London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City

by Gray, Drew D.

  In October 1888, amidst all the panic surrounding the murders, Sir Samuel Montagu MP was prompted to write an open letter to the press in which he refuted the allegations made against the local Jewish community and the suggestion that one of them could be the murderer.

  In Jewish history there are frequent records that, when epidemics have occurred, or murders have taken place, false accusations have been made against the Jews, inciting the ignorant and criminal class to acts of violence. In this enlightened country, with an educated working class, no such fear need be entertained; but why recall the red spectre of bygone ages, when religious persecution was a matter of course, whichever Christian creed was in power? Few have greater experience than I of the Jews of this and of other countries, and I am able to state with confidence that no similar class of human beings is as free from acts of violence as the Jews of Europe and America. It has generally been admitted that the murderer had considerable practical knowledge of anatomy, and I do not believe that there exists such an individual among the Jews of East London. If the `handwriting on the wall' was done by the monster himself, can there be any doubt of his intention to throw the pursuers on the wrong track, while showing hostility to the Jews in the vicinity?76

  For the Jews the problem would seem to be that across the nineteenth and well into the twentieth centuries they have been an easy target for scapegoating.

  In Britain, however, we have had other targets for our prejudices and jokes and in the East End another long established community also suffered from poverty, deprivation and lack of work in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. These were the Irish, the internal (and perhaps eternal) migrants of the British Isles. The story of Irish immigration to England is a long one. The Irish in London outnumbered the Jews but did not stand out in the way that the `dark-bearded men in Russian-Polish dress' did, they were citizens of the United Kingdom rather than incoming foreigners." This did not mean that they passed unnoticed of course, or that they were afforded much more of a welcome than those arriving from Eastern Europe. The Irish had been coming to London for centuries and had been the target of abuse, disparaging comments and jokes for all of that time. Much of this was founded on religious prejudice and intolerance. To observers such as Charles Booth `neither the Irish nor their [Catholic] faith had much to commend them'." The Irish were often poor and so in addition to their Roman ways they were seen as a drain on the poor rates and frequently fell foul of the settlement laws as parish officers attempted to see them `passed' out of their responsibility.

  After 1815 Irish immigration had increased significantly as more and more Irishmen and women made the relatively short journey across the Irish Sea to look for work in the growing towns and cities of Britain. By 1851, 500,000 Irish had settled in England and Wales; during the famine years of the late 1840s thousands of desperate families arrived each month. This nineteenth-century song illustrates the motivation of those who chose to leave Ireland for the chance of a better life in Victorian London:

  `The Irishman's Ramble to London'79

  The early Irish settlers in London had gathered around St Giles and Holborn in Elizabethan times, outside of the old City where they had no licence to trade, and then began to colonize Whitechapel in the eighteenth century. As the nineteenth century brought yet more migrants the Irish concentrated in the poorer workingclass areas north and south of the river Thames, in places that `provided both a demand for unskilled labour and a supply of relatively cheap housing'. East London was predominantly Irish in the middle of the nineteenth century.R° This situation only began to change as the last decades of the century approached: the Irish communities of St Giles had been displaced by the destruction of the infamous rookery, to lay out the broad promenade of Oxford Street and similarly the building of the railways (much of which was carried out with an Irish labour force) drove many more from their old homes.R" Wherever they moved, however, the Irish recreated their communities; like the Jews from Eastern Europe the London Irish retained their cultural differences, their customs, religion and language. The Irish lodging housekeepers in the East End regularly `met the Cork steamer to offer new arrivals a bed' for example."

  The London Irish also lived in some of the worst conditions of all London's inhabitants, drawing the criticism and condemnation of many of those worthy Victorian philanthropists and social reformers that visited the alleys and courts of the city. Chapter 5 will deal with the social problems associated with housing conditions in London in the 1880s but it is worth reflecting on the views of one visitor to an Irish slum at mid-century:

  Rookeries are bad, but what are they to Irish rookeries? In some cases these courts are choked up with every kind of filth; their approaches wind round by the worst kind of slaughter-houses ... they are crowded with pigs, with fowls, and with dogs; they are strewn with oyster shells and fish refuse ... their drainage lies in pools wherever it may by thrown'.83

  Or we might take the rather impressionistic views of one observer in 1872 who wrote:

  In the neighbourhood of Whitechapel or Bethnal Green is congregated the vast army of Irish toil or Irish misery whom the accursed Land system rooted out of their happy homesteads by the Barrow or the Blackwater, the Foyle or the Shannon, the Liffey or the Slaney - some of them struggling manfully and hopefully against the bitter decrees of destiny - others sinking broken-hearted in the strife - withering like plants of another clime - fading beneath the inclemency of strange skies; and, worse than this, others sinking lower still into that worst and lowest state of all - that lowest deep beneath which even imagination cannot conceive a lower - that sink of moral pollution in which wallow the lowest dregs of English society. 14

