Housing, overcrowding and crime

Whitechapel is a district in East London, just outside the City of London. At the end of the 19th century, it was known for poverty, discontent, alcoholism, sex work and crime.

Between c.1870 and c.1900, a range of people lived in Whitechapel. Many of them were unemployed and very poor, while others were relatively comfortable.

According to a report from the medical officer of health for Whitechapel in 1873, Whitechapel was very overcrowded, with 189 people living in each For London as a whole, the figure was 45 people per acre.

Rookeries

An engraving of Wentworth Street. It shows a row of terraced houses and people in ill fitting clothing. There are children sitting in the street — Figure caption,
Wentworth Street, Whitechapel, c.1870. In this poor-quality housing overcrowding was common.

were common in the slum areas of Whitechapel. They were areas filled with lodging houses, where very poor people stayed in overcrowded conditions. There could be as many as three people in one apartment, sharing very little space. In Whitechapel in the late 19th century, there were 233 common lodging houses, also known as ‘doss’ houses. These contained as many as 8,000 people. Poor people would pay for a room in a lodging house for either one or two nights. Each day they would work to earn the money for a room for the following one or two nights. One family would stay in one room, sleeping on the bed and on the floor.

A well-known rookery of lodging houses in 1870, was Flower and Dean Street. The houses on Flower and Dean Street were in a terrible condition. They had outside toilets, but buckets and pots were also used indoors, which caused very bad smells and disease. As a result of the living conditions on Flower and Dean Street, it gained a reputation for housing thieves, drunkards and sex workers, and being an area of London that was feared even by the police.

Whitechapel workhouse

Those who could not afford a bed for the night, or were young, old or sick, could go to a workhouse. Some people only went to a workhouse as a last resort, because of the strict rules enforced in them. These rules included what they could eat (porridge, cheese, bread, potatoes and occasionally meat), how they worked, the time they went to bed and the time they had to get up.

Families were separated in the workhouses, and adults and children were only allowed to see each other once a day. For many, staying at a workhouse was humiliating. The workhouses can be described as places of constant hunger, poor sanitation, frequent illness, poor sleep and violence.

The Whitechapel workhouse was at South Grove.

At the centre of Whitechapel was Buck’s Row, where a workhouse for the sick was located.
Across the road from there, at St Thomas’ Street, there was a ‘casual ward’ with spaces for 60 people who wanted a bed for just one night.
The rules were very harsh as inmates were expected to work to earn their bed for the night.
This work included tasks such as breaking stones, chopping wood, picking oakum (picking apart the fibres of old rope), working in the kitchens and cleaning the workhouse.

The aim of this work was to people from staying at the expense of the taxpayers who funded the Workhouse Union.

The Peabody Estate

In 1879 an area of Whitechapel called Royal Mint Street contained a large number of lodging houses. The land was bought by the Metropolitan Board of Works, a government organisation, who wanted to demolish them. In 1875, Parliament passed the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act as part of the slum clearances. This land was then sold on to the Peabody Trust, which was a charity set up by the wealthy American banker George Peabody.

The trust wanted to design and build new flats that would offer affordable rents to tenants. Weekly rents started at three shillings (15p) for a one-room flat and six shillings for three rooms. On average, labourers earned 22 shillings per week. By 1881, 287 flats had been built that housed 30,000 Londoners who had previously lived in the slums.

The new Peabody Estate provided better living conditions, including:

improved ventilation
brick walls so that lice could not live in them
shared courtyards
shared laundry rooms
shared bathrooms with a bath
shared kitchens

Tenants of the Peabody Estate flats were selected carefully to ensure they would look after the housing. George Peabody insisted that these flats should benefit Londoners who were poor, of moral character and good members of society.

However, the rents were too high for some people in Whitechapel. Those who got behind with their payments were thrown out, which caused overcrowding elsewhere in the district.

Links between Whitechapel and crime

Victorian Londoners were worried about crime in Whitechapel. Unemployment and the overcrowded living conditions led to crime being committed regularly, including petty theft and drunkenness. For some, however, committing crime was a way of responding to financial difficulties brought about by unemployment or reductions in shared income eg if a family member died.

Some people believed there was a criminal underclass, sometimes called the who 'lived off' the hard-working people of London. Others were worried that the conditions in the lodging houses would spread crime from the habitual criminals, who were living close to ‘decent’ people.

Some people in Whitechapel attempted to cope with the difficulties of unemployment and homelessness by drinking alcohol. Alcohol consumption often led to an increase in the numbers of arguments and assaults. It also made drunk people victims of petty theft and pickpockets, as money and other valuables were often stolen from them.

Immigration

Crime and punishment in Whitechapel, c.1870-c.1900 - EdexcelHousing, overcrowding and crime