The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd
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Authors: Fiona Rule
The
Worst Street
in
LONDON
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It would not have been possible to write this book without the excellent staff and resources at the Public Record Office, the British Library, the Metropolitan Archive, the Newspaper Library, the Bancroft Library, Westminster Reference Library and the Old Bailey Archives. My thanks is also extended to all those who generously shared their personal remembrances of Spitalfields with me. Finally, I would especially like to thank Sharon Hicks for her help, support and enthusiasm while researching this book and my long-suffering husband Robert for listening to my incessant ramblings.
First published 2008
Reprinted 2009, 2010
This impression 2010
3600 03363 4
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.
© Fiona Rule 2008
Published by Ian Allan Publishing
An imprint of Ian Allan Publishing Ltd, Hersham, Surrey, KT12 4RG Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham, Kent
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Distributed in the United States of America and Canada by Bookmasters Distribution Services.
DEDICATION
To the memory of Desmond Rule, otherwise known as Dad.
CONTENTS
Part One: The Rise and Fall of Spitalfields
Chapter 1: The Birth of Spitalfields
Chapter 2: The Creation of Dorset Street and Surrounds
Chapter 3: Spitalfields Market
Chapter 5: A Seedier Side/Jack Sheppard
Chapter 6: A New Parish and a Gradual Descent
Chapter 7: The Rise of the Common Lodging House
Chapter 8: Serious Overcrowding
Chapter 9: The Third Wave of Immigrants (The Irish Famine)
Chapter 10: The McCarthy Family
Chapter 11: The Common Lodging House Act
Part Two: The Vices of Dorset Street
Chapter 12: The Birth of Organised Crime in Spitalfields
Chapter 14: Prostitution and Press Scrutiny
Chapter 15: The Fourth Wave of Immigrants
Chapter 16: The Controllers of Spitalfields
Part Three: International Infamy
Chapter 18: The Situation Worsens
Chapter 19: A Lighter Side of Life
Chapter 20: The Landlords Enlarge their Property Portfolios
Chapter 21: The Worst Street in London
Chapter 22: The Murder of Mary Ann Austin
Chapter 23: The Beginning of the End
Chapter 26: The Redevelopment of Spitalfields Market
Part Five: A Walk Around Spitalfields
INTRODUCTION
On a cold February night in 1960, 32-year old nightclub manager Selwyn Cooney staggered down the stairs of a Spitalfields drinking den and collapsed on the cobbled road outside, blood streaming from a bullet wound to his temple. Cooney’s friend and associate William Ambrose, otherwise known as ‘Billy the Boxer’, followed seconds later, clutching a wound to his stomach. By the time he reached the street, Cooney was dead.
The true facts surrounding Cooney’s violent death are shrouded in mystery – investigations following his murder revealed gangland connections with notorious inhabitants of the criminal underworld such as Billy Hill and Jack Spot. Newspapers suggested his death was linked to a much further reaching battle for supremacy between rival London gangs. However, the mystery surrounding Cooney’s murder is just one of the many strange, brutal and perplexing tales connected with the street in which he met his fate.
Halfway up Commercial Street, one block away from Spitalfields Market, lies an anonymous service road. The average pedestrian wouldn’t even notice it existed. But unlikely though it may seem, this characterless, 400ft strip of tarmac was once Dorset Street, the most notorious thoroughfare in the Capital: the worst street in London. The resort of Protestant firebrands, thieves, con-men, pimps, prostitutes and murderers, most notably Jack the Ripper...
I first discovered Dorset Street by accident. Like many others who share a passion for this great city, its streets have always provided me with far more than simply a route from one location to another. They are also pathways into the past that reveal glimpses of a London that has long since vanished. A stroll down any of the older thoroughfares will reveal defunct remnants of a world we have lost. Boot scrapers sit unused outside front doors, hinting that before today’s ubiquitous tarmac and concrete paving, the streets were often covered with mud. Ornate cast iron discs set into the pavements conceal the holes into which coal was once dispensed to fuel the boilers and ovens of thousands of households. On the walls of some homes, small embossed metal plaques remain screwed to the brickwork confirming long-expired fire insurance taken out at a time when fire was a much bigger threat to the city than it is in today’s centrally-heated and electronically-powered world. For the history enthusiast, London’s streets provide a wealth of treasure and their exploration can take a lifetime.
