Beginning with an atmospheric account of Tyburn — a village synonymous with capital punishment in Britain — the author of Bedlam and Necropolis leads a grisly excursion through London as a city of ne'er-do-wells, taking in beheadings and brutality at the Tower, Elizabethan street crime, highway robbers, the 18th-century Gordon Riots, and the Victorian era of incarceration. Catharine Arnold also surveys the grotesque punishments meted out to those who transgressed the law, and investigates the influence of London's criminal classes on the literature of the 19th and 20th centuries.

'If you do not want to dwell with evil-doers', wrote Richard of Devizes in 1180, 'do not live in London'. In her third exploration of the city's history, Catharine Arnold focuses on the sex trade, from slave girls brought to service Roman troops in first century Londinium, through medieval stews, 18th century sex clubs and Victorian male brothels to infamous '60s call girls and the internet 'Belle de Jour'.