Old Nichol
Encyclopedia
The Old Nichol, also known as the Nichol or the Old Nichol Street Rookery, was an area of housing in the East End of London
, between High Street, Shoreditch
, and Hackney Road in the north, and Spitalfields
in the south. The main streets within the Old Nichol were Boundary Street, Old Nichol Street, Half Nichol Street, The Mount and Church Street. The slum
was located in the western boundary of Bethnal Green
, with six of its streets across Boundary Street located in Shoreditch
. The Old Nichol was home to 5,719 people, living in a dense network of about 30 streets and courts. The late 18th-century houses included workshops and stables.
In Victorian Britain of the 1880s, the Old Nichol was London
’s most notorious slum
. The “evil” reputation of the Old Nichol owed much to Arthur Morrison
’s fictionalised account of it in A Child of the Jago (1896), and to sensational articles by Rev. Osborne Jay of Holy Trinity Church, known as Father Jay, on whom Morrison relied for information.
in the 1530s, the garden and fields on the land that became the Old Nichol passed into private hands. The Preston Gardens were created on what would later become the southernmost part of the Old Nichol, and the Swan Field would become Mount Street, today's Swansfield Street. Crock Lane, later Boundary Street and Church Street, was established in an L-shape, with narrow alleys running from it, established the original topographical characteristics of the Old Nichol. In the 1670s City of London
merchants and lawyers started buying small freeholds behind St Leonard's, Shoreditch
. The Gray's Inn
lawyer John Nichol bought nearly five acres of land, bounded by the two arms of Cock Lane, on which he built seven houses. In 1680 he leased the land to Jon Richardson, a mason
, who dug clay for brick-making during the London Restoration-era building boom, and then sublet his land to builders who constructed houses on the land. In the 1680s and 1690s Nichol Street, later Old Nichol Street, was developed, with Nichol Row being added in 1703, New Nichol Street between 1705 and 1708, and later Half Nichol Street.
A high number of the 25,000 Protestant Huguenots who arrived from France in the late 1680s and 1690s and settled in Spitalfields
and south Bethnal Green
were silk weavers. This led to many houses in the north of the Old Nichol featuring "long lights", also known as weaver windows, so as to maximise daylight in the upper storey of the house where handloom weaver
s worked. Virginia Row, Virginia Road and (Old) Castle Street were built in the 1680s, while Mount Street and Rose Street existed by 1725. Until the 19th century, when the Old Nichol was established, the area between Mount Street, Rose Street and Half Nichol Street was fields. Late 17th-century housing was eventually demolished and speculative new building created Nelson, Vincent, Collingwood, Trafalgar, Mead, Christopher and Sarah Street, with numerous courts in between. In the 1870s the street names in the north of the Old Nichol were changed in order to protect the memory of Admiral Nelson, in whose honour the streets had been named, from negative association with the slum.
, and it quickly became infamous for never thoroughly drying out, leading to sagging and unstable walls. Other architectural features that contributed to urban decay
in the Old Nichol included the lack of foundation of most early 19th century houses, which were built with floorboards laid on bare earth, cheap timber and half-baked bricks of ash-adulterated clay. The roofs were badly pitched, leading to rotting rafters and blooming plasterwork. The houses were permanently soggy, as damp from the roof and the earth seeped through the buildings. By 1836 the whole 15 acres (60,702.9 m²) of land which would form the Old Nichol had been built or rebuilt upon.
Over the following fifteen years back yards and other open spaces were built upon with shanty-style developments, creating illegal courts, small houses, workshops, stables, cowsheds and donkey stalls. As surveyors and cartographers struggled to keep accurate maps of the Old Nichol, the already high population density increased further. Families with more than one child often lied to be able to obtain a room and were thrown out if the rent collector or landlord found out that more than one child lived with family in one room. Monday was rent day, known as "Black Monday", and in the Old Nichol women would form queues outside the pawnshops with their belongings. The rent was collected by house agents who would evict tenants if the rent was in arrears. In 1863 The Builder reported of the Old Nichol that:
On 24 October 1863 The Illustrated London News published an article entitled "Dwellings of the Poor in Bethnal-Green" which described the living conditions in the Old Nichol:
The overcrowding in the Old Nichol was made worse as in the twenty years to 1887 various improvement projects were implemented. These included the widening and re-routing through slum streets of Bethnal Green Road in the late 1870s, at the southern edge of the Old Nichol, which made 800 people homeless, the creation of a large number of warehouses and factories in Shoreditch
, the construction of three massive London School Board
buildings within the Old Nichol, and in 1888/1889 a new church in Old Nichol Street required the eviction of 500 people.
