James Wright = Grace
l
James Wright b.1778 = Elizabeth
l William Wright b.1807 = Ann Scamell
I
John Wright b.1840 = Amelia Hunt I
William Wright b.1881 = Jessie Elizabeth Stow
I
James Edward Wright b.1914 = Elizabeth Ivy Matthews
l
Nicholas Andrew Wright b.1947 = Susan Hopkins
l
James Wright b.1778 = Elizabeth
l William Wright b.1807 = Ann Scamell
I
John Wright b.1840 = Amelia Hunt I
William Wright b.1881 = Jessie Elizabeth Stow
I
James Edward Wright b.1914 = Elizabeth Ivy Matthews
l
Nicholas Andrew Wright b.1947 = Susan Hopkins
James and Grace
JAMES AND ELIZABETH
With George lll on the throne in England, Captain James Cook away in the Pacific ocean discovering the 'Sandwich Islands' and the American Revolutionary War in full swing, a new life began in a little house in Narrow Street, Limehouse, London.
Born on the 2nd February 1778 and baptised in St Anne's church on the 22 April 1778 as James, son of James Wright, a weaver, and his wife Grace, Narrow Street. By a strange quirk of fate, the 22nd April 1778 was the same day that James Hargreaves, the inventor of the Spinning Jenny died, the man who did so much damage to the home weaving industry.
Born on the 2nd February 1778 and baptised in St Anne's church on the 22 April 1778 as James, son of James Wright, a weaver, and his wife Grace, Narrow Street. By a strange quirk of fate, the 22nd April 1778 was the same day that James Hargreaves, the inventor of the Spinning Jenny died, the man who did so much damage to the home weaving industry.
Due to the tides and currents, this section of the Thames was a natural landfall for ships. It is believed that Narrow Street was the line of the medieval river wall and that the name of Limehouse was taken from the lime kilns that used to produce mortar and pottery here as far back as the 14th century.
From the Elizabethan time onward this area supplied ships with ropes, sails etc. and the ship chandlers built their warehouses and shops into the cramped area between the street and the river. In 1661, Samuel Pepys wrote that he visited a porcelain factory in Limehouse on his way to view herring fishing boats being constructed here, (see picture lower down by the artist Charles Hemy, 'The Limehouse Barge Builders').
A report to parliament in 1865 noted that no point in Narrow Street was wider than 25 feet (7.5 m).
This was a very cosmopolitan area, a dropping off point for sailors from all over the world, and as a result the first cases of Cholera were reported here. In the 18th century a small group of Chinese sailors settled along the Limehouse Causeway creating the original London 'Chinatown'.
A walk down Narrow Street today, though no longer narrow, will still reveal glimpses of the past, a row of early Georgian terrace houses and the 'Grapes' picture courtesy of Tarquin Binary public house that was a haunt of Charles Dickens.
From the Elizabethan time onward this area supplied ships with ropes, sails etc. and the ship chandlers built their warehouses and shops into the cramped area between the street and the river. In 1661, Samuel Pepys wrote that he visited a porcelain factory in Limehouse on his way to view herring fishing boats being constructed here, (see picture lower down by the artist Charles Hemy, 'The Limehouse Barge Builders').
A report to parliament in 1865 noted that no point in Narrow Street was wider than 25 feet (7.5 m).
This was a very cosmopolitan area, a dropping off point for sailors from all over the world, and as a result the first cases of Cholera were reported here. In the 18th century a small group of Chinese sailors settled along the Limehouse Causeway creating the original London 'Chinatown'.
A walk down Narrow Street today, though no longer narrow, will still reveal glimpses of the past, a row of early Georgian terrace houses and the 'Grapes' picture courtesy of Tarquin Binary public house that was a haunt of Charles Dickens.
It would seem that James jnr would continue living in the same area and would produce at least two possibly three children of his own by his wife Elizabeth; my ancestor William, born 27 July 1807 and his sister Margaret, born 5 August 1813 and a possible third named George and born in 1811, more a little later. William and Margaret were both baptised together on the 26 December 1813 at St Ann Church Limehouse. Their father, James, occupation was given as 'wheeler' but I think this was just a clerical error and should have read 'weaver'. When each of the children married the entry on each of their records quite clearly states that their fathers profession was a weaver.
There really isn't very much more that I can add to this period in time. War with Napolian and France was rageing. Rapid growth in the local population resulted in worsening housing and sanitation problems, it could not have been pleasant.
There really isn't very much more that I can add to this period in time. War with Napolian and France was rageing. Rapid growth in the local population resulted in worsening housing and sanitation problems, it could not have been pleasant.
