%0 Journal Article
%T The Soundscapes of Henry Mayhew Urban Ethnography and Technologies of Transcription
%A Helen Groth
%J Cultural Studies Review
%D 2012
%I UTS ePRESS
%X Contemporary reviewers of London Labour and the London Poor were quick to label as inauthentic both the engraved re-mediations of John Beard¡¯s daguerreotype portraits and Henry Mayhew¡¯s transcription of the voices of London¡¯s street habitu¨¦s. Mayhew¡¯s literal mediations of patter, slang and speech rhythms were the subject of particular scrutiny.  As one critic acerbically observed: ¡®The photographs no doubt are accurate enough, but those dialogues smell of the footlights.¡¯  Such criticisms strike at the core of Mayhew¡¯s commitment to the technologies of faithful mimesis and the mediation of an authentic experience of the everyday lives of London¡¯s wandering tribes.  Sound bites of characteristic speech serve as titles for many of the engraved reproductions of John Beard¡¯s daguerreotypes reinforcing the analogy between visual and textual modes of transcription.  Likewise Mayhew insists that his various re-enactments of the multi-sensorial experience of elbowing through London¡¯s crowded marketplaces and streets are ¡®unvarnished¡¯ transparent mediations of its various sounds and voices.  Central to Mayhew¡¯s enterprise is the commitment to recording and capturing a dying way of life.  Now silenced voices are captured and remediated to ¡®shock¡¯ and teach through the ¡®heart¡¯ to use Mayhew¡¯s terminology.  This paper will reconsider Mayhew¡¯s investment in the power of sympathetic communication in the context of broader transformations in mid-nineteenth century conceptions of the media as a conduit for information rather than as a mechanism of persuasion.
%K British journalism
%K shorthand
%K Londoners
%K sound represented by words
%U http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/2864