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The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum
An enthralling account of the most notorious slum in Victorian England—and how it became a laboratory for "reforming" the poor
Condemned as a "fruitful hotbed of disease and death," the Old Nichol, a fifteen-acre East London slum, was a shameful blot on the age of progress. A maze of rotting hundred-year-old houses, the Old Nichol suffered rampant crime and a death rate four times that of London. Among the more piquant discoveries of an 1887 government inquiry was that the owners of these fetid dwellings included lords, lawyers, even churchmen.
Drawing on a rich archival store, Sarah Wise reconstructs the Old Nichol and the lives of its 6,000 inhabitants—the woodworkers, fish smokers, and dog dealers, whose tiny rooms doubled as workshops and farmyards. She depicts as well the eugenicists, anarchists, and philanthropists who ventured into the Old Nichol to "save" the poor with such theories as emigration and sterilization. The winning solution was demolition: the Old Nichol was replaced with a new, hygienic settlement—in which only eleven of the original residents could afford to live. Widely praised as a sensitive chronicler of the poor, Wise captures the moment when the poor turned from public nuisance into social experiment.
Condemned as a "fruitful hotbed of disease and death," the Old Nichol, a fifteen-acre East London slum, was a shameful blot on the age of progress. A maze of rotting hundred-year-old houses, the Old Nichol suffered rampant crime and a death rate four times that of London. Among the more piquant discoveries of an 1887 government inquiry was that the owners of these fetid dwellings included lords, lawyers, even churchmen.
Drawing on a rich archival store, Sarah Wise reconstructs the Old Nichol and the lives of its 6,000 inhabitants—the woodworkers, fish smokers, and dog dealers, whose tiny rooms doubled as workshops and farmyards. She depicts as well the eugenicists, anarchists, and philanthropists who ventured into the Old Nichol to "save" the poor with such theories as emigration and sterilization. The winning solution was demolition: the Old Nichol was replaced with a new, hygienic settlement—in which only eleven of the original residents could afford to live. Widely praised as a sensitive chronicler of the poor, Wise captures the moment when the poor turned from public nuisance into social experiment.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
41 people are currently reading
2091 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Wise
3 books47 followersYou can hear me speak about each of my books by going to the following site, and clicking the links sarahwise.co.uk/tvradio.html
You can follow me on twitter @MissSarahWise
Extra stories, pictures and further exploration of the subjects of each of my three books are available to read at www.sarahwise.co.uk
My Psychology Today blog on 19th-century mental health is here
http://www.psychologytoday.com/expert...
As for me: I live in central London and as well as writing my non-fiction books, I am currently working on a screenplay of Inconvenient People.
I did a Master's degree in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London – jumping ship from EngLit to History. A chance discovery while writing my dissertation led to the writing of The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London, which was published in 2004.
I followed this up with The Blackest Streets: the Life and Death of a Victorian Slum in 2008.
My third book, Inconvenient People, came out in 2012.
I also teach 19th-century social history and fiction, and I lecture regularly on London history and the history of 19th-century mental health.
Prizes/shortlistings:
The Italian Boy won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.
The Blackest Streets was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize for evocation of a location/landscape.
Inconvenient People was shortlisted for the 2014 Wellcome Book Prize and was a book of the year in the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Guardian and Spectator.
You can follow me on twitter @MissSarahWise
Extra stories, pictures and further exploration of the subjects of each of my three books are available to read at www.sarahwise.co.uk
My Psychology Today blog on 19th-century mental health is here
http://www.psychologytoday.com/expert...
As for me: I live in central London and as well as writing my non-fiction books, I am currently working on a screenplay of Inconvenient People.
I did a Master's degree in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London – jumping ship from EngLit to History. A chance discovery while writing my dissertation led to the writing of The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London, which was published in 2004.
I followed this up with The Blackest Streets: the Life and Death of a Victorian Slum in 2008.
