Social Housing in The East End of London during the Victorian Period.

 

Leopold Buildings, Columbia Road,  Tower Hamlets.

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 frind 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 dfference. She was also a close friend of Charles Dickens who corresponde with her a lot and aided her in many of her charitable schemes.Burdett Coutts paid for Dickens eldest son to attend Eton College.

Urania Cottage ,Shepherds Bush.

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. It6 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 Wiils.Her funds were often distributed bybtrusted 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 Colombia 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

Tenement blocks seen from the centre of Arnold Circus, the site of the Old Nichol Rookery.

Often, when I travel up to Shoreditch to volunteer at The museum of The Home on Kingsland road I get off the train at Shoreditch Station and 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. Te 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 onto the rooms inside. They have a utilitarian design but also have interested 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. 

The Charles Booth poverty maps that were created between 1886 and 1903 were too late to show the poverty in the area although most people were still poor. His maps show the new estate constructed by the LCC. This was good quality housing with proper sanitation brought about by Joseph Bazalgettes sewer system completed in 1875 and which  had solved many of the sanitation problems, and hence many of the diseases of London.

ARTISANS AND LABOURERS ACTS

Much of this new housing for the poor and the creation of better living conditions were brought about by the Artisans and Labourers Improvement Act of 1875. Or also known as The Cross Act after Richard Cross the Home Secretary under Disraeli’s government who designed the act. Disraeli wanted to elevate the poor. It was part of his one nation Conservative policy. Many organisations and philanthropists had begun work on housing already. 

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. They were now able to implement The Torrens Act which was The Artizans and Labourers Dwelling Act of 1868 and the Cross Act of 1875 , the Artizans and Labourers Dwellings Improvement Act of 1875.  The Torrens Act focussed on individual buildings while The Cross Act focussed on whole areas for redevelopment.

These two acts enabled the creation of whole housing estates. The LCC chose Boundary Street as their flagship scheme.

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 to 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.

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  including 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 Mcauley niece of Thomas Babington Macauley. 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

Arnold Circus:

https://www.londonsociety.org.uk/post/arnold-circus-first-council-housing-estate-london

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

Model Dwellings Companies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_dwellings_company

Healey Edna: Lady Unknown. The Life of Angela Burdett Coutts, 1978.

THE GENIUS OF JANE AUSTEN (15 minutes) A talk to my wife's bookclub.

 

A sketch of Jane Austen by her sister Cassandra. It is owned by the National Portrait Gallery.

My wife is a member of a bookclub. They have been meeting for twenty years. I was recently invited to talk to the club about the genius of JaneAusten This year being the 250th anniversary of her birth many Austen societies , Austen places and academics are celebrating this event in all sorts of ways. The ,"bookclub," are reading all her novels and also, now, have listened to me going on about her. Using the idea of how nature and nurture work together to make who we are was my starting point. What made Jane Austen a genius?. This is a copy of the talk I gave. What is missing are the asides from group members, witty comments and me going off at a tangent when I was asked a question. Also it is impossible to recreate the warmth and friendly atmosphere of the meeting. I'll leave you to imagine the scene.

DEATH

Jane Austen died on the 10th July 1817. She was 41 years old. She probably died of Addisons Disease or some think it could have been arsenic poisoning or a number of other diseases. Her doctors left no definitive diagnosis, just descriptions of her symptoms. Later in the year following her death her brother Henry wrote a tribute to her in the introduction to Northanger Abbey. Both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published in the year of her death.

HENRY’S OBITUARY

He wrote, 

“The style of her correspondence was in all respects the same as that of her novels. Everything came finished from her pen; for in all subjects she had ideas as clear as her expressions were well chosen. It is not hazarding too much to say that she never dispatched a note or letter unworthy of publication.”

That was complete nonsense. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Jane Austen was one of eight siblings. She had five older brothers, James, George, Edward Henry  and Francis,  an older sister, Cassandra and a younger brother Charles. Jane was the seventh. Her father George was the rector of two parishes in Hampshire, that of Deane and also of Steventon. Both parishes  are located near Basingstoke. The family lived in the Steventon Rectory. George Austen was  an academic. He had been a  scholarship student and later proctor at Oxford University  before he married Cassandra Leigh. With  marriage  he  had to leave the university and he became a parish Rector. With two parishes he collected tythes but also had some land on which he could farm. To supplement his income he tutored the sons of the gentry , often the sons of friends he knew at Oxford. He prepared the sons  to enter Oxford in their turn. The boys lived with the Austen family at Steventon. George Austen owned a diverse library of some hundreds of books including, novels, poetry, religious books, travel journals and science books which he let Jane, her sister and her brothers freely read . 

