Tag: traders

‘The stench was horrible, and seemed as if from burnt bones or flesh’: the Spa Fields scandal of 1845

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Clerkenwell Police court was crowded on the morning of the 25 February 1845 and the magistrate must have quickly realized that local passions were running high. Most of those present either lived or worked in the near vicinity of Exmouth Street, close by the Spa Fields burial ground.

Burials no longer take place in Spa Fields and nowadays the gardens are an inner-city paradise on summer days as visitors eat their lunch, walk their dogs, or sunbathe on the grass. The London Metropolitan Archives is nearby and in Exmouth Market gourmands can enjoy a wide variety of food from the stalls and cafés that trade there.

The crowd in Mr Combe’s courtroom were represented by a pawnbroker and silversmith called Watts. He stepped forward to explain that he and his fellow ratepayers were there to seek an end to ‘practices of an abominable nature’ that had been taken place in the graveyard.

What exactly were these ‘abominable practices’?

The magistrate listened as  Mr Watts told him that while the burial ground was less than two acres in size and was estimated to be able to hold 3,000 bodies. In reality however, in the 50 years of its existence on average some 1,500 internments were taking place annually. In sum then, something like 75,000 people had been buried in a space for 3,000 and more and more burials were taking place, indeed there had recently been 36 in one day the pawnbroker said.

However, while the graveyard was crowded and this would have meant digging into extant graves and disturbing them, ‘not a bone was seen on the surface’. He (Mr Watts) would provide his Worship with evidence that the bodies of interned persons were routinely being dug up and burned to make room for fresh burials. Moreover many of those coffins removed were new, the wood ‘was fresh’ he added, and witnesses had seen human body parts hacked off by diggers.

The desecration of graves was one thing but the root of the complaint was actually the effect that this practice had on local people and their businesses. According to Watts:

‘The stench proceeding from what was called the “bone-house” in the graveyard was so intolerable that many of the residents in Exmouth–street, which abutted on the place, had been obliged to leave it altogether’.

Surely, the magistrate asked him, a prosecution could be brought against the parochial authorities that had responsibility for the place? Mr Watts said that the parish of St James’ was well aware of what was happening but were doing nothing to stop it.

‘The custom is’ he explained, ‘to disinter the bodies after they have been three or four days buried, chop them up, and burn them in this bone-house’.

Then he should certainly bring a charge against them Mr Combe advised. The clerk to the local Board of Poor Law Guardians was less sure however; since the burial ground was not subject to rates he didn’t think the parochial authorities could be held liable for it. The magistrate said that if the Guardians couldn’t interfere the matter should go to the Poor Law Commissioners and, if they didn’t not help, he would apply directly to the Homes Secretary (who, in February 1845, was Sir James Graham – a politician who, by his own admission, is only remembered by history as ‘the man who opened the letters of the Italians’ in the Mazzini case).

Police Inspector Penny (G Division) testified that he had visited the bone house after being presented with a petition signed by 150 locals.

He found ‘a large quantity of coffins, broken up and some of them burning…the smell was shocking, intolerable. There were coffins of every size there, children’s and men’s’.

The court heard from Reuben Room, a former gravedigger who’d left two year’s previously after ‘a dispute’. He said he’d often been asked to disinter bodies after a couple of days to make room for fresh burials. John Walters, who kept the Clerkenwell fire engine, gave evidence that he had twice had to attend fires at the bone house. He had found it hard to gain admission (suggesting that the authorities there were not keen for people to see what was going on inside) but when he had he’d seen ‘as many coffins as three men could convey, and a great deal of pitch was fastened to the chimney’ [i.e. blackening it], resulting from the burning of coffins.

The smell, he agreed, was ‘horrible, and seemed as if from burnt bones or flesh’. A large crowd had gathered that night and were ready to pull the place to the ground.