My third book, Inconvenient People, came out in 2012.
I also teach 19th-century social history and fiction, and I lecture regularly on London history and the history of 19th-century mental health.
Prizes/shortlistings:
The Italian Boy won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.
The Blackest Streets was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize for evocation of a location/landscape.
Inconvenient People was shortlisted for the 2014 Wellcome Book Prize and was a book of the year in the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Guardian and Spectator.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
February 8, 2009
Wise has constructed from a great diversity of historical material an excellent and thoroughly convincing account of life in one of East London's roughet, but also most maligned slums, the 'Old Nichol' area of Bethnal Green. The streets and alleys which comprised the Nichol were cleared away to make way for the Boundary Estate at the end of the nineteenth century, and this act of urban cleansing might have removed them from the record forever, but for Wise's assiduous excavation of parish and vestry records, parliamentary reports, newspaper accounts, popular fiction, oral history sources and much else.
The Blackest Streets is also valuable because it refuses the trend of much recent popular history, by asserting a socio-political context to the lives and events that she records. The nineteenth century was of course a time of political radicalism and Wise succeeds in animating the different political currents that flowed through the area. But more than this she frames that history within an astutely politicised reading of the genteel middle-class agendas, not just of the many VIctorian improvers, but also of contemporary historians, for whom the past is often so much tidier, simpler and straightforward than it could ever have been when it was the present. Moreover, she contests the morality with which histories of the London poor are usually framed (whether disguised as 'benevolence' or plainly put as class hatred) and champions the inventiveness, guile and spirit which gave the Nichol its perseverance.
This was a quality it clearly needed: the fantastically overcrowded slum was the creation, or rather the accretion, of generations of rack-renters, absentee landlords (many of them amongst the richest men and women in the land; some of them, it transpires, actually dead), laissez-faire politicians and corrupt parish authorities. Wise makes clear the chaos of local administration before the creation of the London County Council at the turn of the century, and makes clear moreover that this 'system' (or rather, the lack of one) left landlords and owners free to build and rent without control. Some of the Nichol's residents actually lived underground, crowded into half-height passages that ran beneath the houses; the sewers were not maintained, and there were no enforceable laws on overcrowding. At the same time, rents were higher, by the square foot, than those in some of the most fashionable parts of London.
London is a city that is perpetually overblown, at the whim of grandiose political rhetoric. At the time of writing, with the country contemplating economic collapse, houses in the East End are once again being torn down, to make way for another spectacular enactment of the ideology of capitalist progress. London always exists in multiple versions, though, beneath this superficial rhetoric. Wise has done an enormously valuable job in capturing the flavour of lived experience in a tiny part of the city that has long disappeared from view.
(One odd error on Wise's part: she uses the phrase 'Lambeth Palace' to refer to the Bishop of London throughout; Lambeth is, of course, the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Historically, the Bishop's palace was at Fulham, but since the eighteenth century his residence has been the Old Deanery by St. Paul's Cathedral. It's strange that something like this should have slipped through the editorial process, but from the bibliography it appears that the Bishop's records are kept in Lambeth Palace Library, so perhaps this is the source of the conusion.)
The Blackest Streets is also valuable because it refuses the trend of much recent popular history, by asserting a socio-political context to the lives and events that she records. The nineteenth century was of course a time of political radicalism and Wise succeeds in animating the different political currents that flowed through the area. But more than this she frames that history within an astutely politicised reading of the genteel middle-class agendas, not just of the many VIctorian improvers, but also of contemporary historians, for whom the past is often so much tidier, simpler and straightforward than it could ever have been when it was the present. Moreover, she contests the morality with which histories of the London poor are usually framed (whether disguised as 'benevolence' or plainly put as class hatred) and champions the inventiveness, guile and spirit which gave the Nichol its perseverance.
