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Rich tapestry of life by the river The popular view of this old East End, in the century running up to World War I, has been of a London unremittingly bleak. The truth is considerably richer and more interesting. see below History Got a story to tell? If you have a tale about East End history, write to John Rennie or email him at johnrennie@gmail.com www.eastlondonhistory.com Dispelling myths of life in the east BY JOHN RENNIE BY the year 1800, London had spawned along its riverside, east of the Tower, one of the world’s great industrial complexes. This stretch of rural Middlesex, known for centuries as Ossulstone Hundred, had been transformed into one of the most efficient and diverse ‘service areas’ on the planet… and it was famed throughout the world, wherever seafarers travelled. The popular view of this old East End, in the century running up to World War I, has been of a London unremittingly bleak: its people living short, povertystricken and diseased lives, with breadwinners queuing each morning at the chain, in the desperate hope of a day’s work on the docks. The truth, as has emerged in two excellent books in the last year, is considerably richer and more interesting. Last year we learnt about ‘Sailortown’ in Jane Cox’s marvellous Old East Enders, a history of the Tower hamlets. And now with London’s Sailortown 1600-1800 by Derek Morris and Ken Cozens, we discover a whole new world, of brewers, clergymen, tax collectors, bakers, magistrates, butchers, ships captains and crew… even those who paved and cleaned the streets, lit the lamps at night and kept their neighbours safe. The book is the fourth in a series published by the East London History Society and looking at the early suburbs that became the East End. And, like its companion volumes, its strength is in the sheer depth and detail of its sources and research. But if detailed, it’s never dull, for through the detail the ordinary lives of the ‘middling’ people emerge in all their colour. East Enders, it appears, were not the poor, downtrodden folk of popular myth. We begin by noting the clear distinction between the two Londons that snaked out from the City from the 18th century. The south bank was dominated by Greenwich Hospital, the naval complex around the Royal Dockyards of Deptford and Woolwich, and the military industries around Woolwich Arsenal. On the north bank, the hamlets of Shadwell, Ratcliff, Wapping and Limehouse were merging into what we would later call the East End? This ‘Sailortown’ was a far less grand affair than the elegant Greenwich, and that’s perhaps why early historians, concerned with the works of great men, were unfailingly dismissive. John Noorthouck, writing in 1773, wrote of parishes “chiefly inhabited by seafaring persons, and those whose business depends upon shipping… in general close and ill-built [and] therefore offer very little worthy [of] observation, except the parish churches”. Hugill wrote in his Sailortowns of the World of “one Sailortown being much the same as another… each port had its boarding houses and brothels, with their crimps and whores… a world of sordid pleasure, unlimited vice and lashings of booze, but a dangerous place too”. Of course, that rather ignores the fact that people have to eat, work, get cures for their ailments and look after their children. The shocking headlines distract from the colourful mundanity of everyday life. The base of all this development was the gravel cliffs of Ratcliff. In Roman times they had provided a firm footing for the Ratcliff Highway, an early route in to London; and from around 1450, they provided foundations for landing and the building of wharves. The mushrooming of Sailortown around these footings is gleaned from the many records London made of its geography and citizens. The Hearth Tax (if you had a home fire, you paid tax) gives a clear record of the ballooning of the parishes of Stepney and Whitechapel between 1550 and 1700. A population of fewer than 5,000 grew to one approaching 90,000. One of the greatest drivers was the opening in 1614 of the East India Company dockyard at Blackwall. Famous names headed out from the growing port –Humphrey Gilbert, Martin Frobisher and Jane Randolph, the mother of Thomas Jefferson. But more enlightening is the detail of ‘ordinary’ people (though some of them very rich indeed). The authors dig into the records of Sun Insurance policies issued from 1700 onwards. There is Sir John Cass, merchant, insured in the early 1700s for £1,500; the Coopers Company (a livery company) insured for the same amount. Richard Ricards (a lighterman and glassmaker) is covered for £1,500. George Petty of Whitechapel (a silk throwster) for £1,000. And brewer Sir John Parsons (also Lord Mayor) for £1,000. London’s poorest quarter? Hardly. In 1723, the Duke of Norfolk had insured his posh Pall Mall dwelling for £2,000. But in Stepney, one prominent house was insured for the same amount, and there were numerous merchant houses (as far downriver as Barking) insured for £1,000 or more. And such a diverse and fast-changing collection of hamlets proved a nightmare to govern. In early days, many services were provided ‘in kind’. So any tax payer had a duty to take his turn at the night watch, to clean the street, to oversee poor relief or to take a turn at jury service. But services became confusingly overlaid atop one another. Professor Penelope Corfield notes that “the parishes outside the City were governed, in the 18th century, by more than 300 bodies, all with differing authorities and constitutions”. A simple obligation to repair the street outside your own front door was never going to cope with the increasing traffic to and from the docks and out to East Anglia and the north. Increasingly, Acts of Parliament allowed the financing of new toll roads, such as the Whitechapel to Shenfield turnpike. So too with sewerage and clean water. The innumerable authorities were gradually reduced and simplified, laying the basis for their takeover by local and national government in the 20th century. And within this prosperous jumble were the ordinary people. All those grand City livery companies, whose officers these days are millionaire bankers and businessmen, started life as humble and worthy trades: candle and watchmakers, bakers and butchers, brewers and ropemakers. The records of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen provide detail of the earnings of the men who kept London moving, of their rents, their apprentices (and how much they were paid), and their not infrequent disputes with customers. So too for the brewers, the cheesemongers, the sailmakers and the rest… from the mass of data emerges a picture of an East End, not of poverty, but serving the greatest economic empire the world had yet known. Clockwise from above: poverty – but was that really an accurate picture of the East End?; customs men monitoring the hugely growing trade; the bustle of East End docks; Roque’s map shows gradual ‘infilling’ of the Middlesex hamlets; Hogarth’s clichéd view of London life 13 – 19 APRIL 2015 N E W S F R OM TOWER HAMLETS COUNCIL AND YOUR COMMUNITY 13


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