[-106-]
Chapter VII
We have before stated that the most
aristocratic streets have a background of wretchedness,- this at first sight
seems incredible. We are too apt to suppose that St. Giles's is the only very
poor quarter in London. Artisans, gentlemen's servants, policemen, and others,
must live somewhere, and we fancy that they form respectable colonies on the
outskirts of the larger squares and thoroughfares. Mews, and other places of a
similar description, take off a goodly proportion of domestic servants; still
the better class of artisans and policemen are much straitened because of the
dearness of lodgings the places where they live are destitute of most of the
comforts and some of the necessary conveniences of life. Still we do not term
their dwellings Rookeries, yet we maintain that few parishes are without a
certain number of tenements which it would be difficult to describe by any other
name. As a sample of this, let us survey part of the Berwick Street district of
St. James, Westminster.
In the time of Charles I. the whole of this district was, as
yet, not built upon ; here and there was a solitary house surrounded with
fields; the great thoroughfare, Piccadilly, was just coming into notice, for
Lord Claren-[-107-]don, in the History of the
Rebellion, speaks of Mr. Hyde going to a house, called Piccadilly, which was a
fair house for entertainment and gaming, with handsome gravel walks with shade,
and where was an upper and lower howling green, whither many of the nobility and
gentry, of the best quality, resorted for exercise and recreation. In Knight's
London reference is made to a petition, from Colonel Thomas Panton, bearing date
1671, which was read at the board of Privy Council, setting forth that the
petitioner having been at great charge in purchasing a parcel of ground lying at
Pickadilly, part of it being the two bowling greens fronting the Haymarket, the
other part lying on the north of the Tennis Court, on which several old houses
were standing; and praying for leave to build upon this ground, notwithstanding
the royal proclamation recently issued against building on new foundations
within a certain distance of London. In consequence of Sir Christopher Wren's
favourable report, Colonel Panton obtained leave to build certain houses in
Windmill Street, on the east corner towards the Haymarket, about one hundred
feet in front, on the east side of Windmill Street, in the two bowling greens
between the Haymarket and Leicester Fields.
In the year 1662, orders were issued for the paving of the
way from St. James's north, which was a quagmire, and also of the Haymarket
about Piqudillo.
The Piccadilly line of road is said to have formed, at its
east end, the line of demarcation between the courtly [-108-]
mansions erecting in St. James's Fields, and the small and mean
habitations which, in Wren's words, "will prove only a receptacle for the
poorer sort, and the offensive trades to the annoyance of the better
inhabitants; the damage of the parishes already too much burdened with poor, the
choking the air of his Majesty's palace and park, and the houses of the
nobility; the infecting of the waters,- these habitations so complained of being
continued and erected in Dogs Fields, Windmill Fields, and the Fields adjoining
Soho." This then is the first mention we have of the district now assigned
to St. Luke's, Berwick Street. The property, in this neighbourhood, belonged of
old to Lord Craven. The famous Pest House was erected here for the reception of
those stricken with the plague, where was what was called a lazaretto,
consisting of thirty-six small houses; and near it, at the lower end of Marshall
Street, was a common cemetery where some thousand persons were buried during
that dreadful pestilence. Out of Wardour Street, which is the eastern boundary
of the district in question, we are told by Strype, in 1720, "goeth Peter
Street, which crosseth Berwick Street, falleth into waste and unbuilt ground; a
street not over well inhabited. Here is a small court, but the right name is not
given. Further northward is Edward Street, which also crosseth Berwick Street,
and falleth into waste and unbuilt ground; nor is this street over well
inhabited." Berwick Street is represented as being on the west of Wardour
Street, beginning at Peter [-109-] Street, and
running northward as far as Tyburn Road; it is described as a pretty handsome
straight street, with new well built houses, much inhabited by the French, where
they have a Church; and near it a Court with a freestone pavement, called Kemp's
Court. About the middle of the street was a place designed for a hay-market, and
a great part of the low ground raised with some of the houses built piazza-wise.
Westward of this street, says the Annalist, " is a large tract of waste
ground reaching to the wall of the Pest House, built by the Earl of Craven,
which runneth from the back side of Golden Square to a piece of close or meadow
ground which reacheth to Tyburn Road."
The district we would now describe was evidently covered with
small buildings towards the beginning of the last century, though a large space
of open ground was still left unoccupied to the north. A square piece of stone
is let into one of the houses in New Street, on which is inscribed the date
1704. Thirty years before this Sir Christopher Wren could complain of the small
streets which were building, and the poverty of their inhabitants; and Fielding,
in 1740, describes the mob, whom he calls the fourth estate of the realm, as
encroaching upon people of fashion, and driving them from their seats in
Leicester, Soho, and Golden Squares, to Cavendish Square and the streets in its
vicinity. The site of we are about to describe was then in its infancy, covered
with mean streets and houses, and appears, even a hundred years since, to have
formed part of a district which had rapidly degenerated.
