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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1249
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 2:33 pm: |       |
I haven't seen this before and thought it of interest:
'By 1901, the area of east London known as Spitalfields (now Whitechapel) had become home to a large Jewish population. From 1881, mounting persecution in eastern Europe and Russia led to the arrival of thousands of Jewish immigrants. They made their way to the tenement houses of Spitalfields already occupied by a considerable Jewish working-class community. By 1901, parts of Spitalfields had a 95% Jewish population, this proportion of foreign-born inhabitants being among the highest in the country. This same area now has a high proportion of residents of Bangladeshi origin, continuing a long tradition of immigration into this part of London.
Follow this link to immigration.
By the time of the 1901 Census, the area around Flower and Dean Street in Spitalfields contained a wide range of dwellings, from slum properties and cheap lodging houses to newly-built model housing for the poor. Connecting to Brick Lane in the east and to Commercial Street in the west, Flower and Dean Street was fronted along most of its north side by the flats of the Nathaniel Dwellings and along half of its south side by those of the Charlotte de Rothschild Dwellings. Although desperately cramped as family homes by modern standards, these Rothschild Buildings were constructed as model housing.
Follow this link to housing and the Rothschild Buildings.
In the 1870s, this street and those around it had had the reputation of being the poorest and most dangerous in the East End of London. Alarmed by the miserable condition of the newcomers to the area and fearing to be associated with their poverty and alien culture, the established Anglo-Jewish bourgeoisie (as represented by the Board of Guardians for the Relief of the Jewish Poor) took action.
Baron Nathan Meyer de Rothschild, the unofficial leader of Anglo-Jewry, formed a company to build cheap tenement dwellings for Jewish tenants while at the same time providing a reasonable return to its shareholders. The Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company was formed in 1885 and opened the Rothschild Dwellings to tenants in April 1887.
Further redevelopment of the area soon received a lurid impetus: all five of Jack the Ripper's victims lived in, or had connections with, Flower and Dean Street and its immediate environs. These events led to both a renewed interest in slum clearance and public outrage at the activities of slum landlords. Most of the rest of Flower and Dean Street was bought by the Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company in 1891 and the Nathaniel Dwellings opened the following year.
The tenants of the two buildings were mostly, but by no means entirely, Jews and had mainly emigrated from Eastern Europe and Russia. They brought with them to the Spitalfield area their trades, predominantly tailoring, cabinet making and cigarette manufacture.
Listen to Bessy Schiffenbaum's story of her family's journey to Britain.
The religious needs of the residents were met by a wide range of places of worship within walking distance of Flower and Dean Street: from the grand Ashkenazi synagogue at Duke's Place in the City of London (destroyed in the Second World War) to the Great Synagogue in Fournier Street, Spitalfields (once a Huguenot chapel and today a mosque) as well as by a multitude of smaller local schuls.
Shops such as kosher butchers, bakers, grocers and the like were all to hand both in Brick Lane and in Flower and Dean Street itself. In the other direction, in Wentworth Street, was the 'Lane' in which was held the market for all the Jewish East End.
The majority of the tenants of the Rothschild and Nathaniel Dwellings were young married couples and their children received education in accordance with their religion both at state schools and at voluntary schools such as the Jews' Infant School in Commercial Street and the famous Jews' Free School, at one time the largest in the country.
Follow this link to education at Commercial Street school.'
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 1044
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 3:17 pm: | |
Many Thanks for this fascinating information AP.Some of this remains to this day and the atmosphere particularly of the little lanes off Artillery Row where there is still a Synagogue -in one of these -crammed in between the high terraced houses,really take you back in time and a sense of the over-crowdedness of Whitechapel then. |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1253
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 5:28 pm: | |
No worries Natalie
I enjoy finding all this stuff.
Sometimes I do feel that we operate in a 'peculiar vacuum' and should let some of the rest of the world in.
Incidentally I am finding tons of material concerning Jack from a 'girl's' point of view, entire books of the stuff, so if you ever want to read it just let me know.
