Born into a live of poverty crime and squallier

where hunger bites and disease was rife

in the dirty crowded cobbled streets

where it was a daily battle to survive

and stay alive.

Uneducated illiturate caught in the poverty trap

drinking water from the same diseased

choleria riddled tap.

An impoverished woman

sells her body for a bottle of cheap gin

and a lodging for the night

While a pick pocket and mucher

ever watchful for a victims pocket to alight.

Children running through the narrow crowded streets

dressed in rags no shoes upon their feet

the putrid smell from the gutter

the thick choking bellowing chimmnies

make it hard to breath

Rats as big as cats

scurry and spread disease.

Dilapidated buildings covered in black soot

horse manure and raw sewage under foot.

Beggars flea infested and imancipated

with large mournful eyes

reach out pleading to the passing gentry

to fill their bowls with plenty.

A peeler pins a notice of a forthcoming 

hanging at a local Goal

pinned to an old rusty nail

for the few who can read.

A desprate Mother needing to feed her family

steals a loaf of bread

from a market stall

a shout goes out' theif'

and she is soon captured in the sprawl

The judge sentences her to 10 years penal servitude

to a colony to farawy Botany bayfar away

but upon the ship she dies of fever on the way.

Her children are sent to the workhouse

for the poor

to labour and gain some education

behind it's hellish door.

Never to see their Mother anymore.

The ifant mortality rate in inner city London, was claimed to be as much 74%, dying before the age of 5..

A Peeler was an early ploice constable, nick named after their founder, Sir Robert Peel.

A mucher, was someone who robbed the drunk and dead.

 Gaol, was the old spelling for jail.

Peter M Dome.copyright.2012.