Charles Booth’s Spitalfields
In the recently published East London volume of Charles Booth’s notebooks of research for his Survey into Life & Labour of the People of London (1886-1903), I came upon an account of a visit to Spitalfields in spring 1898. when he walked through many of the streets and locations of the Spitalfields Nippers around the same time Horace Warner took his photographs. So I thought I would select descriptions from Booth’s notebooks and place Warner’s pictures alongside, comparing their views of the same subject. Click here to order a copy of The Streets Of London: The Booth Notebooks, East for £12
March 18th Friday 1898 – Walk with Sergeant French
Walked round a district bounded to the North by Quaker St, on the East by Brick Lane and on the West by Commercial St, being part of the parish of Christ Church, Spitalfields.
Back of big house, Quaker St
Starting at the Police Station in Commercial St, East past St Stephen’s Church into Quaker St. Rough, Irish.Brothels on the south side of the street past the Court called New Square. Also a Salvation Army ‘Lighthouse’ which encourages the disreputable to come this way. The railway has now absorbed all the houses on the North side as far as opposite Pool Square. Wheler St also Rough Irish, does not look bad, shops underneath.
Courts South of Quaker St – Pope’s Head Court, lately done up and repaired, and a new class in them since the repairs, poor not rough. One or two old houses remaining with long weavers’ windows in the higher storeys.
New Square, Rough, one one storey house, dogs chained in back garden…
Pool Sq
Pool Square, three storeyed houses, rough women about, Irish. One house with a wooden top storey, windows broken. This is the last of an Irish colony, the Jews begin to predominate when Grey Eagle St is reached. These courts belong to small owners who generally themselves occupy one of the houses in the courts themselves.
Isaac Levy
Grey Eagle St Jews on East side, poor. Gentiles, rough on West side, mixture of criminal men in street. Looks very poor, even the Jewish side but children booted, fairly clean, well clothed and well fed. Truman’s Brewery to the East side. To Corbet’s Court, storeyed rough Irish, brothels on either side of North end.
Washing Day
Children booted but with some very bad boots, by no means respectable….
Pearl St
Great Pearl St Common lodging houses with double beds – thieves and prostitutes.
South into Little Pearl St and Vine Court, old houses with long small-paned weavers windows to top storeys, some boarded up in the middle. On the West side, lives T Grainger ‘Barrows to Let’
Parsley Season in Crown Court
Crown Court, two strong men packing up sacks of parsley…
Carriage Folk of Crown Court – Tommy Nail & Willie Dellow
The Great Pearl St District remains as black as it was ten years ago, common lodging houses for men, women and doubles which are little better than brothels. Thieves, bullies and prostitutes are their inhabitants. A thoroughly vicious quarter – the presence of the Cambridge Music Hall in Commercial St makes it a focussing point for prostitutes
Detail of Charles Booth’s Descriptive Map of London Poverty 1889
Such wonderful photographs, yet at the same time heartbreaking to see. They certainly bring Booth’s notes alive . . . very well done GA. Thank you.
Those were grim times for a lot of people. Valerie
As you know, but the other readers probably don’t, the Chas Booth London Maps & Notes are available on-line.
HERE
Warner’s photographs come alive with Booth’s descriptions – the two harmonise so well.
The Charles Booth archive is a wonderful resource for family historians and anybody interested in social history. I’ve delved into it many times over the years for insights into my family and am pleased to report that none of them was ‘vicious’! I looked that one up to find that the meaning in the 19th century was very different and simply meant ‘immoral’.
The full archive is freely available online including: https://booth.lse.ac.uk/
It’s good to have photos illustrating Booth’s account. His budget obviously didn’t allow for an illustrated account!
Another really interesting article – what a great idea to marry up the descriptions from Booth’s notebooks and put those wonderful pictures by Horace Warner alongside them.
Sobering. And as 21stc disenfranchisement begins to gallop so our streets are filled with now-homeless (formerly housed!)….
Greetings from Boston,
GA, well done comparison. The faces of those children, especially the ones playing in the wheelbarrows, says it all – poverty hurts!
The stigma of the Irish would live on in London well into the second half of the twentieth century – ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs!’ I assume that many of these Spitalfields’ dwellers would originally have been refugees from the famine, it can only have been the social deprivation and squalor they endured and their desperation that forced them to survive in any way they could. Sad pictures of such underprivileged lives, probably lived without any satisfaction and ultimately ended in the poverty into which they were born.
Only 3 generations ago did my family live in Little Pearl Street. Hard to imagine them living in such conditions in comparison to where and how we live today.
What a great idea, thanks for doing this.