The People of the Abyss.
Jack London. 1908.
American author London, bought second hand clothes and slummed it in the East End. He said he was a sailor down on his luck. He slammed the British Empire for it's rotten treatment of the poorer classes. With which I had to agree. Better things came with David Lloyd George and his old age pension and workman's compensation 1911.
So here's my "flak": his solutions caused even more misery for even more people.
But I don't think that people are aware of how horrific things were for the regular person back then. Even if what I read was for a small minority of people, it was unjust.