The Worst Street In London Part 2

One such immigrant was James Rouse who had lived and worked on the street since at least 1840. Rouse possessed a talent for his trade combined with shrewd business sense. By 1861, he had accrued sufficient savings to relocate to more s.p.a.cious premises in Lamb Street and described himself in the census of that year as a 'master boot maker'. Two of his sons are listed as apprentices. The profit made from the business in the following decade allowed him to retire in the 1870s and live a comfortable life in the middle-cla.s.s suburb of Bromley.

In 1851, there were 50 people living in Dorset Street who had been born in Ireland. Some like James Rouse and his family had lived in London for some time while others almost certainly arrived on the street as a direct result of the famine in their homeland. At number 16, William Keefe and his family shared their home with four women who had almost certainly escaped deprivation in Ireland and were attempting to make new lives for themselves in the British mainland. Three of the women, Margaret Casey, 35, Margaret Lynch, 20, and Mary Ann Doughan, 35, hailed from Cork while their room-mate, Catherine Allen, 27, hailed from Galway. None of the women were married and so it was entirely up to them to ensure the rent was paid on time. The two Margarets and Catherine worked as seed potters (probably for one of the merchants in Spitalfields Market). This type of work was both home-based and seasonal. One can imagine the mess as flowerpots were filled with soil ready for seeds to be planted in the spring and the growing anxiety felt by the women as summer approached and work became increasingly scarce.

Irish refugees with families in tow found emigration to London particularly challenging, both emotionally and financially. Back in Ireland, even the largest cities such as Dublin were nowhere near as noisy, dirty and frenetic as mid-19th century London. In order to lessen the inevitable homesickness and to keep a rein on rental expenditure, many set up home with members of their extended kin. The Keating family arrived in Dorset Street in the late 1840s. Like so many other Irish immigrants to the East End the head of the family, John Keating, was a boot maker who brought not only his young wife and child with him but also his mother-in-law, brother-in-law, niece and an apprentice. Although the family comprised six adults and a seven-year-old, they all lived in one room at number 25 Dorset Street while John attempted to make a go of his business.

The arrival of famine refugees on the streets of Spitalfields was not well received by the locals, including other Irishmen. The migrants soon gained a reputation for attempting to fit far too many members of their family into one room in order to save money (see the Keatings above). The resulting noise and constant comings and goings irritated their neighbours who did not understand that the extreme overcrowding was due to poverty rather than choice. In 1853, John Garwood unkindly noted 'in the days of Queen Elizabeth, it was customary to divide the Irish in to three cla.s.ses: the Irish, the wild Irish and the extreme wild Irish... The same divisions may be made in the days of Queen Victoria... And the cla.s.s of Irish with which we are most familiar in the courts and alleys of London, are by no means the most favourable specimens of the nation.'

Many Londoners resented the fact that the majority of refugees used their city as a stepping-stone to their goal of reaching America. This even caused divisions between the immigrants and their own countrymen. Garwood explained, 'of the Irish immigrants who remain in London, few have any such intention at first. But they gradually become accustomed to the place and its habits, and at length settle down in it. Their descendants are called "Irish c.o.c.kneys," and the new-comers are called "Grecians.' By these names they are generally distinguished among themselves. And the two divisions of this cla.s.s are most distinct. The animosity which subsists between them is very bitter, far beyond that which often unhappily exists between the Irish and the English. The c.o.c.kneys regard the Grecians as coming to take the bread out of their own mouths, and consider their extensive immigration as tending to lower their own wages. Having also succeeded in raising themselves, at least some steps, from that abject poverty and nakedness which distinguished them on their first arrival, they now look on the Grecians as bringing a discredit on their country by their appearance and necessities. There are constant quarrels between the two, and they are so estranged that they will not live even in the same parts of the town, after the first flow of generous hospitality has pa.s.sed over.'

To the immense relief of all concerned, the 1850 Irish potato crop finally survived. However, it did not yield as much as it had done before the outbreak of the fungal virus and many communities continued to exist in great hards.h.i.+p. By this time, over one million people had died as a result of the worst famine to occur in Europe in the 19th century. As the statistics on page 63 show, the amount of contributions towards pa.s.sages out of the country steadily increased into the 1850s and, although the worst of the famine was over, the Irish continued their exodus in the hope that a better life could be found elsewhere. Their migration was helped immeasurably by compet.i.tion between the steam-boat companies who slashed their prices in order to attract more custom. Pa.s.sage from Cork to London, which normally cost around 10 s.h.i.+llings, could be obtained for as little as one s.h.i.+lling. There were even reports of some companies bringing pa.s.sengers over to the British mainland for no charge whatsoever.

Chapter 10.

The McCarthy Family.

One Irish family that took advantage of the new, rock-bottom prices were destined to become Dorset Street's most influential residents. In 1848, Daniel McCarthy and his pregnant wife Margaret, boarded a s.h.i.+p sailing from Cork harbour and left their homeland behind them. After a brief stay in Dieppe (where it is likely Daniel sought work in the Docks), the McCarthys, who by now had a baby son named John, arrived in England.

