East End Photographs and Drawings

[Normy]

Hiya all
I found an interesting site with lots of info and pictures on workhouses, one of the pictures is of the Victoria Home on Commercial st dated 1900.
I contacted the owner of the site to see if I can get a copy to post.

Is this picture posted somewhere already?

Cheers

Normy

[Rob Clack]

Hi Normy,

You mean this one



Rob

[George Hutchinson]

Some call it Jack London's. I call it ours.

PHILIP

[Normy]

Hi Rob

Ah yes that's the one, ah shame I thought I 'd stumbled on something new!
Good picture, there's a few of the interior or interior of other buildings along with some sketches, pretty grim.
I imagine you all know the site

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/

Cheers.

Normy

[Rob Clack]

Hi Normy,

The Workhouse website is an excellent resource. Some of the images he uses are from 'Living London' published around 1902 and 'The People of the Abyss' by Jack London, 1903 I think, although the photos are usually only found in the early editions. A bit naughty of Peter Higginbotham to claim copyright on them as they are out of copyright.

Regards

Rob

[John Bennett]

Here are some images of the Rowton House hostel in Fieldgate Street from the very site you mention. Some have been seen before:






This one is the interior of the reading room.

[John Bennett]

Whitechapel Road, 1955, Brady Street junction ahead. How quiet it looks!


PRAAANG!! This happened a year or two ago. Outside the Black Bull in Whitechapel Road.

[John Bennett]

From past to future - for all those worried about the encroachment of the City into our beloved crotchety old East End.

This is 100 Middlesex Street. Regular visitors to the area will have seen an enormous block under construction (at the moment it's only the concrete central cores that are visible) and this is an architect's rendition of the result.


It's going to be student accommodation. They're going to love it, what with being so close to Brick Lane and Shoreditch and all that trendiness.

Looks scary, huh? Not only that, the whole area is probably going to turn into an even bigger nightspot than it already is, adding university students to the growing invasion of new-media revellers. They'll be packing 'em in at the Duke of Wellington!

I know this sounds a bit doomy 'Daily Mail', but this could deliver a devastating blow to what remains of Spitalfields' older ambience.

Anybody got any opinions on this?

[Normy]

Hi John
Yes, I've got an opinion on this but it it uses language I don't wish to type on a Sunday!
I hope this won't affect Dirty Dicks?

P.S. Rob Clack thanks for the details in your earlier posting.

Cheers
Normy

[John Bennett]

Hi John
Yes, I've got an opinion on this but it it uses language I don't wish to type on a Sunday!

Oh, come on Normy, don't be coy!!

I hope it doesn't affect Dirty Dick's - it is possibly my favourite watering hole in the area these days - but I would assume that the nightlife would make a beeline to places like the Brewery, Ten Bells, Commercial Tavern and Spitalfields Market.

I'm curious as to see what transpires, if not a little concerned.

[George Hutchinson]

Some of the images he uses are from 'Living London' published around 1902 and 'The People of the Abyss' by Jack London, 1903 I think...

I'm fairly sure you're a year out on both, Rob. I think LL was 1901 (though turned into BOOK form in 1902) and PotA was 1902.

PHILIP

[Limehouse]

Spitalfields has a shabby grace that I love. Its history is the 'history from below' that I find so interesting. There are shameful periods in that history - slum landlords, dirt and disease bred from extreme poverty and of course the violence that we all associate with the Ripper murders and the results of drinking and over-crowding. But there is a triumphant history also. That is the history of people driven to the east end by persecution, their industriousness, their loyalty to one another, their determination to stamp their culture on the tapestry woven by others before and those that came after them, their rise from the ghetto to something better. Spitalfields is full of voices - voices from the past and the present and it is full of shadows and thumbprints - little touches here and there that whisper 'I was here'.

Maybe I am being too romantic. Maybe the shabby grace that I can see is the dirt and filth others despise. Maybe it is time to sweep away the old, crumbling buildings and allow this magnificent glass and steel tower to rise from the old gutters and house the young and the bright.

[John Bennett]

Well said Limehouse. I certainly prefer the first paragraph!

Spitalfields is full of voices - voices from the past and the present and it is full of shadows and thumbprints - little touches here and there that whisper 'I was here'.

As it says on the sundial of the Fournier Street Mosque/Synagogue/Church: UMBRA SUMUS ('we are shadows')

[Normy]

Maybe it is time to sweep away the old, crumbling buildings and allow this magnificent glass and steel tower to rise from the old gutters and house the young and the bright.

No, no it's not time. Those buildings are full of history and character and can be renovated in a way that makes them comfortable by todays standards without stripping the East end of what has made it the place it is.
Please no more monsterous glass disasters that are as artistically cold as they are characterful.
I look out of my window across the London skyline and see more and more towering landmarks of modernity, glass prisons that make it easier to see the monkeys at work in.


Normy

[Suzi]

Mine's in my bin at work! Aaaaaaaaaagh!!

Oooooops that was a reply to Mike earlier!