Slum

Slum in Delhi, India

A slum is a part of a city or a town where many poor people live. It is a place where people may not have basic needs, such as running water, electricity, toilets, telephones, etc. Some of these people may also have social disadvantages, such as unemployment, no access to education, no access to health care, no municipal services, etc. There are slums in most of the big cities of developing countries and least developed countries (which are also labelled as the "Third World"). They may not be called slum, however; see shanty town.

Victorian London

Charles Dickens was a great author of Victorian London. His account of the St Giles rookery was:

"Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper; every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three – fruit and ‘sweetstuff’ manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a ‘musician’ in the front kitchen, a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one – filth everywhere – a gutter before the houses, and a drain behind – clothes drying, and slops emptying from the windows; (…) men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing".

Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 1839.

Slum Media

Share of urban population living in slums (2018)
- London slums Wellcome Images*Keywords: london 19th century; london slums; Gustave Doré; Gustave Doré
One of the many New York City slum photographs of Jacob Riis (ca 1890). Squalor can be seen in the streets, wash clothes hanging between buildings.
Inside of a slum house, from Jacob Riis photo collection of New York City (ca 1890).
Part of Charles Booth's poverty map showing the Old Nichol, a slum in the East End of London. Published 1889 in Life and Labour of the People in London.
A slum dwelling in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, about 1936.
A 1913 slum dwelling midst squalor in Ivry-sur-Seine, a French commune about 5 kilometers from center of Paris. Slums were scattered around Paris through the 1950s. After Loi Vivien was passed in July 1970, France demolished some of its last major bidonvilles (slums) and resettled resident Algerian, Portuguese and other migrant workers by the mid-1970s.
Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, the second-largest slum in Africa and third-largest in the world.
A slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rocinha favela is next to skyscrapers and wealthier parts of the city, a location that provides jobs and easy commute to those who live in the slums.
A large slum pictured behind skyscrapers in a more developed area in La Paz, Bolivia.