Adolphe Smith Headingley was a left-wing political writer. He was a member of the First International, took part in the Paris Commune, and played a key role in organising the 1882 International Trades Union Congress.

John Thompson was a Scottish photographer and early social documentarist. He travelled to the far east to document the people, landscapes and artefacts of eastern cultures. Later, he photographed the people and streets of London, publishing the images in a monthly magazine, Street Life in London, with Adolphe Smith from 1876 to 1877. The project documented in photographs and text the lives of the street people of London, establishing social documentary photography as an early form of photojournalism.