Some ten percent of the houses in Boundary Street had subterranean corridors in 1883, which the local medical officer regarded as one of the most alarming architectural phenomena of the Old Nichol housing stock. The only way to reach the back yard, in which the dustbins and the lavatory was located, was by descending rickety steps, passing through an unlit, unpaved cellar passageway just five feet high, with the yard at the other side. Cellars were illegally rented in the Old Nichol, though the law stated that underground living quarters had to have a window giving at least one foot of light at pavement level, a fireplace, drainage and head room of at least 7 ft (2.1 m). On 31 October 1863 The Builder (vol. XXI, no. 1082) published an article "More Revelations of Bethnal Green", describing the underground rooms of the Old Nichol:
enclave, with second and third generation Londoners formed the majority of inhabitants of the slum. Over a third of London's four million inhabitants had been born outside the city, but this figure dipped to an eighth in the Old Nichol, the lowest figure for any part of London. The Old Nichol, like the 129,000 inhabitants of Bethnal Green
, was in the late 1880s largely homogenous. Although there was a significant number of settled and half settled Irish gypsy, known as "didicai", and Romany families, and judging from the surnames, descendants of Huguenot
settlers. The rotten housing stock of the Old Nichol was the only type of property the very poorest could afford. The surviving Poor Law
case histories for the area show that the Old Nichol was for many East End Londoners the final stop before entering into workhouses.
ers, ivory turners and upholsterers, with their tiny homes doubling as workshops. The Old Nichol had several timber yards and on weekdays the streets of the Old Nichol saw carts and barrows carry newly sawn planks and freshly turned furniture components. Finished tables, chairs and wardrobes were sold to the local wholesaler. Close to the Old Nichol were Shoreditch
's Curtain Road furniture depots and wholesale emporia. The proximity to the London Docks
, which required vast amounts of casual, ill-paid labour, made the Old Nichol home to low-paid labourers. Street sellers also lived in the Old Nichol, which was ideally situated just outside the City of London
boundaries, a 15-minute walk from Liverpool Street station
and a 25-minute walk from the Bank
, Mansion House
, and Guildhall
.
In 1863 an article in The Illustrated London News described the living and working conditions in the Old Nichol:
, diphtheria
, measles
, smallpox
, bronchitis
and especially tuberculosis
had a fatality rate in the Nichol that was twice as high as that in Bethnal Green
, at that time a very poor East London parish. While the contagion rate in the Old Nichol was not higher than in Bethnal Green, inhabitants of the Old Nichol were less likely to recover. Contemporary medical thinking linked the health statistics of the Old Nichol to the overcrowding, lack of sanitary fittings, pervasive damp, lack of light and fresh air.
In the late 1880s the annual mortality rate in the Old Nichol was 40 per 1,000 people, with Bethnal Green's being between 22 and 23 per 1,000 people, and the national average being 19 to 20 per 1,000 people. Four-fifths of the around 5,700 inhabitants of the Old Nichol were children and the death rate of babies under the age of one was 252 per 1,000 live births, compared to Bethnal Green's death rate of 150 per 1,000 live births, which was in line with average death rates in England and Wales. It 1887 the coroner
in Bethnal Green reported that around five out of six infant deaths investigated by the coroner were found to be suffocation
cases in one-room homes where the entire family had slept in one bed. The cause of deaths was described as "overlaying", with a sleeping parent or older child rolling on top of the infant and accidentally killing them. The press at the time noted that such deaths were more common on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, suggesting that heavy drinking was a factor in the fatalities.
cases. While there were rumours that the owners of the freeholds and leaseholds included peers of the realm
, churchmen, Bethnal Green vestry
men and several dead people. One investigation into the housing conditions in the Old Nichol at the time found that many tenants had huge difficulties finding out who their landlords really were:
A single house could have several interested parties, with the ground landlord or freeholder, being unaware of the actions of his or her leaseholder. Leaseholders would frequently lease out various parts of a house, while the weekly tenants sublet to lodgers, who sometimes sublet to other lodgers. Per cubic foot the rents in the Old Nichol were four to ten times higher than those of the finer streets of the London West End, averaging between 2s 3d to 3s for a single room and around 7s 6d for a three-room lodging. This provided high profits to speculative property dealers, which a housing reform campaigner of the time called "the vampyres of the poor". Many of the properties in the Old Nichol were held on fast-expiring leases, and leaseholders thought to get to the end of the lease without spending any money on maintenance or improvements.
Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
, owned a plantation in Jamaica
and 10482 acres (42.4 km²) in Britain, including thirty-eight properties in the Old Nichol. With the help of a solicitor and lease holder his heiress Lady Mary Morgan-Grenville, Baroness Kinloss, remained unknown to the public until 1892, when she broke cover to collect her compulsory purchase compensation for the houses. Another owner of houses in the Old Nichol was Sir Edward Colebrooke, 1st Baron Colebrooke
who was Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
and owned 30000 acres (121.4 km²) across Britain.
