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Every Wednesday, I go into London to volunteer at The Museum of The Home, located on The Kingsland Road in Shoreditch. I travel up with Abi, my youngest daughter, who is on her way to work in Regent Street just north of Oxford Circus. I get out at Clapham Junction and Abi continues to Vauxhall.
From Clapham Junction I walk over to platform 2 from where The Windrush Line takes me on a winding journey through south of the river and on into the East End, Clapham, Brixton, Southwark, Bermondsey, under The Thames then Wapping, Shadwell, Limehouse and eventually Shoreditch and Hoxton where I usually get out next to The Museum. If I am early, I get out at Shoreditch station and walk through the streets of the East End on a journey of exploration. I often walk along streets I haven’t experienced before.
LEOPOLD BUILDINGS (TOWER HAMLETS)
Recently I got out at Shoreditch Station and started walking north, in the general direction of the museum. I took a side road I hadn’t been along before. I came to the junction where Hackney Road, Waterson Street and Columbia Road meet. A new estate of social housing and shops were positioned on the northern corner of Columbia Road. On the south side of Columbia Road stretched a block of six storey Victorian tenement housing called Leopold Buildings. Part of the structure is at basement level, below ground. They look elegant and spacious. Each flat has a wide bay window and a wrought iron balcony. In recent years, because they are a listed grade II building and are an important part of the history of housing in The East End they have been refurbished to a high standard. They belong to Tower Hamlets who employed the Kingsbury Group to refurbish them. The architectural firm who worked on the project were the Floyd Slaski Partnership. I think that if I lived in the East End, it is here that I would love to live.
Leopold Buildings were built in 1872 by The Improved Industrial Dwellings Company known as the IIDC,that was founded by Sir Sydney Waterlow in 1863. The land they used was leased from Angela Burdett-Coutts, the richest woman in Britain during the `Victorian period.
The IIDC operated mostly in central London. Areas that benefited from their housing included , Bethnal Green, where Leopold Buildings are located, Chelsea, Charing Cross, Southwark, Finsbury, Mayfair, Islington, Westminster, Camden and Wapping. Starting with an initial investment of £50,000 it became one of the largest and most successful housing companys. At its height it housed about 30,000 people.Its shareholders included MPs, lawyers, builders, and merchants. It built blocks of five to seven storey buildings providing self contained flats for artisans. Census returns for 1891, 1901 and 1911 show a retired soldier, a metropolitan policeman, a butcher, a cabinet maker and other furniture makers. Among the wives there were shirt makers and haberdashers. These were skilled working-class people. By 1871 over a 1000 IIDC dwellings were occupied and the profits grew above the 5 percent dividend paid. The design of the buildings was prepared by a surveyor working for the IIDC.
Sir SydneyWaterlow.
SIR SYDNEY WATERLOW
Sir Sydney Waterlow (1822-1906) was a philanthropist and Liberal party politician Nowadays he is remembered mostly for donating Waterlow Park, in Highgate to the public. The house he lived in is now a private junior school, Channing Junior School. Waterlow Park is located next to Highgate Cemetery which in itself has an amazing history. I have written a post separately about John lodge and myself visiting Highgate Cemetery and our tour of its famous tombs, vaults and graves.
(https://general-southerner.blogspot.com/2023/07/highgate-and-hampstead-leafy-land-of.html
I stood in front of the statue of Sir Sydney Waterlow erected in his park. He was born in Finsbury and brought up in Mile End. He was apprenticed as a stationer and printer and worked in his family firm of Waterlow and Sons. It was a large printing company. He moved into finance and became the director of the Union Bank of London. He was a commissioner at the great exhibition in 1851 and a juror at the Paris International Exhibition in 1867. He became a councillor in 1857 and in this role introduced telegraph links between police stations He became an alderman of the City of London in 1863. He began his philanthropic work at this time He was chairman of the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company which built Leopold Buildings He worked for other charities. He became Sheriff of London in 1866 and finally Lord Mayor of London from 1872.One of his charities set up the Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund.He became a member of Parliament first in 1868 for Dumfriesshire. Later he became the MP for Maidstone and eventually Gravesend.In 1870 he bought large areas of land in Kent. In 1887 he built Trosely Towers positioned on the North Downs. In 1872 he gave Lauderdale `house, situated in Waterlow Park to St Bartholomew’s Hospital as a convalescent home for the poor. It was staffed by nurses supplied by Florence Nightingale.