Jane’s brothers were on the whole a talented bunch. James and Henry went to Oxford following in their father’s footsteps and both tried their hands at writing, plays, poetry and journalistic writing, which they published.  They copied the style of Dr Johsons magazine The Rambler in their own magazine called The Loiterer. The family loved Dr Johnsons writing and so did Jane. There is  an anonymous article in the  ninth edition of The Loiterer called Sophia Sentiment. It humorously criticises the magazine for not publishing more writing by and for women. The article promotes the genius of women writers. Many academics think the article was written by a young teenage Jane Austen.

The siblings put on dramatic presentations in the barn of their home at Steventon. Some of the scripts were written by the eldest James. There is no record of Jane performing in them, her brothers might have thought she was too young to perform adult roles but she certainly was in the audience and commented on the productions. 

Other members of her family tried their hand at writing. Her mother Cassandra wrote passable poetry. Her mother’s cousin , also born Cassandra Leigh , later, when she was married, Cassandra Cooke,  wrote a novel which Jane read called ,”Battleridge,” an historical novel.  So Jane had precedents within her own family and was herself encouraged to read and write. She learned from the strong influence provided by her family.

Her early juvenile writing, that was not published during her lifetime, includes a History of England illustrated by her sister Cassandra, poetry and plays and short epistolary novels, Lady Susan and Love and Friendship.  These were early  teenage attempts at novel writing. They are fun and somewhat salacious. Her parents didn’t seem to mind too much about her reading books such as Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. The History of England she wrote is  partial and not something to read if you want to learn about history but it gives an  insight into the 18th century daughter of a country rectors view on history. 

EDUCATION

As far as a formal education goes she didn’t have much. In 1787, when she was seven years old, she went with her older sister, Cassandra to a Mrs Cawley’s School in Oxford. Mrs Cawley removed the school to Southampton where Jane, Cassandra and their cousin Jane Cooper became ill with typhoid fever. Mrs Cooper and Mrs Austen both took their children swiftly away to nurse them at home. Unfortunately, Mrs Cooper caught the fever and died. Her mother and father didn’t give up on formal schooling immediately. They then sent Jane , Cassandra and their cousin Jane Cooper joined them, to Reading Abbey School for  eighteen months. It is thought Jane’s description of Mrs Goddards School in Emma was derived from her own school experiences. Formal schooling was a not a success. But jane did seem to learn the rudiments of being an educated young lady. She learned to dance, play the pianoforte. Jane and Casandra both sketched. There is a large patchwork quilt that Jane made. In one letter to Cassandra, she asks her sister to source pieces of material for her quilt making.  Her real education was learning from her sister, her brothers and her father and reading voraciously and continuing to experiment with her writing.

INFLUENCES

I have mentioned some of the writers that influenced her. Dr Johnson wrote a novel called Rassalas Prince of Abyssinia.  The plot involves the main character travelling through many lands in search of what it means to be a balanced human being. There are links here with Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. We know she read Francis Burney’s Camilla, her aunt and uncle The Cookes lived in Great Bookham near Box Hill. Nearby lived Francis  Burney and her husband General D”Arblay. Jane would often visit. The Cookes knew  Francis Burney well. The Reverend Cooke baptised the D’Arblays son. Her aunt encouraged Jane to subscribe to buying a copy of Camilla. There is a mention of,” pride and prejudice” in Camilla and probably Jane got the idea for own novel from Camilla.

In Northanger Abbey there is a scene where a number of Gothic novels are mentioned. Catherine Moorland is hooked on reading them. Jane probably got some of her ideas  for Northanger Abbey from Anne Radcliffe’s novel The Mystery of Udolpho which is one of the novels Catherine Moorland reads in the novel. Other authors that influenced Jane Austen’s writing were Maria Edgeworth and Lord Byron, you can see how some of Austen’s men are Byronic characters, She read Samuel Richardson and  Shakespeare,  when the characters in Mansfield Park get lost in the wilderness at Mr Rushworths house Sotherton there are echoes of A Midsummer Nights Dream. She also read Hannah Moore a Quaker and abolitionist and the playwright Sheridan who wrote School For Scandal. Her favourite poet was William Cowper. She loved going to the theatre when she stayed with her brother Henry in Covent Garden  in London at number 10 Henrietta Street. She mentions in  her letters from London about her visits to the Covent Garden theatre. She saw Edmund Keane perform Shylock in  The Merchant of Venice.  Dialogue and listening to characters speak to each other and interact with each other was one of her loves and passions. 

