Muddy Streets of London

Dear diary,

Into London is an urban setting, but what does a typical street in London 1800 look like? Who can you meet there?

Quick info

London is a booming town.

London is a dirty town. Mud on the street, soot and fog in the air.

The Thames stinks, full with garbage and excrements.

Busy London Street

Population

Population information shapes how a city looks: 1814, London is growing. A lot.

From just under a million in 1801, the population of London booms to 1,3 millions in 1811 (Greater London area).

Increase the population of any city by ~20% within a decade: there are bound to be problems, scarcity of living quarters, high rental prices, and infrastructure cannot be build quickly enough to support the influx of arriving population.

The 19th century is also the time of the beginning of the  industrialisation: not only housing projects are being built, but also production plants. Not all industrial barons built housing for their workers, and not all workers want to live in a building owned by their boss.

So, good housing is scarce (most people live in very cramped situations), commercial housing also.

That’s why a lot of people work on the street (which is considered normal), and seldom spend time at home, apart from meals and sleep. Children play on the street and that’s viewed as normal too.

Immigrants

A lot of the newcomers in London are from the rural areas of Great britain. You can certainly find people from all over them empire in London, but the biggest group among the immigrant population are, by far, the Irish.

Sure, a native-american, a french-cajun, an ex-slave from african descent (esclavage was abolished 1807 by the the Slave Trade Act in the empire) are an odder sight, but most people in London will associate migrants with “Micks” (derogatory term for the irish, apparently all named “Michael”).

Streets

1814, roads and streets in London are a mess: 

The parishes were responsible for their maintenance, there was no money for the work, so once a year, a “voluntary” reviewed the streets, on top of his normal job, with nearly no pay. Be sure he did an appropriate work (this can be compared to the work every citizen has to do in the Watch).

The street and roads in and around the other bigger cities (like Liverpool) were in better shape than London’s, which first started to use the McAdam process of road building in 1815.

The easiest way to get goods into the city was by waterways, the Thames or a canal (at Brentford).

Fish from the North Sea was transported by horse pack train, even though it was quickly perishable, at about the same speed as back when the romans ruled over the island.

But once the goods had arrived on the granite docks, bringing the goods within London was a big challenge: potholes, treacherous mud pools, narrow streets, too high loads for the street and the axles of the carts were daily hassles.

The paved streets themselves were muddy and stinking. The rudimentary sewer system was only used to drain the rain water, and everything landed, in the end, in the Thames, which was a stinking hell, full of detritus, garbage, animal carcasses, and even corpses. The banks of the River are a must every morning for corpses robber, and the Bow Street runners a few minutes later.

Toilets

As said before, the sewer system back in 1814 is only meant to drain the rain water. Every building in London has it’s own “cesspool”, ideally in the garden around back, but often in the basement. “Cesspools were built to be porous so the liquid part of the waste was meant to seep away into the ground. There was no knowledge of bacteriological contamination, although there was plenty of it happening. Nevertheless, you had this residue of solid matter left and it was removed by so-called ‘night soil men.’" (Dirty Old London, The Victorian Fight Against Filth by Lee Jackson)

At least, human feces did not land on the streets, but horse dung, mud, and rain were enough to make the london streets a slippery stinky slop, in which you’d better be in a cart, on a horse, or at least wearing good boots.

By law, the ‘night soil men’ had to work at night (because of the unbearable stink - and the societal taboo around toilets) but could make a good living out of the residue, selling them as fertilizer to farms in the countryside around London.

Sources

• On immigrants:  https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Population-history-of-london.jsp
• On streets: https://www.londonhistorians.org/index.php?s=file_download&id=64

Street urchins as employees

Dear Diary,
Traveling by yourself and exploring the word alone are bad decisions. A small group of motivated individuals (the PCs) has definitely a better survival chance than a lonely individual.
But recruiting “small hands”, like torchbearers, informers, people on the lookout, or shadowing on your behalf, can give you a definitve advantage.
Sure, you will have to pay them a few shillings and they might not be very loyal and certainly won’t risk their life for you.
But once you’ve earned their trust, they might really come in handy.

