During the 1880s, the United Kingdom was going from strength to strength under Queen Victoria, whose Golden Jubilee on 20 June 1887 brought together the British Empire’s high and mighty for sumptuous celebrations in London. Amid soaring temperatures, fifty representatives of a quarter of the planet’s population participated in a banquet at Buckingham Palace. These festivities involved an elite enjoying the fruits of widespread growth in industries ranging from textiles to metallurgy, as “London played the role of a huge economic machine animating trade flows throughout England”. Such streams of industrial wealth contrasted with the circumstances of many citizens in the capital, especially families sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square, within a mile of the royal household. Just over a year earlier, on Monday 8 February 1886, working-class conditions had been so dire that thousands of unemployed Londoners had congregated in the square around Nelson’s Column to demonstrate under the banner of the Social Democratic Federation. This gathering culminated in unmarshaled attendees smashing windows and looting shops on the way to Hyde Park until a charge by truncheon-wielding police compelled them to relent. The events of “Black Monday,” which heralded the socialist tumult of “Bloody Sunday” on 13 November 1887, were emblematic of civic inequalities during the Long Depression of 1873–1896. Beside economic insecurity, the majority of London’s populace was exposed to toxic air due to manufacturers’ surging consumption of coal: “lengthy London fogs provided stark evidence of the health threats of coal smoke in Britain” Spurred by numerous deaths attributable to pollution, organizations such as the National Smoke Abatement Institution spent much of the 1880s striving for legislation to counterbalance industries causing health problems, though little progress was made. All in all, turn-of-the-century London was a gritty place, beset by environmental and social problems that transfixed observers from diverse backgrounds, including poets residing beyond the United Kingdom’s shores.' (Introduction)
