Each step I take I am more faint-hearted and more weary in body and limb. No bills up except for a ‘good tailoress,’ and at these places I dare not apply, for I feel myself an impostor, and as yet my conscience and my fingers are equally unhardened. Hour after hour I have paced the highways and byways of the London Ghetto. Jostled on and off the pavement, I wander on and on, seeking work. Machinists and pressers, well-clothed and decorated with heavy watch-chains Jewish girls with flashy hats, full figures, and large bustles furtive-eyed Polish immigrants with their pallid faces and crouching forms and here and there poverty-stricken Christian women-all alike hurry to and from the midday meal while the labour-masters, with their wives and daughters, sit or lounge round about the house-door, and exchange notes on the incompetency of ‘season hands,’ the low price of work, the blackmail of shop foremen, or discuss the more agreeable topic of the last ‘deal’ in Petticoat Lane and the last venture on race-horses. An unsavoury steam rises from the down-trodden slime of the East End streets and mixes with the stronger odours of the fried fish, the decomposing vegetables, and the second-hand meat which assert their presence to the eyes and nostrils of the passers-by.įor a brief interval the ‘whirr’ of the sewing-machines and the muffled sound of the presser’s iron have ceased. The sun’s rays beat fiercely on the crowded alleys of the Jewish settlement: the air is moist from the heavy rains. “Pages From a Work-Girl’s Diary” is a narrative adaptation of her experience. 3 See Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004. She joined other social investigators of her time who adopted this form of research, including James Greenwood, Charles Booth, and Elizabeth Banks. 2 For more information on the diary where Potter first documented these experiences, see Rosemary O'Day, "Before the Webbs: Beatrice Potter's Early Investigations for Charles Booth's Inquiry," History, Vol 78 No 253, June 1993, 218-42. To better understand the conditions of the working classes, Potter went undercover as a needlewoman and kept a narrative diary of her experiences and observations. 1 Not to be confused with Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), the author of the beloved “Peter Rabbit” stories. Introductory Note: The author of “Pages From a Work-Girl’s Diary,” Beatrice Potter Webb (1858-1943), was also a social reformer and, together with her husband, an eventual member of the social Fabian Society.
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