The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd (23 page)

While there was undoubtedly some truth in what Fred McKenzie wrote, his overdramatic prose, combined with ludicrous exaggeration (according to him, Dorset Street ‘boasts of an attempt at murder on an average once a month, of a murder in every house, and in one house at least, a murder in every room’) really got the goat of both the lodging house keepers and their tenants. In response, Dorset Street resident Edwin Locock convened a protest meeting. The initial date for the meeting was set for Wednesday 17 July (the day after the article had appeared) but the room was not large enough to accommodate the sizeable crowd that attended and so it was adjourned until the following Monday. In the meantime, bills were posted throughout Spitalfields stating that the new meeting would be held at the Duke of Wellington pub in Shepherd Street. The sole speaker at this protest would be none other than Jack McCarthy, described by the local press as ‘a gentleman who holds a considerable amount of property in the neighbourhood’.

On the evening of the meeting, a sizeable crowd arrived at the pub including numerous Dorset Street residents, a handful of representatives from local charities and, quite bravely, the writer of the article that had so inflamed the inhabitants – Mr McKenzie. Jack McCarthy’s response to the article was both eloquent and lengthy. According to press reports, he spoke for two hours, taking McKenzie’s article apart in a manner fit for a courtroom rather than the back room of an East End pub. Suffice to say, McCarthy refuted every indictment made by McKenzie but the picture of Dorset Street painted throughout his long diatribe is probably as inaccurate as the one imagined after reading Fred McKenzie’s article.

Even knowing that he was largely preaching to the converted, Jack McCarthy’s speech leaves the impartial observer with the impression that Dorset Street was inhabited almost solely by cheeky cockney types who would not look out of place in a production of
Oliver!,
presided over by altruistic landlords only too willing to sacrifice their rental income in order to provide shelter for the needy. One suspects that the truth lay somewhere between these two gentlemen’s colourful descriptions.

Despite the best efforts of Jack McCarthy, speeches in local pubs (however impassioned) were no match for the massive publicity machine that was the national press. Dorset Street retained its dubious reputation as ‘The Worst Street In London’ and the authorities continued to leave the inhabitants to their own devices. However, the notoriety that Dorset Street and its surrounds suffered did add certain kudos to the already shady reputations of the men that ran the streets. In their little patch of London, the Spitalfields landlords enjoyed a huge amount of power and this power afforded them status. Men such as Jack McCarthy, Jimmy Smith and Frederick Gehringer were very well known around the area and due to the amount of control they wielded, they were generally respected by their dependents.

By the turn of the century, the landlords had reached the peak of their success. Unbeknown to them, the property empires they had worked so hard to build up were about to go into a slow but unstoppable decline. However, the first few years of the 20th century were probably the most financially stable that any of the landlords had previously experienced. All owned a sizeable chunk of property by this stage, there was no shortage of tenants and the authorities continued to ignore the squalid conditions that prevailed. Consequently, the landlords earned a lot of money and they quickly developed a taste for showing it off in most eccentric ways. Jimmy Smith had long since established himself as the ‘Governor of Brick Lane’, particularly in the eyes those who participated in his illegal gambling activities. However, one night Jimmy had too much to drink and fell into a fire, severely burning himself.

The burns were so deep that they destroyed a great deal of muscle on one side of Jimmy’s body, leaving him partially paralysed and no doubt in a lot of pain. However, once recovered, Jimmy did not let his disability stop him from going about his daily business. He employed a minder to lead him along as he patrolled his ‘manor’ and was one of the first people in the East End to own a motor car, in which he was ferried around by a chauffeur in a chocolate-coloured uniform.

Jack McCarthy also enjoyed spending his money on the latest fashions and was described by contemporaries as looking most ‘gentlemanly’ despite his rough background in the slums of Southwark. He was well regarded by the workers at nearby Spitalfields market who referred to him as a ‘real pal’. The local costermongers also enjoyed a particularly close business relationship with McCarthy, who allowed them to store their barrows in a shed next to 26 Dorset Street thus preventing them from being stolen overnight. In contrast, Arthur Harding, a local lad who wasn’t beholden to McCarthy for anything (and was probably envious of his status) dismissed him as a ‘hard man’ and a ‘bully’.