Daniel had previously been used to agricultural work so the family initially made for Hertfords.h.i.+re, where it was hoped that permanent farm work could be secured. However, this was not to be and for the next five or so years, the family travelled across London and the home counties, picking up menial jobs wherever they could. However, like so many of their countrymen before them, they were eventually forced into the metropolis permanently, where work, however demeaning and badly paid, was in greater supply.

The McCarthys settled in Red Cross Court, in Southwark. This mean yard was a typical London address for impoverished Irishfolk fleeing the famine in their homeland. It had originally been the back yard of the Red Cross Inn a hostelry on Borough High Street. However, as the population of The Borough exploded in the early 19th century, the yard was built over. Two-storey cottages lined its perimeter and a row of dilapidated stables ran down the centre. By the 1860s, the occupants of Red Cross Court were far too poor to keep horses so the stables served as stockrooms for oranges that were bought at Borough Market and sold cheaply on the streets by the Court's inhabitants.

By the time Daniel and Margaret McCarthy arrived in Red Cross Court, their family had increased significantly. Joining John were four brothers: Denis, Jeremiah, Timothy and Daniel. In 1865, a daughter named Annie was born. During the following years, Red Cross Court became something of a Mecca for members of the McCarthy clan. By 1881, there were McCarthys living at numbers 1, 4, 9, 10 and 12 plus two more McCarthy families living at number 2 and 24 May Pole Alley, which was situated next door. By this time Daniel and Margaret had moved across the river to Whitechapel where they lived out the rest of their lives in quiet obscurity. However, their eldest son John harboured grand ideas about his future and set about laying plans to escape the grinding poverty of London's slums plans that were to be more successful than probably even he would have imagined.

Like the Borough across the river, Spitalfields and roads such as Dorset Street in particular became an attractive destination for impoverished Irish immigrants because it offered insalubrious but cheap accommodation and was close to the potential workplaces of the City, the Docks and, of course, the market. Many of the working-cla.s.s Irish immigrants found work as costermongers, buying fruit and vegetables from the market and taking them round the streets on a barrow to sell to the residents. During his investigation into how London's poor lived and worked, Henry Mayhew studied the Irish costermongers in depth. At the time, it was officially estimated that there were 10,000 Irish street-sellers in London. However, Mayhew reckoned the figure to be higher. He noted, 'of this large body, three-fourths sell only fruit, and more specifically nuts and oranges; indeed the orange season is called the "Irishman's Harvest." The others deal in fish, fruit and vegetables... some of the most wretched of the street Irish deal in such trifles as Lucifer-matches, water-cresses, etc.'

In addition to street-selling, many Irish immigrants who had previously been employed on farms took to labouring in the building trade. Some took casual labouring work at the docks, while others took on the back-breaking work of excavating and wood chopping. When work was thin on the ground (as it often was), both men and women would take to the streets and beg.

This hand-to-mouth existence meant that accommodation was hard to find. Families barely had enough money to feed themselves, let alone enough to find rent money for a reasonably furnished room. Consequently the common lodging houses that lined Dorset Street (and many other streets in Spitalfields), experienced an unprecedented boom. However, their burgeoning business was soon to come under the scrutiny of social reformers, journalists and ultimately, the Government.

Chapter 11.

The Common Lodging House Act.

By the beginning of the 1850s, the already pitiful plight of the poor in Spitalfields had been exacerbated to an almost unbearable degree by the arrival of the Irish immigrants. The area was now among the poorest in the whole of London and was beginning to attract the attention of the press. In 1849, the journalist Henry Mayhew visited Spitalfields in search of acute poverty for an article he was writing for the Morning Chronicle newspaper. He was particularly touched by the plight of the old silk weavers, who he found living 'in a state of gloomy dest.i.tution, sitting in their wretched rooms dreaming of the neat houses and roast beef of long ago.' Mayhew went on to note that the remaining Spitalfields weavers seemed resigned to their reduced circ.u.mstances and no longer had the energy to do anything about it: 'In all there was the same want of hope the same doggedness and half-indifference as to their fate.'

Spitalfields was not the only area of the metropolis that was experiencing poverty on an unprecedented scale. Across the river, the ancient area of Bermondsey was experiencing similar problems, as this heartbreaking excerpt from a coroner's report on the death of a poverty-stricken young woman shows: 'she lay dead beside her son upon a heap of feathers which were scattered over her almost naked body, there being no sheet or coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast over the whole body that the doctor could not examine the corpse until it was cleansed. He then found it starved and scarred from rat bites.'

Similar accounts of abject poverty began appearing regularly in the London press. Under particular scrutiny once again were the already notorious common lodging houses which, according to the journalists who visited them, had plumbed even greater depths. The scathing press reports, combined with the report from the Royal Commission forced Parliament to address the common lodging house problem and an act was pa.s.sed in 1851 in a bid to improve the situation.