This was a quality it clearly needed: the fantastically overcrowded slum was the creation, or rather the accretion, of generations of rack-renters, absentee landlords (many of them amongst the richest men and women in the land; some of them, it transpires, actually dead), laissez-faire politicians and corrupt parish authorities. Wise makes clear the chaos of local administration before the creation of the London County Council at the turn of the century, and makes clear moreover that this 'system' (or rather, the lack of one) left landlords and owners free to build and rent without control. Some of the Nichol's residents actually lived underground, crowded into half-height passages that ran beneath the houses; the sewers were not maintained, and there were no enforceable laws on overcrowding. At the same time, rents were higher, by the square foot, than those in some of the most fashionable parts of London.
London is a city that is perpetually overblown, at the whim of grandiose political rhetoric. At the time of writing, with the country contemplating economic collapse, houses in the East End are once again being torn down, to make way for another spectacular enactment of the ideology of capitalist progress. London always exists in multiple versions, though, beneath this superficial rhetoric. Wise has done an enormously valuable job in capturing the flavour of lived experience in a tiny part of the city that has long disappeared from view.
(One odd error on Wise's part: she uses the phrase 'Lambeth Palace' to refer to the Bishop of London throughout; Lambeth is, of course, the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Historically, the Bishop's palace was at Fulham, but since the eighteenth century his residence has been the Old Deanery by St. Paul's Cathedral. It's strange that something like this should have slipped through the editorial process, but from the bibliography it appears that the Bishop's records are kept in Lambeth Palace Library, so perhaps this is the source of the conusion.)
November 16, 2012
I got this from the Whitechapel library as some last minute reading for my interview. On the train home after the interview I took it out of my bag and continued reading. It is a very well written and researched history book. It contained lots of footnotes, and lots of pictures and illustrations from original sources (which is a nice feature in a cheap paperback). The book outlines the history of a Victorian slum in Bethnal Green. It does so in a way that's really neither marginilising or criminalising, although there is a great deal of poverty and criminal activity covered in the book. It starts out with an overview of the people who lived in the area. What their houses were like, what businesses they carried out. One thing that really struck me was not just the ammount of women that were working but the examples of women who were business owners or making a living seperate from any male relatives. Personal accounts were mixed with archival sources in a way that brought the area to light. After looking at the normal residents crime was addressed. I think one of the most staggering statistics was that there was only one reported murder in 15 years in that area. It seemed like stealing and fights were more common though. The book also looked at the country's response to the area. From repeated attempts to allievate the bad housing and sewage, on a political level, most of which failed to even start. Through to the clearing of the slum at the end of the century. The clearing seemed to cause almost more hardship than the existance of the slum as most people were left without homes and the purpose build new housing was too expensive or ill suited for the residents. There were also chapters looking at the church's and philanthropic responses to the poor. One of the things that was most interesting was the man, Father Jay, who had quite a good approach to ministry providing homes, boxing clubs and a theatre for people, but at the same time was writing how the poorest were totally unsavable, shouldn't be allowed to breed and should just be locked up in single sex concentration camps so they can die off. There were some rather strange views towards why people were poor, and Wise spent a long time analysing Mayhew's Life, Labour and the London poor and Booth's infamous poverty map. The focus of just about a decade in one small area meant that this book could be quite detailed. There were things that were very interesting, writing about socialist homosexuality, girls who were forced to sleep in locked cages in one school for the poor once they'd been caught in "mutual masterbation". It was a very enjoyable book and I think I will definitely have to get my own copy for reference.