The winter of 1813/14 was a particularly cold one. So much so that after a very cold and snowy January the river Thames froze over and for four days from the 1st February 1814 the last Thames Frost Fair was held. As young William was only six years old I am sure he would have been very excited. There were fairground booths erected, puppet shows, round-a-bouts, a whole ox was roasted on a fire on the ice and even an elephant was taken for a walk across the frozen river. It must have been a nightmare though for the family to stay warm particularly with a new baby in what was a riverside dwelling.The severe cold spell began on the 27th of December 1813 and lasted right through February 1814; for the period 27 December to 27 January the daily average was -3.15C. The river being frozen meant that no ships could get into the docks for unloading so no work for the dockers, the lightermen, nor the ship repairers and refitters, It also meant no coal deliveries from Newcastle so no fuel for heating peoples homes. Hard times.
This first map shows Narrow Street, Limehouse, as it was in 1802 (Fairburns 'London & Westminster' map). The second map is 29 years latter and is Cruchley's 'New Plan of London 1831'. As you can see, considerable building has taken place as existing docks are enlarged and new ones are built. 1831 also saw the building of the new London Bridge, a little further upstream from the old one and the wider arches allowed for a faster flow of water, one of the reasons why the Thames has never frozen thick enough again for any more Frost Fairs.
The artist Charles Hemy captured this scene, a barge under construction at Limehouse, about 1870
And finally, before we leave Narrow Street, this photograph was taken in 1924. Narrow street ran into Fore Street which in turn ran into Causeway, the original London Chinatown. What the Luftwaffe left standing in the 1940's was demolished by Middlesex County Council in the 1950/60's.
William and Margaret both move away from the Limehouse area as does eventually their father, John Jnr.. Williams sister, Margaret, married George Norman in 1837 at St. Marys Church in Lambeth. One of the witnesses to the marriage is Sarah Ann Wright, presumably a relative but as yet I have not been able to get any closer to discovering her identity.
I do wonder what kind of weaving the family are producing as Margaret married a jeweler; is it silk or fine delicate lace work, using gold and silver thread? Ann's future niece, Jessie Wright, describes herself as a gold and silver lace weaver in the 1861 census and she married a goldsmith, Joseph Barrow.
Margaret had one child by George Norman, Alice, born in May 1838 but sadly George died in December the following year when they had been living in Arlington Street, Lambeth.
In the 1841 census we find James Wright, a weaver, and Margaret Wright (presumable reverting to her maiden name) along with the little three year old Alice living in Frazier Street in Lambeth. There is no mention of Elizabeth so we have to assume that she had already died. There is a record for the burial of an Elizabeth Wright, living in Broad Street on 12 August 1828 aged 48. This would put her birth as 1780 making her just two years younger than James so that would be quite creditable and if you look at the map above you can see that Broad Street is almost adjacent with Narrow Street. I am content therefore to believe that this is her.
Also in the same house is eight year old Emily the daughter of a George Wright who is described as a salesman at the time of her marriage in 1852. Is it possible that Sarah Ann Wright was her mother? In the 1861 census Emily, married to Henry Brookwell, puts her profession as a silk trimming maker so clearly one of the family. I have found no other information about either Sarah or George Wright.
I do wonder what kind of weaving the family are producing as Margaret married a jeweler; is it silk or fine delicate lace work, using gold and silver thread? Ann's future niece, Jessie Wright, describes herself as a gold and silver lace weaver in the 1861 census and she married a goldsmith, Joseph Barrow.
Margaret had one child by George Norman, Alice, born in May 1838 but sadly George died in December the following year when they had been living in Arlington Street, Lambeth.
In the 1841 census we find James Wright, a weaver, and Margaret Wright (presumable reverting to her maiden name) along with the little three year old Alice living in Frazier Street in Lambeth. There is no mention of Elizabeth so we have to assume that she had already died. There is a record for the burial of an Elizabeth Wright, living in Broad Street on 12 August 1828 aged 48. This would put her birth as 1780 making her just two years younger than James so that would be quite creditable and if you look at the map above you can see that Broad Street is almost adjacent with Narrow Street. I am content therefore to believe that this is her.
Also in the same house is eight year old Emily the daughter of a George Wright who is described as a salesman at the time of her marriage in 1852. Is it possible that Sarah Ann Wright was her mother? In the 1861 census Emily, married to Henry Brookwell, puts her profession as a silk trimming maker so clearly one of the family. I have found no other information about either Sarah or George Wright.
James died in 1844 in Lambeth and is buried at St John the Evangelist, Waterloo. His death certificate give his address as 9 Frazier Street, his age as 67 and occupation as Weaver. Cause of death given as Hectic Fever caused by a diseased bladder. Margaret remarried on 30 December 1844 at St Marys Church in Lambeth to John Henry Lawrence and she also gives her address as Frazier Street. She would go on to have three more children, John, Henry and Ann. Margaret died in July 1911 at the age of 97.
William wright and Ann scamell
William does not follow in his the weaving profession but becomes a wood turner, but this could just refers to the wooden bobbins that the weavers used. The 1851 census (below) tells us that William has a wife named Ann, born 1819 in Lambeth and living at 7 White Horse Alley There are two children, Jessie aged 6 and our John aged 10. Also, visiting that night, is Ellen Knowles a widow, from Limehouse.