PUBLISHERS

Her father and brother Henry as well as other members of her family supported her writing.Henry especially made great efforts to arrange for publishers to buy and publish her novels. That was not an easy task but her own family believed in her and thought she warranted the effort.  One of the first publishers to buy her manuscripts was Benjamin Crosby. He bought a copy of First Impressions an early version of Pride and Prejudice but did nothing with it. Eventually Henry bought the manuscript back from Crosby for £10. More successful was Thomas Egerton who had his offices in Whitehall. He published Sense and Sensibility followed by Pride and Prejudice. Later she was published by John Murray of Albemarle Street. He published Mansfield Park and Emma during her lifetime. After her death, in the same year, he published Northangar Abbey and Persuasion.

INNATE TALENT

She was obviously born with  and developed an intelligence which she put to the task of writing. Her early juvenile attempts at novel writing, Lady Susan and Love and Friendship were written in the epistolary style that writers such as Francis Burney used. The epistolary style was a story written as a series of letters between  two or more characters.  Because they were letters they created a distance between the reader and the characters within the story. Jane’s attempts at this style are hilarious though. Jane changed her process of  writing  novels in later years, Elena and Marianne that later became Sense and Sensibiliy and First Impressions which became Pride and Prejudice were probably first written as epistolary novels. She was not averse to giving up on a novel if she didn’t think it was working such as The Watsons. Only a few chapters exist. Sanderton was never completed because she was ill towards the end of her life. At some stage Jane decided to do things differently. You can see how her love of plays came into use. Books like  Pride and Prejudice are full of conversations. Her characters are unique.with their own particular strengths and weaknesses, faults and failings. Austen portrays their individual development. They are never mere caricatures. They are alive and feel real. Emma Woodhouse is a good example. She is not everybody’s favourite character. She is selfish self centred,  and acts as though she is  superior to everybody else. Austen portrays her development in a very human way. The pain of self awareness and her improved treatment of others is a slow process which makes  her all the more real. 

Austen never gives up fully on the use of letters though.  Letters still play an important part.  The famous letter in Persuasion when Captain Wentworth expresses his love to Anne Elliot is a letter in question.  Apparently people still swoon over that   letter to this day. 

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late…”

So Jane Austen reinvented the novel making it real.

CONTROVERSY

There has been some controversy in the last few years over whether Jane Austen needed an editor which obviously counters her brother Henrys assertion that, “Everything came finished from her pen.” Katheryn Sutherland, an Oxford University professor has studied over a thousand pieces of writing Jane wrote in her own hand. Her punctation is hit and miss. She has a habit of using capital letters randomly  for emphasise. Her grammar and sentence construction is  poor at times.  If you read her remaining letters, about 160 in all, you can read for yourself the patchy grammar and see her creative use of punctuation. John Murray her final publisher asked William Gifford, one of his editors, to have a good look at Jane’s writing. Gifford told Murray he thought she had talent, but her prose needed, “buffing,” as he put it. So maybe the polished smooth version of Jane Austen’s novels we know today were not so polished originally. As you can imagine this has upset a lot of people. I don’t think it should take away from her achievements. 

Many people I know have said,” so what, many great writers if not all have needed an editor to help their process.”

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Is jane Austen on a par with Shakespeare? Virginia Woolf wrote a long essay called A Room of Ones Own. She argued that a woman author to be equal to Shakespeare needed enough independent income, her own private space and a whole cohort of other women writers over the generations to provide a rich female literary background enabling this future female author to be on a par with Shakespeare. Woolf also thought that women required the same level of education as men. In the 1930s  that was not the case.  She calls this woman of the future, “Shakespeare’s Sister. “She mentions Jane Austen as being good but still not able to reach the heights of Shakespeare. Austen’s’ world was far too restricted and narrow. She wrote about a small community in each novel and mostly only included the gentry class. 

On the other hand you can argue that you can find a whole world in a grain of sand and that Virginia Woolf  was being too negative. 

FINISH

But to finish off,  what we need, following Virgina Woolf’s argument,  is a lot more, hundreds ,probably thousands more women to write novels, to really build up a bank of experience that one day one woman writer can rise up to be on a par with Shakespeare. In other words you lot need to get writing a novel. 

