The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd by Fiona Rule Page A
Authors: Fiona Rule
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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 passages 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 association 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. Nobody knows. Nobody 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 relationship 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
‘One of the saddest results of (this) overcrowding is the inevitable association 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. Nobody knows. Nobody 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 relationship 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
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