Marked red is White Horse Ally and the red arrow indicates no. 7. The green arrow shows the direction of this photo looking down Peters Lane toward Cowcross Street in 1867, so it is possible that the lady wearing the shawl and holding a bucket shown in the top left drawing is standing outside no. 7.
The original Cow Cross cattle market and the Smithfield horse and livestock market had a large influence on the character of Cowcross Street. The slaughtering of animals, especially horses, and the processing and storage of their carcasses were the trades longest associated with the area.
This rather feted area supported a number of carcass butchers along with bladder dealers and several cat gut works, making strings for violins, as well as a horse slaughterer's yard and a cart-grease manufacturer. There were also other businesses including candle manufacture, coach-building and the making of shafts for horse-drawn vehicles. Among several foodstuff dealers was a poulterer and egg-merchant, who in 1844 lost a thousand pigeons in one fire and a few months later lost 500 quails kept in a cellar. In Cowcross Street near the way-in to Sharp's Alley was a charcoal-burner.
This whole area was redeveloped in the 1850’s for the new railway line and Farrindon Station and it was probably this that prompted William and Ann to move to St Johns Street.
The houses in the courts and alleys off Cowcross Street at this time were generally small, often of one-room plan and timber-built, such as those in the photograph above in Peter's Lane in the 1860s . They were not necessarily ill-built, but they were the simplest of structures, with steep, narrow and unenclosed staircases, and corner fireplaces sometimes built in pairs. Drainage, sanitation and water-supply were poor. Typically, there was a single water closet (toilet) in the court for the use of all the inhabitants. In 1861 it was reported that Rose Alley, just around the corner, had just one closet between a hundred and sixteen people. Water was kept in casks and cisterns, although these were often cleared away as an anti-cholera measure and instead there might be a standpipe; the supply being turned on for a short while each day.
The original Cow Cross cattle market and the Smithfield horse and livestock market had a large influence on the character of Cowcross Street. The slaughtering of animals, especially horses, and the processing and storage of their carcasses were the trades longest associated with the area.
This rather feted area supported a number of carcass butchers along with bladder dealers and several cat gut works, making strings for violins, as well as a horse slaughterer's yard and a cart-grease manufacturer. There were also other businesses including candle manufacture, coach-building and the making of shafts for horse-drawn vehicles. Among several foodstuff dealers was a poulterer and egg-merchant, who in 1844 lost a thousand pigeons in one fire and a few months later lost 500 quails kept in a cellar. In Cowcross Street near the way-in to Sharp's Alley was a charcoal-burner.
This whole area was redeveloped in the 1850’s for the new railway line and Farrindon Station and it was probably this that prompted William and Ann to move to St Johns Street.
The houses in the courts and alleys off Cowcross Street at this time were generally small, often of one-room plan and timber-built, such as those in the photograph above in Peter's Lane in the 1860s . They were not necessarily ill-built, but they were the simplest of structures, with steep, narrow and unenclosed staircases, and corner fireplaces sometimes built in pairs. Drainage, sanitation and water-supply were poor. Typically, there was a single water closet (toilet) in the court for the use of all the inhabitants. In 1861 it was reported that Rose Alley, just around the corner, had just one closet between a hundred and sixteen people. Water was kept in casks and cisterns, although these were often cleared away as an anti-cholera measure and instead there might be a standpipe; the supply being turned on for a short while each day.
We are perhaps jumping forward too quickly here because although the 1851 census shows them as husband and wife they don't actually get married until 10 December 1855 where only Ann is stated as living at 7 White Horse Alley and William describes himself as a widower but so far I have not come across any evidence of a previous marriage. So, is Ann Scamell the mother of John and Jessie? We may never know for certain but I am quietly confident that she was as I shall explain latter.One of the witnesses is her elder brother Joseph William Scamell and interestingly enough when Joseph William Scamell marries in 1856 one of his witnesses is our William Wright. So nice that they were still in touch with their families.
Ann Grace Scamell was the second child of William Scamell and Ann Rooks and was born on the 9 January 1818. The family lived on the south side of the river in Gravel Lane in Southwark. Her father was born in Compton Abbas, Dorset, and worked as a shoemaker.
The south side of the river was where many of the 'smelly' trades were carried on such as soap making and tanning and dyeing and this would probably account for why a shoemaker should have lived there. Living conditions on the other side of the river were just as bad, if not sometimes worse, than elsewhere. This is in a time before the Embankment had been built and as a consequence at every high tide the river would flood whole areas of roads and houses. I came across this description of the Gravel Lane area and Ewer Street, (which is a side ally turning off of Gravel Lane) written by George Godwin and published in 1858 in 'London Shadows' ...