The remaining pillars to the entrance of Columbia Road Market outside of the nursery school.
COLUMBIA ROAD
Across the road from Leopold Buildings is located Columbia Market Nursery School. A low level timber constructed building fronts the road with ornate stone pillars, one topped with heraldic lion supporting a shield. Ornate iron railings border the front of the school too. The school buildings, some of them recent modern additions do not seem to go with the ornate stone pillars and the heraldic lion. There seems to be a mismatch of styles. On the railings is positioned an information board. It relates a short biography of Angela Burdett-Coutts a wealthy Victorian philanthropist who was a friend of Charles Dickens. Then just further along from the nursery school, Columbia Road Flower Market starts. Marilyn and I have been here before. There are many specialist, antique and craft shops set in a Victorian parade of shops on one side and a new housing estate on the other. Leopold Buildings followed by the information board about Angela Burdett Coutts alerted me to something important about this area, so I decided to explore more.
A modern block of flats in Columbia Road.
ANGELA BURDETT COUTTS and COLUMBIA ROAD MARKET
Angela Burdette Coutts.
Angela Burdett Coutts was born on the 21st April 1814. Her father was Sir Francis Burdett and her mother, Sophia Coutts was the daughter of Thomas Coutts, the great banker. Her father came from a wealthy family with country houses and estates but her grandfather Thomas Coutts , as a fifty percent shareholder and director of Coutts bank was immensely wealthy. Both her father and grandfather had mistresses towards the end of their lives. Sir Francis took comfort away from his marriage with Lady Oxford. Interestingly her parents had loved each other deeply at the beginning of their relationship. Her grandfather’wife , Susannah Starkie, had been a housekeeper to his brother and looked after his brothers children and against the families wishes he had married her. Towards the end of her life she became insane. She was always down to earth and ordinary which had appealed to Thomas . It was a sad end to her life as she was unable to fulfil her husbands needs as a wife. He formed a relationship with the actress Harriot Melon. This relationship was stable and lasting. She was reliable and wise and Thomas Coutts saw this in her. Thomas Coutts to the shock of his family and the public left his whole fortune to Harriot. She lived a luxurious life able to holiday abroad and spend the rest of her life in great comfort. Thomas Coutts had been wily as well as wise in his choice of Harriot. He got her assurance that she would take care of his family. There were some profligate members of the family who would not have cared for the famliy fortune as she did. Although she enjoyed her wealth she was careful with her money. She got to know every member of the family well and kept her eye on them. She was a shrewd individual. In the end she left the entire family fortune to Angela, Thomas’s youngest niece. This was not an obvious choice but Harriot thought that Angela, a serious, quiet girl was the best one to take care of all the wealth and use it well. Surprisingly the rest of the family, those who you would expect to hold a stronger claim, did not complain too much. Angela’s two older sisters married well and were given lots of money during their grandfathers lifetime. Angela became the sole beneficiary and the wealthiest woman in England and possibly the world. She became a 50% shareholder in Coutts bank. She was left property and houses.She was not allowed to interfere in the running of the bank but she knew the partners well and supported them. They were serious and very able men who ran the bank well. Angela received a vast yearly income.
So what had Harriot Mellon seen in the young shy heiress? Angela Burdett Coutts decided to use her wealth to help others.During her lifetime Angela Burdett Coutts was pesterd by mne who propsed marriage and in one case was persued relntlessley over a number of years by one unwelcome suitor who when he turned his attentions to ne of the Royla Princess was prosecuted and delared insane. S angela was always wary of men. She had her close frind hannah Meredith with her through out most of her life. Hanah had started as nglea’sgoverness but b43ecame her cose firend and confidante. This caused the social difficultiy of being in a lower class than may of Angela’s friends and family. Howvere she did become accepted by all in in cluding Queen Victoria.
