Dorset Street, in Spitalfields, was the scene of the murder of Jack the Ripper’s final victim, Mary Kelly, on the 9th of November, 1888.
A few years later, it became even more infamous as the worst street in London, and numerous journalists descended on this thoroughfare to find out is it really was as bad as it had been painted.
The Echo, in its edition of Friday the 18th of January, 1895, published a report by one journalist who had dared to venture into it:-
THE WORST STREET IN LONDON
HOW SOME POOR LIVE
There is not a more wretched neighbourhood in the Metropolis than Dorset-street, Spitalfields.
It is quite a short thoroughfare, yet about fourteen hundred people are packed in it, a large proportion of whom are thieves, outcasts, or drunkards, and many all three combined.
Almost within a stone’s-throw, two notorious murders were committed, and for a respectably-dressed person to venture alone down this street after dark would be exceedingly risky.
COMMON LODGING HOUSES
Almost every building is a common lodging-house, or is let out in furnished rooms; and many of the windows are broken, and stuffed with rags or paper.
Until late in the night one can see rough, bare-headed women dancing in the mud, idle men lounging in groups around lodging-house doors, and ragged children darting to and fro; while scenes are witnessed under the yellow glare of gas light that one cannot describe in print.
A BODY OF BRAVE WOMEN
In the middle of this street, a body of brave women have started a work for upraising the people.
Going, as they do, in and out among the homes of the dwellers here all day and every day, they know far more about them than a casual visitor can learn by a chance journey of discovery, so to them I went, asking for facts about life in Dorset-street.
I have watched these women at their work, gathering rough girls in from the street night after night, singing to them, and keeping them from harm; or going from den to den, nursing the sick, feeding the hungry, and bringing gleams of joy and moments of peace into lives that know little of either.
A VISIT TO THE CHURCH HOUSE
The chief way of distinguishing the Church House in Dorset-street from other buildings is by the fact that all its windows are unbroken.
Here I found two of the deaconesses, Miss Robertson and Miss Bedford, and, in answer to my request, they told me some of their experiences.
“Our parish is a quarter of a mile square, and holds 23,000 people,” they said. “Over one-half are Jews, and their number is rapidly increasing.
The Gentiles very much dislike them, and do not care to go where they are.
Probably this is because the Jews are able to live on less and work for less, and can suit their standard of comfort to their means.
In Dorset-street there are no Jews.
ONE ROOM PER FAMILY
Nearly all the families in this parish have only one room each.
These are known as “furnished rooms,” and are let at 10d. or 11d.a night, or 5s. or 5s. 6d. a week.
The rent has to be paid every night, and the landlord will come round for it as late as midnight or one or two in the morning.
If the lodgers cannot pay, even at that hour, out they go, to spend the night on the streets.
WRETCHED FURNITURE
The rooms and the furniture are most wretched.
We could show you one room without a fireplace, where the people have to light their fire in a tin pot.
The furniture usually consists of a bed (with two sheets, a mattress, and a rug), and a table, a chair, and a few minor things like cooking utensils.
The mattress is a cobbled mass of rags, the chair is often tied together with string, and the bed – oh dear!”, and my informants gave a pause and looked at each other, as though no words could possibly describe its state.
EVERYTHING IS FILTHY
Then they started talking again, one giving me one fact and the other another.
“Everything is so filthy.
The walls are often cracked and broken, and all the cracks are full of vermin.
The staircases are awful, and at night time the people who have no homes come and crawl in and lie all over the stairs.
We know one house where there is only a single tea-pot for all the lodgers in all the rooms, and that has two holes in it which they have to stuff with rags before they can use it.
There is generally a mirror, but that is cracked, having been broken in some drunken brawl.
Yet the people who live in such rooms often dress very well when they go out on special occasions.
We heard a story of a woman who ordered a green silk dress costing £10. The shop-keeper sent it along, expecting to find her in a nice house, but her abode was only a single room.”
A VISIT TO SOME ROOMS
Miss Robertson suggested that I should see a few of the “furnished rooms” myself, and offered to be my guide.
The first we went in was a specially favourable apartment, for the occupier tried to keep things tidy, and had some pictures and crockery of her own to supplement the landlord’s allowance.
A wooden bedstead and a table filled up most of the room.
The woman had been washing, and a big sheet and other pieces of linen hung from the ceiling.
Of course, if a tenant wants to clean her sheets she has to wash and dry them between morning and night, for the landlord never provides a change of linen.
The bedstead was remarkable for having the whole of the flock of the mattress pulled out of its lying loosely on the bed.
THE CARDBOARD BOX MAKER
Down a passage, up a staircase, and we entered another room, inhabited by a cardboard box maker and her husband.
This room was much the same as most others, with walls, ceiling, and floor of a dusky hue, and windows and paint work covered with dirt.
It is easy enough to blame the people for not keeping their things cleaner, but most of them have not the necessary utensils or the heart to do so.
MAKING FANCY BOXES
The table in this place had on it a board covered with glue, used by the woman in her work.
She had been making fancy note-paper-boxes for a City firm.
For putting these together she is paid half-a-crown a gross, out of which she must provide her own glue.
But with every gross she has also to make 24 large brown cardboard cases, each of which holds half-a-dozen of the fancy boxes.
The half-crown includes making the big cases.
The woman said that it takes her and her husband as much as they can do to make a gross in two days.
IT WAS SO DARK
Miss Robertson next took me to a doorway leading to a staircase.
In spite of its being day-time, the place was dark, but I felt with my hands and carefully groped up a dozen steps or so.
The woodwork was slippery with filth under my feet, and when I had got up a little way a sensation of nausea almost overcame me, and I was obliged to rush into the fresh air.
In a minute I started again, taking a box of matches with me.
I struck a light and saw that the staircase and walls were full of holes.
Something resembling the body of a dead rat lay in one corner and dirt was everywhere.
THE HORRIBLE ODOUR
The dim light of my match showed various rooms on the first floor, each being the residence of a separate family.
Having reached the first landing, I attempted to mount to the next storey, but, try as I would, I could stand no more of the horrible odour.
It got in my throat as though it would choke me, and made my gorge rise in rebellion.
“Where are your sanitary authorities” I asked Miss Robertson when I once more got into the pure air.
“I don’t know where they are,” she replied. “We have complained about things time after time, but nothing seems to be done.
Once, in a very bad case, the place was whitewashed, that was all.”
FROM THE BEAUTIFUL SUBURBS
Such is a little of what I saw in sordid Spitalfields.
Would that one had the power to make those living at their ease in beautiful suburbs to come and see for themselves the horror and misery that exist!
It might spoil their appetite for a time (as it spoiled mine), but it would benefit them notwithstanding.”
F.A.M.