December 1, 2011
"This has been a voyeuristic book about voyeurism..." and a good, entertaining, and rage inspiring one it was too! If a little rambling and feeling a bit disconnected at times. I'd be more than happy to sit back in no small amount of awe and wonder to laugh at the Victorian upper-class mental cases who waltzed in to stare at and save poor people, were so many of their prejudices and cracked beliefs not so rife in present times. When they cleared out the Nichol and built beautiful new buildings that were completely unsuited to, and too expensive for, the thousands of poor people displaced it was heart breaking, but how many times have I seen the same happen in my own work around slum housing in LA? Bloody hell, you'd think we'd learn. Not that anyone would wish to live in a place where your every move was observed, you were subject to regular 'room checks' to ensure you were following the rules, and the rules covered both your own movements and how you lived. Just another example of rich people thinking they know best, and they have the right to interfere in the lives of others to protect them. But I'm sad to say that hasn't changed either. Still, makes you glad that the people of the Nichol proved that beggars can be choosers, you get some sense of their own anger and irreverance at those presuming to dictate to them, Not enough, I wish there'd been more. But this is full of interesting information, and does give a sense of what the Nichol once was...
March 1, 2016
From the first page, when a foray into the Old Nichol is made by a Communist and an Anarchist, the reader is engrossed in Wise's description of the worst slum in all of Victorian London. Images of ill residents, malnourished children, livestock living cheek by jowl with their human owners, and houses in permanent ill repair populate these pages. But Wise doesn't stop at just describing the terrible living conditions. She investigates how the Old Nichol got that way, stayed a slum for so long, and then experienced a rebirth in the form of new council housing that priced out the original inhabitants.
In this day and age, and especially in America where we're told that we can be whatever we want as long as we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps with hard work and dedication, it's mind-boggling to read how the Victorian upper class felt that the residents of the Old Nichol somewhat deserved to live in such privation. It was felt that the poor suffered as a result of a lack of intellect and a tendency towards criminality, and there was even a movement to segregate the poorest by gender, and in that way allow this underclass to die out, which would make the human race better by its lack.
It's nearly unbelievable that the cream of London society would also treat the Old Nichol as somewhat of a tourist destination. I'm sure the residents weren't all too keen on being treated almost like a zoo exhibit.
At times, this book becomes almost too dry, making it difficult to absorb all the data, but it's obviously a very well-researched work, detailing not only the slum itself but also a great deal of the politics of the day. This American was somewhat confused in spots, not being all that familiar with British politics, but I was able to catch the gist most of the time.
In this day and age, and especially in America where we're told that we can be whatever we want as long as we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps with hard work and dedication, it's mind-boggling to read how the Victorian upper class felt that the residents of the Old Nichol somewhat deserved to live in such privation. It was felt that the poor suffered as a result of a lack of intellect and a tendency towards criminality, and there was even a movement to segregate the poorest by gender, and in that way allow this underclass to die out, which would make the human race better by its lack.
It's nearly unbelievable that the cream of London society would also treat the Old Nichol as somewhat of a tourist destination. I'm sure the residents weren't all too keen on being treated almost like a zoo exhibit.
At times, this book becomes almost too dry, making it difficult to absorb all the data, but it's obviously a very well-researched work, detailing not only the slum itself but also a great deal of the politics of the day. This American was somewhat confused in spots, not being all that familiar with British politics, but I was able to catch the gist most of the time.
Want to read
May 5, 2015A "fruitful hotbed of disease and death"!
March 17, 2020
The Nichol was a rookery in Bethnal Green, and by the mid-Victorian period, a notorious ghetto. Sarah Wise paints an extraordinary picture of what it was like to live there and the people who actually did. This is social history at its best, with a solid basis of fact and politics, brought to life with real people and their stories, coloured with some memorable individuals, and tempered with a healthy dose of myth dispelling.
Sarah Wise begins with a fascinating account of the political environment which brought the Nichol into being, with its cheap housing, narrow streets and lack of sanitation, all of which led inevitably and quickly into creating hovels. The system of sub-letting meant that it was impossible to track down landlords to enforce repairs, and the fact that the controlling governmental bodies were run by a number of those landlords made it almost impossible for the Nichol and its residents to make any sort of improvements.