Angela Burdett Coutts was close friends with many of the famous and powerful. She was close friend of The Duke of Wellington who was an old man when Angela was young. Their friendship was so close that many thought they might marry despite their age difference. She was also a close friend of Charles Dickens who corresponded with her a lot and aided her in many of her charitable schemes.Burdett Coutts paid for Dickens eldest son to attend Eton College.
One of the main charitable ventures Angela Burdett Coutts instigated, with the help of Dickens, was Urania Cottage, a house for homeless women set up in 1847. Dickens wrote about it, anonymously, in his publication Household Words in 1853. These women were cared for and taught skills and trades. Many emigrated to Australia to be married and to set up homes.
There were many more projects she worked on. She had a church built, called St Stephens that is located in Westminster in an area that was impoverished and where a lot of crime and disease was prevalent. The foundation stone was laid in 1847 and completed three years later in 1850. She set up Columbia Road Market established in 1869. It was a large gothic building. It never became successful because the local traders preferred to use the surrounding streets as they always had.When it was turned into a fish market it again failed because the fish traders of Billingsgate Market beside the Thames felt threatened and rejected the new market. Ornate pillars belonging to the entrance of the market still stand outside of Columbia Road School. At the back of the market Angela Burdett Coutts also had Columbia Buildings constructed. Social housing that was designed as a large U shaped block of flats. The area is now a series of modern blocks of social housing. Some of the road names recall its past history, Baroness Road and Colombia Market Nursery School and Old Market Square.
Other ventures that Angela Burdett Coutts was involved with included the construction of memorials and fountains in Victoria park located in Hackney on the north side of the Regents Canal. Near her grand house Holly Lodge in Hampstead she had Holly Village constructed. She financed the building of cathedrals with their Bishoprics in South Africa and Australia.
She supported explorers such as David Livingstone in Africa. The hope was that the fertile lands Livingstone discovered would create economic wealth for Africa. She supported Michael Faraday with his experiments in electromagnetism and electro chemistry. Charles Babbage and his early experiments in computing received her support. She was friends with Benjamin Disraeli and also Prince Louis Napoleon in France. Her influence and the use of her wealth was widespread.
According to Edna Healey, her biographer,
“her main concern was the welfare of the poor at home.”
The great majority of her financial assistance went to causes in the United Kingdom including Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Carlisle and Newcastle but it was. London and especially the East End to which she devoted most of her benevolence.
She gathered round her advisors, administrators, stewards, lawyers and aides. It was as though she created her own ,”government ,”of ministers to help her administer her aid to good causes. She had her trusted steward Weeden. Her main lawyer, to deal with legal matters, was W.J Farrer. Her chief aide was Wills.Her funds were often distributed by trusted almoners and clergymen friends such as Archdeacon Sinclair of Kensington and prebendary Barnes at Exeter. In 1867 the lawyer Mr Hassard became an assistant and after Will’s hunting accident in 1868 he took over as chief minister. The most gifted of her secretaries was Charles Osborne who was with her from 1887 to 1898.
Discovering Columbia Road and Leopold Buildings in Bethnal Green opened up a whole world to me.
CHARITIES WHO DEVELOPED HOUSING IN THE EAST END
The Improved Industrial Dwellings Company is known simply as the IIDC. One of the other large charitable and philanthropic organisations that sought to improve housing and conditions in the East End of London was the Peabody Trust. The two trusts had different styles. The IIDC built houses that fitted into existing streetscapes. The Peabody Trust built courtyard estates.
There were other trusts and charities that included The Artisans Labourers and General Dwelling Company, The East End Dwelling Company ( TEEDC) and The Four Percent Industrial Dwelling Company. Many of these trusts and companies founded to provide housing for the poor of The East End are often known by acronyms. Their full titles are laboriously lengthy and a short acronym is much easier to write and say.
The Four Percent Industrial Dwellings Company, was founded in 1885 by Anglo Jewish philanthropists including Sir Nathaniel Rothschild from the international banking family.