(NB George and possible deafness. George did not live with the Austen family. His father paid for a local farmer and his wife to take care of him. George is mentioned once in her fathers letters . He had visited George. He says that his son was good natured and behaved well. It is thought because of his disability whatever it was George was unable to join in with the family’s everyday life. JA recorded that she learned to speak with her hands. There was no reason for her to learn sign language other than somebody she knew well was deaf.)

The Tale of Jerry Abershawe, Highwayman.

Jerry Abershawe (1773-1795)

Not far from where I live, on the edge of Wimbledon Common where the Kingston Road passes, are some trees on the side of a small rise of ground. This part of the common is called Jerry’s Hill. It is named after the 18th-century highwayman called Jerry Abershawe, who frequented those parts and held up carriages on their way between Kingston and London. He was one of the last highwaymen.

 

Jerry's Hill. The gibbet was near here. Image @Tony Grant

A highwayman was a thief who held up passers by, usually people travelling in carriages, at gun point or with a blunderbuss , and relieved the passengers of their valuables. Some attacks on coaches were brutal and people were killed. Highwaymen were not necessarily the dashing handsome masked desperados of fiction with the manners of a lord and a twinkle in the eye for a beautiful lady. “Stand and deliver!” was their traditional call. They chose lonely remote stretches of the highways to perform their dastardly deeds, but they also had to be sure they chose an area where there was regular traffic going to and fro or their despicable mission would be pointless. They chose places just outside towns and cities where there was a constant flow of people travelling. Wimbledon, then a small rural village on the outskirts of London and with a vast area of wild untamed common land around it, was an ideal spot.

 

Gibbet post at Tibbet's Corner. Image @Tony Grant

Jane Austen was travelling to London from Steventon in 1796 the year after Jerry Abershawe was hung. They were about the same age, she was 20 and Gerry was 22 years old at the end of his life.

To Cassandra Austen Thursday 15 – Friday 16th September:

“….As to the mode of our travelling to Town, I want to go in a Stage Coach, but Frank will not let me. As You are likely to have the Williams’ & Lloyds with You next week, You would hardly find room for us then-. If anybody wants anything in Town, they must send their Commissions to Frank, as I shall merely pass thro’ it- The Tallow Chandler is Penlington, at the Crown & Beehive Charles Street, Covent Garden.”

 

From Steventon, the most direct route for Jane to London took her through Basingstoke, Virginia Water, Staines, Richmond upon Thames, Hammersmith and on to Westminster and the centre of London. From Staines she  travelled on what was known as The Great West Road which lead to London travelling east and going westwards, lead directly to the second most important city after London, in Georgian times, Bristol, the centre of the slave trade. Wealthy merchants and members of the aristocracy  travelled this road. It  had its fair share of highway robbers. Stagecoaches on this road were prime targets. So Frank was right to refuse Jane her wish. But maybe the excitement and the risk appealed to Jane. She was young after all. It does not say in Jane’s letter how they did get to Town, but I presume it was in less conspicuous transport and with her brother.

 

Wimbledon Common showing Jerry's Hill.

In 1813, Jane did travel along the London Road leading out of Kingston, Jerry Abershawe’s haunt. She did this many times from Chawton. There is no hint in her letters of any possible dangers but by the time she was living in Chawton, although the Kingston route was now her most direct route to Town, highwaymen were all but extinct. The toll roads had made highway robbery very difficult. Roads were manned every few miles and the people using them paid to use them. This made it difficult for highway robbers to make their escape along these routes so this crime virtually died out.

 

Jerry's Hill, London Road. Image @Tony Grant

To Cassandra Austen Wednesday 15 – Thursday 16 September 1813 Henrietta Street (1/2 past 8-)

Here I am, my dearest Cassandra, seated in the Breakfast, Dining, sitting room, beginning with all my might. Fanny will join me as soon as she is dressed & begin her Letter. We had a very good journey- Weather & Roads excellent – the three first stages for 1s – 6d & our only misadventure the being delayed about a quarter of an hour at Kingston for Horses, & being obliged to put up with a pr belonging to a Hackney Coach & their Coachman, which left no room on the Barouche Box for Lizzy, who was to have gone her last stage there as she did the first;- consequently we were all four within , which was a little crowd;-We arrived at quarter past 4 …”

This time there was no sense of Jane’s brothers putting their foot down and refusing to let her travel in what appeared to them in the past,  an inappropriate mode of transport. The party Jane travelled with appeared to be Henry, Lizzy and Fanny. There was no danger, just the excitement of the journey, and from Kingston on their last stage, the cramped conditions of four of them inside the barouche. 

