The Great Pearl Street district remains as black as it was 10 years ago. As the Dorset Street district belongs to a dweller in it 'MacCarthy' so this bit belongs to Geringer an inhabitant of Little Pearl Street. The features of both these streets are common lodging houses for men, women & doubles which are little better than brothels. Thieves, bullies and prostitutes are their inhabitants.
MacCarthy is none other than our very own John McCarthy of Miller’s Court fame. Geringer is actually Frederick Gehringer, a local barrow lender and lodging house keeper.
In his book ‘Spitalfields: The History of a Nation in a Handful of Streets’, historian Dan Cruickshank writes about Duckworth’s notes on this walk. Cruikshank writes "In ‘Dorset Street’ they had encountered Jack McCarthy, who headed an Irish Catholic and English gang” and “His [Gehringer’s] gang was presumably German/ Jewish”
Cruickshank says “Gehringer […] controlled the area controlled bordered by Quaker Street, Commercial Street and Grey Eagle Street“ with Fiona Rule acknowledged as the source for this description of his ‘area’.
What evidence is there that either of these men had a ‘gang’ in the usual meaning of the term?
Duckworth discusses McCarthy and Gehringer, but doesn’t mention the other lodging house keepers of the area we know of such as Crossingham, is this perhaps because Gehringer and McCarthy were perhaps recognised as leaders of certain groups/ gangs in 1898?
Were there distinct English/ Irish and German/ Jewish gangs as Cruikshank seems to suggest?
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