The view from the NPC: a legal psychogeography of the bystander

“The pavement and the road are crowded with purchasers and street sellers. The housewife in her thick shawl, with the market-basket on her arm, walks slowly on, stopping now to look at the stall of caps, and now a cheapen a bunch of greens. Little boys, holding three or four onions in their hand, creep between the people, wriggling their way through every interstice, and asking for custom in whining tones, as if seeking charity. Then the tumult of the thousand different cries of the eager dealers, all shouting at the top of their voices, at one and the same time, is almost bewildering.” Henry Mayhew (1851), ‘The London Street Markets in a Saturday Night’ in London Labour and the London Poor (|Vol. 1) George Woodfall & Son, p9. At great length Henry Mayhew chronicled the street life of London. Consistent with his mid-Victorian times and vantage point, he gazed with a mixture of fascination, philanthropy, disgust and a relentless urge to categorise. His project brought to home shores…