Joseph Jacobs, head of the Bethnal Green Vestry Sanitary Committee ran one of the most lucrative pubs in the Old Nichol, The Victory at 65 Nelson Street, for forty years. Watson Francis, chairman of the Bethnal Green Vestry and member of the local Board of Guardians of the Poor, owned houses in the Old Nichol; a sanitary inspection found him renting a small underground room close to a lavatory to a pie maker, who prepared his pies in the room. Henry Quaitrell, Bethnal Green vestryman and member of the Sanitary Committee, by trade a builder, rented out a large number of Old Nichol houses. Similarly the vestryman and Sanitary Committee member William Museum Burrows owned two houses on Mead Street that were found to be insanitary. Between 1865 and 1885 Burrows had been the Bethnal Green Inspector of Nuisances, but had failed to self-inspect. The largest slumlord of the Old Nichol with a seat at the Bethnal Green vestry was the hardware store and plumbing supplies merchant Henry Collins Gould. He held a forty-two houses lease from the large Gwatkin Estate, and the lease on 107 Mount Street, which had been declared a "dangerous structure" by the parish surveyor. Gould was served with a notice for the unsanitary conditions in 51 Mount Street and was fined for the conditions in 3 and 49 Mount Street. Gould also received a closure notice for 7 and 9 Christopher Place in June 1886, the same month in which Gould disobeyed magistrates' orders by neglecting to lay water to the lavatories at his six houses in Jacob Street. Property owned or leased by Gould, Burrows and Quaintrell were on the 1,601 strong list of insanitary property compiled by the Mansion House Council in June 1886, forcing all three vestrymen to remedy the situation.
’s fictionalised account of it in A Child of the Jago, and to sensational articles by Reverend Osborne Jay of Holy Trinity Church, known as Father Jay, on whom Morrison relied for information. The novel became so popular that the "Jago" became an interchangeable name for the Old Nichol. Father Jay also appeared as "Father Ranald" in L. T. Meade's 1895 novel Princes of the Gutter, with the "gutter" being the Old Nichol.
. The newly established London County Council
(LCC) decided to rebuild an area of some 15 acres (60,702.9 m²), including the Nichol and Snow estates, and a small piece on the Shoreditch side of Boundary Street, formally Cock Lane. The slum clearance began in 1891 and included 730 houses inhabited by 5,719 people. Owen Fleming, who designed the Boundary Street scheme for the Old Nichol, retained only Boundary Street in the west and Mount Street in the east, though he widened both to 40 ft (12.2 m). Old Nichol Street was also widened and extended to Mount Street, then renamed Calvin Street. He designed 50 ft (15.2 m). wide streets to radiate from an ornamental space called Arnold Circus. The LCC architects designed 21 and Rowland Plumbe two of 23 blocks containing between 10 and 85 tenements each. A total of 1,069 tenements, mostly two or three-roomed, were planned to accommodate 5,524 persons. The project was hailed as setting "new aesthetic standards for housing the working classes" and included a new laundry, 188 shops, and 77 workshops. Churches and schools were preserved. Building for the project began in 1893 and it was opened by the Prince of Wales
in 1900. The tenants of the new blocks were, with few exceptions, not the original inhabitants of the Old Nichol. The need for small houses had been ignored and many Old Nichol inhabitants could not afford even the new rent of 3s. a room. The new blocks had policies to enforce sobriety and the new tenants were clerks, policemen, cigarmakers and nurses. The Old Nichol inhabitants moved into old houses nearby, spreading eastward of the Nichol.
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
, between High Street, Shoreditch
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...
, and Hackney Road in the north, and Spitalfields
Spitalfields
Spitalfields is a former parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to many markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, founded in the 17th century, Sunday...
in the south. The main streets within the Old Nichol were Boundary Street, Old Nichol Street, Half Nichol Street, The Mount and Church Street. The slum
Slum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
was located in the western boundary of Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green is a district of the East End of London, England and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, with the far northern parts falling within the London Borough of Hackney. Located northeast of Charing Cross, it was historically an agrarian hamlet in the ancient parish of Stepney,...
, with six of its streets across Boundary Street located in Shoreditch
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...
. The Old Nichol was home to 5,719 people, living in a dense network of about 30 streets and courts. The late 18th-century houses included workshops and stables.
In Victorian Britain of the 1880s, the Old Nichol was London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
’s most notorious slum
Slum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
. The “evil” reputation of the Old Nichol owed much to Arthur Morrison
Arthur Morrison
Arthur George Morrison was an English author and journalist known for his realistic novels about London's East End and for his detective stories....
’s fictionalised account of it in A Child of the Jago (1896), and to sensational articles by Rev. Osborne Jay of Holy Trinity Church, known as Father Jay, on whom Morrison relied for information.
Early history
With the dissolution of the monasteriesDissolution of the Monasteries
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their...
in the 1530s, the garden and fields on the land that became the Old Nichol passed into private hands. The Preston Gardens were created on what would later become the southernmost part of the Old Nichol, and the Swan Field would become Mount Street, today's Swansfield Street. Crock Lane, later Boundary Street and Church Street, was established in an L-shape, with narrow alleys running from it, established the original topographical characteristics of the Old Nichol. In the 1670s City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
merchants and lawyers started buying small freeholds behind St Leonard's, Shoreditch
St Leonard's, Shoreditch
St Leonard's, Shoreditch is the ancient parish church of Shoreditch, often known simply as Shoreditch Church. It is located at the intersection of Shoreditch High Street with Hackney Road, within the London Borough of Hackney. The current building dates from about 1740...
