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A series of extraordinary black and white photographs of Victorian London have revealed the daily life of the modern metropolis we know today through millions of digital selfies.

The lives of street doctors, chimney sweeps, market sellers and street beggars are told in the amazing frames captured by photographer John Thompson in the 1800s.

The stories focus on the lower end of society, the poor, on the streets, the nomads, the hustlers looking for another customer.

In one photograph known as "The Street Doctor", a man is pictured plying his trade on a road to two women in a scene described by writer Adolphe Smith as an increasingly rare occurrence of seeing "vendors of pills, potions and quack nostrums" as free public hospitals grew in the city.

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

Then there was a man known as "The Independent Shoe Black", who was described as always carrying "his box on his shoulders and only put it down when he has secured a customer”.

There is the photographer snapping away on Clapham Common, south London, who symbolised those who hit the big time in business in the city but had struck trouble and been reduced to a humbler life.

The photographs were originally published in a magazine, Street Life In London, after Thompson worked with writer Smith throughout 1876 and 1877 on the series.

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(Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

Smith provided often humour descriptions of the characters and how they fit into London life.

The photo series - now stored at the Bishopsgate Institute - was an attempt to capture the street life of the city and tell its story, according to the Spitafields Life blog.

"When I look at these vital pictures, I am always startled by the power of the gaze of those who look straight at the lens and connect with us directly, while there is a plangent sadness to those with eyes cast down in subservience, holding an internal focus and lost in time," the blog wrote.

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

The blog continued: "The paradoxical achievement of these early street photographs is they convey a sense that the city eludes the camera, because either we are witnessing a tableau that has been composed or there is simply too much activity to be crammed into the frame.

"As a consequence it is sometimes the 'wild' elements beyond the control of the photographer which render these pictures so fascinating – the restless children and disinterested bystanders, among others."

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute)

(Image: Bishopsgate Institute) (Image: Bishopsgate Institute)