London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City (22 page)

any wholesale clearing away of these people would in my opinion lead to a general outpouring against police action ... Many of these people are hardly pressed, if at the close of the day they find themselves penniless they are afraid to enter the casual ward, especially if they have been in it once during the month and thus seek the open spaces of the Metropolis for rest at night. The great majority of them are quite distinct from the rough and give no cause for Police interference.

On the flyleaf of the report is a penciled comment, perhaps from Warren, which reads: `As this [the Notes and Proceedings article] has been answered, no action is required. I am bound to say that however much I may sympathize with the poor people, I am disposed to think that locating them in the streets, and in TS is a mistake which will give us trouble? At least one of the policemen on duty in Trafalgar Square that summer took exception to the occupation of his patch by the homeless: according to one contemporary observer he `adopted the practice of sousing the seats there with water "to keep them casuals off"'.'

The police were certainly no strangers to trouble in the 1880s and their greatest criminal challenge was less than a year away. That they entered the late summer of 1888 as targets of press criticism - a criticism that grew to a crescendo by the time that Mary Kelly's eviscerated body was discovered - was a result of their mishandling of two important demonstrations in and around Trafalgar Square. This chapter will explore these events and address the social problems that blighted East London in the period. As we can see from the correspondence cited above, there were different views of the poor in late nineteenth-century London. The contrast between the `cleanly and industrious poor' and the idle and shiftless is a very common one in the rhetoric of Poor Law officials, charity workers, politicians, press and members of the public. The nineteenth century saw the full flowering of social investigation as armies of reformers, `slummers' and missionaries beat a heroic path to the heart of darkness that was the East End. Thus, this chapter will also analyse the housing conditions they found there, the claims of incest being `common' and the fear that existed among nice middle-class people that the so-called `residuum' was ready to throw off its deferential shackles and turn Victorian society on its head. To some degree the activities of philanthropists such as Helen Bosanquet, Octavia Hill and Beatrice Webb can be seen as important landmarks on the long journey to a welfare state. The investigations of men like Charles Booth, Jack London and Andrew Mearns highlighted the extent of misery in the capital of which the actions of political organizations, such as the Social Democratic Foundation, sought to exploit for their own purposes. The state of `outcast London' was therefore a matter of concern and debate for many different and sometimes discordant voices in late Victorian Britain, and ultimately contemporaries were seeing the end of one epoch and the gradual birth of the `modern.

THE BITTER CRY AND THE HOMES OF THE POOR: MIDDLE-CLASS VISIONS OF THE UNDERCLASS

In 1883 the Rev Andrew Mearns' expose of housing problems in London was promoted by the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, William Stead.' Mearns brought the attention of his readership to the problems affecting the poorer classes of the capital. The opening lines of The Bitter Cry of Outcast London bear scrutiny because they neatly illustrate the fears of the Victorian middle class.

There is no more hopeful sign in the Christian Church of today than the increased attention which is being given by it to the poor and outcast classes of society. Of these it has never been wholly neglectful, if it had it would have ceased to be Christian. But it has, as yet, only imperfectly realised and fulfilled its mission to the poor. Until recently it has contented itself with sustaining some outside organizations, which have charged themselves with this special function, or what is worse, has left the matter to individuals or to little bands of Christians having no organisation. For the rest it has been satisfied with a superficial and inadequate district visitation, with the more or less indiscriminate distribution of material charities, and with opening a few rooms here and there into which the poorer people have been gathered, and by which a few have been rescued. All this is good in its way and has done good; but by all only the merest edge of the great dark region of poverty, misery, squalor and immorality has been touched.9

Andrew Mearns' reference to the perils of `indiscriminate' charity; of `rescuing' the poor and to `immorality' are key themes that run through the rhetoric of those who undertook to study, reform and assist the poor in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The question of poverty and pauperism, and the more specific issue of the housing of the working classes, unveils an ideological battle at the end of the century between those who wished to maintain a `self-help' position and those who favoured a more interventionist approach. This brought into sharp contrast two of the foremost women of the late Victorian period: Beatrice Webb (nee Potter) and Helen Bosanquet (nee Dendy). Their story provides a commentary on the battle between collectivism and individualism that was fought out in parliamentary debates, newspaper columns and on the doorsteps of the East End - a conflict that has rumbled on into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the heart of this debate is the question of how society deals with poverty. In 1898 Helen Bosanquet recognised that the middle classes' relationship with the poverty of the working classes was complex. She maintained that a determined commitment to curing the underlying causes of poverty was required if sustainable changes were going to be made to the conditions of the poorest. She cautioned her readership against merely tinkering with the problem of poverty to assuage any guilt they might have at their own wealth and comfort.'° Beatrice Webb and her husband Sidney, as Fabians and early British socialists, would have agreed with her desire to affect change but not with her methods of doing so: for the Webbs the solutions to the problems of poverty lay in the intervention of the state.

