The Old Clothes of St Giles

This photograph was one of 37 taken by John Thomson for the social documentary publication 'Street Life in London'. The accompanying text, written by Adolphe Smith includes the following extracts: 'The accompanying photograph represents a second-hand clothes shop in a narrow thoroughfare of St Giles, appropriately called Lumber Court, where several similar tradesmen are grouped together, all dealing in old clothes and furniture of a most varied and dilapidated description. It is here that the poorest inhabitants of a district, renowed for its poverty, both buy and sell their clothes....The dealer whose portrait is before the reader cannot boast of a large business. She had been unfortunate in previous speculations and illness had also crippled her resources, so that her stock is limited and her purchasing power still more restricted....I could not help concluding, howerver, that ignorance was to some extent a bar to greater success. Her knowledge of the value of some old books and some wretched oil paintings was of the vaguest description...In this case, however, the floor was well washed, the shop carefully dusted the goods kept in order of merit, and the grate resplendent in all the glory of unstinted black lead. A door at the back admitted a thorough current of air...Perhaps these rare qualities explain the fact that trade is slack with her. Cleanliness is essentially distasteful to, and is even considered 'stuck up', by a large section of the population'.