The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd by Fiona Rule Page B

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 destitute. 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 Classes: ‘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 Classes Act was passed 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 assassinated 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 assassination, 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 Nazi 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.
    The Russian Government pandered to the anti-Jewish feeling and passed a hastily-written act that was designed to remove any of the power and status held by Jews that so upset the rest of the population. This act, known as the ‘May Laws’ required all Jews to live only in urban areas. Even the ownership or purchase of countryside land was forbidden. In addition, restrictions were applied to Jewish businesses, university