More witnesses came forward to testify to the horror of the bone house and the ‘abominable practices’ carried out there. Catherine Murphy, who lived in a house which overlooked the graveyard had seen grave diggers chop up a body with their shovels, and had intervened to admonish them when one of the men had lifted the ‘upper part of a corpse by the hair of the head’.

‘Oh, you villain’, she cried, ‘to treat the corpse so!’

Mr Combe  again advised Mr Watts and his fellow petitioners to make a full statement of their complaint to the board of guardians so that they could take action against whomsoever was to blame. Satisfied with this, the crowd emptied out of the courtroom.

Even by early 1800s the pressure on London’s graveyards was acute. The small parish burial grounds simply were not designed to cope with the huge numbers of burials that a rapidly growing population required. The local authorities recognised that larger cemeteries needed to be laid out so that room could be found for new internments. In 1824 a campaign began to build large municipal cemeteries on the edge of London, away from crowded housing and the danger of disease.

From 1837 to 1841 Parliament agreed to ‘the building of seven commercial cemeteries’ at Kensal Green, West Norwood, Highgate, Nunhead, Abney Park, Brompton and Tower Hamlets. By mid century (not long after the horror of Spa Fields) these were already filling up.* Acts in the 1850s caused most of the old seventeenth century burial grounds to be formally closed, some of these are now public gardens.

So the next time you take a stroll in Spa Fields enjoying your lunch or coffee, and taking in the antics of the local canines, you might try to imagine what this place smelled like when the bone house’s fires were in full operation.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Wednesday, February 26, 1845]

*Weinrebb & Hibbert, The London Encyclopædia (p.129)

for other posts about the problems of London’s dead see:

Knocked down in the street a week before her wedding.

A grave legal dispute in Essex

‘What could parsons, bishops, politicians, and the editors of the daily press do without lying’? An Anarchist exposé of hypocrisy

220px-Imperial_Federation,_Map_of_the_World_Showing_the_Extent_of_the_British_Empire_in_1886_(levelled)

In 1884 the Imperial Federation League was formed in London and in several other colonial cities throughout the empire. Its aim was to create a federation of self-governing states under the umbrella of the British Empire. At the heart lay the idea of British Nationalism – a greater Great Britain if you will – and was very much concerned with white nationalism.

In a break from my usual sources for this blog I’ve had a look at the political newspapers that are made available via Gale’s Nineteenth Century Collections Online. Within these I found an article in The Anarchist from September 1885 which references the notion of a ‘Federation of the Empire’ and the racism that underpinned it.

It reported that a number of ‘Indians’ had applied to a district court which was presided over by a Police Magistrate named Mr Panton. The group wanted to obtain license to trade on the streets door to door (hawking) but were refused. The writers was indignant on their behalf:

‘Those Indians are our fellow-citizens, members of the same empire; but they are unfit to hawk goods in this part of the world! We have seen several of them about the streets, and were impressed with their cleanly appearance and respectable bearing. For hawkers, we thought them a immense improvement on any of our own race that we have seen in the same trade’.

The article goes onto say:

‘And what of the Chinese? They hawk and very properly too. And they are not of the same empire. We presume were China conquered and annexed to the British Empire, all Chinese would be refused hawker’s’ licenses here. This is a good commentary on the Federation craze’.

The author ends by declaring that his society accused ‘swarthy Indians’ of being ‘noted liars! Ah, that is sad. But is that any reason they should be refused hawkers’ licenses?’ he asks.

‘have we no liars in Melbourne of the British race? What could parsons, bishops, politicians, and the editors of the daily press do without lying? To honestly carry our any law against lying would be to shut up most of the churches, most of the newspapers, to stop most trades, to abolish royalty, levees, parliaments, and what not.

Let us have fair play all round, and favor to none, whether truthful or not’.

Despite having some popular political support in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the IFL never managed to persuade enough politicians that it was viable and the outbreak of war in 1914 effectively killed it as an idea. However, there it has remerged as a possible solution to life after Brexit; CANZUK (a political union of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK) has been mooted as a viable alternative economic force to the EU.