Frederick Gehringer was also well-known to the costermongers as he ran a barrow-hire business from one of his properties in Little Pearl Street. This sideline was to grow into a full-time business in later years as Gehringer progressed from barrows to horses and carts and finally motorised lorries. The Gehringer family was in the haulage business until well into the 20th century. Like Jimmy Smith, Frederick Gehringer enjoyed being flash with his new-found wealth and rumour has it that he enjoyed parading around his properties on a sedan chair.

The landlords’ families also benefited from their increasing wealth and began to live a distinctly middle-class existence. Men who had been raised in slums found they could give their own children a vastly superior start in life. In a bid to keep them away from the daily horrors of Dorset Street, Jack McCarthy sent two of his younger daughters (Annie and Ellen) to boarding school in Battle, Sussex. This small school was run by Mrs Fanny Lambourn, the wife of the preceptor tutor at Battle Town Grammar School. Here the girls were taught the ‘three R’s’, learned how to sew and cook and also acquired a command of the French language; a skill that was not in much demand around Dorset Street since the Huguenots had departed.

However, as the new century unfurled, subtle changes in how and where Londoners lived and worked were underway. These changes would have a profound effect on Dorset Street, its surrounds and the way McCarthy and his fellow landlords made their money.

By 1900, better transport links in and out of the capital meant that it was no longer necessary for men and women to live within walking distance of their work. Spitalfields had for decades been a popular residential area not just for the destitute, but also for low paid workers whose employment was found in the City or along the banks of the Thames. As transport links improved, developers began to build new estates of affordable housing in parts of Middlesex, Kent and Surrey that until recently had been impossible to commute from. Suddenly it became possible for workers to move out to the new suburbs such as Charlton, Norwood, Wembley, Finchley, Ilford and still retain their jobs in central London. This sea change in the way people lived and worked would eventually have a devastating effect on the fortunes of the Spitalfields landlords.

While the very poor remained in the area, those who had once relied on their furnished rooms and two-up, two-down cottages were lured away to the suburbs, never to return. This economic change was coupled with the fact that many of the houses the landlords let out were literally falling to pieces. The once middle-class properties had been in a pretty bad state when the landlords had acquired them twenty years previously. Since then, they had been ill-used by the tenants and neglected by their owners – remember that McCarthy didn’t even bother to paint over the bloodstained wall in Mary Kelly’s room, let alone embark on any serious renovation work.

In addition to the population changes and the dilapidated state of many properties in Spitalfields, traffic around Spitalfields Market was still causing increasing problems. On market days, there were so many carts, vans and barrows around that the streets became impassable. Market customers complained that they couldn’t get close enough to the market to pick up their goods, non-market related shops moaned that their customers couldn’t get through the mêlée (thus losing custom) and thefts from unattended vehicles were commonplace.

By the 1890s, the newly-formed London County Council could clearly see that widening the streets around the market would solve two problems in one fell swoop. Firstly, wider streets would ease traffic congestion considerably, and, secondly, it would give them the opportunity to get rid of the dreadful courts and alleys that surrounded the market for good. The only problem was that the market did not belong to the council.

Undeterred, the LCC began introducing bills in Parliament that they hoped would give them the power to purchase the freehold on Spitalfields Market. In 1902, their wish was granted and the freehold was bought from the trustees of the Goldsmid family (the current owners). The leaseholder, Robert Horner (who had run the market since the 1870s), proved a more difficult nut to crack. After much negotiating, Horner reluctantly agreed to relinquish control of the market for £600,000 – a massive sum in those days. However, his agreement contained many caveats and for the next ten years, the situation at Spitalfields Market remained the same as the LCC and Robert Horner battled it out.