. The Gray's Inn
Gray's Inn
The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...
lawyer John Nichol bought nearly five acres of land, bounded by the two arms of Cock Lane, on which he built seven houses. In 1680 he leased the land to Jon Richardson, a mason
Masonry
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, stone, marble, granite, travertine, limestone; concrete block, glass block, stucco, and...
, who dug clay for brick-making during the London Restoration-era building boom, and then sublet his land to builders who constructed houses on the land. In the 1680s and 1690s Nichol Street, later Old Nichol Street, was developed, with Nichol Row being added in 1703, New Nichol Street between 1705 and 1708, and later Half Nichol Street.
A high number of the 25,000 Protestant Huguenots who arrived from France in the late 1680s and 1690s and settled in Spitalfields
Spitalfields
Spitalfields is a former parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to many markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, founded in the 17th century, Sunday...
and south Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green is a district of the East End of London, England and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, with the far northern parts falling within the London Borough of Hackney. Located northeast of Charing Cross, it was historically an agrarian hamlet in the ancient parish of Stepney,...
were silk weavers. This led to many houses in the north of the Old Nichol featuring "long lights", also known as weaver windows, so as to maximise daylight in the upper storey of the house where handloom weaver
Weaver
The Ploceidae, or weavers, are small passerine birds related to the finches.These are seed-eating birds with rounded conical bills, most of which are from Sub-Saharan Africa, with fewer species in tropical Asia. A few species have been introduced outside their native range. The weaver group is...
s worked. Virginia Row, Virginia Road and (Old) Castle Street were built in the 1680s, while Mount Street and Rose Street existed by 1725. Until the 19th century, when the Old Nichol was established, the area between Mount Street, Rose Street and Half Nichol Street was fields. Late 17th-century housing was eventually demolished and speculative new building created Nelson, Vincent, Collingwood, Trafalgar, Mead, Christopher and Sarah Street, with numerous courts in between. In the 1870s the street names in the north of the Old Nichol were changed in order to protect the memory of Admiral Nelson, in whose honour the streets had been named, from negative association with the slum.
Housing stock
Many of the buildings in the Old Nichol contravened the Building Acts. Builders leasing land from owners who did not care what use was made of the acreage, so long as it was profitable, created an instant slum. The use of cheaper lime-based substances derived from the by-products of soap-making at local factories was the most important factor in the swift deterioration of the building fabric in the Old Nichol. Speculative builders used this cement, which was known as "Billysweet", instead of traditional lime mortarLime mortar
Lime mortar is a type of mortar composed of lime and an aggregate such as sand, mixed with water. It is one of the oldest known types of mortar, dating back to the 4th century BC and widely used in Ancient Rome and Greece, when it largely replaced the clay and gypsum mortars common to Ancient...
, and it quickly became infamous for never thoroughly drying out, leading to sagging and unstable walls. Other architectural features that contributed to urban decay
Urban decay
Urban decay is the process whereby a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude...
in the Old Nichol included the lack of foundation of most early 19th century houses, which were built with floorboards laid on bare earth, cheap timber and half-baked bricks of ash-adulterated clay. The roofs were badly pitched, leading to rotting rafters and blooming plasterwork. The houses were permanently soggy, as damp from the roof and the earth seeped through the buildings. By 1836 the whole 15 acres (60,702.9 m²) of land which would form the Old Nichol had been built or rebuilt upon.
Over the following fifteen years back yards and other open spaces were built upon with shanty-style developments, creating illegal courts, small houses, workshops, stables, cowsheds and donkey stalls. As surveyors and cartographers struggled to keep accurate maps of the Old Nichol, the already high population density increased further. Families with more than one child often lied to be able to obtain a room and were thrown out if the rent collector or landlord found out that more than one child lived with family in one room. Monday was rent day, known as "Black Monday", and in the Old Nichol women would form queues outside the pawnshops with their belongings. The rent was collected by house agents who would evict tenants if the rent was in arrears. In 1863 The Builder reported of the Old Nichol that:
"With few exceptions, each room contains a separate family; some consisting of mother, father, and eight children. The first two adjoining houses that we looked into, of six rooms each, contained forty-eight persons. To supply these with water, a stream runs for ten or twelve minutes each day, except Sunday, from a small tap at the back of one of the houses... The houses are, of course, ill-ventilated. The front room in the basement, wholly below the ground, dark and damp, is occupied, at a cost of 2s. a week for rent."
