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Podcast: New Books in Sociology
Episode: Oskar Jensen, "Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century London" (The Experiment, 2024)
Description: London, 1857: A pair of teenage girls holding a sign that says "Fugitive Slaves" ask for money on the corner of Blackman Street. After a constable accosts them and charges them with begging, they end up in court, where national newspapers pick up their story. Are the girls truly escaped slaves from Kentucky? Or will the city's dystopian Mendicity Society catch them in a lie, exposing them as born-and-raised Londoners and endangering their safety?With its many accounts of people like these who lived and made their living on the streets, Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century L...