A Cultural Presentation

A Cultural Presentation LON - DON SLUMS – 1850s By David Oludi- mimu

City of London showing all its streets, lanes,

Pre - London Slums Britain – the richest country on the earth London – the world’s biggest city • Capital of England • Largest trading Center in England • (sales of fine English wool-from Sheep- to Antwerp where it was woven to cloth) • War around Antwerp • Leading to Attraction of cloth manufacture back to London • Creating a huge demand for labor and housing • Immigration from the rural areas to the city • Overpopulation

Characteristics of London Slums Overpopulation Filth & Stench Social Exclusion Poverty

Slums In London • Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper • every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three – • fruit and ‘sweet-stuff’ manufacturers in the cellars, • barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back • a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, • starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a ‘musician’ in the front kitchen, and • a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one – • filth everywhere - a gutter before the houses and a drain behind – • clothes drying and slops emptying, from the windows; • girls of fourteen or fifteen, with matted hair, walking about barefoot, and in white great-coats, almost their only covering; • boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes and no coats at all; • men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing.

Slums Locations In London • East London has the “most notorious” slums and this is why this area got the name “Darkest London”. • “St. Giles and Clerkenwell in central London, • the Devil’s Acre near Westminster Abbey, • Jacob’s Island in Bermondsey , on the south bank of the Thames River, • the Mint in Southwark, and • Pottery Lane in Notting Hill” • Whitechapel, • Spitalfields, • BethnalGreen and • Old Nichol

St. Giles – Most celebrated criminal slum Beer Street and Gin Lane

Old NicholSlum Two –three different families crowded in a narrow and filthy broken room !

EFFECTS OF LONDON SLUMS TYPHOID FEVER CHOLERA MALNUTRITION INFANTILE DIARRHEA

VIOLENCE STEALING/PICKPOCKETING MURDER NIGHT MOLESTERS CRIMES IN THE LONDON SLUMS

Charles Mowbray Former soldier, Master tailor and One of the greatest working-class orators Probably first – Anachist –Communist in Britain

'MURDER!' his posters read.'Workmen, why allow yourselves, your wives and children to be daily murdered by the foulness of the dens in which you are forced to live!'It is time the slow murder of the poor, who are poisoned by thousands in the foul, unhealthy slums from which robber landlords exact monstrous rents was stopped. Charles Mowbray - enthusiastic propagandist for the struggle

You have paid in rent the value over and over again of the rotten dens in which you're forced to dwell. Government has failed to help you. The time has come to help yourselves.'

Hinderances to Interventions • Vested interest of House Owners and Landlords (churchmen and peers of the realm)in maintaining the status quo • Vestrymen – (Bethnal Green Vestry, a squad of venal councillors who operated as the local authority) blocked repeated attempts by politicians, from the 1850s on, to have the whole slum demolished

Remarkable Interventions (ii) • A new and vigorous London County Council (LCC) came into being, and its first, flagship task was the demolition of Old Nichol, and the eviction and rehousing of its inhabitants.. • From the 1830s to the 1870s plans were developed to demolish the slum, as part of London wide clearances for improved • Transport routes, • Sanitation and the • Expansion of the railways. but the Rookery dwellers were not re-housed by the authorities. 5000 were evicted and many just moved into nearby slums, such Devil’s Acre and Church Lane, making those even more overcrowded.

Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875 Benjamen Disraeli • – Prime Minister Of United Kingdom (2nd Administration) • Social Reformer ; • Initiated the Public Health Act of 1875 Late in the 19th century, Slums problem became acute the government took urgent measures to address the public health hazards The Dwellings Improvement Act, introduced in 1875, Aimed to remove slums and put new low-cost housing in their place. the local authorities’ responsibility

A Healthy London: Up With The Houses, Down With The Slums • Slums housing some 200,000 people were cleared in the 1920s and 1930s, • Mostly in the inner city area of London. • Reconstructed council houses were mainly built in peripheral areas, • forcing suburbanization, and • increasing the size of the built-up area of London. • " A Healthy London : Up with the Houses, Down with the Slums ". (LabourParty Slogan - 1934)

21st Century Slums, How Different? AMERICA – Los Angeles ASIA - India AFRICA - Nigeria AUSTRALIA-Thailand

Work Cited Georgian London LucyInglis (2009) http://georgianlondon.com/post/49461306842/slum-living-londons-rookeries It was the worst slum in Victorian Britain. Yet its crime-ridden streets were SAFER than today's Christopher Hudson 2008 Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1033919/It-worst-slum-Victorian-Britain-Yet-crime-ridden-streets-SAFER-todays.html The horrors of the London slum of St Giles's - nicknamed "Old Nichol" (London Slums) Blackleaf 2008 - Retrieved from http://forums.canadiancontent.net/history/77557-horrors-london-slum-st-giless.html The Evolution of Slum Clearance Policies in London and Paris By Sandra Rihs and Katell Daniel

A Cultural Presentation