Comments on: Charles Booth in Spitalfields

By: Rosemary Wenzerul

Rosemary Wenzerul — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 17:41:15 +0000

Manasah Isaac Goldston, Merchant, 35 Great Pearl Street, Spitalfields. 12 October 1802. Can anyone tell me where this is or was?

Are there any photos of the actual building?

What is there now? Is Great Pearl Street still there?

Information was taken from an Insurance policy.

In addition on 11 September 1822 he is shown as a slop-seller.

Unfortunately, I have no further information about him.

PS Above in replies shows the following person living at 35 Great Pearl Street but it doesn’t give a date.
R GEHRINGER permalink
November 12, 2021
THE NAME OF THE BARROW MAKER & LENDER SHOULD BE F GEHRINGER WHO LIVED AT No35 HE WAS MY GRANDFARTHER,

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

By: Aly Williams

Aly Williams — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 19:48:11 +0000

One set of my great grandparents left Chernigov, then in Russia (now Ukraine), around 1898 and are listed as living on Pearl Street in Spitalfields in the 1901 census. They were Jewish tradespeople who owned a hat and glove factory back in their home country. Story is they went on “holiday” and never went back due to the pogroms. My grandad was only 3 or so when they came to UK. Grandad went on to serve in the British Army in WW1 in France, marry an Irish girl, and served as an air raid warden during WW2 in Putney. The descendants of the Malkoff (Malkov) are now living in UK, America, Australia, Israel, and some went to S. Africa in the 1920s. Several had changed their name to Michaels while in the UK.

By: R GEHRINGER

R GEHRINGER — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 16:10:07 +0000

THE NAME OF THE BARROW MAKER & LENDER SHOULD BE F GEHRINGER WHO LIVED AT No35 HE WAS MY GRANDFARTHER,

By: Susan Foxall

Susan Foxall — Mon, 10 Dec 2018 22:10:41 +0000

Hi I have been tracing my family history
And we once lived in pearl Street
My great great Grandfather was a silk weaver called
Richard King Harper
Any one else out there with any info on
Him would be wonderful
Sue

By: gabrielle

gabrielle — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 08:39:12 +0000

Heartbreaking photos. I have traced my ancestors back to 1700s who were born, lived and died in East End. Not all lived like the people depicted here but hard life nonetheless. Can’t help comparing these pictures with the lifestyle of the Royals living up the road. Seems the worker has never been paid a proper living wage although one would have expected it not still to be the case in 2015.

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 07:50:51 +0000

I keep being drawn back to the photographs of the children.
For some their only mark on the world may be the blurred image seen here.
Others standing formally, hands clasped or at their sides, very few slouching.
That their lives were hard is obvious but trying to think of their aspirations, hopes then the crushing weight of day to day existence is for me almost impossible.
Some faces stand out, as though they know their lives and what the future holds for them and they will meet it, come what may.
I suppose many of the boys will face life and death in the wars of the next three decades. The girls will build families and cope until the social revolution of the Great War brings home its gifts. That bland generalisation however, insufficiently masks the day to day grind of abject poverty.
I find myself thinking what they would think of us ? Are we honest; are we fair ? I feel they are looking out onto our world and perhaps are just about to give a judgement down the years.

By: Geraldine Moyle

Geraldine Moyle — Sat, 24 Jan 2015 07:16:06 +0000

The London School of Economics’ Charles Booth Archive makes available online the raw material of the notebooks that underpinned Booth’s 17-volume Life & Labour of the People of London.
Those informed by Sergeant French can be read at:
http://booth.lse.ac.uk/cgi-bin/do.pl?sub=list_walks_by_district&arg0=7

As the LSE website explains, the notebooks were compiled by Booth’s investigators, rather than the man himself, most prominently George Duckworth (Virginia Woolf’s half-brother), who was Booth’s unpaid secretary, 1892-1902, & who wrote 2000 pages of the notebooks (see Retrieved Riches, eds. David Englander & Rosemary O’Day, 1995). I’ve had reason to consult the online notebooks for both Hammersmith & Marylebone, & would attest that the handwriting in those notebooks (known to be Duckworth’s) is the same as those for Spitalfields.

All of which is to say that there’s a formula to the notebooks (not unlike sports commentary) whereby Duckworth provides the play-by-play (the physical condition of what he sees), while the accompanying police officer provides the local color (as per the station’s blotter).

If you read the notebooks themselves, thereby within their own context, then I think they are less judgmental of the poor than indicting of the society that permits such conditions to persist. Jack London walked the same East End streets for The People of the Abyss in 1902 & he’s no gainsayer of Charles Booth.

By: teapot

teapot — Sun, 18 Jan 2015 18:08:32 +0000

Oh Booth, he does make me eyeroll. All of my East End ancestors, according to his notebooks, were ‘rough’ or ‘very low’. My great-grandmother was born on Great Pearl St at about the time those notebooks were produced. I like to think she’d have given him a good ‘rough’ clip round the ear.

By: Carolyn Badcock - nee Hooper

Carolyn Badcock - nee Hooper — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 23:50:34 +0000

Catching up on recent posts, gentle author, and I can’t help but feel incredibly sad when I compare the wealth and social standing of nearly everyone in the Dog Post, to this one, where even the human beings are worse off than the dogs in the earlier post. I appreciate how you’ve tied Booth’s work with these photos. Although it makes the heart even sadder.

And in our world today, for some, nothing’s changed. Many dogs get a way better life than some children. Imagine the poverty that those Irish folk left and then…… the East End. Still looked down upon by almost everyone!

By: Peter Holford

Peter Holford — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 15:31:41 +0000

It’s not hard to see here the inspiration for so much of Dicken’s writing. Obviously Booth was many years afterwards but the same problems remained. The pictures go well with the text – a nice idea. Thank you.