Henry Mayhew

Born into a large family of a London solicitor, he was one of seventeen children. In adolescence, he enrolled in Westminster School, but a few years later he ran away and took a job as a cabin boy on an East India Company ship. He spent several years at sea, lived in Calcutta for some time. In 1829, he returned to the UK, studied law for a while under the guidance of his father and was an intern with a lawyer in Wales.

In 1831, together with Gilbert E-Beckett, he founded the weekly newspaper "Figaro in London", which was not very popular with readers; in 1832 he became one of the founders of the digest "The Thief", in which he published two farces of his own composition, which were positively received by critics.