Georgian London: Into the Streets

by Lucy Inglis

  The entire operation was done, including dressing, in twenty minutes and with no form of anaesthetic. It was understandable that surgeons were regarded, in Burney’s words, as ‘practically insensible’ to the sufferings of their patients. They had to be. This insensibility was cultivated in the very early stages of their education by the handling of fresh corpses, and perhaps contributed to the moral ambivalence which surrounded the procurement of the necessary bodies. There is no doubt that the surgeons running these schools were treading a fine line.

  Although bodysnatching was common in London as soon as, if not before, the private anatomy schools were established, the only available documentation dates from the 1790s onwards, when the practice of surgery and the number of medical students grew dramatically. In 1793, there were 200 medical students in London; by 1823, there were over 1,000. In theory, they were all competing for access to the 100 corpses legally available. Even by the early eighteenth century, anatomists had separated themselves from the act of obtaining corpses. Instead, they employed their medical students, or ‘agents’ – men and women who went into prisons and hospitals to persuade those approaching the end of their lives to turn over their corpse in exchange for a financial incentive. Other agents were the bodysnatchers, known as the Resurrection Men.

  The Borough Gang of resurrectionists operated from the beginning of the nineteenth century until 1825. They were led by Ben Crouch, a former porter at Guy’s Hospital. Sir Astley Cooper, the Professor of Anatomy at Guy’s, employed Crouch and his gang to source bodies for the students. Cooper was so dependent upon the gang’s efficient and constant service that when a member ended up in prison, usually for unrelated petty crime, Cooper continued to make payments to their family.

  The Borough Gang were particularly good at what they did. They hung around graveyards and funeral processions to identify their targets. The night after burial, they dug down to one end of the coffin and smashed their way in, then hauled the body out. The dirt was then replaced and the grave put back as it was found. Londoners were increasingly aware that the graves of their friends and family might not be safe, and they placed markers in the fresh earth so that they could check for disturbance. Some even rigged booby traps. Still, the Borough Gang were successful. They didn’t always wait to dig bodies up either, but broke into houses where the body was being prepared for burial.

  The resurrection trade became increasingly sophisticated, with complicated pricing structures. Freakish or unusual bodies commanded high prices. Children under three feet in height were classed as ‘large small’, ‘small’ or ‘foetus’ and priced by the inch. There was a separate trade in teeth, which were sold to dentists to furnish dentures. Some may even have attempted to transplant the dead teeth into living mouths. In 1817, Ben Crouch left the Borough Gang to follow the British Army in France and Spain where he raided the bodies of the dead for teeth, making a prosperous living.

  In Lambeth, in 1795, ‘three men were discovered conveying away five human bodies in three sacks’. The authorities ‘ascertained that the grave-digger was the chief robber; and that eight eminent surgeons were in the habit of buying these bodies … for each adult corpse, if not green or putrid, two guineas and a crown; and for persons under age, six shillings for the first foot, and ninepence per inch for all above it.’ Apparently, one of the surgeons ‘made a wanton use of these bodies, by using the skulls for nail-boxes, soap-trays, &c., and his child had an infant’s skeleton to play with as a doll.’ He became known as the Lambeth Articulator. The authorities also heard that ‘much of the human flesh had been converted into an adipose substance resembling spermaceti, and burnt as candles, whilst some had been converted into soap’.

  The public horror of the resurrectionists and dissection was growing as rapidly as the trade itself. Joseph Naples worked with the Borough Gang in 1811 and kept a diary of the gang’s extensive work throughout London, often taking five bodies a night from assorted cemeteries, and sometimes many more small corpses. On Tuesday 10 December, he wrote: ‘Intoxsicated all day: at night went out & got 5 Bunhill Row. Jack all most buried.’ The diary also shows how profitable bodysnatching was: on the 9th and 10th of the following January, Naples took in over £20 from St Thomas’s – and that was only his share of the profits. An average annual wage for a labourer was only around £40 at that point. Naples was caught, after being turned in by Ben Crouch, and was sentenced to two years in prison. He escaped, Sir Astley Cooper having intervened on his behalf.