In their wisdom, the politicians responsible for drawing up the act came to the conclusion that the common lodging houses caused problems not because of the wanton lack of facilities and the type of person that frequented them, but because they lacked supervision and clear rules and regulations. The new act stipulated that every common lodging house should have clear signage outside stating what the building was used for. Inside, every sleeping room should be measured. From these measurements, the number of beds allowed in each room would be calculated and a placard hung on the wall stating the allocation. Beds were to have fresh linen once a week and all windows were to be thrown open at 10am each day for ventilation purposes. All lodgers had to leave the lodging house at 10am and would not be allowed back in until late afternoon. These regulations were to be enforced by the local police.

While the regulations imposed by the Common Lodging Houses Act were well meaning, they were at best badly thought out and at worst laughable. Measuring the rooms to allocate beds was all very well and good if only one person was going to sleep in each bed. However, it had been a long-standing practice for people to share beds in order to save money, thus doubling or even tripling the room capacity on particularly cold nights. The fact that each room had a sign stating the number of beds allowed was of virtually no use because few inmates could read and those that could were not about to report their only source of shelter to the authorities. Fresh bed linen once a week would have been a good idea if the act had also made the laundries obliged to take it in. In reality, few self-respecting laundries would touch lodging-house bed linen as it was often riddled with vermin, which infected the whole laundry.

In winter, the throwing open of all windows during the day made the unheated rooms bitterly cold. The fact that lodgers were thrown out on the street at 10 in the morning may have made for a quiet day for the lodging house management, but was cruel to the lodgers, many of whom were sick and malnourished. They had to take all their belongings and walk the streets for up to six hours in search of money for their bed for the next night. In the case of Spitalfields, the police knew only too well what type of characters inhabited the lodging houses and officers were unwilling to walk into the 'lion's den' for fear of being attacked. Consequently, few lodging houses were inspected regularly.

The Common Lodging Houses Act of 1851 had many failings, but probably its biggest fault was that it did not provide any regulation on the way the proprietors made their money. Consequently, prices for a bed were self-regulating. Anybody could go into business running common lodging houses, so long as they had a suitable property at their disposal. In Spitalfields, the downward slide of the local economy meant that by the mid-19th century, property prices were at an all-time low as no self-respecting house-hunter would even consider living there. The elegant master weavers' homes that had been so lovingly designed and furnished in the 1700s were now suffering from severe neglect. Roofs leaked, plaster fell off the walls, the kitchen ranges were clogged with grease and floorboards began to fall away. In 1857, The Builder magazine reported on the collapse of a house in Dorset Street, which resulted in the death of a child and warned that virtually every house in the street was in a similarly dangerous state of decay.

Consequently, these houses (which had once only been within the reach of the reasonably wealthy) could now be picked up for next to nothing. The combination of inexpensive property and a huge demand for cheap housing made Spitalfields one of the key areas for men and women keen to make their living from the misfortune of the poor. Most of the new landlords were previously itinerant entrepreneurs who acquired their property with money won by gambling on the horses or, as Henry Mayhew described, 'by direct robbery.' Furnis.h.i.+ngs were often obtained from hospitals or houses in which contagious disease had been rife. The furniture from this type of place was cheap as no one else wanted to risk buying it for fear of infection. Aspiring property magnates with little or no collateral soon hit on the idea of selling shares of their business in order to raise the start-up capital. Advertis.e.m.e.nts appeared in the newspapers offering a 4% return to investors in common lodging houses. Once a project had a sufficient number of investors, the property was converted and quickly let out. Most of the investors in this type of scheme lived far away and had little or no idea of how their 'customers' were being treated. If they had, it is doubtful they would have slept easily, as this description by Henry Mayhew clearly ill.u.s.trates: 'Padding-kens (common lodging houses) in the country are certainly preferable abodes to those in St Giles, Westminster or Whitechapel; but in the country as in the town, their condition is extremely filthy and disgusting; many of them are scarcely ever washed, and to sweeping, once a week is miraculous. In most cases they swarm with vermin. Except where their position is very airy, the ventilation is very imperfect, and frequent sickness the necessary result. It is a matter of surprise that the n.o.bility, clergy and gentry of the realm should permit the existence of such horrid dwellings.' Mayhew then goes on to describe the lodging houses in glorious detail: 'One of the dens of infamy may be taken as a specimen of the whole cla.s.s. They generally have a s.p.a.cious, though often ill-ventilated kitchen, the dirty dilapidated walls of which are hung with prints while a shelf or two are generally, though barely, furnished with crockery and kitchen utensils. In some places, knives and forks are not provided, unless a penny is left with the deputy or manager till they are returned. Average numbers of nightly lodgers is say 70 in winter, reducing to 40 in summer, when many visit the provinces... The general charge to sleep together is 3d per night or 4d for a single bed. There are family rooms that can be hired and crammed with children sleeping on the floor...

