The second chapter describes the author's attempts to rent a room from Johnny Upright, while we learn about a docker named Dan Cullen and a "winner of the Victoria Cross" in other chapters.  
This book's preface quotes a letter from Justin McCarthy which describes the situation in the winter following the events it depicts.  The second chapter describes the author's attempts to rent a room from Johnny Upright, while we learn about a docker named Dan Cullen and a "winner of the Victoria Cross" in other chapters.  Beginning with a chapter on "The Descent" in which the author cannot find anyone who knows anything about the East End, it goes on to consider suicide, the ghetto, "the hunger wail," and similar horrors observed in "the under-world of London" in 1902.  FTP, name this classic expos?of the brutality of poverty, a work by Jack London.
This book's preface quotes a letter from Justin McCarthy which describes the situation in the winter following the events it depicts.  
The People of the Abyss