I had made many investigative sorties onto the streets of London before I ventured into Spitalfields, but what I found in this small, ancient district was unique and alluring in equal measure. At its centre lay the market. A far cry from the over-developed gathering place for the über-fashionable it is today, at the time of my visit it was a deserted hangar filled with a jumble of empty market stalls. Across from the abandoned market, Hawksmoor’s masterpiece, Christ Church, loomed over shabby Commercial Street, looking decidedly incongruous next to a parade of burger bars, kebab houses and old fabric wholesalers whose window displays looked as though they hadn’t been changed for at least twenty years. In the churchyard, tramps lounged around on benches searching for temporary oblivion in their bottles of strong cider.
On the other side of the church lay the Ten Bells pub. Paint peeled off its exterior walls and the interior was almost devoid of furniture save for a couple of well-worn sofas and some ancient circular tables near the window. However, despite its rather unwelcoming façade, there was something about the place that made it seem utterly right for the area. Moreover, it looked as though it hadn’t altered a great deal since it was built, so I decided to go in. Once inside the Ten Bells, the feature that became immediately apparent was a wall of exquisite Victorian tiling at the far end of the bar, part of which was an illustration of 18th century silk weavers. Next to the frieze hung a dark wood board that reminded me of the rolls of honour that hung in my old secondary school listing alumni who had achieved the distinction of being selected Head Boy or Girl. However, the names on this board had an altogether more horrible significance. They were six alleged victims of ‘Jack the Ripper’. A discussion with the barman about this macabre exhibit revealed that all six women on the list had lived within walking distance of where we were standing and may even have been patrons of the Ten Bells. They had earned their living on the streets, hawking, cleaning and when times were really tough, selling themselves to any man that would have them, often taking their conquest into a deserted yard or dark alley for a few moments of sordid passion against a brick wall. Unluckily for them, their final customer had in all probability been their murderer.
Of course, I had known a little about the career of Jack the Ripper before my visit to the Ten Bells. However, I had never previously stopped to consider the reality behind the story. The magnificence of Christ Church suggested that at one time, the area had been a prosperous and optimistic district. How had Spitalfields degenerated into a place of such deprivation and depravity that several of its inhabitants could be murdered in the open air, in such a densely populated area of London without anyone hearing or seeing anything untoward? My interest piqued, I returned home and began my research.
What intrigued me most about the Jack the Ripper story was not the identity of the perpetrator but the social environment that allowed the murders to happen. As I delved deeper into the history of the Spitalfields, I began to uncover a district of London that seemed almost lawless in character. By the time of the murders, the authorities seemed to have almost entirely washed their hands of the narrow roads and dingy courts that ran off either side of Commercial Street, leaving the landlords of the dilapidated lodgings to deal with the inhabitants in whatever manner they saw fit. The area that surrounded the market became known as the ‘wicked quarter mile’ due to its proliferation of prostitutes, thieves and other miscreants who used ‘pay by the night’ lodging houses, where no questions were asked, as their headquarters. These seedy resorts flourished throughout the district during the second half of the 1800s and were places to which death was no stranger. Even one of the landlords, William Crossingham, described them as places to which people came to die.
The sheer dreadfulness of the common lodging houses prompted me to investigate them further. During a particularly fruitful trip to the Metropolitan Archive, I uncovered the 19th century registers for these dens of iniquity, which gave details of their addresses and the men and women that ran them. As I turned the pages of these ancient old volumes, one street name cropped up time and time again: Dorset Street. By the close of the 19th century, this small road was comprised almost entirely of common lodging houses, providing shelter for literally hundreds of London’s poor every night of the year. Most intriguingly, I remembered that the street’s name also loomed large in the newspaper reports I had read about the Ripper murders, in fact the only murder to have occurred indoors had been perpetrated in one of the mean courts that ran off it. Dorset Street now became the focus of my research and as I uncovered more of its history, what emerged was a fascinating tale of a place that was built at a time of great optimism and had enjoyed over one hundred years of industry and prosperity.