Slum tourism has taken off in recent years, but as Sonia Tsuruoka shows, the practice dates back to the Victorian Era:
“How the other half lives” has been a topic of perverse fascination for the upper and middle-classes even prior to Jacob Riis’ groundbreaking photojournalistic study of Manhattan’s tenement- and sweatshop-ridden Lower East Side in 1890. Consider the loaded, etymological origins of the word slumming, and its earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1884. Around this time hordes of blue-blooded Londoners – leaving their lavish abodes in Mayfair and Belgravia – were rumored to flood London’s squalid East End for everything from amusement to philanthropy. This “fashionable London Mania” found its way from Victorian-era England to the streets of New York City, as wealthy foreigners increasingly engaged in “slumming parties,” which typically entailed “a tour of the Bowery winding up with a visit to an opium joint or Harry Hill’s.” A recognizable tension between slumming as reform enterprise and twisted voyeurism emerged, blurring the boundaries between slum tourism as a form of entertainment for the privileged class and a spirited call to action for well-intentioned missionaries, social activists, politicians, journalists, and philanthropists.
(Image: 1885 engraving “New York City – ‘Doing the Slums’ – A Scene in Five Points”)
The Dish 