On 24 October 1863 The Illustrated London News published an article entitled "Dwellings of the Poor in Bethnal-Green" which described the living conditions in the Old Nichol:
"This district of Friars-mount, which is nominally represented by Nichols-street, Old Nichols-street, and Half Nichols-street, including, perhaps most obviously, the greater part of the vice and debauchery of the district, and the limits of a single article would be insufficient to give any detailed description of even a day's visit. There is nothing picturesque in such misery; it is but one painful and monotonous round of vice, filth, and poverty, huddled in dark cellars, ruined garrets, bare and blackened rooms, teeming with disease and death, and without the means, even if there were the inclination, for the most ordinary observations of decency or cleanliness."
The overcrowding in the Old Nichol was made worse as in the twenty years to 1887 various improvement projects were implemented. These included the widening and re-routing through slum streets of Bethnal Green Road in the late 1870s, at the southern edge of the Old Nichol, which made 800 people homeless, the creation of a large number of warehouses and factories in Shoreditch
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...
, the construction of three massive London School Board
London School Board
The School Board for London was an institution of local government and the first directly elected body covering the whole of London....
buildings within the Old Nichol, and in 1888/1889 a new church in Old Nichol Street required the eviction of 500 people.
Some ten percent of the houses in Boundary Street had subterranean corridors in 1883, which the local medical officer regarded as one of the most alarming architectural phenomena of the Old Nichol housing stock. The only way to reach the back yard, in which the dustbins and the lavatory was located, was by descending rickety steps, passing through an unlit, unpaved cellar passageway just five feet high, with the yard at the other side. Cellars were illegally rented in the Old Nichol, though the law stated that underground living quarters had to have a window giving at least one foot of light at pavement level, a fireplace, drainage and head room of at least 7 ft (2.1 m). On 31 October 1863 The Builder (vol. XXI, no. 1082) published an article "More Revelations of Bethnal Green", describing the underground rooms of the Old Nichol:
"The occupation of the underground rooms here, as well as elsewhere, is illegal, and may at once be prevented. Under the Local Management Act, as our readers may remember, an underground room may not be occupied separately as a dwelling unless certain conditions are complied with, one of which is that there shall be a window of specified size, with an area before it open down to 6 inches below the floor of the room... One of the worst examples that we saw of these underground rooms we must endeavour to illustrate. It is in Nichol-street, No.59, and may be described as entirely below the surface. the window of the apartment is a little over 3 feet in width, and about the same in height; the area is even with the breadth and depth of the window. It extends from the wall about 2 feet, and was closed with an iron grating; but this having become broken, the entire top of the area has been covered with wood, so that the only means of light and ventilation is a chink 3 feet wide by 4 and a half inches in height. Passing through the passage to the back, the dilapidated condition of the premises, as may be seen in the sketch, is startling. The plaster has fallen from the walls and the ceilings, the narrow staircase is rotten and shaky, the general colour is of a dingy smoky black, with peeps of indifferent brickwork and broken laths. At the back there is a large open space, in a most filthy condition; damp refuse of all kinds is piled up against the wall; there is no supply of water;"
Inhabitants
The Old Nichol was a CockneyCockney
The term Cockney has both geographical and linguistic associations. Geographically and culturally, it often refers to working class Londoners, particularly those in the East End...
enclave, with second and third generation Londoners formed the majority of inhabitants of the slum. Over a third of London's four million inhabitants had been born outside the city, but this figure dipped to an eighth in the Old Nichol, the lowest figure for any part of London. The Old Nichol, like the 129,000 inhabitants of Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green is a district of the East End of London, England and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, with the far northern parts falling within the London Borough of Hackney. Located northeast of Charing Cross, it was historically an agrarian hamlet in the ancient parish of Stepney,...
, was in the late 1880s largely homogenous. Although there was a significant number of settled and half settled Irish gypsy, known as "didicai", and Romany families, and judging from the surnames, descendants of Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
settlers. The rotten housing stock of the Old Nichol was the only type of property the very poorest could afford. The surviving Poor Law
Poor Law
The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief which existed in England and Wales that developed out of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws before being codified in 1587–98...
case histories for the area show that the Old Nichol was for many East End Londoners the final stop before entering into workhouses.
Trades and work
The Old Nichol was locally known as "The Sweaters' Hell", in references to the prevalence of home-based artisan work that paid little among Old Nichol inhabitants. Work was plentiful, but pay was poor and wages got lower. Hundreds of Old Nichol inhabitants made couches, chairs, mirrors and toys, or worked as sawyers, carvers, french polishFrench polish
French polishing is a wood finishing technique that results in a very high gloss surface, with a deep colour and chatoyancy. French polishing consists of applying many thin coats of shellac dissolved in alcohol using a rubbing pad lubricated with oil...
ers, ivory turners and upholsterers, with their tiny homes doubling as workshops. The Old Nichol had several timber yards and on weekdays the streets of the Old Nichol saw carts and barrows carry newly sawn planks and freshly turned furniture components. Finished tables, chairs and wardrobes were sold to the local wholesaler. Close to the Old Nichol were Shoreditch
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...
