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    The artist cannot handle a brush save in the vicinity of Soho or of Fitzroy Square; hatters flourish only in Southwark; goldsmiths, watchmakers, and jewellers, in Clerkenwell; the Hebrew is at home nowhere save in Houndsditch, St. Mary Axe, and Petticoat Lane; hawkers, pedlars, caravan drivers, showmen, still resort to Lambeth, as the alchemists and astrologers used in the olden time.

The World of London, by John Murray, in Blackwoods Magazine, August 1841

     London may be not inaptly characterised as a vast congeries of towns, drawn into juxtaposition by the consolidating force of civilization, and the centralising necessities of the age. But, whilst thus confederated into one stupendous unity, they are not so far merged as to lose altogether their separate individuality. Each district still retains, to an extent that is obvious to the most superficial observer, those peculiarities in its population and its trading pursuits which the locality may be more especially adapted to generate and foster, or which, in a modified form, have been transmitted with all the force of hereditary habits and associations through successive decades and centuries. The justness of this remark may be readily verified by glancing over a map of the metropolis, and drawing an inky belt around those sites where certain handicrafts or vocations are found to be chiefly localised, and where the working bees belonging to these respective hives of industry gregariously swarm. Though brought by the constraints of commerce into close contiguity, there yet yawns too often a moral and social gulf between the classes thus massed within the limits of this populous region, that is almost impassable. The environs of London, embracing a glorious circuit of twenty or thirty miles, are adorned with palatial abodes, and peopled with the graduated aristocracies of birth, title, and wealth. A wide strip, extending oh either side of the Thames, is inhabited by, or dependent upon, a unique, unassimilative race of seafaring men. The old city focalises within its boundaries the chief treasures of national wealth, vast store-streets teeming with the most precious merchandise, and the exchanges that daily witness the transactions of a world-wide commerce. In like manner, other quarters are inhabited by a preponderance of persons pursuing their several arts, grouped in distinct labour-tribes. Thus we have ' the potters of Lambeth-the hatters of Southwark-the tanners of Bermondsey-the coachmakers of Long Acre-the watchmakers of Clerkenwell-the marine store- dealers of Saffron Hill-and the old clothesmen of Holywell Street and Rosemary Lane.' But by far the most notable and perfect exemplification of this propensity, in the followers of particular trades to herd together, is seen in the case of the metropolitan silk-weavers. They are exclusively confined to that extensive realm commonly known as SPITALFIELDS.

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The Busy Hives Around Us, 1861