Hitting musical highs in Sailortown The East End wasn’t poor, but it didn’t have the grand theatres of the West End. People sang and played in taverns and inns, and from these would emerge the tradition of the music halls. 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 BY JOHN RENNIE LAST week we saw how Sailortown had emerged east of the City of London from the 1600s on, as ribbon development along the main routes east saw the hamlets of Shadwell, Limehouse and Ratcliff gradually merge into one. We know much about the economic life of these early East Enders from the multiplicity of records kept. This was an age a world away from computers or typed records, but still – the plethora of logs of voters, births, deaths, marriages, hearth records, tax returns and ratepayers provides a rich seam of data. But what of the people themselves? A society doesn’t live by census returns and grocery bills alone. What was life like in Sailortown for corn chandler Thomas Church, apothecary Mr Bateman and slopseller Mrs Armstrong? A society is often seen most clearly in the way it takes its leisure. And for historian Millicent Rose the love of music, and in particular of amateur music-making, was one outstanding feature of the early Georgian East End. It seems the folk song and a widespread musical literacy both lingered here long after they had begun to decline in the rest of London. Who knows why. Perhaps it was the constant infusion of fresh blood from the ships, bringing new songs and styles. Perhaps it was also the relatively rough and ready nature of public entertainment. The East End wasn’t poor, but it didn’t have the established grand theatres of the West End. The people sang and played in taverns and inns instead, and from these would emerge the peculiarly East End tradition of the music halls in the 19th century. Digging into the ballads of the time, such as The Cruel Cooper of Ratcliff, gives a highly coloured flavour of East End life of the time. There are tales of drunken and abusive husbands, sailors being tricked and robbed by cunning prostitutes, unfaithful wives, deaths at sea. The songs may of course be unrepresentative of daily life but they give a f l avour of Sailortown nonetheless. The wealthy merchants and emerging middle class in this earliest London suburb weren’t spending all Unlikely fortunes made at the centre of the world their time swilling ale. Wills and diaries provide fascinating evidence of what East Enders were passing on to their heirs – and so what they valued. Households had teapots, china cups and saucers, sugar bowls and silver. Nobody ‘grabbed a coffee’ on their way to work; the drinking of tea and coffee were recent, elaborate rituals, rather like cracking open a bottle of champagne today. The accoutrements were expensive, a sign of social arrival, and so were the backgammon, chess and draughts tables, the chocolate pots, the caged birds (perhaps something exotic that had been delivered from a ship out of the West Indies) and the increasingly fancy guns and spy glasses. Exotic arrivals could also be espied at Charles Jamrach’s notorious menagerie off the Ratcliff Highway, where the drama was occasionally heightened by the escape of a lion or a python. And if the East End got too much (the noise, smell and sheer crush of people would be a shock to modern sensibilities) then the middle classes might ride out to the countryside of Middlesex just to the east, or cross the River Lea into Essex. While London was becoming the biggest city on Earth, it was still a small town by modern standards, and the Sailortown middle classes could ride out and take the air. They did, after all, care for their health. Life was getting shorter (a rich and alcohol-fuelled city diet light on fresh fruit and veg, plus the likelihood of catching something nasty from your neighbours, saw to that). But the Spa in Love Lane could be one remedy. Here Mr Berry had found a spring of water “the colour of brandy… fine and clear and on tasting found to be of a mineral quality”, which promised a way to flush out the poisons. “Taken internally, it vomits gently,” was the promise. It sounds, and probably tasted, disgusting. That presumably was how the people knew it was doing them good. Even the lowest middle-class house had a servant. For domestic life was labour intensive. Coal had to carried into the house, so did clean water. Ashes had to be carried out. Smoky walls had to be washed down once a week. Linen had to be washed by hand in vast ‘coppers’, silver had to be polished, shopping had to be collected from the grocer, chandler, butcher and milliner. An analysis by historian Peter Earle shows over half the households had at least one servant; the wealthier would also have chambermaids, cooks or gardeners. The evidence, as ever, is in the tax records. We complain about tax today, but in the late 18th century, you would also be taxed on your servants. And in 1780, more than 2,800 men and women in Middlesex paid that servant tax. Women worked of course. Traditional ideas of ‘housewives’ as part of a nuclear family are historically recent – most would work as servants before they married (and probably after too, childbirth permitting). And, as ever in the East End, immigration played a huge part. The 1660 Navigation Acts tried to ‘strengthen’ the British maritime industry by stipulating the master and at least three quarters of the crew of British ships bringing in goods from Asia had to be British. So 25 per cent of each crew were not, and that meant thousands of ‘Lascars’ (Burmese, Malay, Bengali and Chinese seamen) were passing through Sailortown each year. Many stayed, settled, intermarried, and Chinatown (and other long-lost quarters) was born. They even had nascent buy-tolet landlords getting rich off the wages of poor immigrants. The Chinese-born John Anthony made his fortune housing Lascar seamen and his brother-in-law, Abraham Gale, was paid £177,958 in rents over a period of just ten years. Sailortown vessels were now sailing out to Russia, Newfoundland and Hudson’s Bay, to the Antarctic… London was at the centre of the world and it made some unlikely fortunes. The Mellish family were wholesale butchers in Shadwell from 1740 to 1867. But not many butchers today would also be sending 20 whaling ships to Greenland and the South Seas. William Mellish died in 1834 possessing £3m… and most of the Isle of Dogs. As one writer observed, “everything that can be bought, desired or imagined flows through the port of London”. ■ London’s Sailortown 1600-1800 by Derek Morris and Ken Cozens, A social history of Shadwell and Ratcliff, an early modern London riverside suburb, published by the East London History Society, £12.99. Above: playing backgammon was a sign of social arrival Right: the wealthy and rich enjoy cups of coffee Below: household items were expensive with exotic items such as caged birds being shipped in 20 – 26 APRIL 2015 N E W S F R O M TOWER HAMLETS COUNCIL AND YOUR COMMUNITY 13
East_End_Life_20Apr2015
To see the actual publication please follow the link above