's Curtain Road furniture depots and wholesale emporia. The proximity to the London Docks
London Docks
The London Docks were one of several sets of docks in the historic Port of London. They were constructed in Wapping downstream from the City of London between 1799 and 1815, at a cost exceeding £5½ million. Traditionally ships had docked at wharves on the River Thames, but by this time, more...
, which required vast amounts of casual, ill-paid labour, made the Old Nichol home to low-paid labourers. Street sellers also lived in the Old Nichol, which was ideally situated just outside the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
boundaries, a 15-minute walk from Liverpool Street station
Liverpool Street station
Liverpool Street railway station, also known as London Liverpool Street or simply Liverpool Street, is both a central London railway terminus and a connected London Underground station in the north-eastern corner of the City of London, England...
and a 25-minute walk from the Bank
Bank
A bank is a financial institution that serves as a financial intermediary. The term "bank" may refer to one of several related types of entities:...
, Mansion House
Mansion House, London
Mansion House is the official residence of the Lord Mayor of the City of London in London, England. It is used for some of the City of London's official functions, including an annual dinner, hosted by the Lord Mayor, at which the Chancellor of the Exchequer customarily gives a speech – his...
, and Guildhall
Guildhall, London
The Guildhall is a building in the City of London, off Gresham and Basinghall streets, in the wards of Bassishaw and Cheap. It has been used as a town hall for several hundred years, and is still the ceremonial and administrative centre of the City of London and its Corporation...
.
In 1863 an article in The Illustrated London News described the living and working conditions in the Old Nichol:
"In the neighbourhoods where the inhabitants follow poor trades the condition is but little better: a few streets where there is a more cleanly appearance do but lead to a repetition of the horrors just witnessed; and from garret to cellar whole families occupy single rooms, or, if they can find a corner of available space, take a lodger or two. In some wretched cul de sac, partly inhabited by costers, the fetid yards are devoted to the donkeys, while fish are cured and dried in places which cannot be mentioned without loathing. Bandbox and lucifer-box makers, cane workers, clothespeg makers, shoemakers, and tailors, mostly earning only just enough to keep them from absolute starvation, swarm from roof to basement; and, as the owners of such houses have frequently bought the leases cheaply and spend nothing for repairs, the profits to the landlords are greater in proportion than those on a middle-class dwelling."
Health
Whooping cough, which killed more children under the age of five than any other transmittable illness, scarlet feverScarlet fever
Scarlet fever is a disease caused by exotoxin released by Streptococcus pyogenes. Once a major cause of death, it is now effectively treated with antibiotics...
, diphtheria
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, a facultative anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium. It is characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity...
, measles
Measles
Measles, also known as rubeola or morbilli, is an infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus, specifically a paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus. Morbilliviruses, like other paramyxoviruses, are enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses...
, smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
, bronchitis
Bronchitis
Acute bronchitis is an inflammation of the large bronchi in the lungs that is usually caused by viruses or bacteria and may last several days or weeks. Characteristic symptoms include cough, sputum production, and shortness of breath and wheezing related to the obstruction of the inflamed airways...
and especially tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
had a fatality rate in the Nichol that was twice as high as that in Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green is a district of the East End of London, England and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, with the far northern parts falling within the London Borough of Hackney. Located northeast of Charing Cross, it was historically an agrarian hamlet in the ancient parish of Stepney,...
, at that time a very poor East London parish. While the contagion rate in the Old Nichol was not higher than in Bethnal Green, inhabitants of the Old Nichol were less likely to recover. Contemporary medical thinking linked the health statistics of the Old Nichol to the overcrowding, lack of sanitary fittings, pervasive damp, lack of light and fresh air.
In the late 1880s the annual mortality rate in the Old Nichol was 40 per 1,000 people, with Bethnal Green's being between 22 and 23 per 1,000 people, and the national average being 19 to 20 per 1,000 people. Four-fifths of the around 5,700 inhabitants of the Old Nichol were children and the death rate of babies under the age of one was 252 per 1,000 live births, compared to Bethnal Green's death rate of 150 per 1,000 live births, which was in line with average death rates in England and Wales. It 1887 the coroner
Coroner
A coroner is a government official who* Investigates human deaths* Determines cause of death* Issues death certificates* Maintains death records* Responds to deaths in mass disasters* Identifies unknown dead* Other functions depending on local laws...
in Bethnal Green reported that around five out of six infant deaths investigated by the coroner were found to be suffocation
Suffocation
Suffocation is the process of Asphyxia.Suffocation may also refer to:* Suffocation , an American death metal band* "Suffocation", a song on Morbid Angel's debut album, Altars of Madness...
cases in one-room homes where the entire family had slept in one bed. The cause of deaths was described as "overlaying", with a sleeping parent or older child rolling on top of the infant and accidentally killing them. The press at the time noted that such deaths were more common on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, suggesting that heavy drinking was a factor in the fatalities.