Lloyd P Gartner’s book about Jewish immigration states,
“Demolition was the surest cure for the ills found in most of the Jewish immigrants houses. Two ventures were prominent in the early years of slum clearance, The Four Percent Industrial Dwellings Company and the East End Dwellings Company both the outcome of the Unted Synagogues enquiry into ,”spiritual destitution,” in the East End in 1884. The Four Percent company proposed a four percent return to investors.There were some objections but with Rothschild in charge the money was quickly found. The houses were open for occupancy in 1886. The occupants were charged six shillings a week.The Rothschilds houses had two rooms, shared a toilet and kitchen with adjacent flat and opened to outdoor halls and stairways. They were draughty but solid and sanitary. They were not restricted to Jews but all the occupants were Jewish. By 1894 almost three thousand people resided in the Four Percent Dwellings and almost a thousand more in the East End dwellings."
The Jewish Chronical of the 17th December 1886 wrote,
” the dwellings in course of erection in Thrawl Street, Flower and Dean Street and George Street, Spitalfields are now all roofed in and it is expected that they will be completed at the end of next month. They will afford accommodation for upwards of 150 families.”
THE PEABODY TRUST
The Peabody Trust was founded in 1862 by the American banker ,based in London, George Peabody. He wanted to make a charitable gift to benefit Londoners. First of all he wanted to build a number of drinking fountains for the public. Finally he settled on a model dwellings company. Writing to the Times on 26th March 1862 he began the Peabody Donation Fund providing £150,000. He wanted to provide comfort and happiness to the poor and needy. Just before e died in 1869 he increased his gift to £500,000. Later an act of parliament constituted The Peabody Trust. The organisation was to provide model dwellings for the capital’s poor.
Their first tenement blocks were designed by H.A.Darbishire in Commercial Street Spitalfields in 1864.It contained 57 dwellings for the poor, nine shops,, baths and a laundry on the upper floor. Water closets were grouped in pairs by the staircases, one for every two flats. Estates in Islington, Poplar, Shadwell, Chelsea, Westminster and Bermondsey followed. Early the Trust imposed strict rules. Rents were to be paid weekly, there was a night curfew and a set of moral standards to be kept to.
ARNOLD CIRCUS
Often, when I travel up to Shoreditch to volunteer at The museum of The Home on Kingsland road if I get off the train at Shoreditch Station to walk to the museum, about half a mile away. I cross Redchurch Street outside of the station and walk up the cobbled streets. Up Turville Street, left into Old Nichol Street and then right up Clement Street to Arnold Circus. Arnold Circus is unusual in many ways. Tall dark red brick tenement buildings lead up to it and surround the steep conical mound in the centre of The Circus. The mound is grassed and topped by a conical roofed seating space. From the top you can look out over the area. Virginia Primary School is to the north built in the same Victorian style and bricks as the tenements. It has a wall of tall windows across its front. The Victorians wanted light to flood the classrooms. The tenement buildings such as Shiplake House to the west, and Marlow House, also have plenty of windows giving light into the rooms inside. They have a utilitarian design but also have interesting architectural details such as archhed doorways with a checkerboard pattern above the doors. They look solid and well built. They are used to this day and I am sure many have been beautifully modernised and updated inside..This estate was built between 1890 and 1893 by the LCC ( The London County Council). It replaced the Friars Mount Rookery in the Old Nichol area. The rookery was one of the worst slums in London, an area of cramped and overcrowded houses that had poor or no sanitation. Crime was rife. Diseases such as cholera and typhoid were prevalent.
ARTISANS AND LABOURERS ACTS
Much of this new housing for the poor and the creation of better living conditions were brought about the implementation of the Torrens Act which was The Artizans and Labourers Dwelling Act of 1868 and the the Artizans and Labourers Dwellings Improvement Act of 1875 also known as the Cross Act. The Torrens Act focussed on individual buildings while The Cross Act focussed on whole areas for redevelopment.by the Artisans and Labourers Improvement Act of 1875. Richard Cross, the Home Secretary under Disraeli’s government, designed the act. Disraeli wanted to elevate the poor. It was part of his one nation Conservative policy.
