London had all of these folks flooding in from the countryside -- basically displaced by the industrial revolution. Life became very cheap and folks became numbed to the most appalling effects of poverty.
Yes, life in Victorian London was appalling for much of the population. Babies fed cheap gin in their bottles to keep them quiet, poor working men pawning the families meager possessions from week to week, whole families crammed into tiny rooms, illiteracy, out-of-wedlock births, hunger, disease, rampant prostitution, and on and on.
But for many people who didn't live in London or weren't on the bottom of the social rung, live was pretty good. And, yes, and they were the ones who wrote the histories.
And, that's why the "olden days" often look better than today. Because those who had the time, resources and interest wrote history.