East End Back Yards...

[BooksbyBJThompson]

This may be condidered a foolish question, but I am very intetested to know the answer, if there is one...

The back yards of the row housing... if people were very hungry back then, why not buy seed packets, which must have been cheap, dig up the soil and plant a veg garden?

29 Hanbury's yard beyond a storage corner and outhouse was unused land.

Is there something I'm missing here? Was it because of the coal soot polution that veg would not grow in that area?

Your thoughts, all. Thanks!

[Wickerman]

This may be condidered a foolish question, but I am very intetested to know the answer, if there is one...

The back yards of the row housing... if people were very hungry back then, why not buy seed packets, which must have been cheap, dig up the soil and plant a veg garden?

Who knows, what might make sense to us may not have been the most important thing to them.
I do know some tenants did keep chickens & pigs in a basement where they lived. I've read reports about that.

When the poor have no food it's bread, meat, and beer that seems to be at the top of their list, not peas and carrots
If someone put a goat in their backyard, it would likely get stolen.

Have you read anything about the living conditions in the East End at this time? It was pretty rough, no-one trusted anyone, most people lived from hand to mouth. If they worked a few hours they would get paid, and spend it right away. Most people of this class didn't eat at home. Once they had some pennies, they might call at a corner shop, food cart on the high street, or the pub and buy a pie or baked potato or stewed mutton.
If they owned a plate they might take it home, otherwise eat it right there.

You might like to read London Labour & the London Poor, Henry Mayhew, or more recently, East End 1888 by William Fishman - both excellent works for a look into the sad life of the typical East Ender of the late 19th Century.

[Parisi North Humber]

What Wick said.

Also, people lived fairly transient life styles and were often only in a place for a matter of months sometime weeks. Plus digging, sowing, watering, weeding, harvesting etc takes time and energy and veg generally (potatoes excepted) are low energy and low protein so not first on the menu of the lvp inner city poor. Add to that many families shared the yard as a thoroughfare to the privy and cellar so not conducive to cultivating crops as they could be destroyed or easily stolen.

And if course I should point out that the back yard was not theirs to dig up. Folks rented and most landlords even today do not like tenants altering their property, even to the point of not putting a nail in a wall.

I'm sure there are many other reasons growing your own crops was not seen as a viable option.

Helen x