Other editions of book The People of the Abyss

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Jack London lived for a time within the grim and grimy world of the East End of London, where half a million people scraped together hardly enough on which to survive. Even if they were able to work, they were paid only enough to allow them a pitiful existence. He grew to know and empathise with these forgotten (or ignored) people as he spoke with them and tasted the workhouse, life on the streets, … and the food, which was cheap, barely nutritious, and foul.He writes about his experiences in a fluid and narrative style, making it very clear what he thinks of the social structures which created the Abyss, and of the millionaires who live high on the labours of a people forced to live in squalor. “… The food this managing class eats, the wine it drinks, … the fine clothes it wears, are challenged by eight million mouths which have never had enough to fill them, and by twice eight million bodies which have never been sufficiently clothed and housed.”

“Nowhere in the streets of London may one escapethe sight of abject poverty, while five minutes’ walk fromalmost any point will bring one to a slum; but the regionmy hansom was now penetrating was one unending slum.The streets were filled with a new and different race ofpeople, short of stature, and of wretched or beer-soddenappearance. We rolled along through miles of bricksand squalor, and from each cross street and alley flashedlong vistas of bricks and misery. Here and there lurcheda drunken man or woman, and the air was obscene withsounds of jangling and squabbling. At a market, totteryold men and women were searching in the garbage thrownin the mud for rotten potatoes, beans, and vegetables,while little children clustered like flies around a festeringmass of fruit, thrusting their arms to the shoulders into theliquid corruption, and drawing forth morsels but partiallydecayed, which they devoured on the spot.”

The People of the Abyss (1903) is a book by Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account after living in the East End (including the Whitechapel District) for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.

The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of 1902. I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to measure the life of the under-world. That which made for more life, for physical and spiritual health, was good; that which made for less life, which hurt, and dwarfed, and distorted life, was bad. It will be readily apparent to the reader that I saw much that was bad. Yet it must not be forgotten that the time of which I write was considered “good times” in England. The starvation and lack of shelter I encountered constituted a chronic condition of misery which is never wiped out, even in the periods of greatest prosperity.

A profound and moving piece of investigative journalism, Jack London’s study of the London underworld remains, a century after it was written, a timely tale of poverty and injustice. In 1902, Jack London purchased some second-hand clothes, rented a room in the East End, and set out to discover how the London poor lived. His research makes shocking reading. Moving through the slums as one of the poor; eating, drinking and socialising with the underclass; queuing to get into a doss-house, London was scandalised and brutalised by the experience of living rough in Britain’s capital. His clear-eyed reflections on the iniquities of class are a shaming testament to the persistence of social inequality in modern Britain.

Full text.From the author's preface: "The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of 1902. I went down into the underworld of London with an attitude of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to measure the life of the underworld. That which made for more life, for physical and spiritual health, was good; that which made for less life, which hurt, and dwarfed, and distorted life, was bad."

A profound and moving piece of investigative journalism, Jack London's study of the London underworld remains, a century after it was written, a timely tale of poverty and injustice.In 1902, Jack London purchased some second-hand clothes, rented a room in the East End, and set out to discover how the London poor lived. His research makes shocking reading. Moving through the slums as one of the poor; eating, drinking and socialising with the underclass; queuing to get into a doss-house, London was scandalised and brutalised by the experience of living rough in Britain's capital.

The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of 1902. I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to measure the life of the under-world. That which made for more life, for physical and spiritual health, was good; that which made for less life, which hurt, and dwarfed, and distorted life, was bad.