I also have a very interesting interview with Colin Wilson taken in a taxi in the rain, which does give wonderful insight into his universe.
Thanks Natalie. |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1255
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 15, 2004 - 3:21 pm: | |
Some more Flower & Dean:
'Across the Whitechapel Road, where the fog is so thick that passing vehicles, dimly appearing, suddenly vanishing, have a phantasmal look; and people who want to cross, linger on the kerb, like timid bathers hesitating to take their plunge. Up, by way of Osborne Street, to the lodging-houses, which are as thick as thieves - and some of them almost exclusively used by thieves - in and about Flower-and-Dean Street. But there are comparatively respectable houses - houses that will not take everybody in - in that neighbourhood; and in some of these there [-45-] is a degree of comfort which a stranger does not expect to find in a low lodging-house. To be able to pass the little lodge in which sits the proprietor or his deputy before his account book, must be cheery, after a weary day in the cold streets, or wearying docks. Some of the inmates have lived in them for years as weekly lodgers; others pay half-weekly; chance-corners pay every night. The general charge is four- pence a night, or two shillings a week, for a single bed in a general dormitory. For a trifle more, a boarded-off bedroom, dark, but private can be secured. In all registered houses the number of beds which each room is to contain is stated on a ticket hung upon the wall In the comfortable houses it is enclosed in a little gilt frame; in the houses in which the proprietors strive to do the very least they ,can, it is pasted on a bit of millboard. These comfort able houses have "maple"-framed engravings along their walls, and, besides the kitchen, with cooking apparatus, and dressers covered with white crockery, a "coffee-room," with boxes, to which the lodgers can retreat when tired of the kitchen, in which each cooks for himself the food he has brought in. One of these comfortable houses is a regular warren. A row of old-fashioned buildings have been thrown into one; and if it were not for index-fingers, with verbal directions beneath, painted on the corner of every passage, a stranger might wan-[-46-]der about in it the whole day long without being able to find his way out. It must not be supposed, however, that all the inmates of these better houses are model characters. In one, a hulking tramp dogs us about, hoping first that our honours, and then that our lordships, will give him a trifle to drink our healths. In the coffee-room of the same house, a lodger of the "patterer" class leans back in his box, puts his legs on the seat, and somewhat to this effect addresses the room at large :-" My friends, we are in a place of public entertainment. Is there anything derogatory in that? My friends, there is nothing derogatory in being in a place of public entertainment, into which, as into the London tavern, any person of good moral character, or, perhaps, otherwise, can come, if he has only money enough to pay for his admission. My friends, there are gentlemen present. They may, and they may not, have paid for admission to our room; I cannot say. But, my friends, the gentlemen go about and smile, and now they laugh. Why do they smile and laugh? What is a smile and laugh? Can they not express their feelings in a way more satisfactory to our feelings ?- put into a more substantial shape those sentiments of deep admiration and philanthropy with which doubtless they regard us?" Even in these houses, too, it is considered a great joke for a lodger to ask of our dragoman, "Who's wanted?" or for our [-47-] dragoman to say to some unseen sleeper, into whose cupboard bedroom he has peeped, "Don't disturb yourself; I'll let you go to church in peace to-morrow."
On our way to houses of a lower class-lower in character and comfort, although the charges are sometimes the same as those of the better class houses-we pass one with the whole of a lower window-sash smashed in. The dirty drab blind, inscribed with "Accommodation for Travellers," leans against the shattered frame. The mischief was done, we learn, by some ill-conditioned fellow who had a spite against the keeper of the house; and as we pass the broken window there comes out a clamour of angry voices, highly flavoured with the hottest oaths, which seems to menace the continuity of the other casement.
Whilst our dragoman is giving some local information in straight, narrow, dark, damp, dingy Flower-and-Dean Street, one of us happens to be looking through the glass of the door of the next lodging-house upon our list. There are thieves, slimly-built thieves, very shabby-looking thieves, slipping about by twos and threes, in the dimly gaslit darkness; but they can see our guide, and slip past as quietly as they can. Inside, however, eyes begin to peer curiously into the outside gloom. Presently three or four fellows make a move towards the door, and one lurches out into the [-48-] street, with a view of commencing operations on the inquisitive stranger, who is supposed to be alone. It is odd to note how disappointed he looks, how his bullying aspect collapses into servility, when he catches sight of our police-guide.
