The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd

by Rule, Fiona

  On the evening of 5 June, one of the Dorset Street lodging houses was the scene of a heated argument that broke out between Annie Chapman (obviously not the Ripper victim) and fellow lodger, Elinor French. The lodging house deputy made no attempt to nip the argument in the bud and soon the women were screaming at one another. Finally, unable to contain herself any longer, Chapman grabbed a broken pair of scissors and rushed at French, stabbing her in the face, just below her right eye. The police were summoned and French was encouraged to prosecute her attacker. Consequently, the two women appeared in court on 11 June. French appeared in the witness box with her head swathed in bandages, thus making Chapman look very much the villain of the piece. Annie Chapman was committed for trial and most likely enjoyed a spell in penal servitude as a result.

  Chapter 19

  A Lighter Side of Life

  Although life in Dorset Street was tough, there were distractions and diversions available to even the poorest of inhabitants: drinking dens had been a feature of the area ever since it had been built. By the mid-1600s, local demand was such that William Bucknall opened a brewery in Brick Lane. In 1697, one Joseph Truman became manager and his family subsequently founded what was to become The Black Eagle Brewery – the largest brewery in London.

  Back in the 17th century, pubs as we know them today did not exist. Instead, Spitalfields locals frequented alehouses and taverns. Alehouses were originally private properties belonging to individual brewers in which locals could purchase and consume the brewers’ ale. Mention is made of their existence in England as early as the 7th century and it is highly likely that they were extant long before this. Over the following centuries, the population increased, the natural water supply became contaminated by industry and ale gained a reputation as a drink that was both safe to consume and had a pleasant effect on the imbiber’s state of mind. The subsequent increase in demand led to ale houses evolving from informal, sometimes part-time affairs into profitable and efficiently-run businesses.

  By the mid-16th century, improved transport and communication networks meant that foreign wines became increasingly accessible to the general public, particularly those with a reasonable amount of disposable income. As a result, taverns (a contemporary version of Roman ‘tabernae’) began to spring up in London and other major cities. Unlike the ale houses, which were very basic affairs designed purely for the consumption of alcohol, the taverns provided comfortable seating and tasty food alongside their selection of wines.

  By the late 1600s, these forerunners of the modern public house catered for two, distinct types of customer. The ale houses tended to attract the labouring classes as although the surroundings were basic, prices were cheap. The taverns appealed to business-owners and the professional classes as they were an ideal venue in which to entertain clients, meet friends or simply relax after a hard day’s work. The taverns were also a popular destination for the area’s first prostitutes who found the drunk inhabitants a great source of income. As Spitalfields’ population grew, the taverns and ale houses enjoyed a healthy trade and their owners sought ever-larger and more impressive edifices. However, their profits were soon to be severely affected by the arrival of the most pretentious of all watering-holes – the Gin Palace.

  During the reign of William III (1689-1702), tensions between Britain and France led to a ban on French brandy and wine. The Huguenot silk weavers had traditionally drunk wine and brandies from their homeland and so sought illegal means of obtaining the drinks via smugglers. Illegal imports of French liquor were not just sought after in Spitalfields; throughout London and beyond, smugglers began to reap huge dividends by supplying the forbidden wines. Obviously, taverns could not serve French wines for fear of having their licence revoked and their trade inevitably went into decline. Realising that the ban was severely affecting the British alcohol industry, the authorities lifted all restrictions on distilling gin and soon the streets of every town and city in England were awash with gin shops. These shops replaced the older ale houses as places in which the poor sought shelter and temporary oblivion. They were designed purely for the consumption of drink and unlike the taverns, did not serve food or have any comfortable seating areas.

  The cheapness and availability of gin made the spirit extremely popular with the poorer classes and by the 1720s, London was awash with the stuff. Londoners didn’t necessarily have to sit in a gin shop in order to obtain their daily fix. Bottles of the spirit could be purchased virtually anywhere. Street vendors sold it from barrows along the city’s major thoroughfares and there were even reports of employers giving gin to their workforce in order to keep them in a compliant state of mind.

  Setting up as a gin vendor in the early 18th century was a relatively easy task. No licence was required and there were virtually no restrictions on where or how the commodity could be sold. In 1734, Joseph Forward stood trial at the Old Bailey accused of theft. He was found not guilty of the crime, but the report of the trial demonstrates just how simple it was to set up as a gin seller. Forward’s accuser (his landlady, Mrs Ann Chapman) stated in court that a sheet, two candlesticks and a pair of tongs had gone missing from her house after the defendant and his wife took lodgings with her while working at the annual Bartholomew’s Fair – a huge, annual extravaganza held in Smithfield over four days in August.

  Chapman testified ‘the Prisoner and his Wife hired a Room from me by the Week on the last Day of April. They staid till Bartholomew-tide, and then he set his Wife up in Bartholomew-Fair to sell Gin and Black-puddings.’ Regrettably the Forwards’ moneymaking scheme did not go according to plan. Mrs Chapman explained, ‘some body stole (Mrs Forward’s) Bottle of Gin, and then she was broke’. It was this misfortune that had apparently forced the Forwards into stealing Mrs Chapman’s goods however, the jury did not believe her story and found in favour of the defendant.