For many of the readers of Mearns' article (which could be purchased for a penny) his revelations must have shocked them to their core. As we have seen Victorian Britain was at its apogee as the century entered its final decades. Middle-class Londoners could be excused their complacency and smugness, even if Britain was experiencing its own `great depression' between 1873 to 1896.11 It must have come as a nasty shock to discover that incest was `common' in the overcrowded tenements where the poor lived. Even if this claim was probably made with a nod to journalistic license, Mearns' intention was to emphasize the consequences that such poor conditions brought with it: `Immorality' he wrote, `is but the natural outcome of conditions like these' " In the same year that The Bitter Cry of Outcast London appeared, Octavia Hill, the foremost matron of London charity, published a new edition of her Homes of the London Poor which drew on her own extensive experience of visiting the poorer classes. Octavia Hill had started her involvement with London's poorest in her early teens, when she had assisted her mother at the Ladies Guild in Russell Place, Holborn. The Guild operated a co-operative crafts workshop involving local children and Octavia soon became familiar with their homes and lives and was horrified at the conditions in which they existed.13 Inspired in part by her association with John Ruskin but also by her strong belief in the principles of `self-help' (as propounded by Samuel Smiles), Hill attempted to address the issue of social housing. Ruskin invested in her scheme to build affordable housing for the working classes, and Octavia's career as a social reformer was up and running. The essential element of Hill's philosophy was personal contact with the recipients of her charity. By visiting her tenants, with her growing band of female helpers, to personally collect the rents, Octavia could observe the way they were living and could get to know their problems. As Gillian Darnley notes, `in effect they were model social workers'.14

Let us return to Hill's own writings on the housing issue. She wrote that she wanted to `free a few poor people from the tyranny and influence of a low class of landlord and landladies; from the corrupting effect of continual forced communication with degraded fellow-lodgers; from the heavy incubus of accumulated dirt: so the poor might have scope to spring, and with it such energy as might help them to help themselves.'5 In reporting her contact with one male tenant Hill reveals the importance of reforming as well as re-housing the working classes. On discovering that the tenant would not send his children to school and was allowing an unacceptable level of overcrowding by taking in three additional children, Octavia threatened him with eviction. He requested an interview and expressed the view that since he was not behind with his rent she should let him be. `The room was his; he took it, and if he paid rent he could do as he liked in it, he argued. Hill countered `Very well, and the house is mine; I take it, and I must do what I think right in it' She agreed the extra mouths could stay but insisted that the children were taught to be `good, and careful, and industrious', warning him that `If you prefer liberty, and dirt, and mess, take them but if you choose to agree to live under as good a rule as I can make it, you can stay. You have your choice"' The man agreed - the children were sent to school. In the long tradition of charitable giving in England, Hill's approach was paternalistic but it was underpinned by the principles of self-reliance and responsibility.

The Bitter Cry of Outcast London and the writings of Octavia Hill were not new commentaries on London's problems. They sat within an ongoing discourse regarding the living conditions, morals and health of the working classes. As we shall see, attempts at solving the problems of poor and inadequate housing and sanitation had been ongoing since the late 1850s. Neither were social investigators, newspapermen or charity workers novel inventions of the 1880s. However, the horrific events of the summer and autumn of 1888 gave renewed impetus to the drive for change, coming as they did hot on the heels of a royal commission a few years earlier.

In 1884, in response to a newspaper campaign orchestrated by the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, William Stead, and the personal intervention of the Prince of Wales, the Liberal administration established a royal commission to examine the housing conditions of the working classes in London." This was not the first, nor was it to be the last occasion on which the honourable members of the Houses of Parliament peered into the homes of the poor of the capital. The problem of poor quality, insanitary and overcrowded lodgings had exercised politicians, social reformers and religious missionaries throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. The Conservative leader, the Marquis of Salisbury, was an active supporter of the commission as was the Prince himself who had visited the poorest areas of London and had himself contributed by speaking in the debate."

The commission's brief was to explore two related questions: first, given that conditions had improved in the previous 30 years, why was there still a problem of chronic overcrowding; and second, to discover why legislation to remedy housing problems was not being enacted. In 1868 a bill sponsored by William Torrens had allowed for the demolition of unfit housing and the re-housing of those made homeless as a result. However, the House of Lords forced amendments to Torrens' bill so that when it became law the requirement to re-house had been omitted and, as a result, Torrens' Act became merely a tool for destruction.19 Richard Cross' later act (of 1875) had also failed to appreciate the costs involved in implementing his legislation. It had been hoped that clearing away slum housing would bring a concomitant rise in rateable values as areas improved; once it was clear that this was unlikely and that the burden of such clearance schemes would fall on the ratepayer the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) and the City of London both backtracked from implementing reforms.20

With these previous reforms in mind the commission heard evidence from various parts of the metropolis (including Whitechapel) and more generally from elsewhere in Britain. The findings were sobering. The commission discovered that the inhabitants of Whitechapel cellars who were evicted by sanitary inspectors merely moved to another cellar to continue their troglodyte existence while `their condemned habitation' was immediately filled by new tenants.21 The commission was informed of the high relative costs of rented accommodation in London with tenants having to part with anything from a fifth to a half of their incomes in rent. The average weekly rent in Spitalfields was 4s 6d to 6s per week, and that for an unfurnished room. The East End was overcrowded and workers were unable to move to the less congested suburbs because of their need to stay close to their places of work. Casual dock workers had to be able to react to news of work at 6 a.m., others had to start work even earlier (at 3 or 4 a.m.), or when a merchant's vessel came into the Port of London.22 Costermongers (those selling a range of usually cheap goods from street stalls or barrows) needed to live close to their pitches and supplies.

Centrally located working-class communities also provided better forms of support and cheaper goods than those available outside. Affordable transport schemes were gradually being introduced to encourage families to move away from the centre but these did not come into widespread use until the last decade of the nineteenth century.23 Other concerns affected some residents of the East End. Jewish immigrants would have found it hard to move out of the centre for all the above reasons but had additional anchors holding them in Whitechapel. As Jerry White has observed, `For a Jewish family, needing to live within walking distance of a synagogue, a kosher butcher and the ritual baths, there was no alternative to living in the "ghetto" and thus no alternative to overcrowding'.24 The housing crisis could not be solved by `displacement' as James Yelling has noted, instead it required a more holistic approach to the problems of the late nineteenth-century city and these problems were increasing.25