"The latter (Ewer Street) is a long street of dilapidated houses, partly wood, which comes into Gravel Lane. The drainage is here most defective, in this and the surrounding neighbourhood were formerly many open ditches, into which the tide regularly ebbed and flowed; these have been covered, and now form 'blind drains.' Even now the tides often overflow parts of this street to a depth of from 2 to 3 feet. The cellars about here are often flooded. The houses are dilapidated, and as a matter of course, have cesspools at the back, many of them without even a covering. The health of the people is very bad: fever, we were told, had killed many lately in Ewer-street, and the courts leading from it. Here are cesspools and choked surface drains, which at the time of our visit were undergoing inspection. The place at the back of Ewer-street, which we have sketched, contains twenty or thirty houses. It would be difficult, either by words or illustrations, to give an idea of the squalid and unhealthy condition of this spot. The houses are unfit for occupation: at the back is a large dust-heap. The pavement of this neglected place is broken and uneven, strewed with refuse amid puddles of water. Sometimes, in parts, the water is up to the knees of the people. The houses are thickly inhabited chiefly by Irish: there are only four closets, with cesspools, for the use of the neighbourhood, and these we found in a dreadful condition."
The south side of the river was where many of the 'smelly' trades were carried on such as soap making and tanning and dyeing and this would probably account for why a shoemaker should have lived there. Living conditions on the other side of the river were just as bad, if not sometimes worse, than elsewhere. This is in a time before the Embankment had been built and as a consequence at every high tide the river would flood whole areas of roads and houses. I came across this description of the Gravel Lane area and Ewer Street, (which is a side ally turning off of Gravel Lane) written by George Godwin and published in 1858 in 'London Shadows' ...
"The latter (Ewer Street) is a long street of dilapidated houses, partly wood, which comes into Gravel Lane. The drainage is here most defective, in this and the surrounding neighbourhood were formerly many open ditches, into which the tide regularly ebbed and flowed; these have been covered, and now form 'blind drains.' Even now the tides often overflow parts of this street to a depth of from 2 to 3 feet. The cellars about here are often flooded. The houses are dilapidated, and as a matter of course, have cesspools at the back, many of them without even a covering. The health of the people is very bad: fever, we were told, had killed many lately in Ewer-street, and the courts leading from it. Here are cesspools and choked surface drains, which at the time of our visit were undergoing inspection. The place at the back of Ewer-street, which we have sketched, contains twenty or thirty houses. It would be difficult, either by words or illustrations, to give an idea of the squalid and unhealthy condition of this spot. The houses are unfit for occupation: at the back is a large dust-heap. The pavement of this neglected place is broken and uneven, strewed with refuse amid puddles of water. Sometimes, in parts, the water is up to the knees of the people. The houses are thickly inhabited chiefly by Irish: there are only four closets, with cesspools, for the use of the neighbourhood, and these we found in a dreadful condition."
Moving on ten years to the census of 1861, and William and Ann have moved not very far away to 107 St Johns Street, which is almost on the corner with Aylesbury Street. John is not with them as in 1858 he married Amelia Hunt . Jessie is though until she marries Joseph Barrow at Christ Church, City of London, on 18 December 1864. Jessie is described as a gold and silver lace weaver and so continues in her grandparents footsteps. Before the next census of 1871 both William and Ann would be dead, William in 1866 and Ann one year later in 1867 but they did at least see their two children married.
john wright and amelia hunt
The marriage of my great grandfather, John Wright, has not been easy to confirm but now that I have found the marriage of his father to Ann Scamell I am certain that I have the correct person. There is a marriage entry for a John Scamell Wright and an Amelia Hunt in the parish church of St Clement Danes in the Strand on 3rd November 1858. There are a few anomalies here though as Johns father is recorded as John when it should be William although his profession as a turner is correct. We know that Amelia's maiden name is Hunt as she gives that on the birth certificate of my grandfather William, born in 1881. The fact that Amelia is not able to sign her own name is also mirrored on William's birth certificate, although that in itself would not be unusual as in deed William Wright also marked his marriage entry to Ann with a cross. The name Scamell turns up again when John and Amelia's first daughter, Ann, is born which we will come to shortly. It was a common practice to incorporate the mothers maiden name into the names of some of their children, as in the Caldow family and others within the larger scale of this family tree and it would seem that this is the case here.
We only have Amelia's fathers name from the marriage entry, John Hunt a costermonger, and as they have come over from Cork, Ireland, there is very little chance of gleening any background details. Eighteen months after the wedding, in the 1861 census John and Emma (Amelia) are living at 49 Union Street Court, Cavendish Square. John as a cabinet maker and Emma a flower maker. Artificial flowers for button holes were very popular. There are no children recorded.
Moving swiftly on another ten years, to 1871, and we find John and Amelia living at 70 Dudley Road, St Giles but now with one child.
