In 1969, the London Topographical Society published a compilation, by Peter Jackson, of original Tallis guides dated between 1838-1840 and 1847.

These London Street Views were last century's equivalent of modern street directories, in that they listed streets and the people and businesses in them. They also included maps, and line drawings which depicted streets, shop and building fronts, just as they looked at the time.

The 1969 compilation is a treasure trove of information, but with more than 10,000 surnames alone, and no alphabetic index, it can be hard to search for individual people and businesses.

To make the task easier, a companion alphabetical index has been created. This index, available from Interlink Bookshop on a set of five high quality microfiche, includes all the people, businesses, streets, churches, inns and taverns in the City of London, Westminster and small sections of Holborn and Southwark. The index links each entry with the book’s street elevations.

For those researchers who do not have access to the book, which is available from the London Topographic Society, this set of fiche serves as a directory equivalent for the area. If you're looking in the 1969 collection for an ancestor's name, or a business, our Index will pinpoint exactly where they may be in the  street views and you can also see what the building and streetscape looked like.

The London Times discusses the significance of Tallis's London Street Views:
"Among the list of Cheap Periodicals none equal "Tallis's London Street Views" for price, — and for the great novelty of the plan it stands unrivalled; the older it gets the more it will be esteemed. If in the present day, the plan of London, sketched in the time of Queen Elizabeth, is esteemed so great a relic of antiquity, without any index to the names of the occupiers of houses, what will our successors say a century hence, to the present faithful delineation, when in all probability many, even thousands of the descendants of the present generation will be able to identify not only their family-name, but the very house, and even the trade carried on by their forefathers. As a document for the identity of property alone, copies should be possessed by all persons, and handed down from father to son as an heir-loom, and taken as much care of as the title-deeds of their inheritance." (ca 1888)