'The amiable and deservedly popular minister of a district church, built among the lodging houses, has stated that he has found 29 human beings in one apartment and that having with difficulty knelt down between two beds to pray with a dying woman, his legs became so jammed that he could hardly get up again. Some of the lodging houses are of the worst cla.s.s of low brothels, and some may even be described as brothels for children... At some of the busiest periods, numbers sleep on the kitchen floor... a penny is saved to the lodger by this means. More than 200 have been accommodated in this way in a large house.'

The Spitalfields common lodging houses catered for three major types of customer: those too ill or old to work, those too lazy to work and the common criminal. Consequently, the day-to-day running of them was not a job for the faint-hearted. Generally, lodging house proprietors employed a 'deputy' whose job it was to make sure that all inmates had paid for their beds and a 'night watchman', who acted as a bouncer, keeping unwanted individuals away. Both the deputy and the night watchman had to possess the ability to throw out anyone who could not pay for their bed, regardless of their situation. As this often meant ejecting pregnant women and sick, elderly persons, knowing full well that they would have to sleep rough, it can be a.s.sumed that lodging house employees did not possess much of a conscience.

The lodging house proprietors possessed even less concern for their fellow man. In addition to allowing desperate people to sleep in disgusting conditions, they made more money from their pathetic customers by seizing the local monopoly on essentials such as bread, soap and candles, which they sold on to lodgers at hugely inflated prices. Detective Sergeant Leeson, who patrolled the Spitalfields area in the late-19th century, wrote of the common lodging houses, 'the landlords of these places...are to my mind, greater criminals than the unfortunate wretches who have to live in them.'

In addition to the wretched lodging houses, Dorset Street and much of Spitalfields became overrun with mean tenements that were let out on a weekly basis. These tenements were usually let out by the room, which came spa.r.s.ely furnished with ancient and often dilapidated furniture. Thomas Archer wrote about such tenements in his report on 'The Terrible Sights of London', saying, '...each ruined room is occupied by a whole family, or even two or three families, houses which are never brought under the few and not very effective restrictions of the law, and where, from garret to bas.e.m.e.nt, men, women and children swarm and stifle in the foul and reeking air. It is here that poverty meets crime, and weds it.'

These tenements were particularly popular with prost.i.tutes as they provided the privacy required to service a client that was denied them in the huge dormitories of the common lodging houses. Landlords welcomed the prost.i.tutes because they could charge higher rent to allow for the risk of them being found to be living off immoral earnings. As the number of prost.i.tutes operating in Spitalfields dramatically increased in the second half of the 19th century, the landlords of the tenements realised that additional money could be made out of becoming more organised in the way they controlled their tenants.

Part Two.

THE VICES OF DORSET STREET.

Chapter 12.

The Birth of Organised Crime in Spitalfields.

The term 'organised crime' inevitably conjures up images of suit-wearing cigar-chewing, gun-toting gangsters such as Al Capone. However, this type of highly efficient, sophisticated gang leader didn't emerge until the 20th century. The organised crime that evolved in Spitalfields (and many other parts of London) in the 1870s was on a much more primitive level. Far from being criminal geniuses, the leaders of the Spitalfields underworld were simply men who wanted to make money, but did not possess the education or background to go about it in a strictly legal manner.

By the 1870s, Spitalfields landlords were becoming highly organised in the way they made their money. Common lodging houses represented the legitimate, if morally dubious, side of their business, as did the chandlers' shops (which sold household essentials such as candles, soap and oil) and general stores that proliferated in the area. However, the occupations and tastes of their lodgers created a huge demand for three services that were on the wrong side of the law: prost.i.tution, the fencing of stolen goods and illegal gambling.

A typical tenant of a common lodging house in Dorset Street and the surrounding roads was male and aged between 20 and 40. By day he would find casual work at one of the markets, on a building site or down at the docks. All these places of work provided a copious, never-ending supply of commodities well worth pilfering. Disposal of stolen goods was easy and quick; the chandlers' shops and general stores were more than happy to purchase foodstuffs and household essentials, which were then sold on at the usual, highly inflated prices. The lodging house proprietors were also not averse to fencing, as the journalist Henry Mayhew discovered while investigating London's poor: 'In some of these lodging houses, the proprietor(s)... are "fences", or receivers of stolen goods in a small way. Their "fencing"... does not extend to any plate, or jewellery, or articles of value, but is chiefly confined to provisions, and most of all to those which are of ready sale to the lodgers. Of very ready sale are "fish got from the gate" (stolen from Billingsgate); "sawney" (thieved bacon), and "flesh found in Leadenhall" (butchers' meat stolen from Leadenhall market).' If a more ambitious robbery was planned, the local shopkeepers' in-depth knowledge of the population usually meant that a buyer could be found for virtually anything within hours.

