The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London

Many of those walking long distances then worked twelve-, fourteen- or sixteen-hour days, at the end of which they then walked home again. The great journalist of working-class London, Henry Mayhew, noted in passing what he considered ‘the ordinary hours’ of employment: from six to six.* At Murdstone and Grinby’s wine warehouse, the eight-year-old David Copperfield works until 8 p.m., walking to and from his lodgings in Camden Town. Many people worked much longer hours. Shifts for drivers of hackney cabs were always long: the shorter shifts lasted eleven or twelve hours, the long shifts from fourteen to sixteen hours, sometimes more. (The horses could work nothing like these hours: two or three horses were needed for a twelve-hour shift.) Even worse were the hours of many omnibus employees: