Inside the Old Nichol: One of Victorian London’s Most Notorious Slums

Inside the Old Nichol: One of Victorian London’s Most Notorious Slums

In the Old Nichol, some families lived, ate, slept and worked in the same room.

The district lay around the boundary of Bethnal Green and Shoreditch in London’s East End. Its streets and courts were densely packed, and by the late 19th century it had become known for severe overcrowding and poor housing.

Work was often carried out inside the home. Social reformer Clementina Black investigated home workers in the area and recorded matchbox making among the trades she found. Women and children could spend long hours making boxes for very little money.

Victorian accounts also gave the Old Nichol a reputation for crime and disorder. Some of those descriptions were exaggerated, but the poor condition of much of the housing and the level of poverty in the area were well recorded.

Charles Booth’s investigations into London poverty during the 1880s included this part of the East End. His work showed just how concentrated poverty had become in some London neighbourhoods.

The London County Council was created in 1889. The following year it proposed the Boundary Street improvement scheme, covering about six hectares and involving the displacement of 5,719 people.

A revised scheme was approved in 1893 and demolition began. Hundreds of houses were eventually cleared.

The Boundary Estate was built on the site. Red-brick blocks surrounded the raised garden at Arnold Circus, with wider streets running out from the centre. The redevelopment was completed by the end of 1900.

Former Old Nichol residents were not necessarily moved into the new buildings. The rents were too high for many of them, so they were forced to find cheaper rooms elsewhere in the East End. Some moved into areas where overcrowding was already common.

By 1900, the streets of the Old Nichol had largely disappeared under a completely different development. For the people who had lived there, however, demolition did not necessarily mean better housing.

Had you heard of the Old Nichol before?

Image: Boundary Street, Old Nichol, c.1890. Photographer unknown. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Children Who Left Guernsey - And the Parents Who Stayed Behind

The Children Who Left Guernsey - And the Parents Who Stayed Behind

Thousands of Guernsey parents said goodbye to their children without knowing when - or whether - they would see them again.

In my previous post, I looked at what happened in Guernsey in June 1940, when families learned that the island was to be demilitarised and parents had to decide whether their children should be evacuated to Britain.

Around four-fifths of Guernsey’s children left.

Most schoolchildren travelled with their teachers and classmates, and some mothers went as helpers. Once they arrived in England, many were sent north and billeted with local families. Several Guernsey schools were re-established there, which meant some of the children continued to be taught by teachers they already knew.

Five-year-old Brenda de Moulpied was one of the children who left.

Brenda travelled aboard the SS Viking with her school. Her mother remained in Guernsey for another two days before leaving with Brenda’s brother, but Brenda had already been moved on by the time she reached England. She was at an evacuation reception centre in Bury, and her mother did not know where she had been sent.

They were eventually reunited at Stockport railway station on the 16th of September 1940.

They had both left Guernsey, but Brenda had still spent almost three months separated from her mother.

For children whose parents remained on the island, the separation could last years. German forces occupied Guernsey on the 30th of June 1940, only days after the evacuation had begun.

The children remained in Britain, living with host families and continuing their schooling. Some spent a large part of the war there while their parents and relatives remained in occupied Guernsey.

What had initially been expected to be a fairly short evacuation had become something nobody could put an end date on.

Some of the children who left Guernsey in June 1940 would not return until after liberation in May 1945.

Do you know of anyone whose family was affected by the evacuation from Guernsey?

Channel Island evacuees in Marple, Cheshire, 1940. Ministry of Information Photo Division / Imperial War Museums. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Six Hours Before Her Execution, Mary, Queen of Scots Was Still Writing

Six Hours Before Her Execution, Mary, Queen of Scots Was Still Writing

At two o’clock in the morning on the 8th of February 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots wrote to Henri III of France from Fotheringhay Castle.

She had been told after dinner the previous evening that she would be executed at eight o’clock in the morning.

Letters connected with the Babington Plot were produced as evidence against her, and she had been tried at Fotheringhay in October 1586. Elizabeth I signed the warrant for her execution on the 1st of February 1587.

She asked Henri to see that money owed to her servants was paid. She wanted prayers and masses said for her and wrote about the difficulties she faced in arranging her affairs. Her papers had been taken from her and she complained that she had been prevented from seeing her chaplain.

In the letter, Mary wrote that she believed her Catholic faith and her claim to the English throne lay behind her condemnation.

The execution took place later that morning in the Great Hall at Fotheringhay Castle. Mary was forty-four years old.

She had first come to England in 1568 after fleeing Scotland following her defeat at the Battle of Langside. She had hoped Elizabeth might help restore her to the Scottish throne, but she would spend almost nineteen years in English custody.

Mary was buried at Peterborough Cathedral. Her son, James VI of Scotland, succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 and became James I of England. In 1612, he ordered his mother’s remains to be brought from Peterborough and reburied in Westminster Abbey.

I had read about Mary’s execution before, but I had never really looked closely at the letter she wrote that night. Knowing how close she was to the execution changes it for me. She was still writing about wages owed to her servants, prayers and her wish for her body to be taken to France, with only hours remaining.

Have you ever read Mary’s final letter?

The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay Castle, 1587, drawing attributed to Robert Beale. British Library, Add MS 48027. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Raid Was Over -But One Bomb Could Keep a Whole Street Out of Its Homes

The Raid Was Over -But One Bomb Could Keep a Whole Street Out of Its Homes

An air raid could finish without every bomb exploding.

Some disappeared into roads, gardens or patches of open ground. Others buried themselves beneath damaged buildings. Sometimes the first clue was simply a crater that did not quite match the damage around it.

These were the unexploded bombs - the UXBs.

A British Army training film made in 1941 shows just how seriously reports of them were treated. Air-raid wardens were taught to examine the scene carefully before drawing conclusions. A crater, pieces of a bomb, surrounding blast damage and even apparently undamaged windows could all help establish what had happened.

Once a UXB was reported, the information passed through Civil Defence and military channels. The bomb was assessed and given a priority. One shown in the training film threatened Post Office cables; another lay near a railway shunting yard.

For the people living nearby, that often meant evacuation.

Police, wardens and Civil Defence workers kept people away while bomb disposal specialists took over. Residents who had only recently emerged from shelters sometimes found themselves leaving home again, carrying a few belongings and not knowing when they would be allowed back.

Bomb disposal was the responsibility of specialist Royal Engineers units. The work involved locating buried bombs, identifying them and, where possible, making them safe or removing them.

It was exceptionally dangerous.

On the 13th of December 1940, Acting Captain Michael Flood Blaney of the Royal Engineers was working on an unexploded bomb at Romford Road, Manor Park. The bomb had fallen on the 5th of December and was causing serious disruption to an important road out of London.

While Blaney was attempting to remove its fuze, it exploded. Blaney, eight other Royal Engineers and Metropolitan Police Inspector Henry Lane were killed.

So when the aircraft disappeared and the all-clear sounded, life did not always return to normal.

For one street, a single bomb buried beneath the ground could mean barriers, evacuation and an anxious wait for the men sent in to deal with it.

Had you ever thought about what happened to a neighbourhood after an unexploded bomb was discovered?

 

A Bomb Disposal Squad Digging Out an Unexploded Bomb, Philip Hutton, 1945. Imperial War Museums collection. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Harold Had Won in the North. Now William Was Waiting in the South.

Harold Had Won in the North. Now William Was Waiting in the South.

On the 25th of September 1066, Harold Godwinson won a crushing victory at Stamford Bridge. Harald Hardrada and Harold’s own brother Tostig were both killed, and the Norwegian invasion was effectively broken. But within days, another threat had appeared more than 200 miles away.

William, Duke of Normandy, had landed at Pevensey on the 28th of September and soon moved his army towards Hastings. The earliest Harold is likely to have heard of William’s landing was around the 2nd of October, giving him very little time to recover from the campaign in Yorkshire before turning south again.

Harold headed back towards London, although we do not know exactly how many of the men who had fought at Stamford Bridge travelled south with him, or precisely how they made the journey. It is tempting to imagine the same exhausted army simply marching all the way from Stamford Bridge to Hastings, but the evidence does not allow us to say that.

What we can say is that Harold moved quickly. He reached London, where he paused to gather more troops before continuing towards Sussex. Even allowing for a short stay in the capital, those travelling overland may have covered roughly 200 miles from Yorkshire to London in about seven days. Another journey of around 50 miles still remained before they would meet William.

Meanwhile, William was strengthening his position around Hastings. His men constructed a wooden fortification, gathered supplies and raided the surrounding countryside. The Bayeux Tapestry shows a fortification being prepared at Hastings and later depicts a house being burned.

The raids brought in supplies and may also have helped draw Harold into battle before he had time to gather a larger army.

By the evening of the 13th of October, Harold’s army had reached the area near what is now Battle.

The following morning, the two armies would meet.

Would Harold have been better waiting for more men, or did he have little choice but to face William quickly?

For subscribers, I’ve gone into this story in much more depth, including Harold’s journey south, what William was doing around Hastings, and the difficult decisions facing Harold before the battle.

If you’d like to read the full extended post, you can subscribe by tapping the Subscribe button at the top of my Facebook page.

Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 48, showing Norman knights leaving Hastings and moving towards battle. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

When the Air-Raid Sirens Sounded, These Workers Couldn’t Just Run for Cover

When the Air-Raid Sirens Sounded, These Workers Couldn’t Just Run for Cover

The ‘Key Men’ Who Had Their Own Tiny Air-Raid Shelters

While Thousands Took Cover, Some Workers Had to Stay Close to Their Posts

When the air-raid sirens sounded during the Second World War, most people knew what they were supposed to do: get under cover. But there were also people whose work meant they could not move very far from the place they were responsible for.

That created an obvious problem. How could somebody take shelter while still remaining close to machinery, equipment or an area that might need their attention?

One answer was something called a “Shelter for Key Men”.

I came across an example preserved by Imperial War Museums, and it is remarkably small compared with the shelters we usually associate with wartime Britain. IWM describes its surviving example as a Wardens’ Look Out Shelter. There were three standard sizes of these shelters, and the example preserved by IWM is the middle size, intended to hold no more than three people.

Air-raid wardens could be provided with these small all-steel shelters while carrying out their duties. These shelters gave wardens somewhere to take cover while remaining close to the area they were responsible for.

Factories faced a similar problem.

A contemporary edition of The Architects’ Journal from May 1940 discussed shelters specifically for “key men and fire watchers”. The Ministry of Home Security generally recommended brick shelters built against an existing wall, but that was not always practical inside a large factory.

Long rows of machinery might stretch across a workshop, and some workers needed to remain close to particular pieces of equipment or important parts of the building.

Portable steel shelters offered another possibility.

One manufacturer, Cooke and Ferguson, produced remarkably compact versions for two, three or four people. Some were fitted with viewing slots so that those inside were not completely cut off from what was happening around them. Their small size also meant that they could be positioned much closer to machinery than a large communal shelter.

It must have been an extraordinary experience. While hundreds or even thousands of other people might be heading towards larger shelters, a worker or fire watcher could instead be climbing into a small steel enclosure only a short distance from their normal place of work.

Air-raid wardens also had good reason to remain nearby.

IWM records the experiences of Jo Oakman, a part-time ARP warden in Chelsea who was on duty during the first night of the Blitz and on many nights afterwards. On the 14th of September 1940 she was called to a shelter which had received a direct hit.

While cycling there, bomb blasts twice knocked her from her bike. She continued on and later helped deal with fires and casualties.