On the 7th October 1868 Amelia gave birth to a daughter, Ann, and she is baptized on the 15th November. On the christening ledger (shown below) she is just Ann, but on the official General Registers entry, shown underneath, she is Ann Scammell Wright. Also worth noting is that here John is described as a shoemaker but the address given is exactly the same as that given three years later in the 1871 census as 70 Dudley Street, St Giles where John is back to being a cabinet maker and Amelia a flower maker. I can't help wondering if there were many non surviving children born before Ann as it seems quite along time between the marriage in 1858 and Ann being born in 1868!
On the 7th October 1868 Amelia gave birth to a daughter, Ann, and she is baptized on the 15th November. On the christening ledger (shown below) she is just Ann, but on the official General Registers entry, shown underneath, she is Ann Scammell Wright. Also worth noting is that here John is described as a shoemaker but the address given is exactly the same as that given three years later in the 1871 census as 70 Dudley Street, St Giles where John is back to being a cabinet maker and Amelia a flower maker. I can't help wondering if there were many non surviving children born before Ann as it seems quite along time between the marriage in 1858 and Ann being born in 1868!
Dudley Road, and the Seven Dials area of London is not a good place to be living.
This extract is taken from 'St Giles on line' ....
"The population of the parish grew enormously in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, exceeding 30,000 by 1831.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the area to the north side of St Giles High Street as far as Great Russell Street became one of the poorest parts of London, known as St Giles Rookery, notorious for its drunkenness and licentiousness.
The St Giles Rookery became the iconic slum in nineteenth century London. During this period, many of the local residents were Irish, having fled Ireland to escape from the potato famines of the 1840s. A survey of the Rookeries in 1849 revealed that in some four-roomed houses between fifty and ninety people found nightly lodgings. In 1851 the population of the parish had risen to 37,407. There continued to be a very high death rate in the parish, with 190 burials in July 1840, and 1,856 during the course of the year.The increasing population of the parish and the lack of drainage led to major outbreaks of disease, and a very high death rate. The first appearance of Cholera in 1848 led to the area being regarded as a focus of infection. In 1850 there were 1,213 burials of residents of St Giles’s parish in the Burial Ground at St Pancras. The most burials on one day were twenty-five, on 15 December 1850.
In 1851 107 people were reported to be living in an eight-roomed house.In 1844-7 major clearance of slums began with the construction of New Oxford Street through the middle of the Rookery, but this merely increase overcrowding in the surviving buildings. From 1851 sewers began to be laid in the area, and the water supply was improved. However, major concentrations of very poor housing remained, and poverty intensified in the Seven Dials district, to the south of the Churchyard. There were always many breweries and workshops in the parish, and from the 1870s, they began to take over the overcrowded houses in the Rookery, and the population of the area began to decline."
And this extract by James Greenwood first published as ' Cellar Life in St Giles' in 1875.
One evening recently I alighted from the omnibus that, on its westward route, takes a short cut through Seven Dials.
It was about seven o'clock, and the gas was alight - the gas and the oil and the paraffin and the naphtha. St. Giles's of 1873 is pretty much what it was a quarter of a century ago. A big brewery and three or four new streets have shorn its skirts somewhat, but it is still as dirty and draggletailed as ever. The only "enlightenment" that modern customs and usages have brought it appears is in the increased brilliancy of its public houses, which are especially rich in plate-glass and gas glitter. There are the same ragged women, some with babies in their arms - some mere girls - and some with backs bent with age; and there are, as of old, the groups of lanky, ill-dressed youth, with a sharp look-out from under the peaks of their caps; the same knots of hulking men of mature age too lazy even to support with their fingers the short pipe which hangs all aslant from their mouths, while their hands are plunged wrist-deep in the pockets of their trousers. The stalls are the same, so are the shops, the awful little dens - and there are scores of them - inside and out of which are exposed for sale scraps of household furniture, which, by a jocular fiction of the "trade," is termed "second-hand," although it must be twenty-second hand at the very least, and bedding, mattresses, and beds, and bolsters and pillows, the sickening complexion of which should be sufficient warrant for a sanitary inspector to seize them at once and consign them without delay to the flames.
I purposely fixed on the Dudley-street quarter of the St. Giles's district, because there is scarcely a house in the front of which there is not a hole in the pavement and a ladder by which the underground lodgers use to descend to their lairs. And from where I stood, I glanced into Dudley-street, and left and right, within thirty yards, I could see the open mouths of several cellars luridly lit by the fire and candlelight below. As though to put the matter beyond a doubt, at that moment there slowly emerged from the jaws of the nearest gulf a male lodger with a pair of deplorably ragged trousers slouched about his legs, and wearing a shirt horribly dirty and so full of rents that his hairy chest and shoulders were almost bare. His face was dirty, too, and sickly white, and to prevent his lank black hair from falling ever his eyes - which blinked and winked as do those of a miner who comes up in the cage after many hours' labour in the gloomy pit - he had encircling his head a fillet of cobler's "waxed end." With his dangling shirt-sleeve he administered a refreshing wipe to his face and throat, and seated himself at the edge of his hole, with the evident intention of enjoying a few mouthfuls of the comparatively pure air of Dudley-street.
