Just started this. I know we're both going to love it.
In 1902, Jack London (
Call of the Wild, White Fang etc) decided to live among the poor people of the East End of London for a time, to see what life was like for them there. Disguising himself as one of them and only arranging a safe haven where he could come and go occasionally if it all got too much, he spent months living in the slums, talking to the people there, learning about their lives through true experience. Then he wrote about it. Absorbing stuff already.
Here's an interesting quote right from the start of the book, almost:
"Presto! In the twinkling of an eye, so to speak, I had become one of them (the common folk). My frayed and out-at-elbows jacket was the badge and the advertisement of my class, which was their class. It made me of like kind, and in place of the fawning and too respectful attention I had received hitherto, I now shared with them a comradeship. The man in corduroy and dirty neckerchief no longer addressed me as "sir" or "governor". It was "mate" now."