Owners and management
Almost half of the properties in the Old Nichol were managed by solicitors and other trustees to benefit estates of the long deceased. Two of the largest Old Nichol holdings, the Gwatkin Estate and the Wolley Estate, including about 297 houses, were managed partly on behalf of phantoms. Several of the Old Nichol estates were the subject of long-running Court of ChanceryCourt of Chancery
The Court of Chancery was a court of equity in England and Wales that followed a set of loose rules to avoid the slow pace of change and possible harshness of the common law. The Chancery had jurisdiction over all matters of equity, including trusts, land law, the administration of the estates of...
cases. While there were rumours that the owners of the freeholds and leaseholds included peers of the realm
Peerage
The Peerage is a legal system of largely hereditary titles in the United Kingdom, which constitute the ranks of British nobility and is part of the British honours system...
, churchmen, Bethnal Green vestry
Vestry
A vestry is a room in or attached to a church or synagogue in which the vestments, vessels, records, etc., are kept , and in which the clergy and choir robe or don their vestments for divine service....
men and several dead people. One investigation into the housing conditions in the Old Nichol at the time found that many tenants had huge difficulties finding out who their landlords really were:
"Their rent books contain only the names of the tenants, the amounts and the dates of payment, and the initials of the rent collector... The collectors are often merely agents' clerks. Sometimes the persons for whom the collectors act are only farmers of the rent; and they not only bully the tenants, but often take the law into their own hands, and turn the people into the street without legal warrant of any kind.
A single house could have several interested parties, with the ground landlord or freeholder, being unaware of the actions of his or her leaseholder. Leaseholders would frequently lease out various parts of a house, while the weekly tenants sublet to lodgers, who sometimes sublet to other lodgers. Per cubic foot the rents in the Old Nichol were four to ten times higher than those of the finer streets of the London West End, averaging between 2s 3d to 3s for a single room and around 7s 6d for a three-room lodging. This provided high profits to speculative property dealers, which a housing reform campaigner of the time called "the vampyres of the poor". Many of the properties in the Old Nichol were held on fast-expiring leases, and leaseholders thought to get to the end of the lease without spending any money on maintenance or improvements.
Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos KG, PC , styled Earl Temple from 1784 to 1813 and known as The Marquess of Buckingham from 1813 to 1822, was a British landowner and politician.-Background:Born Richard Temple-Nugent-Grenville, he was the eldest son...
, owned a plantation in Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
and 10482 acres (42.4 km²) in Britain, including thirty-eight properties in the Old Nichol. With the help of a solicitor and lease holder his heiress Lady Mary Morgan-Grenville, Baroness Kinloss, remained unknown to the public until 1892, when she broke cover to collect her compulsory purchase compensation for the houses. Another owner of houses in the Old Nichol was Sir Edward Colebrooke, 1st Baron Colebrooke
Edward Colebrooke, 1st Baron Colebrooke
Edward Arthur Colebrooke, 1st Baron Colebrooke PC, GCVO , known as Sir Edward Colebrooke, 5th Baronet, from 1890 to 1906, was a British Liberal politician and courtier....
who was Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
The Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is the British Sovereign's personal representative to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland , reflecting the Church's role as the national church of Scotland, and the Sovereign's role as protector and member of...
and owned 30000 acres (121.4 km²) across Britain.
Joseph Jacobs, head of the Bethnal Green Vestry Sanitary Committee ran one of the most lucrative pubs in the Old Nichol, The Victory at 65 Nelson Street, for forty years. Watson Francis, chairman of the Bethnal Green Vestry and member of the local Board of Guardians of the Poor, owned houses in the Old Nichol; a sanitary inspection found him renting a small underground room close to a lavatory to a pie maker, who prepared his pies in the room. Henry Quaitrell, Bethnal Green vestryman and member of the Sanitary Committee, by trade a builder, rented out a large number of Old Nichol houses. Similarly the vestryman and Sanitary Committee member William Museum Burrows owned two houses on Mead Street that were found to be insanitary. Between 1865 and 1885 Burrows had been the Bethnal Green Inspector of Nuisances, but had failed to self-inspect. The largest slumlord of the Old Nichol with a seat at the Bethnal Green vestry was the hardware store and plumbing supplies merchant Henry Collins Gould. He held a forty-two houses lease from the large Gwatkin Estate, and the lease on 107 Mount Street, which had been declared a "dangerous structure" by the parish surveyor. Gould was served with a notice for the unsanitary conditions in 51 Mount Street and was fined for the conditions in 3 and 49 Mount Street. Gould also received a closure notice for 7 and 9 Christopher Place in June 1886, the same month in which Gould disobeyed magistrates' orders by neglecting to lay water to the lavatories at his six houses in Jacob Street. Property owned or leased by Gould, Burrows and Quaintrell were on the 1,601 strong list of insanitary property compiled by the Mansion House Council in June 1886, forcing all three vestrymen to remedy the situation.