I crossed the road, and obtained a peep at the interior, and made inquiry of the man…” we are nearly all translators here." he said.
"Are you a translator ?" I asked him.
"Ah !" he replied, "anybody might know that with arf a hi in his head ;" and as he spoke he jerked with his thumb in the direction of the cellar's depths. My eyes followed the movement, and presently in the steamy haze were enabled to make out a cobbler's seat in the midst of a heap - a couple of bushel, at least - of old boots and shoes, apparently in the last stages of mildew and decay.
"There's what I translates," explained the ragged cobbler, with a grin that showed how neatly the stem of his short clay pipe fitted into the hollow it had worn for itself in the side teeth of his upper and lower jaw; "I translates 'em into sound uns."
"Is it good pay ?" I ventured.
"It's starvegut pay," growled the poor translator, most un-pleasantly scratching himself; "it ain't taturs and salt hardly for a cove's wife and kids."
"Especially with rents so high !" I remarked.
"Well you may say it, mister," he replied, ruefully; "fancy! four bob a week for that!" and once again, with a backward movement of his thumb, he indicated the underground den.
The excavations under the ancient houses of Dudley Street possess no windows at all, and the only way in which light and ventilation can be conveyed to the wretched inhabitants is through a hole in the pavement - a narrow opening, no larger than might be made by removing an ordinary paving-stone.
Leading down into the cellar is a ladder or a flight of wooden steps protected by a handrail. The roof of the cellar is level with the common roadway, and its floor must be several feet below the sewage and gas pipes. A wooden flap is hinged by the side of the gap at the head of the ladder, and is, I imagine closed at night time, and when the weather is unendurably inclement; though how, at such times, the benighted lodgers contrive to breathe is a mystery.
I turned away from the hole in which the translator and his family resided. At every step I took in dark Dudley Street I grew more and more amazed. Here was another inhabited cellar of precisely the same pattern as that already described, and next door another, and again next door still another, this time with half-a-dozen nearly nude and hideously dirty children wriggling up and down the ladder, and larking in and out of the cellar darkness below, like rabbits in a warren. More inhabited cellars on the right hand side, on the left hand side-sometimes two and three together, sometimes with half-a-dozen houses between. From one end to the other of Dudley Street, which be it borne in mind, is but a small portion of the district of St. Giles, I counted thirty of these underground dens, all alive with human life. Besides these there were eight others, which though inhabited, could scarcely be said to be lively. In these a solitary cobbler toiled, the flames of his tallow candle disclosing him deep down in the dingy hole, hammering and stitching with desperate energy in the midst of heaps of mildewed wreckage of souls and upper leathers. In these eight instances I could not see any one down in the cellars but the cobblers themselves though for that matter there was so little light that there may have been in each case a wife and a large family of children stowed away in the background. But, as regards the other thirty instances, they made no secret of their existence as human dwelling-places. There they were, with their mouths open, gaping on the highway, and there was nothing to prevent the passer-by from looking down their dingy throats. There were the fires in the places, and the pots and kettles on the fires, and there were the mothers, and there were the babies, the elder children hauling refractory youngsters down the ladder, at the same time threatening them in forcible language with what they would "ketch" if they didn't "come indoors and go to bed."
I did not pursue my investigation beyond Dudley Street, but it is fair to assume that in the surrounding vile courts and alleys - Dudley Street is a broad and busy thoroughfare - the evil is just as prevalent. I must be permitted to say in conclusion that the picture here given is not a bit overdrawn or exaggerated. There, today, are to be seen in Dudley Street, Seven Dials, the deep black cellars, reached through a gap in the pavement, and by means of a steep ladder, and in each, at a greater depth in the earth than the sewers and the nests of the sewer rats, families of human beings - fathers, mothers, and little children-live and eat and drink, and make themselves at home.
And just to illustrate the point a little further are these two pictures.The first is an engraving by Gustave Dore entitled 'Dudley Street in 1872' and the second, a sketch by an unknown artist, entitled 'The Rookery of Dudley Street' 1850.
This extract is taken from 'St Giles on line' ....
"The population of the parish grew enormously in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, exceeding 30,000 by 1831.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the area to the north side of St Giles High Street as far as Great Russell Street became one of the poorest parts of London, known as St Giles Rookery, notorious for its drunkenness and licentiousness.
The St Giles Rookery became the iconic slum in nineteenth century London. During this period, many of the local residents were Irish, having fled Ireland to escape from the potato famines of the 1840s. A survey of the Rookeries in 1849 revealed that in some four-roomed houses between fifty and ninety people found nightly lodgings. In 1851 the population of the parish had risen to 37,407. There continued to be a very high death rate in the parish, with 190 burials in July 1840, and 1,856 during the course of the year.The increasing population of the parish and the lack of drainage led to major outbreaks of disease, and a very high death rate. The first appearance of Cholera in 1848 led to the area being regarded as a focus of infection. In 1850 there were 1,213 burials of residents of St Giles’s parish in the Burial Ground at St Pancras. The most burials on one day were twenty-five, on 15 December 1850.