Her story also shows why the wartime term “key men” can be slightly misleading to modern ears. Women were carrying out dangerous civil-defence work too, including serving as air-raid wardens and fire watchers.

The Civil Defence Act 1939 also placed new legal responsibilities on many employers for air-raid precautions and workplace shelter provision. Wartime Britain produced an enormous range of shelters for different situations. Some were large enough for hundreds of people. Others were built for families in gardens or houses.

And then there were these.

Tiny steel shelters for just a few people, placed close to the work that could not be abandoned.

I had seen plenty of photographs of Anderson shelters, communal shelters and Underground stations being used during raids, but I had never really thought about the people who needed protection without being able to move far from their posts.

Had you ever come across a “Shelter for Key Men” before?

‘Igloo’ steel shelter in use by a military policeman on traffic duty, November 1940. War Office Second World War Official Collection / Imperial War Museums. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Huskar Pit Disaster: 26 Children Drowned Underground in 1838

The Huskar Pit Disaster: 26 Children Drowned Underground in 1838

On the 4th of July 1838, a violent thunderstorm hit Silkstone in Yorkshire. At the local colliery, people were already underground working when the rain began causing problems.

Among those below were a large number of children.

The steam machinery used to bring workers back up the Moorend shaft stopped working properly, leaving them waiting underground. After a while, around 40 children decided to try another way out through the Huskar Day-Hole.

This was a route they knew. It came out at the surface further away and involved climbing through the workings rather than being brought up the shaft.

The children put out their lights before setting off. Accounts differ slightly over exactly why, although fear of danger underground appears to have played a part.

They were making their way towards the surface in darkness while the storm continued above.

The rain had caused a nearby stream to overflow. Water began finding its way into the mine and eventually came rushing down the passage the children were using.

They were caught on a steep section of the workings.

The water rushed down the drift, swept the children backwards and trapped many of them at a ventilation door lower down.

Fourteen children survived. Some had managed to get farther along the day-hole, while surviving accounts also describe children escaping into a narrow slit or passage away from the main rush of water.

Twenty-six children died.

Fifteen were boys and eleven were girls. Their ages ranged from seven to seventeen.

James Burkinshaw was seven. His brother George was ten. Both were killed.

There are several very young children among the names recorded after Huskar, and that is probably the part of the story I find hardest to get past. Not because child labour itself is surprising -most of us know children worked in Victorian factories and mines- but because seven is so young.

Children could be given jobs such as opening and closing ventilation doors as tubs moved through the mine. Others helped move coal or worked alongside older members of their family. In mining communities, several people from one household could be earning wages from the same colliery.

Huskar attracted attention outside the local area, particularly because of the number and ages of the children who had died.

Concern about conditions in mines was already growing, and in 1840 a Royal Commission was set up to investigate the employment of children underground.

The investigation went well beyond simply asking mine owners what conditions were like. Investigators visited mining districts, went into pits and spoke to the people doing the work.

J. C. Symons, who investigated Yorkshire, visited around 200 pits and went underground in about 70 of them.

The report published in 1842 included evidence from children themselves. It described long working days, very young workers and jobs carried out in difficult conditions far below ground.

Later that year, Parliament passed the Mines and Collieries Act.

Women and girls were no longer allowed to work underground. Boys under ten were also banned.

That age is worth keeping in mind. The law stopped a nine-year-old working underground, but a ten-year-old could still legally be sent down a mine.

Huskar had happened four years earlier.

By the time the Act was passed, there was already a memorial to the children in the churchyard at All Saints’ in Silkstone. It had been erected in 1841.

Their names are still recorded there today.

I had heard about children working in mines many times before, but Huskar is one of those stories where the individual ages make it much harder to think of child labour as just another feature of Victorian Britain.

Had you heard of the Huskar Pit Disaster before?

 

Image info:

Child trapper in a British coal mine, 1842. From the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Children’s Employment. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.