Whitechapel

• POLLUTION + POOR SANITATION

  • Heavy pollution
  • Smog
  • Poor sanitation
  • Little healthy drinking water
  • Sewage runs onto streets
  • Illness
• POLLUTION + POOR SANITATION

  • Hard to catch criminals
  • Easy to not be seen
• OVERCROWDED HOUSING

  • Slum areas 'rookeries'
  • Dirt, disease, crime
  • Up to 30 per apartment
  • Sharing densely packed beds
  • Difficult to move about
• OVERCROWDED HOUSING (CRIME)

  • Around many people
  • Hard to chase people
  • Many possessions around
• LODGING HOUSES

  • 3 8-hour sleeping shifts a day
  • Rats
  • Smell
  • 200+ houses, 8000+ inhabitants
• 1875 Artisans' Dwellings Act - Improved living conditions for the working class - allowed local councils to buy up areas of slum dwellings, clear them, and then rebuild them to provide better housing.
• MODEL HOUSING

  • 1875 Artisans' Dwellings Act
  • 11 new blocks of flats designed by Henry Darbishire
  • Paid for by George Peabody
• PEABODY ESTATE - 1881

  • 286 flats
  • Weekly rent - 3 shillings for 1 room, 6 shillings for 3
  • Affordable for working class
• WORK

  • Tailoring, shoe making, making matches
  • Sweatshops - small, cramped, dusty, little natural light
  • Some worked 20 hours a day
  • Low wages
• WORKHOUSES + ORPHANAGES

  • Poor relief in the 19th century
  • Food + shelter
  • Old, sick, disabled, orphans, single mothers
  • Conditions worsened as a deterrent
  • Last resort for many
• WORKHOUSES

  • Tough manual labour
  • Uniform
  • Families split up and punished for communicating
  • Vagrants held separately (Lazy, bad influence)
• CRIME

  • Dense population
  • Smog
  • Low wages
  • Bad workhouses
• The 1880s saw a rise in Fenianism - a radical demand for Irish Home Rule. Bombs, suspected of being planted by Irish nationalists, had exploded and injured people in the city.
• There was a fear amongst some (including the police) that many Jews belonged to radical revolutionary groups who aimed to overthrow the government.
• There were often violent demonstrations by striking workers - this may have fed public fear that Jewish Revolutionaries were causing trouble.
• Some Polish immigrants were suspected of being Jack the Ripper.
• Some churches were actively trying to convert Jews to Christianity, sometimes leading to unrest as some Jews resented being preached at.
• Having faced previous persecution, Russian Jews were scared of authorities. They tended to distrust the police making them easy prey for criminal gangs.
• Some East-end Jews were slow to learn English and tended to converse in Yiddish. This language barrier helped to keep them segregated from the native population.
• There was competition for jobs between Jewish tailors and shopkeepers and the existing 'native' business owners.
• Immigration led to overcrowding and tensions with the existing population.
• Mass immigration to the Whitechapel area was seen by some as the cause behind rapidly rising rent prices.
• ANARCHISTS

  • Rise due to social/economic problems
  • Overthrow government/revolution
  • Special branch of Metropolitan Police to investigate possible anarchy
  • Stories exaggerated
  • Eastern Europeans stereotyped as anarchists
  • Immigrants stereotyped as dangerous criminals
• SOCIALISTS

  • Social Democratic Federation (SDF) - 1881
  • Look after women and agricultural/poor industrial workers
  • Police seen as unorganised, ineffective and incompetent (Jack the Ripper)
• Drinking made people vulnerable and thus more susceptible to crime (Jack the Ripper's victims were alcoholics).
• Alcohol reduced people's inhibitions and affected their judgement, this could lead to people making the wrong choices and committing crimes. It also caused disagreements to escalate into violence.
• Drinking was one way of coping with the difficulties of Whitechapel; addiction to alcohol was responsible for some turning to crime after losing their jobs- the very high number of pubs and gin- palaces in Whitechapel made this more common as alcohol was so cheaply available.