In 1851 107 people were reported to be living in an eight-roomed house.In 1844-7 major clearance of slums began with the construction of New Oxford Street through the middle of the Rookery, but this merely increase overcrowding in the surviving buildings. From 1851 sewers began to be laid in the area, and the water supply was improved. However, major concentrations of very poor housing remained, and poverty intensified in the Seven Dials district, to the south of the Churchyard. There were always many breweries and workshops in the parish, and from the 1870s, they began to take over the overcrowded houses in the Rookery, and the population of the area began to decline."
And this extract by James Greenwood first published as ' Cellar Life in St Giles' in 1875.
One evening recently I alighted from the omnibus that, on its westward route, takes a short cut through Seven Dials.
It was about seven o'clock, and the gas was alight - the gas and the oil and the paraffin and the naphtha. St. Giles's of 1873 is pretty much what it was a quarter of a century ago. A big brewery and three or four new streets have shorn its skirts somewhat, but it is still as dirty and draggletailed as ever. The only "enlightenment" that modern customs and usages have brought it appears is in the increased brilliancy of its public houses, which are especially rich in plate-glass and gas glitter. There are the same ragged women, some with babies in their arms - some mere girls - and some with backs bent with age; and there are, as of old, the groups of lanky, ill-dressed youth, with a sharp look-out from under the peaks of their caps; the same knots of hulking men of mature age too lazy even to support with their fingers the short pipe which hangs all aslant from their mouths, while their hands are plunged wrist-deep in the pockets of their trousers. The stalls are the same, so are the shops, the awful little dens - and there are scores of them - inside and out of which are exposed for sale scraps of household furniture, which, by a jocular fiction of the "trade," is termed "second-hand," although it must be twenty-second hand at the very least, and bedding, mattresses, and beds, and bolsters and pillows, the sickening complexion of which should be sufficient warrant for a sanitary inspector to seize them at once and consign them without delay to the flames.
I purposely fixed on the Dudley-street quarter of the St. Giles's district, because there is scarcely a house in the front of which there is not a hole in the pavement and a ladder by which the underground lodgers use to descend to their lairs. And from where I stood, I glanced into Dudley-street, and left and right, within thirty yards, I could see the open mouths of several cellars luridly lit by the fire and candlelight below. As though to put the matter beyond a doubt, at that moment there slowly emerged from the jaws of the nearest gulf a male lodger with a pair of deplorably ragged trousers slouched about his legs, and wearing a shirt horribly dirty and so full of rents that his hairy chest and shoulders were almost bare. His face was dirty, too, and sickly white, and to prevent his lank black hair from falling ever his eyes - which blinked and winked as do those of a miner who comes up in the cage after many hours' labour in the gloomy pit - he had encircling his head a fillet of cobler's "waxed end." With his dangling shirt-sleeve he administered a refreshing wipe to his face and throat, and seated himself at the edge of his hole, with the evident intention of enjoying a few mouthfuls of the comparatively pure air of Dudley-street.
I crossed the road, and obtained a peep at the interior, and made inquiry of the man…” we are nearly all translators here." he said.
"Are you a translator ?" I asked him.
"Ah !" he replied, "anybody might know that with arf a hi in his head ;" and as he spoke he jerked with his thumb in the direction of the cellar's depths. My eyes followed the movement, and presently in the steamy haze were enabled to make out a cobbler's seat in the midst of a heap - a couple of bushel, at least - of old boots and shoes, apparently in the last stages of mildew and decay.
"There's what I translates," explained the ragged cobbler, with a grin that showed how neatly the stem of his short clay pipe fitted into the hollow it had worn for itself in the side teeth of his upper and lower jaw; "I translates 'em into sound uns."
"Is it good pay ?" I ventured.
"It's starvegut pay," growled the poor translator, most un-pleasantly scratching himself; "it ain't taturs and salt hardly for a cove's wife and kids."
"Especially with rents so high !" I remarked.
"Well you may say it, mister," he replied, ruefully; "fancy! four bob a week for that!" and once again, with a backward movement of his thumb, he indicated the underground den.
The excavations under the ancient houses of Dudley Street possess no windows at all, and the only way in which light and ventilation can be conveyed to the wretched inhabitants is through a hole in the pavement - a narrow opening, no larger than might be made by removing an ordinary paving-stone.
Leading down into the cellar is a ladder or a flight of wooden steps protected by a handrail. The roof of the cellar is level with the common roadway, and its floor must be several feet below the sewage and gas pipes. A wooden flap is hinged by the side of the gap at the head of the ladder, and is, I imagine closed at night time, and when the weather is unendurably inclement; though how, at such times, the benighted lodgers contrive to breathe is a mystery.
