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BOOK LAUNCH AND SIGNING SESSION AT THE WHITECHAPEL SOCIETY! Sarah Wise will be signing copies of her new book 'The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum' at her presentation on June 7th 2008.
Using a rich archival store, Sarah Wise reconstructs how life was really lived in the Old Nichol - the 15-acre area of London's East End with a reputation for criminality, disease and dilapidation that was so bad in 1887 that inspectors for a quasi-governmental commission were sent in to report on conditions.
The inspectors discovered horrifying living conditions in the Old Nichol's 30 or so streets and learned of how these rotting, 100 year-old houses were in fact among the most lucrative property in London for their owners - who included peers of the realm, local politicians, churchmen and lawyers. Profits of as much as 150% per annum could be made by slumlords, and one estimate in the Daily Telegraph of 1889 stated that per cubic foot, the rents of these death-traps were between four and ten times those charged in Belgravia and Mayfair.
The Blackest Streets explores the real lives behind the myths about the Old Nichol, and turns the gaze back on the 'respectable' observers and their various theories about how to solve the poverty problem. Some of their more extreme suggestions included mass forced emigration, internment camps and the prevention of breeding - in line with contemporary 'racial degeneration' theory. Anarchists and Communists also came to explore and to gauge to what extent revolutionary feeling might exist among the very poor. But the Nichol was also a battleground of religious thinking, with various shades of Protestantism doing battle with each other - and with religious apathy - to save souls.
Everyone welcome. Small entry fee for non-members.
Coral
Using a rich archival store, Sarah Wise reconstructs how life was really lived in the Old Nichol - the 15-acre area of London's East End with a reputation for criminality, disease and dilapidation that was so bad in 1887 that inspectors for a quasi-governmental commission were sent in to report on conditions.
The inspectors discovered horrifying living conditions in the Old Nichol's 30 or so streets and learned of how these rotting, 100 year-old houses were in fact among the most lucrative property in London for their owners - who included peers of the realm, local politicians, churchmen and lawyers. Profits of as much as 150% per annum could be made by slumlords, and one estimate in the Daily Telegraph of 1889 stated that per cubic foot, the rents of these death-traps were between four and ten times those charged in Belgravia and Mayfair.
The Blackest Streets explores the real lives behind the myths about the Old Nichol, and turns the gaze back on the 'respectable' observers and their various theories about how to solve the poverty problem. Some of their more extreme suggestions included mass forced emigration, internment camps and the prevention of breeding - in line with contemporary 'racial degeneration' theory. Anarchists and Communists also came to explore and to gauge to what extent revolutionary feeling might exist among the very poor. But the Nichol was also a battleground of religious thinking, with various shades of Protestantism doing battle with each other - and with religious apathy - to save souls.
Everyone welcome. Small entry fee for non-members.
Coral
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