When we enter, we find that an attempt is being made at "cleaning up for Sunday." A table .has been pushed askew, a form laid on it, and a man and woman are ploughing up the conglomeration of mud, greasy newspaper scraps, and litter of various kinds with which the floor is caked. At a table on one side sit a number of limp, damp, scanty-skirted, depressed women, who look as if they had been not long before fished out of a stagnant ditch. On two forms running from the fireplace sit two rows of men. The last of the right-hand row is an almost imbecile-looking young man, who is nursing a baby-a wee, sickly mite, with a pinched, pale-blue face, staring goggle-eyed out of the rough jacket of its clumsy nurse. The fire would soon roast an ox. The men's clothes are very dirty, some of them filth-sodden; herrings are being toasted, rank tobacco is being smoked, there is a stale smell of fried fish in the air; the mere memory of that atmosphere gives one nausea. When we go into the bedrooms we find one of the lodgers smoking in bed. The dragoman taps the pipe with his stick, and says, "Don't go to sleep with that in your mouth, my man." [-49-] It is taken out of the mouth, but is popped into the mouth again, as we pass out of the further door.
One house we enter, whose deputy has to go out to buy a "halfpenny dip" to show us over the bedrooms, is almost entirely occupied by young thieves and prostitutes, ranging from youths and girls of eighteen or nineteen down to mere children. As we go in, a woman, who feels herself, or pretends to feel herself, above her company, calls to our guide, "Turn out the thieves." Thieving does not seem to be a very profitable calling, judging from the members of the profession seen here. they are eating coarse food in a foul-scented room, and are all shabbily dressed. One of the boys is without shoes and stockings, and his clothes are more like lengths of list tied on to him than torn portions of once continuous cloth. The hobbydehoys look heavy, both in heart and mind, but the boys are merry as grigs, and sharp as needles. "We're only having a game, sir," explains the spokesman of a double row of them seated before the fire. It is a queer game. The spokesman makes a little speech, and then all the other boys hold out their hands in turn to receive a sounding whack from a weighted thong. The harder a boy is hit, the more he seems to like it. Merry as they are, however, it is most painful to see so many mere "chits of children," girls as well as boys, each on his [-50-] or her "own hook," without any home but such a crowded den as this, earning their scanty bread by vice and crime. Surely, for our own sakes, we ought to do something for these fatherless and motherless. From the boy's at any rate - acute, patient, daring - good citizens might be made. The hobbydehoys sit mum whilst we are in the house. "We are very quiet, you see, gentlemen," says our smiling guide. "Sometimes," emphasises one of the party, and the heavy hobbydehoys silently relax into a broad, knowing grin. "Good night, sir; good night, gentlemen," they shout after us in a tone of relief, as the door closes behind us.'
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Natalie Severn
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Severn
Post Number: 1045
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 15, 2004 - 5:39 pm: | |
Thanks again AP for providing these cameos of the area we search for clues.
Yes,I would love to read the piece on the Taxi ride with Colin Wilson.
Best Natalie |
Mark Andrew Pardoe
Inspector
Username: Picapica
Post Number: 251
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 5:39 pm: | |
Whatho all,
A small question: from where did Flower & Dean Street get its name?
Cheers, Mark (back from the cold and wondering) |
John Savage
Inspector
Username: Johnsavage
Post Number: 228
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 20, 2004 - 9:25 am: | |
Hi Mark.
It gets it's name from the builders a Mr. Flower and a Mr. Dean. It is in one of the books somewhere, but I can't remember which one.
Best Regards
John Savage |
Mark Andrew Pardoe
Inspector
Username: Picapica
Post Number: 253
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 22, 2004 - 3:58 pm: | |
Whatho John,
Thanks, I've always wondered.
Cheers, Mark |
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