  To some extent of course the Irish were the victims both of poverty and a lack of opportunity but also of negative stereotyping. The English working class lived alongside their Irish neighbours in many parts of the capital (including the East End) but it was the immigrants that dwelt in the worst houses and played second fiddle to the indigenous population in the labour market.8'

  The Jewish community of Whitechapel was heavily involved in the `rag trade' - the production of clothing and shoes - as we have seen, but what of the Irish? Again, the new arrivals to London (and those out of work) relied heavily on the settled population in their attempts to find gainful employment. This was especially difficult in the depressed years of the 1870s and 1880s, and as the ranks of London's immigrant population were swollen by the influx of foreign Jews and poor Irish escaping the latest failure of the potato crop. Those arriving in London had mixed experiences: John Fitzgerald for example left Cork in November 1881 to see if he could find work in the capital `as he could get no work in Ireland'. At first he had got by sweeping the snow off the pavements but had ended up begging and being arrested for doing so. He was told to seek help from the local Catholic Church and not to `annoy people by begging' in future.16

  Undoubtedly there were many success stories among the Irish migrants and Irish-born settlers found employment across the trades of London. As Colin Pooley has noted, `the experience of acute poverty ascribed in most studies to a small majority of Irish migrants has been used to obscure the fact that many Irish-born gained jobs which required skill and which gave them responsibility, status and financial reward"' The Irish to some extent appear to have dominated on the London Docks and most of the skilled dockers, the stevedores, were Irish.88 However, employment on the docks was seasonal and subject to considerable fluctuations in trade cycles and the weather. The industry had a surfeit of labour and there were regular gatherings of casuals hoping for a day's or week's work outside the dock gates early each morning. The Irish made excellent dock workers: they had `strong arms, broad shoulders, and brave hearts that are cheerful and jocund in the midst of toil'. However, the work was extremely hard and it would wear men out after a time. Few dockers could continue beyond their fifties.89

  The Irish community of Whitechapel also found work in tailoring and shoemaking, where in both trades long
hours and poor pay ensured a steady turnover in staff. The Irish that Henry Mayhew talked to in the 1850s were working in the sweated workshops of the East End for very little pay, in just the same conditions that the immigrants from Eastern Europe were to experience a few decades later.90 Irish women were employed as needleworkers, the men and boys in shoemaking. They also found work in a range of other low-paid industries as one observer noted:

  One meets them at every step, young women carrying large bundles of umbrellaframes home to be covered; young women carrying wooden cages full of hats, which yet want the silk and binding ... and above all female sackmakers ... These girls have a yellow oily look and are many of them slight and delicate, but they can carry immense loads of sacking on their heads.91

  Once again the stereotype of the long-suffering poorly paid but plucky and strong Irish migrant is trotted out. This was not the only construction of the Irish in London at this time. There were thousands of Irish servants working in the houses of London's middle and upper classes. Unfortunately Irish servants had a reputation for being cheeky and less able than their English-born counterparts. As a result many migrants found that they were merely offered domestic service roles at the bottom of the employment ladder. Service was a precarious way of earning a living, especially for young women and girls who often found themselves at the mercy of predatory males - both masters and fellow servants. The servant girl that got pregnant through the unwanted attentions of her employer (or his son) had little chance of saving her reputation. Many of London's prostitutes were poor Irish girls (like Mary Kelly - the Ripper's last victim) that had often tried and failed to find or keep a position in a London household.

  The clearest differentiation between the Irish workforce in London and that drawn from the English-born majority is in the proportion of migrants that worked as unskilled labourers, however broadly defined. Lees has sampled five areas of London from the 1851 census to show that almost four times as many Irish workers were employed as unskilled labourers than the indigenous London population. There was a similar proportion of lower middle class (shopkeepers, clerks, teachers, small business people etc.) and a very similar pattern emerges for the semi-skilled workers. But the preponderance of unskilled labourers - those often most vulnerable to unemployment or underemployment, and those drawing the lowest wages - goes a long way in explaining the relative poverty of large numbers of the Irish in London (and indeed elsewhere in Britain - studies have shown that in Liverpool, Glasgow and Manchester the Irish diaspora had a similar experience). Thus, while the Irish may not have looked very different to their English-born neighbours - and were not deemed to be `foreign' by the local population or the authorities - they were in many ways just as marginalized economically and socially as were the later Jewish immigrants to the capital.

