The Garret and the Garden

A London slum, a garret, a crossing-sweeper and a strip of ground turned into a garden — Ballantyne's argument that a patch of soil can pull a family out of the gutter. He researched his books by living the work, and this one is set in a court on the Surrey side of the Thames. The philanthropy is of its period and the observation is exact, down to the price of a barrow of loam. Forty plates of Victorian city and shore, from Grimshaw's rain-slicked streets to Fildes's London poor, match this story of a slum court and the ground that redeems it.