The Fool is a 1990 British film set in Victorian England's world of finance directed by Christine Edzard and produced by John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin, from a script by Edzard and Olivier Stockman. It stars Derek Jacobi, Cyril Cusack, Ruth Mitchell, Maria Aitken, Irina Brook, Paul Brook and Miranda Richardson. The camerawork was by British cinematographer Robin Vidgeon.

Henry Mayhew was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine Punch in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in its early days. He is also known for his work as a social researcher, publishing an extensive series of newspaper articles in the Morning Chronicle that was later compiled into the three-volume book London Labour and the London Poor (1851), a groundbreaking and influential survey of the city's poor.