The Old Nichol in Victorian slum fiction
The Old Nichol inspired a number of slum fiction novels. The “evil” reputation of the Old Nichol owed a lot to Arthur MorrisonArthur Morrison
Arthur George Morrison was an English author and journalist known for his realistic novels about London's East End and for his detective stories....
’s fictionalised account of it in A Child of the Jago, and to sensational articles by Reverend Osborne Jay of Holy Trinity Church, known as Father Jay, on whom Morrison relied for information. The novel became so popular that the "Jago" became an interchangeable name for the Old Nichol. Father Jay also appeared as "Father Ranald" in L. T. Meade's 1895 novel Princes of the Gutter, with the "gutter" being the Old Nichol.
Slum clearance
After Old Nichol house owners were required under the Torrens Act to repair and render the houses "tolerably comfortable" a government enquiry of 1887 found the Old Nichol to be in "fair condition" but in 1890 the Old Nichol was declared a slumSlum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
. The newly established London County Council
London County Council
London County Council was the principal local government body for the County of London, throughout its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council...
(LCC) decided to rebuild an area of some 15 acres (60,702.9 m²), including the Nichol and Snow estates, and a small piece on the Shoreditch side of Boundary Street, formally Cock Lane. The slum clearance began in 1891 and included 730 houses inhabited by 5,719 people. Owen Fleming, who designed the Boundary Street scheme for the Old Nichol, retained only Boundary Street in the west and Mount Street in the east, though he widened both to 40 ft (12.2 m). Old Nichol Street was also widened and extended to Mount Street, then renamed Calvin Street. He designed 50 ft (15.2 m). wide streets to radiate from an ornamental space called Arnold Circus. The LCC architects designed 21 and Rowland Plumbe two of 23 blocks containing between 10 and 85 tenements each. A total of 1,069 tenements, mostly two or three-roomed, were planned to accommodate 5,524 persons. The project was hailed as setting "new aesthetic standards for housing the working classes" and included a new laundry, 188 shops, and 77 workshops. Churches and schools were preserved. Building for the project began in 1893 and it was opened by the Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...
in 1900. The tenants of the new blocks were, with few exceptions, not the original inhabitants of the Old Nichol. The need for small houses had been ignored and many Old Nichol inhabitants could not afford even the new rent of 3s. a room. The new blocks had policies to enforce sobriety and the new tenants were clerks, policemen, cigarmakers and nurses. The Old Nichol inhabitants moved into old houses nearby, spreading eastward of the Nichol.
See also
- Beer Street and Gin LaneBeer Street and Gin LaneBeer Street and Gin Lane are two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act. Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin as a contrast to the merits of drinking beer...
- Boundary EstateBoundary EstateThe Boundary Estate is a housing development, formally opened in 1900, in the East End of London, England. It is situated in the north western corner of Bethnal Green in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and on the boundary with Shoreditch, in the London Borough of Hackney.The estate, constructed...
- Denmark StreetDenmark StreetDenmark Street is a short narrow road in central London, notable for its connections with British popular music, and is known as the British Tin Pan Alley. The road connects Charing Cross Road at its western end with St Giles High Street at its eastern end. Denmark Street is in the London Borough...
- Devil's AcreDevil's AcreThe Devil's Acre was a notorious slum near Westminster Abbey in Victorian London. The Devil's Acre was located along Old Pye Street, Great St Anne's Lane and Duck Lane in the parish of Westminster St Margaret and St John.In the 19th century it was considered one of the worst areas of London and...
- Flower and Dean StreetFlower and Dean StreetFlower and Dean Street was a road situated at the heart of the Spitalfields rookery in the East End of London. It was one of the most notorious slum areas of the Victorian era and was closely associated with the victims of Jack the Ripper...
- Lisson GroveLisson GroveLisson Grove is a district and also a street of the City of Westminster, London, England located just to the north of the city ring road. There are many landmarks surrounding the area. To the north is Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood. To the west are Paddington and Watling Street...
- Matthew HayMatthew HayMatthew Hay was a Scottish doctor and champion of Public Health. He was appointed Medical Officer of Health for the City of Aberdeen in 1888, a post he held until 1923. He was also Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Aberdeen....
- RookeryRookery (slum)A rookery was the colloquial British English term given in the 18th and 19th centuries to a city slum occupied by poor people...
- Somers Town, LondonSomers Town, LondonSomers Town, was named for Charles Cocks, 1st Baron Somers. The area in St Pancras, London, was originally granted by William III to John Somers, Lord Chancellor and Baron Somers of Evesham. It was to be strongly influenced by the three mainline north London railway termini: Euston , St...
- Spitalfields rookeryDorset Street, LondonFor the Dublin street of the same name, see Dorset Street Dorset Street was situated at the heart of the Spitalfields rookery in the East End of London, England. It should not be confused with the road of the same name in Marylebone, in London's West End...
- Wych StreetWych StreetWych Street was a street in London, roughly where Australia House now stands on Aldwych. It ran west from the church of St Clement Danes on the Strand to a point towards the southern end of Drury Lane...