  Prejudice against the Irish community was rooted, as suggested earlier, in deep-seated anti-Catholicism in England. In 1780 London had been rocked by several days of anti-Catholic rioting as Lord Gordon's demonstration against attempts by parliament to grant Catholic emancipation descended into personal vendetta and mob violence. Throughout the nineteenth century the `Irish Question' dominated domestic politics and was to split the Liberal party in 1886, when the election was largely fought on that issue alone.92 The failure of the potato crop in 1845 brought four years of famine to Ireland forcing tens of thousands to emigrate to Britain and America. In 1875 Charles Stewart Parnell was elected to Westminster as the leader of the Irish Nationalist Party placing the issue of Irish Home Rule firmly at the heart of English politics. Parnell, a Protestant landlord, faced the thorny task of uniting Catholic nationalists behind him while at the same time convincing the British government that their best interests were served by granting Ireland some level of independence. His efforts kept Ireland firmly implanted on the political agenda of Great Britain throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

  These problems that faced Ireland and its people were exacerbated by returning agricultural depression in the 1870s that led to the widespread eviction of tenant farmers unable to pay their rents. Protests against the forced evictions ranged `from cattle-maiming to murder' and the number of incidents in 1877 (273) had spiraled to 2,590 by 1880.93 The underlying opinion within British political circles was that much of the unrest was being fermented and organized by radical republicans who were taking advantage of the weak Irish policing network. In 1881, parliament passed the Irish Coercion Act to deal with all outbreaks of `terrorist' activity. The extent of Irish terrorism in the nineteenth century will be discussed in some detail in Chapter 5 so it need not detain us here. Neither do we need to explore the issue of Irish Home Rule since it has been covered in great detail in many other histories. It is sufficient to note that Ireland and the Irish dominated British politics in the second half of the nineteenth century, not least because as the vote was gradually extended to reach larger sections of the working classes the competing political parties, Conservatives, Liberals and then, latterly, the new Independent Labour party, all scrambled for their votes. The Irish in London had tended to vote Liberal but began to move towards the Conservatives under the influence of Parnell. Gladstone had failed to get his Home Rule policy through parliament and had split the Liberal party in the process. Politicians like Joseph Chamberlain who opposed Home Rule left to form the Unionists and allied themselves with the Conservatives. At the end of the 1880s Home Rule effectively fell off the political agenda only to be revived in the early Edwardian period when the Liberals once again tried to use it to gain Irish votes.

  The Irish in London thus carried with them a plethora of unwelcome stereotypes. They were seen as unskilled and ignorant, useful only for manual work. They were suspect on account of their religion and associated with political violence and fanaticism. But the Irish were also condemned for their raucous popular culture and for their propensity for drunkenness, fighting and general criminality. Between 20 and 28 September 1888, perhaps 12-15 per cent of those charged at the Thames Police Court were clearly of Irish ancestry. Of the men, Henry Hurley, Timothy Malone, Michael Nolan and Michael O'Brien were all fined for being drunk and disorderly and using vile language. Jeremiah McCarthy was prosecuted for an assault and given the option of two weeks' imprisonment or a 10-shilling fine. Michael Murphy and Michael Sullivan were jointly charged with assaulting a policeman, PC Bishop from H division. They were both remanded until the following week but could expect a heavy sentence from Mr Lushington JP, who was known to take a dim view of attacks on police.94

  Attacks on the police were not uncommon in Victorian London and parts of the capital had effectively become no-go areas for officers. In 1881, four Irish men were convicted at Bow Street Police Court of beating a constable so badly that he could not return to duty for several days; the defendants on that occasion were imprisoned for a month and fined.95 Irish male violence was also often aimed at wives and partners. Cases of domestic violence, although frequent in the police courts of London and elsewhere, undoubtedly only represent a fraction of the amount of violent abuse that women (and some men) suffered in the nineteenthcentury home. One example will serve here to illustrate the problem that women had in controlling the violent behaviour of their husbands. Annette Kelly had been sent out by her husband John to fetch him some `winkles for his tea' When she got back the pair had an argument over the change and he hit her in the face. Annette retaliated and the fight escalated with a water jug being thrown and John eventually flooring his wife with a punch to the eye. That was the point at which she decided to go to the police, suggesting that she was prepared to accept a certain level of violence in their four years of marriage. However, she had no real desire to see him punished as a fine or his imprisonment would have impacted adversely on what was already a meagre family budget. Instead she wanted his promise not to repeat the violence again or `she should leave him'.96

  James Driscoll, aged 47, was accused of stealing a pair of trousers but discharged by the magistrate while 23-year-old Joh
n Murphy was committed to trial for stealing pawn tickets.97 The case was serious and Murphy, along with another man, John Barrett, took his trial at the Old Bailey on 22 October 1888. The Irishmen had been drinking in the same pub as the victim - a foreign shoemaker called Wolter - at the top of Cable Street and had asked him to buy them beer. He obliged and then left soon after. He had not gone far before four men surrounded him and Murphy grabbed him and held his hand over his mouth so he could not cry out. Wolter's pockets were rifled and the gang made off with his pocket book and money. Wolter shouted `Thief, thief, my money, my money' before a policeman came rushing to his assistance. Murphy was soon caught and Barrett was picked up a few weeks later when Wolter identified him among a group of men near Leman Street Police Station. Barrett produced a witness who swore that he had been indisposed at the time of the assault, having been in hospital undergoing an operation to remove a tumour from his groin. As a result Barrett was found not guilty while Murphy was sentenced to ten months hard labour.9R