Map of the Inns of Court and districts inhabited by lawyers

A map showing the Inns of Court and districts inhabited by lawyers from page 71 of 'The criminal prisons of London and scenes of prison life' by Henry Mayhew and John Binny. The authors note that the legal district in London is grouped about the Courts of Law and Inns of Court in Westminster and Lincoln's Inn. 'The Inns of Court are themselves sufficiently peculiar to give a strong distinctive mark to the locality in which they exist; for here are seen broad open squares like huge court-yards, paved and treeless, and flanked with grubby mansions - as big and cheerless-looking as barracks - every one of them being destitute of doors, and having a string of names painted in stripes upon the door-posts ... and there is generally a chapel-like edifice called the "hall" that is devoted to feeding rather than praying, and where the lawyerlings "qualify" for the bar by eating so many dinners, and become at length - gastronomically - "learned in the law".'