First Published in 1983. In October 1849 a London newspaper, the Morning Chronicle, announced to its middle-class readers that it was to undertake a survey of the condition of the labouring classes in England and Wales under the general title of “Labour and the Poor”. The reports of the survey were published over a period of two years and provided the mid-nineteenth-century Englishman with the most comprehensive view of the working classes that he had ever seen. The letters to The Morning Chronicle from the manufacturing, mining and rural districts and the towns of Liverpool and Birmingham appear here for the first time in book form and have been organised in eight volumes. This is Volume I and offer insights into labour and the poor in England and Wales 1849 to 1851 in the areas of Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire.