The Jago is a few streets of East London where nearly everyone steals and violence is ordinary, and young Dicky Perrott is born into it. The novel follows him from small-boy pilfering through the gang feuds, the fences who exploit him and a vicar’s efforts at rescue, showing how the place shapes a child who might have been something else.
The slum novel that shocked readers in 1896 and remains one of the most unflinching portraits of Victorian poverty. Download the free EPUB.