London History

east end history 17apr06 fishman 2of2

As Bill Fishman observes in his landmark work ‘East End 1888′, the area may only recently have got its name (’coined about 1880′) but the mythologised horror of the area had swiftly taken root. This vision of an abyss, a netherworld ‘was rapidly taken up the new halfpenny press … a shabby man from Paddington, St Marylebone or Battersea might pass muster as one of the respectable poor … the same man coming from Bethnal Green, Shadwell or Wapping was an “East Ender”. Dirty, feckless, amoral and above all criminal, the East Enders were different.

Fishman carefully and methodically strips away the hype by focusing on life as it was actually lived by our forebears. Significantly, once we’ve dealt with ‘The Image and Reality’, the first chapter proper is ‘Housing, Health and Sanitation’. If people weren’t sleeping rough, and most East Enders at least had a roof over their heads, then the reality was that accommodation was getting worse in the 1880s. Millions of people poured into London in search of work but there was no concerted programme of housebuilding to match, so subletting was the answer: families crammed into single rooms, with a subsequent increase in squalor and disease. Sharp investors cashed in with the lodging houses. Middle class investors employed wardens to police these houses, and the wardens themselves were often abusive of their power. The investors themselves were often blissfully unaware (or chose to be). They might only be a mile or two away in the West End, but they were unlikely ever to set foot east … and returns were good. For the poorest there wasn’t even that option - there wasn’t enough return in letting to those at the very bottom.

The Oxford English Dictionary first listed the word ‘unemployed’ in 1882, ‘unemployment’ entered its pages in our year of 1888. It’s a fair bet the words had been in currency in the East End for a while before that. ‘The Unemployed and the Sweated’ captures the desparate condition of East End labour. The docks, the garment factories, breweries and bakeries to feed all the new bodies … all had grown from nowhere to employing many thousands of East Enders (and all putting pressure on existing building stock of course). But there was no employment legislation. Casual labour meant a worker didn’t know, on finishing work on Monday night, whether there would be another payday on Tuesday. This fear lead to ’sweating’: a workshop with poor, unhealthy and unsafe conditions, rates of pay being ever driven down, as hours got longer and longer. Argue and you’d be out of a job.

Meanwhile politicians and priests were lecturing the East Enders on their lack of providence, of failing to save, of failing to build a decent future for their children. The East London Observer reacted with fury to the dismissive attitude of Lord ShaftsburyMargaret Harkness (a sympathetic observer) wrote: ‘First they grow reckless, then become hopeless, finally they take to drinking … to let thousands of men and women in enforced idleness is dangerous’. Here lay the great fear, that revolution was brewing. As the East London Advertiser wrote: ‘If our governors do not settle the question soon, the governed will adopt measures of their own to solve it.’

Meanwhile people fell - into the workhouses or ‘Bastilles of the poor’, or onto the street. In our year, East London ‘proper (Tower Hamlets, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Hackney) had 17,000 in the workhouse. Harkness describes Jo in Out of Work. Arriving at the workhouse he is stripped naked, washed in a common bath, and led to a cell measuring 8ft by 4ft. There, written on the walls, is scrawled ‘I’ve served my Queen and country for 15 years, and this is what I’ve come to.’

Of course there is ‘Leisure’ too. ‘To portray the East End as one sombre mass of unmitigated woe would be a travesty,’ admits Fishman. Even the much-maligned pubs sold wholesome food, and would hire out backrooms for piano concerts and dances. The new mutual and friendly societies would meet in these de facto village halls - while MPs might lecture and hector, many East Enders were already embracing ’self help’. The political parties would hold their meetings in the pubs and clubs; there were even Bible classes. And though there is a particularly gruesome description of a bunch of lovable urchins beating a cat to death with sticks, there were healthy outdoor pursuits too. The new ‘lads clubs’ were organising trips out to take the greenery of Epping Forest and the healthy salt air at Southend, and ‘muscular Christians’ in the Oxbridge settlements were teaching young East Enders to box and play football. Fishman fully recognises the contribution of these often-mocked do-gooders.

East End 1888 by William J Fishman, Five Leaves, £14.99, ISBN 0907123856