  Due to the excessive quantities of gin available, prices remained low and Londoners gradually became increasingly reliant on it to get through their day. Many poorer members of the populace would nip out for gin in the same way as we would pop out for a pint of milk today. Gin was an essential part of their daily diet and the resulting drunkenness began to have genuinely horrifying results. Sensational reports began appearing in the newspapers of drunken nurses mistaking babies for logs and putting them on the fire and inebriated mothers killing their children so they could spend more time in the gin shops.

  By 1730, it became clear that the country (and London in particular) was in the grip of a gin epidemic and something had to be done to curb the public’s insatiable appetite for the drink. A previous attempt to control public consumption of gin through taxation had achieved little so the Government decided to introduce more drastic measures. In 1736, the second Gin Act was passed through parliament. Ministers saw that those most addicted to gin were the poor and so they decided to raise the retail tax on the spirit to 20 shillings per gallon (it had previously run at 5 shillings per gallon). In addition to this, gin retailers were now required to take out an annual licence, at a cost of £50.

  Generous rewards of £5 were to be awarded to anyone who informed the authorities of illegal trade. The idea behind the massive tax increase and annual licence fee was to make gin prohibitively expensive, thus stopping the masses from buying it. However, the retailers and distillers were not about to give up their lucrative businesses without a fight. Working on the (correct) assumption that very few members of the public would risk the wrath of their alcoholic neighbours by ratting on the gin suppliers, most gin shops continued to sell the spirit either under the counter or disguised as an exotically named ‘medicinal’ beverage. Popular brands at the time included ‘My Lady’s Eye Water’ and ‘King Theodore of Corsica’!

  Unsurprisingly, the 1736 Act did little to stop the gin epidemic and if anything, consumption increased. Various solutions to the problem were discussed including an ill-advised campaign to encourage drinkers to switch to beer, using Hogarth’s famous engraving ‘Gin Lane’
to illustrate the perils of gin drinking. In the end, it was an economic crisis that ended the gin epidemic rather than any Government influence.

  During the 1750s, a series of poor grain harvests pushed the price of gin’s basic ingredient to an alarming level. As the cost of grain soared, workers were laid off and farmers began supplying the food industry instead of the gin distillers whose alcoholic beverage was not considered as important a commodity as bread. With growing unemployment and higher food prices, the public had less disposable income and so gin consumption began to fall dramatically. Seizing the opportunity to kill off the epidemic for good, the Government passed yet another Gin Act, this time lowering the licence fees but severely restricting the number of outlets from which gin could be sold. This time, their efforts worked and by 1757 the gin craze was in its death throes.

  However, gin never entirely disappeared from London’s streets. Some gin shops survived the mid-eighteenth century recession in trade and by the dawn of the new century, London’s burgeoning population was beginning to discover the delights of gin once again. As the city became increasingly overcrowded and living conditions deteriorated, the public sought escape through alcohol-induced oblivion. Seemingly oblivious to the horrors of the gin craze less than a century previously, the Government actively assisted the gin shop owners in attracting more custom by halving the cost of spirit licences and drastically cutting the duty payable on spirits. By 1830, around 45,000 spirit licenses were being issued in Britain per annum and production of gin had increased by over 50% in little more than five years.

  As business took off, the gin shop owners began to give their premises a makeover. Realising that their customers needed a respite from their often dark, squalid homes, they set about making their premises as light and bright as possible. Their interiors were brilliantly lit and large, etched-glass windows were fitted to the shop-fronts so passers-by were stopped in their tracks by the light flooding out onto the dark street. Inside, mirrors lined the walls to create a sense of space and reflect the light. To the poor, these gin shops, with their bright façades and glitzy interiors were like palaces and became known as such. Charles Dickens visited some of London’s gin palaces while writing Sketches by Boz (1836) and described the one thus:

  ‘All is light and brilliancy... and the gay building with the fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate-glass windows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of gas-lights in richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left. The interior is even gayer than the exterior. A bar of French-polished mahogany, elegantly carved, extends the whole width of the place; and there are two side aisles of great casks, painted green and gold, enclosed within a light brass rail, and bearing such inscriptions as “Old Tom, 459”, “Young Tom, 360”, “Samson, 1421” – the figures agreeing, we presume, with gallons...

  ‘Beyond the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon, full of the same enticing vessels, with a gallery running round it, equally well-furnished. On the counter, in addition to the usual spirit apparatus, are two or three little baskets of cakes and biscuits, which are carefully secured at the top with wicker-work to prevent their contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it are two showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces, dispensing the spirits and “compounds”.’

  Dickens’ description of a gin palace in the 1830s is surprisingly familiar. To this day, the Victorian gin palace survives throughout London and beyond and with it endure the myriad pleasures and problems associated with social drinking in Britain. The current alcoholic craze may not be for gin, but it presents the authorities with the same social problems as befell their predecessors. Despite the Government’s best attempts, it appears that drinking to excess is an endemic part of British society and will never be eradicated.

