Contemporary reviews started appearing in other publications shortly after the “Labour and the Poor” investigation commenced, of which a number were reprinted in The Morning Chronicle.
We have transcribed a selection of these to give an idea of how the letters were being received at the time, which you can find below. Each article has links to the other articles at the top and bottom of the page.
The Sunday Times, February 3, 1850.
We have seen vast sums of public money lavished upon Royal Commissions to inquire into the condition of the poor, and to discover the latent causes of national distress, without arriving at any very satisfactory results. That which the power of the Legislature, aided by the coffers of the state, has failed to achieve, is now being accomplished by private energy and enterprise. No one who has even casually glanced over the admirable series of letters on the state of “Labour and the Poor in the Metropolitan, Rural, and Manufacturing Districts of England and Wales,” which have for several weeks past appeared in the columns of The Morning Chronicle, can resist the conviction that a more complete exposition of the real condition of the labouring population throughout the kingdom has never been given to the world. The revelations, especially those which appear in the Metropolitan Correspondent’s letters, are in the highest degree interesting and important, and will furnish invaluable data to the political economist, and the legislator for effecting an amelioration in the condition of the poor, and for reforming the baneful system that everywhere tends to degrade and demoralise the working classes. We have but one regret—that these letters, the result of the laborious investigations of the intelligent gentlemen who have been selected to prosecute this great national inquiry—should not have been all published separately by our spirited contemporary in a quarto supplement to the paper, so that they might be collected and bound together at any future time. The advantage of being thus enabled to preserve them in a distinct and substantive form would add greatly to the permanent value of the letters; and we trust it may not yet be too late to carry the suggestion into practice.
The Sunday Times, February 3, 1850.