London; Or Truth without Treason

By the beginning of the 19th century London was the largest and most important city in the world. Its population had doubled in the 1700s as thousands flooded into the capital from the surrounding countryside and the rest of Britain seeking work. It was set to double again by 1850.

To outsiders London was a city of wonder and terror. Tales of its delights and horrors were reported in the furthest parts of Britain. It was seen as a seething den of vice and squalor; a nest of depravity where everything had its price. Others were content to read about it in broadsheets.

This broadsheet was printed in York, probably for a local audience. Readers could marvel at the enormous scale of everything in London without having to travel there: the six hundred thousand pounds of butter consumed annually, the five hundred boat loads of cod, haddock and whiting eaten, the 980 thousand gallons of milk drunk and the "20,000 persons [who] rise every morning without knowing how they are going to subsist during the day".