By night, lodging house residents, being young, free and mostly single, sought the company of women. Recognising a gap in the market, the canny landlords installed prost.i.tutes in their properties thus creating a new, highly lucrative revenue stream for themselves. Although the lodging houses were supposed to be patrolled by the police, this rarely happened, allowing brothels and prost.i.tution rings to be run without impediment. In October 1888, the East London Observer complained of the common lodging houses that 'No surveillance is exercised, and a woman is at perfect liberty to bring any companion she likes to share her accommodation.' The newspaper then went on to blame the prost.i.tutes for the proliferation of criminals in the lodging houses, which was unjust: 'If loose women be prevented from frequenting common lodging houses, their companions the thieves, burglars and murderers of London would speedily give up resorting to them.' As the lodging houses provided the 'thieves and burglars' with 'no questions asked' accommodation at an affordable price, it is unlikely they would have deserted them due to the lack of prost.i.tutes.

As vice in Spitalfields' lodging houses and furnished rooms increased, men known as 'bullies' were employed by the landlords. Their job was ostensibly to act as a doorman to the establishment, thus keeping undesirables away from the tenants. However, in reality, the bully's main job was to ensure that punters didn't leave without paying their dues. A typical bully was either ex-army or recently out of gaol. Some would work their way up the ranks until they had enough money to purchase a lodging house of their own. However, most were indolent ruffians who enjoyed lounging around during the day and exercising their muscle at night. Their only fear was of the police, which was unsurprising as many of them had a criminal record and would have easily landed themselves back in gaol after even the most minor altercation with the boys in blue. Consequently, the bullies avoided the police like the plague.

By the 1870s, Dorset Street was comprised almost entirely of common lodging houses, furnished rooms and general shops run by the landlords. Simply by catering for demand, the average Dorset Street landlord had, by the 1870s, quite a number of 'employees'. In addition to the prost.i.tutes who worked out of his properties (from whom he would have received a cut from any money earned in addition to the rent); there were 'deputies' who acted as lodging house managers, doormen or bullies and a.s.sistants for the adjacent general stores or chandler's shops. Times were good and if a landlord was smart, a lot of money could be earned from these little empires.

The police found it easier to turn a blind eye to the goings on in the lodging houses and, without feedback from the police, the authorities were oblivious to the plight of the law-abiding residents. The only threat to the lodging house proprietors' empires came from compet.i.tors, keen to expand their operations. Consequently, common lodging houses became highly sought-after by anyone who could raise enough money to acquire them. Enterprising young men saw how well established lodging-house keepers such as the Smiths of Brick Lane were doing and began to hatch plans to obtain their own properties. The only stumbling block was how to sc.r.a.pe together enough start-up capital. However, soon an Act of Parliament was about to bring their dreams much closer to reality.

Chapter 13.

The Cross Act.

Throughout the 1870s, the Government had become increasingly troubled about the extreme poverty and lawlessness that was prevalent in areas such as Dorset Street. Of particular concern were the properties in which the poor were forced to live. The politicians listened to the social commentators and developed sympathy for the honest poor who had to share living accommodation with prost.i.tutes, thieves and conmen. In an attempt to improve matters, the Artisans and Labourers' Dwellings Act (otherwise known as the Cross Act) was pa.s.sed in 1875.

This act allowed the Government-run Metropolitan Board of Works (the predecessor of the London County Council,) to purchase and demolish large swathes of 'unfit' property, with a view to replacing the houses with more salubrious dwellings. The Board of Works responded to the act with enthusiasm and over the following two years purchased 16 slums comprising 42 acres, mainly located in the Boroughs of Stepney, Finsbury, Islington and Whitechapel (which included Spitalfields.) Many of London's most notorious slums were demolished, including a ma.s.sive site in Flower and Dean Street.

Despite its good intentions, the Cross Act produced disastrous results. It had been the Metropolitan Board of Works' intention to sell the land on which the slums had once stood to housing charities. These charities would then build new, model dwellings in which the poor of the area could be re-housed. The new properties would be clean, bright and warm and with any luck, would have a miraculous effect on the inhabitants, who would eschew their life of crime in favour of a hard-working, G.o.d-fearing existence.

In reality, the only people to truly benefit from most of the slum clearances were the landlords of the properties earmarked for demolition. These canny property owners made sure their houses were packed to the rafters with tenants when the surveyors called in order to ensure maximum compensation for lost income. Once a property had been condemned, the landlord naturally lost all interest in repair and maintenance work thus subjecting his tenants to truly abominable conditions, while he used the money from the compulsory purchase to buy up more suitable housing close by that was not earmarked for demolition. When the condemned properties were ready to be demolished, the tenants were cast out into the street, while the landlord counted his compensation money paid to him by the rate-payers of the Borough. The displaced slum dwellers, now desperate for somewhere to stay, crowded into the remaining lodging houses, thus lining the pockets of the landlords once again. The landlords responded to the surge in demand by raising their prices.

