[-15-]
Chapter II
Whence sprang The Rookeries of London
Various causes combined to produce them. Many, from the
first, were intended for the occupation of the poor. In the parish of St.
Pancras, you have streets of the class Rookery, which cannot be fifty years old;
small houses are now building which will soon become Rookeries. Agar Town, in
that immense parish, contains a squalid population, originally a band of
settlers, who seem, as they would say in America, to have squatted there, and
now it is almost impossible to remove them. In other districts, rows of small
houses are constantly erected; the ground around them is not drained, and they
are as so many depots for the investment of money by rapacious speculators.
These houses are badly built, mere lath and plaster; built, we should think, by
contract, solely as a profitable investment, with an evident desire to evade the
provisions which the Legislature, at last, has been forced, from a sense of
decency, to enjoin. In this attempt to neutralise Acts of Parliament,
contractors have been eminently successful, owing to the want of a public
prosecutor, whose business it is, as in France and other countries, to uphold
the law. The recklessness of [-16-] poverty, the
greediness of avarice combined,-what pledge have you that such dwellings shall
serve more than the temporary purposes for which they were erected? No real
reform will take place till the size, materials employed, drainage, &c. are
fixed by Act of Parliament; dilapidated houses, insecure dwellings, all, in a
word, which do not answer the purpose proposed, and will not bear the strictest
examination, should be condemned by a committee appointed for the purpose. A
wholesome check would soon be imposed upon the heartlessness of capitalists, and
poverty protected in spite of self. A large class of the genus Rookery, are very
ancient houses, deserted by those to whose ancestors they once belonged. The
tide of fashion - the rage for novelty - the changes of the times, have also
changed the character of the population who now tenant these buildings. In the
dingiest streets of the Metropolis are found houses, the rooms of which are
lofty, the walls panelled, the ceilings beautifully ornamented, (although the
gilding which encrusted the ornaments is worn off,) the chimney-pieces models
for the sculptor. In many rooms there still remain the grotesque carvings for
which a former age was so celebrated. You have the heavy balustrades, the wide
staircase, with its massive rails, or, as we now call them, bannisters; you have
the strong doorway, with its carvings, the large unwieldy door, and those
well-known features of the olden time, in keeping with the quaint and
dust-stained engravings which seem to have descended as heirlooms from one poor
family to another. [-17-] The names of the courts
remind you of decayed glory,- Villiers, Dorset, Buckingham, Norfolk, telling of
the stately edifices which once stood where you now breathe the impure
atmosphere of a thickly-peopled court. A street, now remarkable only for its
narrowness and dirt, is called Garden, because once there was a garden there
some term of chivalry distinguishes another ; some article of dress, now in
disuse, a third; some alley, without a pump, bears the pompous name of Fountain
Court. The houses themselves are in keeping externally, with what we have
described of the interior; the dark redbrick, the pillars, with their capitals
and quaint figures, speaking of art called forth by wealth, and taxed to produce
novelty, to stamp on the buildings in which he lived, the rank of the owner.
In other parts of London, groups of small houses, with their
background of courts and alleys, have been erected upon the site of large
gardens, which formerly were the pleasure grounds of stately mansions. Two
hundred years since, one side of the Strand consisted of the houses of the
nobility; of these mansions, Northumberland House is the only remnant, the
grounds belonging to which extended to the river. The famous Villiers, Duke of
Buckingham, the courtier in the times of Charles II., pulled down the
magnificent house in which he lived; the site of it, together with the gardens,
is occupied by streets which bear his name and title some of these are rapidly
degenerating, and will become Rookeries, if no change take place in the social
con-[-18-]dition of the poor; the beautiful water
gate seen from the river, was the entrance to the grounds.
Such are the general features of London Rookeries. We
may be interested in inquiring how any particular nest of these buildings grew
to its present size, or became appropriated to its present use. Men generally
connect St. Giles's and Seven Dials with squalid misery and a degraded
population; most people suppose that extreme poverty and abject distress are
confined to this spot, and that pauperism in other parishes is merely
comparative.
To omit mention of the Minories, Saffron Hill, and other
notorious plague spots,-we may safely assert, that very few parishes in London
are without these haunts of destitution. The most aristocratic parishes, as they
are termed, have a background of wretchedness, and are too often so many screens
for misery which would shock the mind and make men avert their gaze, could they
indeed see them as they really are.