[from The Anarchist, Tuesday, September 15, 1885]

One thirsty fellow’s scheme for ‘raising the wind’.

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Vauxhall Bridge c.1829

James Edwards was a man with a tremendously large thirst but very small funds. In early 1854 he came up with a cunning plan to cash in on what may have been a fairly common practice. Unfortunately for him it backfired, and in late February he found himself in the dock of the Westminster Police Court.

One day a house in Besborough Gardens, Pimlico, was inundated with tradesmen delivering all sorts of goods and services. Between 15 and 18 different butchers, bakers, sweeps, french polishers and the like descended on the fashionable parade near Vauxhall Bridge. The staff and the unnamed gentleman that resided there were puzzled – no one had ordered anything.

One can imagine the chaotic scene with bewildered homeowner turning away frustrated and annoyed tradesmen – perhaps much like the exchanges between Charles Pooter and his butcher and the other tradesmen that called on him (and then fell over his badly positioned boot scraper).

The gentleman and his family at first assumed it must have been ‘a hoax got up by some mischievous person’ but eventually the trail was traced back to James Edwards.

Edwards had apparently gone around the various local tradesmen making spurious orders for unwanted items and services in the hope that he would received a tip. This came in the form of ‘a few halfpence or pints of beer’ and, with up to 18 orders he must have had plenty of money or alcohol to drink himself silly for the rest of the afternoon.

Whether it was good luck or inside knowledge is not made clear in the report, but the family’s cook, who normally placed most of the orders for the household, had recently left. This allowed such an unusual situation to occur. Edwards had, as the paper reported, discovered  a new ‘mode of raising the wind’ (or obtaining there necessary funds).

It was a nuisance if not a crime and in the absence of the cook’s testimony that she had not made the orders the magistrate was obliged to give him the benefit of the doubt. He ordered him to enter into his own recognisances to behave himself for the next six months and warned the tradesmen to be on ‘their guard against tricks of this description’.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, February 27, 1854]

Do you know the muffin man (and is he annoying you)?

Do you know the muffin man?
The muffin man, the muffin man.
Do you know the muffin man
Who lives in Drury Lane?

Are you familiar with this old nursery rhyme? It was probably first written down in the early 1800s but it reminds of us of a time when many people bought their food and household goods and services from street vendors or door-to-door salesmen.

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These were men and women like the ‘muffin man’ in the illustration above (from Punch in 1890). They attracted the attention of the householders by ‘crying’ their goods in songs and making a noise (by, for example, ringing a bell). I remember the ‘rag and bone’ man’s bell in Finchley in the 1970s, and we still have ice cream vans with their familiar tunes.

It was vital for the tradesmen to be able to advertise their wares because they how else would you know they were there? There were plenty of advertisements in the 1800s (just look at any photograph of a street scene and you will see the buildings and buses literally covered in promotional material) but there was no television or radio to promote yourself on.

Increasingly it seems however that street sellers were coming into conflict with the very people they wanted to sell too, because not everyone appreciated the disturbance they caused. The police, who had tried to regulate the streets since the 1830s, often chose to turn a blind eye unless local residents complained. In December 1879 some householders in Lambeth did complain, and the problem reached the Police Courts.

Mrs Hart, and other residents of Brunswick Terrace in Camberwell Road, south London appeared before the magistrate at Lambeth to lodge a complaint against a muffin man and other tradesmen for disturbing their peace. Mrs Hart’s daughter was ‘very seriously ill’ she told the justice, ‘and the noises on Sundays as well as on other days from muffin bells were most annoying and unpleasant’.

Sunday had become a ‘day of torment and misery instead of rest’, she said and added that whenever she remonstrated with the man he ignored her, and went off laughing and ringing his bells without any consideration for her or her daughter.