Street urchins

2 Urchins and child on a london street

In the 1800ies, the social system is not a welfare state. If you’re unlucky enough to be born into the lower class, you’ll have to go work early as a child, sometimes as early as 8 years old. If you’re really unlucky, your parents died at work, during childbirth, or succumb of one of the random infections that plague the insalubrious poor neighbourhoods, that have been quickly built to house the influx of people leaving the campaigns for the towns.
Those unluckiest children tend to gather in small bands living on the streets, begging, stealing and getting by on any opportunity.

You, as an adventurer, are such an opportunity. And these kids are also an interesting ressource for you.
These characters need to be 3 things: helpful, memorable, and odd.
Helpful is easy, they only need to do what you expect them to do without whining.
Memorable is trickier: you need at least a name and something special. An accent, a strange habit, a peculiar physical trait.
Odd is in the name of the game, so it’s important too. Furthermore, it makes Characters more memorable.

A few urchins to get started

1d20	Name	Nickname	Oddity
1	Cuthbert	Cuddy the Saint	Lives in a church cellar. Quotes approximately the bible
2	Nathaniel	Filthy Fanny	Always tries to see naked people
3	Harold	Shadow Hal	Always wears black. Very discreet in shadowy environments
4	Isaac	Frosty Zak	Wears multiple layers of wool and always seeks warmth
5	Jeduthan	Stabby Jed	Fascinated by knives and blades
6	Gerald	Feathery Jerry	Picks and cleans feathers (mostly seagull and crow), then wears them
7	Christopher	Kit the Tinkerer	Fascinated by mechanics. Seems to be able to repair instinctively
8	Malcolm	Mal long fingers	Kleptomaniac who gives stuff back
9	Patrick	Irish Paddy	Was born and raised in british columbia
10	Nathaniel	Indian Nat	Born of a Wampanoag huntress and a scottish sailor (both died on boat)
11	Thaddeus	Right said Tad	Listens to aristocrats to learn new words. Uses words he doesn’t understand
12	William	Willie the Bolt	Runs very quickly
13	Jeremiah	Jem & tommy	Is protected by a dog quite as big as him. He sometimes rides Tommy. Tommy always eats first.
14	Phineas	Squeezy Finny	Seems to be able to squeeze through any crack, fence, or hole
15	Robert	Bully Dob	As stupid as strong and violent. Kids and animals are instinctively afraid of him
16	Martha	Mother Molly	Already a mother at 15 (kid is 3). Had to fight in court to keep her Nan (Ellen)
17	Arabella	Perverted Bella	Sells her mouth to men for food. Pretends to still be a virgin.
18	Lucinda	Spotless Cindy	Never dirty. Works in a wash-house
19	Dorothy	Boom Boom Dolly	Fascinated by explosions, black powder and pyrotechnics
20	Augusta	Gussie the dressmaker	Creates dolls and clothes. Accepts payment in textile, threads, and yarns

All these characters are poor souls, some of them still kids, not even teenagers, a few of them already 16.

All have 1 HP, and 1D6+6 STR.

Most of them don’t possess a weapon.

Dangers on the street

Your characters will probably invest in those kids. First, financially, but in the end it's the emotional investment that will be interesting. Make those urchin likeable and make your players their ally.
Life on the street is though. Coldness, dirt, violence, stray dogs, sickness, predators, there are a lot of dangers on the streets especially for kids. And then there's the worst kind of predators: the human kind. Be it slave-traders trying to catch and sell the little ones somewhere where slavery is still allowed, or be it the sexual predator kind of scum, those are adversaries worth the time of your player's characters. Help and save those kids from these felons and they'll be forever loyal.

Sources

An interesting article on how to get rid of street urchins (it is meant to be satire, but suprisingly informative and inventive)

how-to-rid-yourself-of-a-victorian-street-urchin