Wellcome uses cookies.

Read our policy
Wellcome Collection homepage
All
Stories
Images
Catalogue
Events

Stories

  • Article

How slums make people sick

A newly gentrified corner of Bermondsey leaves little clue to its less salubrious history. But a few intrepid writers recorded the details of existence in one of London’s most squalid slums.

  • Article

Milk trails round Euston

Where cows once grazed near Wellcome Collection in London, baristas now froth their milk. Esther Leslie uncovers Euston’s dairy-based urban history.

  • Article

Drugs in Victorian Britain

Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?

  • Article

Coleridge’s hypochondria

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.

All stories (6)

Images

  • Charles Dickens on his deathbed. Halftone, 1870.
  • An episode in Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens: a crowd gathers around Mr Mantalini who has attempted to poison himself. Etching after Phiz (Hablot K. Browne).
  • Daniel O'Connell in the character of Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge carries on his back a raven with the head of Lord Melbourne. Coloured lithograph by H.B. (John Doyle), 1841.
  • An episode in Dombey and son by Charles Dickens: the interior of "The wooden midshipman", a shop in the City of London for navigational instruments; a boy ("Rob the Grinder") is conversing with a pugilist known as "The Game Chicken". Etching by Phiz (Hablot K. Browne).
  • A girl and her grandfather sit at the top of a hill which looks back over St Paul's cathedral. Lithograph by J. Barnard.
  • Oliver Twist, holding a bowl and a spoon, asks for more food, while other children and a woman look surprised. Etching by George Cruikshank.
  • A London linen-draper's assistant reveals his true identity: he is not "Horatio Sparkins", an aristocratic man about town, but Mr Smith, an assistant in a down-market shop. Etching by George Cruikshank, 1839.
  • The election of a parish beadle in England: crowds thronging the entrance to the polling station, including supporters of the rival candidates, Spruggins and Bung, who expect to be elected according to the large number of their dependents. Etching by George Cruikshank, 1836.
  • A noisy tenant and three of his friends, having stayed up singing until the early hours of the morning, go to the house of an elderly neighbour and disturb his sleep to ask him for glass of water and the loan of a shilling for a cab. Etching by George Cruikshank, 1839.
  • The sportsman's handbook to practical collecting, preserving, and artistic setting-up of trophies and specimens : to which is added a synoptical guide to the hunting grounds of the world / by Rowland Ward.
All images (44)

Catalogue

All works (213)