An estimated 22,868 people were evicted as a result of the Cross Act. Most were from the poorest sectors of the population whose irregular income or home-based work made them ineligible for the smart new model dwellings that replaced their previous homes. Consequently, many became permanently homeless.

The Cross Act also proved to be a disaster for the Metropolitan Board of Works. Between 1875 and 1877, the Board purchased property to the value of over 1.5 million. However, when the demolished sites were sold on to the housing charities, little more than 330,000 was raised. Realising that they were never going to recoup their losses through the charities, the Board of Works refused to sell some sites for affordable housing. In Spitalfields, many of the demolished slum sites were reserved for commercial development in a bid to gain a better price for the land. Few developers were interested and, despite some warehousing being built, the area did not benefit from the relocation of any major employers. Thus, Spitalfields acquired yet more dest.i.tute, homeless individuals on a permanent basis. The landlords, who had already received fat compensation payments for the demolition of their slum properties must have rubbed their hands with glee.

By this time, overcrowding in Dorset Street was worse than ever before. Rooms no larger than 10 square feet became home to two, three or even four families. Sleeping could only be achieved if done in s.h.i.+fts, the other tenants either spending their time at work or in the pub. Despite their poverty, the tenants of these awful places did their best to give their children a decent start in life. Schools sprang up in even the most dangerous and overcrowded tenements, as evidenced by the report of Mr Wrack, a housing inspector from the Metropolitan Board of Works who visited Miller's Court, Dorset Street in 1878.

On arriving in the court, Mr Wrack found that the ground floor of number 6 was being used as a school room during the day and a sleeping room at night. At the time of his visit there were 19 people in the 12 foot square room, namely 17 children, all under 7, the schoolmaster and his wife. This overcrowding, coupled with the fact that the room was directly adjacent to three privies and the communal dustbin, prompted Mr Wrack to deem the room an inappropriate place in which to educate children. He informed the schoolmaster of his findings and two days later the school was relocated.

By the closing years of the 1870s, Spitalfields resembled a bomb site. Large swathes of land in roads such as Goulston Street and Flower and Dean Street were a mess of bricks, mud and cement as developers built model dwellings for the housing charities. Other sites that had previously housed rookeries stood empty. Any private property-owners who could afford to sold up and moved out. Property values. .h.i.t an all-time low. It was at this point that the area acquired a new generation of landlords. Most of these men had come from poor, working-cla.s.s backgrounds. Some had come to London from Ireland during the famine. Others had lived in Spitalfields all their lives but had never before been presented with the opportunity to acquire property. All of them wanted to make money from housing the poor and dest.i.tute.

Most of the new landlords did not go into the business of running a registered common lodging house immediately. A preferred route to this goal was to initially secure the lease on a property and let it out on a weekly basis as furnished rooms. Rooms let in this manner had not been included in the regulations set out in the Common Lodging Houses Acts (only those let on a nightly basis had to be registered with the Police). This loophole allowed aspiring landlords to rent rooms with little interference from the authorities, just as long as they were prepared to trust their tenants for a whole week before they paid their dues.

Investing this amount of trust in tenants who were desperately poor was a risky business and nearly every slum landlord in London had experienced 'bunters': men and women who made a profession out of taking lodgings in which they stayed for some time before absconding without paying the rent. Henry Mayhew met with a 'bunter' named 'Swindling Sal' from New Cut in Lambeth who told him about 'Chousing Bett', a particularly notorious bunter: 'Lord bless me, she was up to as many dodges as there was men in the moon. She changed places, she never stuck to one long; she never had no things to be sold up, and, as she was handy with her mauleys (fists), she got on pretty well. It took a considerable big man, she could tell me, to kick her out of a house, and then when he done it she always give him something for himself, by way of remembering her. Oh, they had a sweet recollection of her, some on' them.' Swindling Sal and her kind justified their actions through prejudice; making the sweeping generalisation that most lodging-house keepers subscribed to the Jewish faith (which was actually untrue), they reasoned that their victims 'was mostly Christ-killers, and chousing (defrauding) a Jew was no sin'.

In order to protect themselves against losses incurred through bunters, landlords charged highly inflated rents so that the money paid by their honest tenants more than covered losses due to fraudulence. This practise earned them little respect from the more educated cla.s.ses. Henry Mayhew himself described keepers of low lodging houses as 'rapacious, mean, and often dishonest.' This opinion was shared by many other social commentators of the era, and their criticism was not unjust. However, it should be borne in mind that had it not been for the existence of low lodging houses, the very poor (of which there were many) would have had nowhere else to go. Making money from the starving was certainly not a career to be proud of, but the virtual absence of any form of welfare for the very poor inevitably resulted in housing being created for profit. It could reasonably be suggested that the Government was the real villain of the piece.

Once they had gained control over their properties, the new Spitalfields landlords quickly became aware of the type of clientele from whom they could make the most money as a seemingly endless stream of prost.i.tutes enquired after rooms to let. This state of affairs was by no means unusual. Indeed, Henry Mayhew suggested that 'those who gain their living by keeping accommodation houses... are of course to be placed in the category of the people who are dependent on prost.i.tutes, without whose patronage they would lose their only means of support.'