These two acts enabled the creation of whole housing estates. The LCC chose Boundary Street as their flagship scheme. The area that became known as Arnold Circus.
THE LCC
The LCC was created by the Local Government Act of 1888. It took responsibility for housing the working classes. Those with progressive views had obtained a large majority in the first election. The new housing committee of the LCC secured from Parliament the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890.
The LCC decided to develop 15 acres that included the Nichol and Snow estates and a small piece of Shoreditch beside Boundary Street.It was called the Bethnal Green Iimprovement Scheme. It would displace 5,719 people demolishing 730 houses in the process. The radical plan to replace the demolished properties would house a greater number of people in return. Owen Fleming designed the scheme. He planned tree lined streets, fifty feet wide, to radiate from Arnold Circus. The LCC architects designed twenty one properties and Rowland Hiil designed two more blocks. Each block contained between ten and eighty five tenements.
Altogether there were 1,069 tenements of two and three bedrooms accommodating 5,524 people.. They created new stadards for housing the working classes. The estate included a laundry, eighteen shops, which are mostly still shops today and seventy seven workshops.The 1740,s Shoredtich Church , St Leonards was kept intact and so were the two schools Virginia Primary School built in 1887 and Rochelle School built in 1877 before the estate was created.
Sadly, even for all this development, for the people who had lived in the Old Nichol Rookery things did not change. The old residents were forced further east within Bethnal Green and out towards Dalston. This created new overcrowding and new slums. The new estate was for the skilled working classes, policemen, nurses, clerks, cigar makers and furniture makers and the like.The Prince of Wales opened the estate in 1900. Today, walking through Arnold Circus and the tenement blocks, they have been refurbished to todays standards and are still lived in and the roads remain tree lined.
SHOREDITCH AND SOCIAL HOUSING HISTORICALLY
Shoreditch , just north of the city and bisected by the Kingsland Road, the old Roman Staine Street, has always been a place for social housing. In the 18th century almshouses were built by The Ironmongers Company between 1712 and 1714 on the Kingsland Road, just north of Arnold Circus. The Framework Knitters Amshouses were built in 1770 next to the Ironmongers Almshouses. The purpose of these almshouse were initially to house men who had worked for these institutions and who had hit hard times when they retired. They could apply to live in an almshouse from the age of 56. The Ironmgers Almshouses were built using the legacy left by Sir Robert Geoffrye (1612-1702) who had been the Master of the Ironmongers, Lord Mayor of London and was on the committee of The Royal African Company promoting the slave trade. He died without any children, his wife Pricilla dieing many years before him. His will requested his money to be used for good works. Although the Ironmongers Almshouses were for the social good of past employees, the thinking behind their construction and purpose was very different from the Victorian housing of one hundred years later built by the LCC, philanthropists and charitable organisations. These 18th century almshouses were intended for a very specific group and not for the poor generally.
CHARLES BOOTH
Charles Booth.
The Charles Booth poverty maps that were created between 1886 and 1903 were too late to show the dire poverty in the area ,most people were located in the area were now skilled artisans. His maps show the new estate constructed by the LCC that consisted of good quality housing with proper sanitation . The sanitation was enabled by Joseph Bazalgettes (1819- 1891) sewer system completed in 1875 and which solved many of the sanitation problems, and hence many of the diseases of London.
Charles Booth, born in 1840 was a dedicated social reformer of a different type. Booth was a critic of the philanthropists and charities that went before him. He saw many shortcomings and inadequacies. The charities and philanthropists had their key projects targeting certain aspects of poverty. Their approach was not universal and did not include all the poor.
Booth made his wealth in Liverpool as a ship owner.. He became profoundly concerned with social problems.. He was not a religious man. He infact became disillusioned with the church and conventional politics. These seemed to scratch at the surface of societies problems and failed to solve the underlying problem.He disliked the limitations of philanthropy and charities that required conditions placed on those who needed their help. These conditions included, church attendance, the banning of drink and in some cases keeping to a curfew. They had to keep to ideas of communinal living that was strict. He was unsuccessful as a Liberal candidate in the 1865 election, but while canvassing in the slums of Toxteth, in Liverpool, he saw the shocking poverty and squalor for himself. This helped towards his abandonment of religious faith because he saw the lack of real action by the churches. This developed in him a sense of obligation and responsibility to the poor. The education act of 1870 did not support enough the cause of secular education for the masses, and this drove Booth to further disillusionment with the politicians. The 1870 Act failed to resolve the problem of the involvement of the churches in state educational provision. It should, in his view, have begun to separate church and state, as was happening in other countries.
