The 1896 book A Child of the Jago was written by Arthur Morrison. It tells the story of Dicky Perrott, a little boy growing up in the "Old Jago," a fictionalized version of the Old Nichol slum in the East End of London, which is situated between Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road. The book was a success at the time. George Gissing, an English novelist from the late nineteenth century, described the book as "bad stuff" after reading it on Christmas Day 1896. The book begins after midnight on a steamy summer night, when many of the Jago's inhabitants, who have been compared to "great rats," opt to sleep outside to escape the intense heat and foul odor of the neighborhood's tightly packed homes. A man is severely coshed, robbed, and dragged unconscious into the street where others remove his boots after he is enticed into a home by a woman. Dicky Perrott, who is 8 or 9 years old (the age difference is significant), arrives at home and finds his mother, Hannah Perrott, and his baby sister, Looey, who has flea bites, but just a crust of bread to eat.
English author and journalist Arthur Morrison (born 1 November 1863; died 4 December 1945) is best known for his realistic books, his depictions of working-class life in London's East End, and his Martin Hewitt-centered detective tales. Additionally, he authored various publications on Japanese art while collecting Japanese artwork. Through donations and purchases, the British Museum now holds a large portion of his collection. Morrison's novel A Child of the Jago is his most well-known piece of fiction (1896). Morrison published his first piece of significant journalism in the newspaper The Globe in 1885. He was hired in 1886 to a position at the People's Palace in Mile End after rising to the rank of the third-class clerk. He was granted reading privileges at the British Museum in 1888, and he went on to publish a series of 13 sketches titled Cockney Corner that chronicled daily life in a number of London neighborhoods, including Soho, Whitechapel, and Bow Street. Around 1,800 Japanese woodblock prints were given by Morrison to the British Museum in 1906.
