Labour.
March 1865 launches a one-shilling monthly, The Shops and Companies of London. It lasts until the fall.
July 1866 editor of The Sunday Times theatrical review column.
October – November 1868 imprisoned for debt in Whitecross Street prison. Appeals to the Royal Literary Fund for financial assistance again and is granted £50.
20 April 1869 registers a patent for a ‘An Improved Button Fastening’ that does away with the need for needle and thread, reported in one newspaper with the pun ‘Single Men. May-Hew Evermore Be Happy!’.
1870s
July 1870 covers Franco-Prussian war with his son Athol for the London evening paper The Globe and Traveller. Mistaken as a Prussian spy, he narrowly escapes death by firing squad, and is ordered to leave France.
January 1871 supports a fractious campaign in Greenwich to have the Liberal Prime Minister, Gladstone, deselected as the local MP; a meeting he addresses descends into a brawl for which some press reports blame Mayhew.
Summer 1871 commissioned to write an investigative report on working men’s clubs for the Licensed Victuallers’ Protection Society.
30 November 1871 Griffin sell the copyright of London Labour and Criminal Prisons to Maxwell publishers for £110. They do not develop the assets, and both go out of print.
May 1874 opening of an unsuccessful stage comedy, Mont Blanc, co-written with Athol.
1880s
13 June 1880 delivers a free lecture, London Wits, a personal account of London literary society of the past fifty years, at The Star and Garter, Leicester Square.
26 February 1880 Jane Mayhew dies. She requests burial beside her father. Mayhew is absent from her funeral.
1873 – 1887 lives in a series of rented rooms in lodging houses, primarily in London’s Bloomsbury area where the British Museum is located. He spends much of his time in the Reading Room, overlapping with Karl Marx who wrote Das Kapital there. Contemporaries said Mayhew was a prolific ghostwriter. Writes an anonymous series for The Builder on ‘The Wonders of London’.
25 July 1887 Mayhew dies of bronchitis at the age of seventy-four, in a rented room in 8 Tavistock Street. Tucked behind Convent Garden in London’s theatre district, it was also around the corner from where the offices of London Labour had been, in 16 Upper Wellington Street. He is buried in London’s Kensal Green Cemetery.