  At around the same time, many surgeons in London formed a loose club which served two purposes. The first was to share information on both bodies and pricing, and to prevent the snatchers charging outrageous prices. The second was to raise awareness of the need for bodies. In 1828, the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh, committed to supply corpses for dissection, shocked Britain. A Select Committee was appointed to look into the need for a better system. Before the committee, Sir Astley Cooper described his loyal gang as ‘the lowest dregs of degradation’. This led to the passing of the 1832 Anatomy Act which allowed the corpses of paupers, and people who had died ‘friendless’, to be anatomized. The rising popularity of surgical procedures, as well as the Act, lessened the stigma about dissection, although bodysnatching remained one of London’s marginal trades right into the twentieth century.

  SOUTHWARK INDUSTRY: THE ALBION MILLS AND COADE STONE

  Southwark was home to some of London’s major industries. All along the river were the ‘great timber-yards … One would fear that the forest of Norway and the Baltic would be exhausted, to supply the want of our overgrown capital.’ There were also steelyards and ‘the vast distilleries … There are seldom less than two thousand hogs constantly grunting at this place; which are kept entirely on the grains.’

  Windmills throughout Southwark and Lambeth milled flour for much of London. In the early 1780s, Samuel Wyatt decided to employ new technology in the creation of a large flour mill. In March 1783, he negotiated the lease on land now covered by the railway into Waterloo. He began to build quickly and, in 1786, the first engine was installed. It was the first of three steam engines designed by Boulton & Watt, and was one of the earliest to be used for such industrial purposes. The mills were opened in a flush of publicity, attended by prominent Londoners, including Josiah Wedgwood.

  The first engine could grind ten bushels of wheat per hour between twenty pairs of millstones. It was a wonder of the new industrial age, and many visited to see it in action. The second engine was up and running by 1788. In 1791, before the third engine could be installed, the Lambeth mills burned down, destroying a massive stock of flour and grain.

  Arson was suspected. The local mill owners had watched Albion Mills turning out far more flour in a day than they could hope to produce in a week. Steam power had divorced Albion Mills from the vagaries of the weather, and many suspected that the owners were speculating by stockpiling flour. William Blake, born in Lambeth, had seen the significance of Albion Mills: even the name conjured some idealized version of the nation. But for Blake, these were the ‘dark, satanic mills’ of Jerusalem.

  The Albion Mills were never rebuilt. On the night of the fire, many of the poorer inhabitants of Southwark danced in the street for joy at the demise of the industrial monster. It was a symbol of the industrial revolution, heralding the arrival of a new, mechanized age – an age that could not be held back for long.

  The south bank was already a centre for brewing, wire-making, glass-making and anchor-smithing. Then, in 1769, Widow Coade arrived in Lambeth from Lyme Regis, bringing with her one of Georgian London’s forgotten wonders: Coade stone or, as she called it, Lithodipyra.

  Eleanor Coade was born, in 1733, to a family of ceramicists, and to a father who couldn’t stay solvent. He died in 1769, and in the same year she and her daughter, also Eleanor, arrived in Narrow Wall, Lambeth, taking over an artificial stone foundry from one David Picot, who retired or left the business two years later.

  There had been a histo
ry of artificial stone being made in the area, but the Coades had a secret. Their stone was finer and more durable than anyone else’s and could be cast into very fine relief. They made it to a secret formula, which they guarded during their lifetimes. The younger Eleanor Coade was a formidable artist and businesswoman, and she took on the title ‘Mrs’, although she never married. After her mother’s death, in 1796, she took the business to a new level, and the improvements in the ‘mix’ are probably down to her.

  Coade soon became the stone to have, due to the imaginative and lively modelling. In addition, it stays clean and isn’t eroded by pollution. Sculptors were drawn not only from Britain but also included some of the talented foreigners working in London at the time, such as John de Vaere who later worked for Wedgwood. Customers could commission what they wanted, or choose from the Coade’s catalogue. They could also visit the premises, where huge garden statuary and architectural ornaments were displayed everywhere. In 1799, Eleanor Junior appointed her cousin and chief modeller, John Sealy, as her partner. In the same year, they opened Coade’s Gallery on the Pedlar’s Acre at the south end of Westminster Bridge.