The landlords and residents of Dorset Street realised that it was only a matter of time before their lives and businesses would be seriously affected by the proposed redevelopment around the market. However, the daily struggle to simply stay alive prevented most of the residents from worrying too much about the fact they may soon be made homeless. Jack McCarthy and William Crossingham didn’t lose too much sleep over the proposed expansion either. By the beginning of the new century, they were reaching retirement age and their thoughts were inevitably turning to more leisurely activities than the hard and sometimes violent profession of slum landlord. In addition to this, running common lodging houses was getting to be an increasingly frustrating business.

By 1903, all lodging-house keepers were required to register their properties every year (previously one, initial registration had been sufficient). In addition, each lodging house had to be equipped with certain facilities. For example, a lodging house accommodating between 60 and 100 people had to provide one water closet for every 20 people and all lodgers had to be provided with towels. Previously, landlords had got away with one or two water closets for the entire house so the provision of extra toilets meant that space had to be converted for the purpose.

The provision of towels also proved a headache. Most of the lodgers were not too interested in personal cleanliness and many were infested with lice and other creepy crawlies. In 1908, the council had to pay for 32 women lodgers from the Salvation Army Women’s Shelter in Hanbury Street to be washed at the Poplar Cleansing Station. Consequently, the towels they were given quickly became infested and the lodging house keepers were faced with the old problem that laundries refused to take them. Washing usually fell to some of the local women who, in the absence of appropriate washing facilities, usually made the towels dirtier than they had been before they were washed.

The new laws also made it illegal for lodging houses to be unattended between the hours of 9pm and 6am. This may have proved problematic for the more rural establishments, but the nature of the Spitalfields residents had long since made it necessary for a deputy to be on-site constantly while the house was in use.

The new laws attached to common lodging houses prompted the writer Jack London to investigate them while researching his book
The People of the Abyss.
Instead of asking local policemen about conditions and touring the area with an armed escort, London decided to experience the lodging houses from the inside. His comments following his research prove that he learnt far more about the problems associated with the lodging houses than any councillor could ever hope to. At the time of Jack London’s research, there were 38,000 registered common lodging houses in London. London noted: ‘There are many kinds of doss-houses, but in one thing they are all alike, from the filthy little ones to the monster big ones paying 5% [to investors] and blatantly lauded by smug middle class men who know nothing about them, and that one thing is the uninhabitableness.’

Jack London went on to describe one of the lodging houses he stayed in, in Middlesex Street, Whitechapel:

‘The entrance was by way of a flight of steps descending from the sidewalk to what was properly the cellar of the building. Here were two large and gloomily lit rooms, in which men cooked and ate. I had intended to do some cooking myself, but the smell of the place stole away my appetite... A feeling of gloom pervaded the ill-lighted place.’

London beat a hasty retreat from the kitchen and decided to go and pay for his bed. After surrendering his money, he was issued with a ‘huge, brass check’; his ticket, which had to be surrendered to the doorman upstairs before venturing to the sleeping quarters. Once upstairs, he gave a brilliantly observed description of what a typical lodging house bedroom looked like at the turn of the century: ‘To get an adequate idea of a floor filled with cabins, you have to merely magnify a layer of the paste-board pigeon-holes of an
egg
crate till each hole is seven feet in height and otherwise properly dimensioned, then place the magnified layer on the floor of a bar-like room, and there you have it. There are no ceilings to the pigeon-holes, the walls are thin and the snores from all the sleepers and every move and turn from your nearer neighbours come plainly to your ears.’

By the beginning of the 20th century, changes to lodging house regulations showed that the powers that be were at least making some effort to improve the lot of the very poor. However, many of the streets in which the lodging houses stood had gained such a nefarious reputation over the years that mere mention of their name caused a sharp intake of breath. In a rather desperate bid to rid the worst streets of their appalling reputation, a council official suggested that a name change might help and so it was that, in 1905, Dorset Street changed overnight into Duval Street. No explanation exists as to why the name Duval was chosen, although it may have been selected to evoke memories of the long departed Huguenot silk weavers that populated the street during happier times. Not surprisingly, the name change did little to improve the general ambience of the street.