“Although the term “slum” was not widely recognized until 1890 a vague and familiar pattern was recognized as a contributing factor to the creation of these regions. A region of the city would be cut-off from circulation by a nearly constructed thoroughfare that bypassed it; businesses departed, disagreeable industries would move in creating local noise and air pollution and further reducing the attractiveness of the area; ultimately, no one with the means to live elsewhere would choose to live in such a place, and the region would become decrepit, badly maintained, and over populated by the lowest classes.
Prior to being referred to as slums these regions were known as to as rookeries and London had several notorious rookeries. There were the Seven dials, Rosemary Lane, Jacob’s Island, and Ratcliffe Highway, however none were more famous or should I say infamous than the six-acres in central London that comprised the rookery of St. Giles, otherwise known as ‘the Holy Land’. The Holy Land was located near the theatre district of Leicester Sq., the prostitution center of the Hay Market, and the fashionable shops of Regent Street. The St. Giles rookery was strategically located for any criminal who wanted to ‘go to around’.”
The Great Train Robbery, Michael Crichton
"In such a neighborhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of Southwark, stands Jacob’s Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in the days of this story as Folly Ditch. It is a creek or inlet from the Thames, and can always be filled at high water by opening the sluices at the Lead Mills from which it took its old name. At such times, a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails, domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up; and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it—as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.
In Jacob’s Island, the warehouses are roofless and empty; the walls are crumbling down; the windows are windows no more; the doors are falling into the streets; the chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke. Thirty or forty years ago, before losses and chancery suits came upon it, it was a thriving place; but now it is a desolate island indeed. The houses have no owners; they are broken open, and entered upon by those who have the courage; and there they live, and there they die. They must have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob’s Island."
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
What was it like to live in the London of Charles Dickens?
The London Of Charles Dickens: Mapped
Updated on 10.25.21 & 10.27.21