Chapter 14.

Prost.i.tution and Press Scrutiny.

Despite its less than salubrious atmosphere, Dorset Street and the surrounding area was a good hunting ground for prost.i.tutes as there was a large and mixed supply of punters. Spitalfields Market offered a regular supply of market workers and out-of-town traders. The Docks, with their never-ending supply of s.e.x-starved sailors were well within walking distance and it even became fas.h.i.+onable for West End gentlemen to visit the area for an excursion known as 'slumming'. Consequently, any woman finding it hard to make ends meet and able to disregard her self-respect, could earn money by plying her trade on the streets.

The landlords of lodging houses (particularly those not subjected to Police scrutiny) used prost.i.tution to feather their own nests. Many acted as quasi-pimps; although they would not find punters for the girls, they would provide them with protection from the numerous gangs that prowled the streets extorting money from the street-walkers. These gangs usually comprised between three and ten youths. Most lived just outside the area they stalked. The Old Nichol estate, which lay just north of Spitalfields, sp.a.w.ned many of these gangs. The youths would walk down to Spitalfields in the evenings and generally make a nuisance of themselves, pestering elderly street-vendors and intimidating the local prost.i.tutes from whom they would often extort money. However despite their frightening appearance, these gangs were comprised of cowards who only singled out those weaker than themselves for rough treatment. The appearance of one of the lodging-house doormen would usually send them packing. Consequently, the doormen became indispensable to the working girls.

Many of the local prost.i.tutes were rather pathetic, gin-soaked women whose alcoholism had caused their families to abandon them many years earlier. Most were in their forties and possessed rapidly fading looks. They plied their trade on the streets, taking punters down the nearest alleyway for a quick knee-trembler. The lucky few managed to make enough money to hire their own room in one of the numerous courts. Miller's Court, off Dorset Street was a perfect location for prost.i.tutes. The fact that the court only had one exit meant that punters going in and out could be observed and the girls' nightly intake could be easily a.s.sessed. Additionally, the proximity of the neighbouring rooms meant that the girls were afforded a much larger degree of mutual protection than they would have enjoyed had they resorted to doing their business out in the street.

The new landlords' acquisition of property in the Dorset Street area really paid off in 1883 when the now rather aged Spitalfields Market began a phase of ma.s.sive redevelopment. Over the next 15 years, the main market area acquired a new iron and gla.s.s roof and the old 17th-century buildings surrounding it were demolished. In their place, new buildings were built around the market area, including four blocks containing shops at street level, bas.e.m.e.nts below and three-storey residential accommodation above. These new buildings still survive today at the eastern side of the market. The huge amount of building work at the market meant that, in addition to the traders and porters, ma.s.ses of men involved in the building trade arrived in the area seeking somewhere cheap to sleep. Obviously, the streets closest to the market benefited the most from this sudden influx of workers and landlords of property in Dorset Street, Whites Row and Brushfield Street really reaped the benefits.

However, while the lodging-house keepers were busy cas.h.i.+ng in on the development of Spitalfields Market, their properties and their dubious business activities were about to come under the spotlight of public scrutiny. Journalists decided it was time that the more educated cla.s.ses got to know how the poor really lived. Soon a flurry of articles and pamphlets appeared, most of which dealt with the deplorable housing conditions suffered by the poor.

One of the first journalists to write about the issue was George Sims, who composed a series of articles for Pictorial World ent.i.tled 'How The Poor Live' early in 1883. Later the same year, he followed with a series called 'Horrible London' in the Daily News. In October 1883, William C. Preston, using the pseudonym Reverend Andrew Mearns, wrote 'The Bitter Cry of Outcast London', a 20-page penny pamphlet that highlighted the plight of the poor. The Pall Mall Gazette published a selection of pa.s.sages from the pamphlet, including the following, rather prosaic tract that deals with conditions in lodging houses: 'One of the saddest results of (this) overcrowding is the inevitable a.s.sociation of honest people with criminals. Often is the family of an honest working man compelled to take refuge in a thieves' kitchen (referring to the shared facilities in the common lodging houses)... who can wonder that every evil flourishes in such hotbeds of vice and disease?... Ask if the men and women living together in these rookeries are married and your simplicity will cause a smile. n.o.body knows. n.o.body cares... Incest is common; and no form of vice or sensuality causes surprise or attracts attention... The low parts of London are the sink into which the filth and abominable from all parts of the country seem to flow.'

Preston's pamphlet started an avalanche of public comment but few of its readers actually took practical steps to improve matters. One man that did his utmost to make a difference was an East London vicar called the Reverend Barnett.