  While the gin palaces thrived, the old taverns were gradually being replaced by the forerunner of today’s pub – the beer house. In 1830, the Beer Act lifted restrictions on producing and selling beer and just like the gin palaces before them, beer shops began to spring up on street corners. Trade was good and successful shop owners expanded their premises, sometimes dividing up the bars into ‘Public’ (for the workers), ‘Saloon’ (for management) and ‘Private’ (for their most influential patrons). The most favoured tipple at the beer shops and public houses of Spitalfields was Porter, a dark beer that had been developed in the eighteenth century. London Porter was strong and got the drinker in an inebriated state without them having to spend too much money. Consequently, it became extremely popular with the working classes: by 1835, The Black Eagle Brewery in Brick Lane was producing 200,000 barrels a year. Porter remained popular with the labouring classes until World War 1, when grain rations all but prevented the production of strong beers in England and the market began to be taken over by Irish brewers such as Guinness.

  By the 1850s, there were literally thousands of pubs, beer houses and gin palaces in London. In working class areas like Spitalfields, there could be four or five down one street. Naturally, the sheer number of pubs, particularly in cities, made competition fierce. Publicans sought new ways to encourage more customers through the doors and once inside, to stay for as long as possible. One of the most successful strategies involved putting on entertainment. An ever-increasing variety of acts were booked and nineteenth century drinkers could expect to be entertained by singers, jugglers, magicians, comedians, contortionists, the list was endless. It was from these pub entertainments that one of the most popular of all Victorian pastimes was born – the Music Hall.

  Music Halls were an integral part of the social lives of the working class. However, they vanished almost as swiftly as they arrived. Despite the valiant efforts of a few music hall groups and distant memories of a television programme called The Good Old Days, the British Music Hall is now obsolete. This is in a way unsurprising because it epitomised a moment in history that is now almost beyond living memory. However, in its heyday, the Music Hall was an incredibly important element of society.

  Music Halls first began to emerge in the mid-nineteenth century. In December 1848, a pub landlord named Charles Morton acquired the Canterbury Arms in Upper Marsh, close to Lambeth Palace. Morton had previously worked in theatre and decided to provide entertainment at his new pub in the form of ‘harmonic meetings’, where gentlemen were invited to come and listen to singers in an informal atmosphere. The harmonic meetings proved to be very successful and in order to increase business, Morton organised ‘Ladies’ Thursdays’, which were so successful that he used the profits to build a new hall on the bowling green at the back of the old pub. The Canterbury Arms’ motto was ‘One quality only – the best’ and Charles Morton worked hard to maintain a high standard of entertainment. He employed an in-house choir and regular soloists to perform operatic favourites and guests were provided with baked potatoes (for which The Canterbury became renowned) to soak up the alcohol. In addition to the musical entertainment, Morton operated a bookmaker’s from the pub to satisfy his guests who enjoyed a flutter at the races.

  In 1856, Morton ploughed his profits back into the business and rebuilt The Canterbury in a much larger and grander style. The new building comprised a main hall and a gallery and was decorated in a sumptuous, palatial style. The walls were adorned with paintings of such quality and value that The Canterbury was nicknamed ‘The Royal Academy Across the Water’ by one of its patrons. Out went the baked potatoes as the new hall had large tables at which visitors were served a more varied menu.

  The increased size of the stage meant that more ambitious productions could be staged. Gounod’s Faust was sung for the first time in England at The Canterbury and Morton was responsible for introducing Londoners to the work of Offenbach. Not all the entertainment in The Canterbury was so highbrow; interspersed between opera and ballet performances were displays of tightrope walking, bicycle tricks and animal shows. It was this variety that became the essence of Music Hall as a genre.

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nbsp; Landlords across London took note of the success of Charles Morton’s Canterbury Music Hall and soon similar establishments were springing up all over the capital. In 1857, Edward Weston converted the Six Cans and Punch Bowl Tavern on High Holborn into Weston’s Music Hall and a year later, the Royal Panopticon of Science and Art in Leicester Square was converted into the exotically-named ‘Alhambra Palace’ and promptly let to an American circus because the owner, one E. T. Smith, could not obtain a theatre licence. However, a year later, Smith managed to obtain a licence and promptly gave the circus their marching orders. He then set about converting the interior into a theatre. The circus ring became the dining area and the original Panopticon organ, which had loomed over the hall for decades, was sold to St Paul’s Cathedral. In the gaping hole that was left, Smith built a stage. The Alhambra Palace Music Hall opened in December 1860 and one of its first major attractions was a trapeze act performed by Jules Leotard, the man who gave his name to the style of dancewear.

  Following the success of his first venture across the river in South London, Charles Morton decided to go west and in 1861, opened the Oxford Music Hall on the site of an old tavern called the Boar and Castle Inn, close to the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. Morton used The Canterbury as a blueprint and The Oxford was an instant success. Spurred on by this, Morton decided to sell The Canterbury to a man named William Holland, who promptly redecorated the hall and invited patrons to come and spit on his new thousand guinea carpet! The sale of The Canterbury made Morton financially very secure, but this was to be short-lived as, a month after the sale went through, The Oxford was gutted by fire. Inadequately insured, Morton was forced to sell what remained of the building in an attempt to recoup his losses and never built another music hall.