[-110-] The particular spot to
which attention is invited is bounded on the north by Cock Court, so called
because of a low public house whose sign is the Cock; on the west by New Street,
on the south by Husband Street, on the east by Hopkins Street. There is a mouldy,
smoky, dilapidated air about the whole; some of the houses have evidently sunk
much; others are closed up with shutters, the windows, in many cases, broken or
mended with paper; some houses marine store shops, others inhabited by sweeps
and costermongers; the usual number of idlers lounging about, so that should you
stop a minute to make inquiries, a crowd of suspicious looking characters would
assemble, many youths among them whose age averages from fifteen to twenty; the
passages between opposite houses narrow, the pavement covered with decayed
vegetable matter; Irish, the vernacular language of the inhabitants. This mass
of buildings, so bounded as we have described, forms a quadrangle; it will be
asked, is the interior or court of this quadrangle open? To this we answer, that
the buildings which are exposed to view form only the outer lair of the colony
which is established within these precincts. In the centre of this square, yet
lodged in and confined by buildings, is a large cow-house, in which thirty cows
are said to have been confined at one time, though, on the occasion of our
visit, there were not much more than half that number: a space in this large
cow-house was allotted to pigs, of which there was a goodly number. When you
look at the area of these buildings, you will say that so many cows could not be
collected together in a space so [-111-] confined;
strange as it may seem, there are two stories in this building, the upper of
which, as well as the ground floor, is filled with cows, and they are hoisted up
in a sort of box very much like those used for the conveyance of horses by
railroads. The stench arising from this packing of unwieldy animals in so small
a space, and the near neighbourhood of the pigs, may be conceived. The houses in
Husband Street flanked this cow-house, and their back windows looked out upon
it. Between these dwellings of the poor and the place we have described were a
series of excessively small, narrow, uneven yards not to appearance five feet in
breadth, and this was the only open space allotted them. In summer, the smell
from the cow-house must have been carried into every open window in the
tenements described: if Husband Street on the south was thus affected, it will
be asked how the dwellers on the north in Cock Court fared, small as the
intervening space between the cow- house and this northern boundary is? Even
this is rendered smaller by an intervening screen of wooden houses, the access
to the habitable parts of which is by a covered staircase: the lower floor of
this building is a sort of cellar in which were some rabbits belonging to the
tenants. In one of the houses, the upper part was occupied by families: a
proportion, though small, of these tenements is let out in lodgings; in a few
instances trampers and nightly lodgers are harboured, and there is the usual
crowding together of inmates common to Rookeries: by day it is not easy to
calculate the number [-112-] of persons who sleep
there. The houses are not so crowded as those in Church Lane or Saffron Hill,
and there is not the same amount of squalid misery. It is said that instances
are upon record of three families living together in the same room: in one room
we saw three or four beds, but were told that they were all tenanted by members
of the same family. The rooms are miserably small; mere closets, very
dilapidated, quite unfit for human habitation, scarcely safe, below the level of
the ground, with hardly any ventilation; until lately miserably, if at all,
drained, their back parts very close in consequence of the cow-house we have
described; so that the atmosphere is rendered still more fetid by the rank odour
continually emitted from the animals confined. Some of the houses were occupied
by chimney- sweepers, several by day labourers-some by men who get their living
by selling baked potatoes. There are three costermongers living in one of these
streets, from whom the potatoes are procured. Under the houses are large
cellars, which are filled with these vegetables, and from which the tin cans of
the vendors are replenished. There are also several rag shops in this part of
the parish, the cellars being filled to overflowing with rags-which, at certain
seasons, are carted away and sent to the paper makers. You are struck with the
curious appearance of some of the lower windows in these houses,- old bonnets,
veils, articles of dress, faded indeed, shorn of much of their original
splendour, are exposed as if to tempt those who pass by; these are unlicensed
pawn shops, where [-113-] women deposit their
wearing apparel, and with the money thus obtained gratify their passion for
drinking at the next public house. Sometimes they redeem the goods, yet too
often never return to claim them; after a time the goods are sold, though,
whether a year elapses, as in the case of pawnbrokers, before the sale takes
place, we could not learn. In the streets opening upon the quadrangle to which
we have limited our inquiries, are two or three houses where thieves are
harboured. Inquests are common in this locality - many persons die by violence.
Not long since, three women of the town were residing here, two of them sisters;
the youngest died of concussion of the brain arising from a blow she had
received from one of her companions in a scuffle. There are several low
lodging-houses in Husband Street, where the charge is 3d. a night, or 1s.
6d. a week, Sunday Evening being considered, according to the law adage,
a dies non, and therefore the lodgers pay only for six nights. The rooms
are too small to admit of many sleeping together at the same time, accordingly,
eight persons in a room seems as far as we could learn to be the maximum.
It is gratifying to think that an attempt is being made, with
what success it remains to be seen, to buy up this block of houses (to speak
technically), and on their site to erect model lodging-houses: a Society
established three years since in the parish have built some lodging-houses on
the opposite side of New Street, which have been tenanted for some months; and,
for the special object of erecting the building contemplated, the Society of
which [-114-] Lord Jngestre is president, has agreed to co-operate with the
Parochial Society, and endeavour to accomplish between them the good work, not
doubting that funds will be provided for a purpose so desirable*.
[*Since this was written, the Committee of the Society have accepted the offer made them, and there is every prospect of the progress of the good work, if funds can be procured for the outlay.]