  There was almost no style, or size, in which Coade’s were not willing to work. Their designs range from Indian animal friezes to gates to Greek Revival statues. They had a team of in-house designers but also worked to designs by Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West and James Wyatt. The stone was used throughout London, and was also shipped to South Africa, Ceylon, Gibraltar and the West Indies. A Gothic font was created for a church in Bombay. A bank in Montreal ordered much of its decoration from the Lambeth firm. The King of Portugal ordered a special set of architectural works for his complex in Rio de Janeiro (some of which now form the gates to Rio’s zoo).

  Eleanor Coade died in her house in Camberwell Grove, in 1821. She was a devout Baptist. The recipe for the stone still exists, and Coade stone can be made today. The special ingredient which made the mix so workable was not cement, but ceramic. Amongst London’s extant Coade is the shopfront of Twining’s at 216 Strand, and Captain Bligh’s tomb in St Mary’s Churchyard, Lambeth. On the south-east side of Westminster Bridge stands a large Coade stone lion on a pedestal, close to the site of his creation. Originally he had stood outside the Red Lion Brewery, close to County Hall, but was moved to Waterloo Station in 1949. He was brought to the current spot in 1966, and gazes towards the Houses of Parliament with a somewhat defiant expression. Little wonder, as his testicles were removed in case they caused offence to public decency.

  Eleanor Coade’s stone factory, Lambeth, 1784. The interior of the kiln shows the firing of the statues of the Thames river god and the Four Seasons

  From the industries of the south bank, large and small, we next turn back to north London proper, and the industries of the East End, which were born, flourished and died all within the eighteenth century.

  10. Spitalfields, Whitechapel and Stepney

  Daniel Defoe, born in 1660, recalled the Spitalfields of his youth: ‘The Lanes were deep, dirty, and unfrequented; that Part now called Spitalfields-market was a Field of Grass, with Cows feeding on it, since the Year 1670.’ This pastoral scene did not last long. By 1700, Spitalfields, and Whitechapel to the east, was a mass of open spaces given over to brewing, cloth workers’ animals, and illegal housing. The area had held religious houses and early theatres, including Richard Burbage’s predecessor to The Globe. These open spaces were used for recreation and the relatively low-level commerce of London’s woollen industry. It was also a refuge for many dissenting religions, including the Huguenots and the Jews; immigration has been a constant theme, as well as a bone of contention, throughout the area.

  London had been the centre of Britain’s cloth trade for centuries; throughout the city there were areas which concentrated on buying, storing, weaving, dyeing and treating. Even during the late medieval period, the City’s weavers and textile businesses were moving east to make the most of the ample water supply and the open ground. Open ground was very important to the cloth industry: when large bolts of fabric were treated, they needed to be dried on the ‘tenter grounds’ marked on many of the maps of the area. To prevent the dyes settling unevenly, they were pulled out tightly with tenterhooks, giving us the saying ‘being on tenterhooks’.

  The ample natural springs and lack of confinement were attractive to other light industries, such as brewing. In 1694, Joseph Truman established the Black Eagle Brewery in Brick Lane, and the ‘brewhouse’ came to dominate the area as one of the greatest single employers in Georgian London. The firm soon took up six acres on the east side of Brick Lane. Their output was tremendous. (The Truman Brewery building, although a later version, still exists today, now converted into trendy studios for media businesses.)

  Spitalfields (top) and Whitechapel, detail of map by John Greenwood, 1827

  But the area was, and would remain for two centuries, dominated by weaving and cloth-finishing. Wool, long the English staple, was being supplanted in popular taste by linen and, soon after the beginning of the Georgian period, silk. Wool was grown in the provinces, linen usually originated from Ireland, and silk was an exotic product which was imported ready-made. An early attempt at keeping silkworms in England had failed, when James I planted many thousands of trees inedible to silkworms near Hampton Court Palace. From then on, it was deemed easier to obtain silk as a finished product. It was not until the arrival of the Huguenots en masse, in 1685–6, that the weaving community began to dominate the area. Huguenots had brought new techniques, designs and organization with them from France. So devastating was the effect of the Huguenot silk weavers leaving France that, within a few years of their departure, the country went from being a bulk exporter of silks to a bulk importer.