In April 1871 Booth married Mary Macauley niece of Thomas Babington Macauley the politician and historian. She was well educated and became an invaluable advisor and contributor to her husbands work on his survey of poverty in London.
Among his family and his friends Booth discussed the social issues of the day. Beatrice Potter and Octavia Hill were among his circle .The scale of poverty was often sensationally reported in the press and there was always the fear of social unrest. Booth wanted to create a true description of what was going on and gather useful facts about society. In 1884 he assisted in the Lord Mayor of London’s relief fund by analysing the census returns. He soon discovered that the census provided little useful information. In 1891 he was to make suggestions for the improvement of the census. After looking at other enquiries into poverty he thought it was by far underestimated. He decided to set up his own enquiry into the condition of workers in London.He held the first meeting to organise this enquiry in April 1886. The work would last until 1903. It ran to 17 volumes. They employed a team of social investigators who walked the streets of London knocking on doors, interviewing people and recording observations. Note books were carefully kept and poverty maps of all the different areas of London were created. The maps can be seen on the London School of Economics website including the many notebooks handwritten in pencil. In The Museum of London there is a display about Booths poverty maps.
The survey included three broad sections, poverty, industry and religious influences. The poverty series gathered information from the school boards about levels of poverty and types of occupation among the families. Trades associated with poverty, housing, population movements ,the Jewish community and education were all included It also included those in institutions and a lot of information was gathered about workhouses and the causes of poverty. It also covered religion, philanthropy, local govenement and policing.
Part of one of Booths poverty maps showing the rebuilt Arnold Circus.
This survey was of vital importance to discovering what society was really like and as such did inform political action both local and national. However one thing that a reader of today finds is that there is a certain tone deriving from Social Darwinism. It describes traits that the different ethnic groups were generally thought to have. They include, personality, behaviours,facial characteristcs, skin characteristics and often failed to see people as equal and as individuals.Social Darwinism caused a lot of problems in society especially leading up to the 1930s, seeing races as hierarchical. These ideas fed into Naziism and ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Darwin himself had not intended this. He studied animals and plants and not humans. Booth himself I am not sure intended to use this in a detrimental way. The state of poverty and how it could be remedied was his aim.
The maps produced were colour coded so that at a glance you could easily see the social conditions of any given area and street.Black demonstrated the lowest class and included what was termed as the vicious and the semi criminal class. The middle range included brown which indicated some comfortable lifestyles but some poor. The highest rank was a sandy yellow colour which denoted the upper middle class, upper classes and the wealthy.
REFERENCES:
Joseph Bazalgette: https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/london-stories/how-bazalgette-built-londons-first-super-sewer/
London School of Economics (LSE): Charles Booth’s maps and notebook
https://booth.lse.ac.uk/map
Angela Burdett Coutts /Columbia Market/ St Stephens Westminster (and school)/Urania Lodge/ Holly Lodge Estate
Various charitable organisations that built social housing.
https://www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/sir-sydney-waterlow-park-life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Sydney_Waterlow,_1st_Baronet
https://stilwellhistory.uk/social-housing/the-victorian-age/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_Estate
https://www.eastlondonhistory.co.uk/east-end-dwellings-company/#google_vignette
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Improved_Industrial_Dwellings_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Association_for_Improving_the_Dwellings_of_the_Industrious_Classes
Arnold Circus:
https://www.londonsociety.org.uk/post/arnold-circus-first-council-housing-estate-london
Model Dwellings Companies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_dwellings_company
Healey Edna: Lady Unknown. The Life of Angela Burdett Coutts, 1978.
Very thorough and informative.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I enjoyed discovering the East End.
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