Clues in the Street: Sherlock Holmes, Martin Hewitt, and Mean Streets

While the Victorian city at first seems made up of buildings, it is the space between those buildings, the street, which gives the city life and a purpose. Here people pass as an anonymous crowd, a tide of faceless people, and a potential mob. Here the street people of Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861-62) spend most of their lives. The life of the street is in a state of movement and transition; its very presence seems threatening. Here, Harper examines Arthur Morrison's novel "A Street."