These photos are, ah, not representative (most historical artefacts of this type aren’t; part of why people tend to have an impression of Victorian London as ba

These photos are, ah, not representative (most historical artefacts of this type aren’t; part of why people tend to have an impression of Victorian London as basically hell on earth is that, unusually, photos _were_ taken of the nasty bits, but really it was no worse than anywhere else at the time). You’d certainly prefer to live in Japan in 2025 than in 1860.