Henry Sharpe’s remarkable journals are a stunning early Victorian treasure trove, in which the man himself is revealed as few other contemporary diaries dared to attempt.

He opens a fascinating window on 1840s London: the Industrial Revolution with all its astonishing innovations; and the great rebuilding of London that transformed it into an Imperial city, which provided the backdrop to his world. A successful City merchant, he moved his residence to Hampstead in 1841, and there adds layers of fresh information about missing detail and forgotten bits of Hampstead history.

Sharpe’s great passion was for education, spending much of his spare time teaching in local schools, and setting up Reading Rooms and evening classes in Hampstead for local working men. He offers a rare insight into how the existing patchwork of voluntary educational effort worked.

Although his Journal covers only nine years (1830, and then 1840-47), the text is rich with observations about the key political and social concerns of the time, national and international events, as well as life in London and Hampstead. His accounts of the ups and downs of family life and raising children are both touching and amusing, putting Victorian fatherhood into a new light. He tells his story almost with the art of a novelist, skilfully weaving together so many varied interests and facets of life.

Helen Lawrence is the editor of Sharpe’s journals. Her illustrated talk will look at some of what she discovered. The book, The journals of Henry Sharpe: City merchant and Hampstead worthy, 1830-1847, to be published by Boydell and Brewer (August 2025) on behalf of the London Record Society, is being launched at this talk.