  Spitalfields is famous now for the weavers’ houses in and surrounding Spital Square, Fournier Street and Elder Street, which were built in the early eighteenth century and survived both the demolition and ‘improvements’ of the subsequent decades. The area is now associated with London’s artistic community. But as late as the 1970s, it was still relatively run-down, despite being right on the edge of the City. Now, the weavers’ houses are some of the most sought after in London, yet they are not all they seem. Many of them appear large and imposing from the outside, with their basements, three or four upper storeys and light, airy roof garrets, but inside they are only one or one and a half rooms deep, and sometimes these are very small. Elder Street, with its varied architecture, is a fine example of this. The houses were built quickly, on small old plots, and sometimes the rooms did not come up quite square. So the internal fittings, where they survive, contain the odd trompe l’oeil here and there to fool you into thinking they are symmetrical. The weavers of Spitalfields, even at the peak of their success during the first half of the eighteenth century, did not live in such grand style as might at first be imagined; in their housing, as in their fashion, they put on a fine show. The rapid rise and fall of the English silk trade created these streets and then left them, almost as if frozen in time, waiting for another group of artists to move in.

  LES RÉFUGIÉS: THE HUGUENOTS

  The arrival of the Huguenots revolutionized the English silk business. As they had come to dominate Soho, so they also came to dominate the Spitalfields and Shoreditch areas of London throughout the eighteenth century. Suzanne de Champagné sailed for England, in April 1687, with her siblings. Desperate to escape France, Suzanne’s mother, Marie de Champagné, and her children set out for La Rochelle. Marie was heavily pregnant, and unable to make the sea voyage straight away, but nineteen-year-old Suzanne made a plan to get the children to safety. She negotiated with an English sea captain, Thomas Robinson, to get them to England. At two o’clock that night, she took her smallest sister into her arms, and four sailors carried the whole family on to the boat on their shoulders. They were stowed inside a secret compartment, on piles of salt.

  After we were put there and seated on the salt … the trap door was closed again and tarred like the r
est of the vessel, so that no one could see anything there … we took care to hold our heads directly under the beams so that when the inspectors, as was their lovely custom, thrust their swords through, they would not pierce our skulls.

  The family were let out of the small hold, where the salt was stored with ballast, after the ship had been successfully inspected by the French authorities. Suzanne said that by the time of their release, they had been ‘suffocating in that hole and thought we were going to give up the ghost there, as well as everything we had in our bodies, which was coming out of them every which way’.

  They made it to England, but not without some difficulty, as Captain Robinson decided that he wanted more money and would not take them to their chosen destination of Topsham. Suzanne said this was ‘unjust and complained to the governor of the town’, who told Robinson to fulfil his contract. Robinson, of course, dumped them as soon as he could – in Salcombe, where they were found by local children.

  In the end, the Champagné family were successful in their various escapes and were reunited. Suzanne’s experience is by no means unique amongst the Huguenot community; many of the most extraordinary escapes went unrecorded, apart from family legend. Once they had reached London, many of these people, whether noble or not, turned up at the French Church on Threadneedle Street.

  The church offered a familiar form of worship. It seems that the Huguenot church was largely an informal one – not dissimilar, for the most part, to a Quaker meeting house. In a sixteenth-century picture of the temple in Lyons, there is even a dog sitting in the aisle, apparently listening to the sermon.

  The ‘court’ of the French Church of Threadneedle Street, where members were summoned if they had committed a crime such as adultery, also recorded petty infractions – for example, leaving the church early during the service. ‘This scandalizes the English, who hold pastoral blessing in high esteem, whereas we should neglect nothing that may persuade them we are Protestants truly Reformed according to the word of the Gospel.’ English people, such as Samuel Pepys, attended services at the Huguenot churches (Pepys particularly enjoyed the singing).