I turned away from the hole in which the translator and his family resided. At every step I took in dark Dudley Street I grew more and more amazed. Here was another inhabited cellar of precisely the same pattern as that already described, and next door another, and again next door still another, this time with half-a-dozen nearly nude and hideously dirty children wriggling up and down the ladder, and larking in and out of the cellar darkness below, like rabbits in a warren. More inhabited cellars on the right hand side, on the left hand side-sometimes two and three together, sometimes with half-a-dozen houses between. From one end to the other of Dudley Street, which be it borne in mind, is but a small portion of the district of St. Giles, I counted thirty of these underground dens, all alive with human life. Besides these there were eight others, which though inhabited, could scarcely be said to be lively. In these a solitary cobbler toiled, the flames of his tallow candle disclosing him deep down in the dingy hole, hammering and stitching with desperate energy in the midst of heaps of mildewed wreckage of souls and upper leathers. In these eight instances I could not see any one down in the cellars but the cobblers themselves though for that matter there was so little light that there may have been in each case a wife and a large family of children stowed away in the background. But, as regards the other thirty instances, they made no secret of their existence as human dwelling-places. There they were, with their mouths open, gaping on the highway, and there was nothing to prevent the passer-by from looking down their dingy throats. There were the fires in the places, and the pots and kettles on the fires, and there were the mothers, and there were the babies, the elder children hauling refractory youngsters down the ladder, at the same time threatening them in forcible language with what they would "ketch" if they didn't "come indoors and go to bed."
I did not pursue my investigation beyond Dudley Street, but it is fair to assume that in the surrounding vile courts and alleys - Dudley Street is a broad and busy thoroughfare - the evil is just as prevalent. I must be permitted to say in conclusion that the picture here given is not a bit overdrawn or exaggerated. There, today, are to be seen in Dudley Street, Seven Dials, the deep black cellars, reached through a gap in the pavement, and by means of a steep ladder, and in each, at a greater depth in the earth than the sewers and the nests of the sewer rats, families of human beings - fathers, mothers, and little children-live and eat and drink, and make themselves at home.
And just to illustrate the point a little further are these two pictures.The first is an engraving by Gustave Dore entitled 'Dudley Street in 1872' and the second, a sketch by an unknown artist, entitled 'The Rookery of Dudley Street' 1850.
However, very shortly after the 1871 census John and Amelia have moved as their next child, John, is born in 1871 in St James. The next census of 1881 shows them now living across the river at 5 William Street, Fulham and with five children, Ann, John, George, Emma and Joseph. They do seem to have moved around quite a bit, Ann having been born at Dudley Street in St Giles, John in the parish of St James and George in Ramsgate in Kent. The two youngest were both born in Fulham so perhaps they had been settled in William Street for the past five years. This abode must have been in stark contrast to previous homes and is shown ringed in red in this map.William Street leads straight onto the Hammersmith/Kensington Road and one street up from North End Road. Fulham was an up and coming suburb at this time and although William Street was not in the best location there would have been plenty of work opportunities.
George Wright also became a chair maker by trade and married Agnes Kelly in 1895. They had one son,John, born 1 February 1898. He was one of those unfortunate individuals to suffer lasting effects of his experiences during the first world war and he was admitted to St Bernards Hospital in Mach 1921 and died there in 1964 having never left. I have no information of any of the other children except my grandfather, another William Wright.
He was born nine months after this census on the 22nd December 1881, also at 5 William Street, Fulham. It is from his birth certificate that we have his mother's maiden name, Hunt, and again confirmation that she was not able to write. This copy of his birth certificate was given to me by my late cousin Marlene and is in itself a copy made in 1913 presumably by William but for reasons unknown.
He was born nine months after this census on the 22nd December 1881, also at 5 William Street, Fulham. It is from his birth certificate that we have his mother's maiden name, Hunt, and again confirmation that she was not able to write. This copy of his birth certificate was given to me by my late cousin Marlene and is in itself a copy made in 1913 presumably by William but for reasons unknown.
The family moved back to the St Giles area to 38 Shorts Gardens where their last child, James, is born in 1885 and it is also where Amelia dies on 6 November 1890. Within three months of her death my great grandfather remarried the widow Margaret Cleary with her own two children. They move to East Street, Holborn and had one child of their own, my fathers aunt Mag (Margaret), born 28 October 1896. New wife Margaret died in October 1901 in Holborn and the 1911 census shows just John and daughter Margaret together and still living in Holborn, John still a chair maker and Margaret is his apprentice upholsterer. Eighteen months later, October 1912, John William Wright died. I don't know where sixteen year old Margaret goes to live and work during the war years but on the 10 July 1920 she marries Frederick Bennett in East Dulwich. They had no children and Margaret died 19 May 1957 in Peckham.