Mayhew, Henry

Mayhew, Henry

Henry Mayhew, engraving after a photograph

(credit: BBC Hulton Picture Library)

(born 1812, London, Eng.—died July 25, 1887, London) English journalist and sociologist. He studied law but soon turned to journalism. In 1841 he founded the highly successful Punch. A vivid and voluminous writer, he is best known for London Labour and the London Poor (1851–62), an evocation of the sights and sounds of the working-class districts of London, which influenced Charles Dickens and other writers. He also wrote plays, farces, fairy tales, and novels, some in collaboration with his brother Augustus Septimus Mayhew (1826–75).