In the same year as Preston's pamphlet was published, Barnett and a group of public-spirited investors formed the East London Dwellings Company with a view to buy, rehabilitate or rebuild on slum properties. Unlike the Metropolitan Board of Works, Barnett and his colleagues wanted to bring relief to the very poorest inhabitants of London. In return, investors would be able to sleep the sleep of the just, and receive 4% in dividend. Barnett's idea proved to be more than just hot air and by 1886, the East London Dwellings Company had completed Brunswick Buildings in Goulston Street and Wentworth Buildings in Wentworth Street (previously one of the most run-down streets in Spitalfields). The success of these two schemes attracted other developers to the area including the banking family, Rothschild.

The Rothschilds had settled in the East End when they first arrived in Britain and had evidently not forgotten their roots. They purchased the land in Flower and Dean Street that had been demolished by the Metropolitan Board of Works and under the name of the 'Four Per Cent Dwellings Company' they built Rothschild Buildings. These developments housed over 200 Jewish families and although residents complained of bed bugs and overcrowding, the conditions were comparatively sanitary. The design of Rothschild Buildings was not unlike that of an army barracks and critics believed that these surroundings would make it impossible for a community to flourish.

However, research shows that this was far from the truth. Against the odds, a strong sense of community and mutual support developed in the blocks and the tenement rules (which looked very forbidding on paper,) were generally enforced by the tenants themselves in the interests of safe and orderly communal living. In his book Rothschild Buildings, Jerry White notes that 'after that first and crucial decision about who could have a flat and who could not, the people of Rothschild Buildings were largely on their own. The myth of an all-powerful rooting system of "rebuke and repression" which kept the people orderly owed more to bourgeois prejudice than reality... the community life which centred on the landings of Rothschild Buildings was friendly and vibrant. "At Rothschild, we were like one family" is a frequently heard description of the relations.h.i.+p between neighbours'.

However, life was not this rosy at all tenement blocks. However good their intentions, most philanthropic housing developers sought tenants that were poor but hard working and honest. They were not in the business of providing housing for the indolent, criminal or chronically sick. Consequently, most people that frequented the common lodging houses in Spitalfields were ineligible as tenants and Spitalfields became unattractive to developers. The sites the housing companies wanted were in Finsbury and Westminster, where there were plenty of people willing and able to pay 6/- or 7/- a week, not in the East End, where flats remained empty and rents were often unpaid. Only 2% of the population of Tower Hamlets and 2.8% in Southwark, lived in charity tenements in 1891, compared to 8% in Westminster. Several slum clearance sites in Wapping, Shadwell, Limehouse and Deptford were rejected by housing charities in the 1870s and 1880s, and remained undeveloped until the LCC took them on.

Over 4% of London's population lived in philanthropic housing blocks in 1891, but as we have seen, the charities did not provide shelter for the very poor and the demolitions which they encouraged and depended upon intensified the plight of the dest.i.tute. For example, the 1884-5 Royal Commission was convinced that the really poor, including those evicted in the demolition schemes undertaken to satisfy philanthropic developer the Peabody Trust's need for land, did not find places in the Peabody Buildings, and that preference was given to respectable artisans and families with more than one income.

Poor families with nowhere to go moved into Spitalfields with alarming regularity and despite the efforts of men such as the Reverend Barnett and the Rothschilds, the area continued to be overrun with honest poor rubbing shoulders with criminals. In 1885, an old woman spoke to the Royal Commission on Housing of the Working Cla.s.ses: 'I came to London 25 years ago and I've never lived in any room for more than two years yet: they always say they want to pull down the house to build dwellings for poor people, but I've never got into one yet.' The Government could not fail to ignore the deplorable situation regarding the housing of the very poor in many areas in London. In a bid to improve the situation, the Housing of the Working Cla.s.ses Act was pa.s.sed in 1885. However, housing of the poor was not tackled with any real success until four years later, when the Metropolitan Board of Works was replaced with the London County Council. By then, the already sizeable problem with overcrowding in Dorset Street and its surrounds had worsened.

Chapter 15.

The Fourth Wave of Immigrants.

On 1 March 1881, Tsar Alexander II of Russia was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a gang of revolutionaries. This act, although seemingly unconnected to religion, proved to be a catalyst for an outbreak of extreme violence and animosity towards Jewish communities in Russia, Poland, Austro-Hungary and Romania and provoked an exodus on an unprecedented scale.

Following the a.s.sa.s.sination, rumours abounded throughout Russia that the Jews were responsible (in actual fact, only one of the gang was Jewish). Word spread that the new Tsar had issued a decree instructing all Russians to avenge the death of his father by attacking any Jew they might happen to come across. Although this decree never existed, it gave many Russians the opportunity to vent their frustrations at the sorry economic state their country was in by providing a scapegoat. In April 1881, an anti-Jewish riot (known as a pogrom) broke out in Elisavetgrad. In scenes that were to be repeated in n.a.z.i Germany, Jewish businesses were attacked, shops ransacked and homes burned. Jews were beaten, insulted and spat on. Word spread fast about the attack and soon pogroms were breaking out all over Eastern Europe.