spitalfields

• Spitalfields is a district in the East End of London within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is situated just east of the Bishopsgate section of the former London Wall. Spitalfields takes its name from the hospital and priory, St. Mary’s Spittel which was founded in 1197. The area is famous for traders working from a collection of sheds and stalls doing their best to meet the needs of London's rapidly growing population and their appetite for fresh fruit and vegetables. Their success made Spitalfields Market.
• Spitalfields

  • It was outside the walls of London
  • Close to the river Thames and the docks
• The Romans built a defensive wall round London that lasted until the sixteenth century
• Spitalfields is just outside the north eastern edge, beyond the Bishop's Gate into the City
• Spitalfields

  A place for those who didn't quite fit, who broke the rules or were outside the law, whose business was seen as edgy or dirty, who ended up there because they couldn't afford anywhere else, who arrived from somewhere else
• After the Great Fire of London there was a relaxation on building regulations because of the demand for housing which saw Spitalfields become part of an expanding city
• Spitalfields

  • It became a place where outcasts, criminals and poorer people gathered
  • There were greater freedoms beyond the control of the City
• Nearby in Shoreditch was London's first purpose-built theatre since Roman times: stage entertainment was not allowed inside the City walls
• Further south, below the walls around Houndsditch was an area of often illicit street traders dealing in old clothes and other items, as well as 'noxious trades' such as meat curing and tanning
• Some foreign-born people, prevented from living inside the walls, settled here
• The violent anti-foreigner riots of 'Evil May Day' in 1517 were sparked off by a sermon against 'strangers' preached at St Mary Spital
• After the Protestant Reformation (when the priory was destroyed) life was not easy for Catholics and many chose to live outside the walls in the houses and gardens among the remains of the old priory
• Religion, not ethnicity dictated how well you were treated
• The emergence of the textile industry saw the appearance of Huguenots and the Irish
• Someone walking the streets of eighteenth century Spitalfields would have heard many languages and dialects from the mix of people drawn to the booming industry there
• There were certainly English, Irish, French and some Jewish people
• There may have been African child servants or Indians working as nannies or servants for the wealthy
• Hog's Lane was an informal market that appeared selling second-hand clothes. Later known as Petticoat Lane
• Brick House on Spital Yard where Doña Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza
• Groups in Europe

  • Catholics
  • Protestants
• Reformation

  The 16th-century movement for the reform of abuses in the Roman Catholic Church ending in the establishment of Protestantism
• After the Protestant Reformation life was not easy for Catholics and many chose to live outside the walls in the houses and gardens among the remains of the old priory
• They included foreign ambassadors from Catholic France and the Spanish Netherlands
• Jesuit

  A member of the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic order founded in 1534
• Father Henry Garnet, a Jesuit priest, lived here for several years in a 'safe house' and arranged for the arrival of Doña Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza
• Doña Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza

  A Spanish Catholic activist and poet with an extraordinary story
• They had to live their lives in secret
• Doña Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza set up an illegal religious community in a house with high security and a hidden chapel
• Doña Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza was arrested and imprisoned
• Doña Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza tried to convert people to Catholicism including prostitutes
• Reasons Africans moved to England

  • As ambassadors
  • As translators for merchants
  • As part of the Royal Court
  • For jobs
  • Fleeing religious persecution
• One in every fifteen people recorded in the parish registers of St Botolph's Church at Aldgate between 1538 and 1603 was described as 'blackamoore'
• Africans in England were well integrated, resulting in mixed marriages and being accepted
• 1. 
     

  1570
• Huguenots

  French Protestants
• The St Bartholomew's Day massacre and the 1680 law overturning their rights
• Huguenots

  • Arriving as refugees fleeing religious persecution in the St Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants in Paris in 1572 (first wave)
  • The number of Huguenots increased rapidly in the 1680s after the French King Louis XIV overturned a law protecting their rights (second wave)
  • Many arrived poor and destitute after terrible experiences
• Committees set up to help them estimated that 13,050 Huguenots had arrived in London by 1687, mostly living in Spitalfields
• By 1700 Huguenots were about 5% of London's population
• Huguenots

  • They had a strong tradition of business skills, self-reliance and community support
  • Many were highly skilled silk weavers who settled in new houses that were being built over the fields
  • They were given the freedom to worship and build churches
  • By 1700 Spitalfields had at least nine Huguenot churches which helped the poor and gave support to new arrivals, finding them work and lodgings