Thomas Pitten, who lived in Peckham, came into to add his voice in support. He said the muffin man was bad but so were ‘the vendors of coal and other articles, whose noises were terrible’. His wife was also sick and he had complained to the salesmen but to no avail.

The justice, Mr Ellison, turned to the muffin man (who was not named in the report) and told him he was guilty, under the terms of the Police Act, of making a disturbance. He said that on this occasion he would be lenient and simply charge him the cost of the summons but that the noise and nuisance must cease herewith; if he was to come before him again he would ‘heavily fined’.

I’m not sure what the muffin man could do about that except to take his business elsewhere. Most likely if he did desist then his trade would suffer and the other residents would lose the convenience of a delivery service unless they booked him. Complaints such as this probably helped move the retail trade away from this sort of business and into the more fixed premises we recognise in our high streets today. Is this a good thing?

Personally I’d quite like a warm muffin right now, without having to find my nearest bakery or supermarket.

[from The Standard, Friday, December 19, 1879]

A coster fights back: evidence of collective action in mid Victorian London?

One of the issues the BBC Series that the Victorian Slum dealt with this week was the impounding of costermongers’ barrow, effectively depriving them of a livelihood. Costers (market tradesmen who sold a variety of goods from a mobile stall)  traded on the streets and throughout the 19th century they were engaged with an almost daily war with the police, who tried to move them on so they did not block the streets.

costermonger

In October 1844 the street keeper of St Luke’s parish was summoned before the magistrate at Worship Street Police Court charged with assaulting a coster and seizing his barrow unlawfully.

The trader’s name was Charles Thwaites and he complained that on the previous evening Peter Dixon (the street keeper) came up to him while he was wheeling his stall with his stock of cauliflowers. It was about 9 o’clock and Thwaites was on his way to where he usually stood – outside a pub on Fore Street, near the Barbican.

Dixon approached him and told him he was going to impound his cart and take it to the Green Yard. The Green Yard had been the City of London’s ‘pound’ for centuries; wandering cattle and sheep, barrows and abandoned carriages all ended up there and  (just like modern car pounds) owners had to pay a fee to get their property released.

Thwaites objected to being taken there since he said he’d done nothing wrong. When a passing policeman came in range he appealed to him fro help. PC Coley (126G) listened patiently and then instructed him to go to the Police Station instead, to clear things up. However, as the coster set off Dixon once again interfered and tried to lead him off to the yard.

Dixon used force now, trying to take control of the barrow and when Thwaites resisted he threatened to ‘break his arm’. PC Coley now intervened – but on behalf of the parish officer, grabbing Thwaites by the collar and his neckerchief. The poor man complained that ‘he was nearly strangled’ and then ‘thrown to the ground. When he recovered himself his barrow and his cauliflowers were nowhere to be seen.

When he investigated he fondu that his vegetables had been taken to the workhouse and used to feed the inmates there, they had cost him 10s and he had not be recompensed for them. He added that his wife and children relied on him and if it had not been for some charitable donations they would be starving now.

Several witnesses were called to support Thwaites’ case and he had a lawyer as well. The policeman deposed that he had been called to assist the street keeper and that Thwaites was a regular problem, always been asked to move on. Thwaites’ lawyer pointed out that stalls in Whitecross street were routinely left unmolested, and that this seemed like a vindictive action by the police and parish official.

The magistrate agreed and said that PC Coley should also be in the dock, binding both of them over to appear at the sessions of the peace to answer what he considered to be  a very serious charge. However, he suggested that to avoid this the men might come to a settlement with the costermonger and so avoid trial.

I wonder whether Thwaites drew wider support from the coster community. I doubt he could have found the money for a lawyer on his own and this suggests that the traders were keen to challenge the authority of the street keepers and the police in their ongoing war over the use of the footpaths for commerce. In that at least there is a distant echo of collective action to protect customary rights from change.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Saturday, October 26, 1844]