They would have passed the inn at the bottom of Kingston Hill, where Jerry Abershawe had once made his headquarters, before their barouche made the long rising trek up the hill onto Wimbledon Common, going past Jerry’s Hill, where I am sure the gibbet would still have been displayed on the right hand side of the road. There probably was no sign of the remains of Jerry Abershawe by that time though. His body had been pecked clean by the crows and his bones had been taken as souvenirs. His finger bones and toe bones were used in candleholders. Jerry Abershawe was the last person to have his body displayed like this on a gibbet.

 

JERRY ABERSHAWE

Louis Jeremiah Abershawe(1773-3 August 1795), better known as Jerry Abershawe, terrorised travellers between London and Portsmouth in the later 18th century. He was born in Kingston upon Thames and at the age of 17 began his life of crime. He formed a gang, which was based at an inn on the London Road between Kingston and Wimbledon, at the bottom of Kingston Hill called the ,Bald Faced Stag.I am sure, as well as his primary occupation of highway robbery, Jerry Abershawe also managed to gain the odd carcase of a King’s deer from Richmond Park, which backed on to the, Bald Face Stag Inn. The inn no longer exists, but there was a very large pub and restaurant built there in the early 1900’s that, just a few years ago, was demolished for new housing built on the site.

Jerry had other places of refuge at Clerkenwell near Saffron Hill. He used a house called the Old House in West Street. Other highwaymen also used this house. Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild were known to have stayed there. It was a house renowned for its dark closets, trap doors, and sliding panels.

 

Clerkenwell

All attempts to bring Jerry Abershawe to justice failed until in January 1795, when he shot dead one of the constables sent to arrest him in Southwark and badly injured the other constable sent along too. Abershawe was arrested at a pub in Southwark called The Three Brewers. He was brought to trial at Surrey Assizes in July of 1795, and convicted and sentenced to death. On Monday 3 August 1795, Jerry Abershawe was hung on Kennington Common, a couple of miles from Wimbledon and then his body was set up in a gibbet on the hill overlooking the Kingston Road, which was more commonly known then as the London Road, next to Wimbledon Common near the scene of many of his highway robberies. It remained there for all passers by to see and those so inclined to be warned of the price to pay for evil ways.

 

Newgate Prison

The Newgate Calendar for 1795 describes the manner of his being found guilty of murder. Newgate prison was a notorious London prison in which criminals waiting for trail would be held, and it was there that Jerry Abershawe was incarcerated before his execution.

“When the judge appeared in his black cap, worn by a judge at the time of passing of a death sentence, Abershaw, with the most unbridled insolence and bravado, clapped his hat upon his head, and pulled up his breeches with a vulgar swagger; and during the whole of the ceremony, which deeply effected all present except the senseless object himself, he stared full into the face of the judge with a malicious sneer and affected contempt, and continued this conduct till he was taken, bound hand and foot from the dock, venting curses and insults on the judge and jury for having consigned him to, “murder.”

The Newgate Calendar also describes his execution on Kennington Common.

“He was executed on Kennington Common, on the 3rd of August, 1795 in the presence of an immense multitude of spectators, among whom he recognised many acquaintances and confederates, to whom he bowed, nodded, and laughed with the most unfeeling indifference. He had a flower in his mouth, and his waistcoat and shin were unbuttoned, leaving his bosom open in the true style of vulgar gaiety; and talking to the mob, and venting curses on the officers, he died, as he had lived, a ruffian and a brute!”

 

A hanging at Tyburn 17th c.

Highwaymen especially were supposed to affect an attitude and a jocular type of behaviour called gallows humour. It seems that Jerry Abershawe went to his death displaying ribald and stentorious gallows humour.

 

Jerry's hill view. Image @Tony Grant

At least Jane was now safe on her journeys to London. But I wonder if she had just a small wish for the thrill of danger and would have loved to encounter Jerry on the wild wilderness of Wimbledon Common and ,”stand and deliver,” to him. If it had happened, would her novels have turned out differently in some ways?

 

Tibbets Corner. A stylized sign commemorating Jerry Abershaw. Image @Tony Grant