So the very poor lived there, but it wasn’t only the very poor – there were small businesses, there were large businesses, and there was a good sprinkling of criminals. The Nichol became notorious. Victorian society tried to legislate and failed. Victorian philanthropists and various churches moved in. And life in the Nichol carried on, with high mortality rates, high crime rates and appalling living conditions. All of this is evoked colourfully, but Sarah Wise’s research shines through. She backs every anecdote up with facts and figures, she gives us the myth and then debunks it – or in some cases, she doesn’t. She gives us some memorable characters. And she writes so beautifully – her facts and figures are never dry, her humour is always wry.
As public opinions changed and Victorian attitudes to the ‘deserving’ and un-deserving’ poor developed, the Nichol is used as a brilliant case study in the development of town planning and the thinking behind it. The Nichol is finally destroyed, but despite having first offer, the inhabitants refuses to return to the new ‘improved’ housing. In the end, Sarah Wise demonstrates the utter failure of the well-meaning thinkers and town planners to understand basic needs and wants.
I am in awe of the research behind this book and even more in awe of her ability to turn it into a highly readable account that is both entertaining, instructive and extremely thought-provoking. Excellent.
Sarah Wise begins with a fascinating account of the political environment which brought the Nichol into being, with its cheap housing, narrow streets and lack of sanitation, all of which led inevitably and quickly into creating hovels. The system of sub-letting meant that it was impossible to track down landlords to enforce repairs, and the fact that the controlling governmental bodies were run by a number of those landlords made it almost impossible for the Nichol and its residents to make any sort of improvements.
So the very poor lived there, but it wasn’t only the very poor – there were small businesses, there were large businesses, and there was a good sprinkling of criminals. The Nichol became notorious. Victorian society tried to legislate and failed. Victorian philanthropists and various churches moved in. And life in the Nichol carried on, with high mortality rates, high crime rates and appalling living conditions. All of this is evoked colourfully, but Sarah Wise’s research shines through. She backs every anecdote up with facts and figures, she gives us the myth and then debunks it – or in some cases, she doesn’t. She gives us some memorable characters. And she writes so beautifully – her facts and figures are never dry, her humour is always wry.
As public opinions changed and Victorian attitudes to the ‘deserving’ and un-deserving’ poor developed, the Nichol is used as a brilliant case study in the development of town planning and the thinking behind it. The Nichol is finally destroyed, but despite having first offer, the inhabitants refuses to return to the new ‘improved’ housing. In the end, Sarah Wise demonstrates the utter failure of the well-meaning thinkers and town planners to understand basic needs and wants.
I am in awe of the research behind this book and even more in awe of her ability to turn it into a highly readable account that is both entertaining, instructive and extremely thought-provoking. Excellent.
December 9, 2011
I got this book out of the library for two reasons: 1) someone recommended it in the Goodreads reviews for Lost London: 1870-1945 which I'd recently bought; 2) I thought, based on my struggles with working out historical London streets, that I had ancestors living in the Nichol around 1840. I've since discovered that my lot were actually in Haggerston, several blocks to the north, but never mind.
This is a very readable account of the neighbourhood behind St Leonard Shoreditch which, for about one century, had the reputation of being the dirtiest, poorest, and most dangerous place in London. Sarah Wise doesn't dispute the dirt and poverty, but she has some perspective to offer on the danger. The Nichol was a dangerous place to live, no doubt, but more for malnutrition, disease, and domestic violence than murder. Wise tells the story of how a rather rural area surrounded by gardens became a dark warren of poorly constructed and overcrowded buildings in a few decades. We hear what it was like to grow up in such an area, why so little was done for the residents, and finally the grand plans to transform the neighbourhood into a wholesome and aesthetically pleasing community for the "deserving poor", with predictable results.
It's an interesting angle on the nineteenth century and underlines how much, and how very little, has changed.
This is a very readable account of the neighbourhood behind St Leonard Shoreditch which, for about one century, had the reputation of being the dirtiest, poorest, and most dangerous place in London. Sarah Wise doesn't dispute the dirt and poverty, but she has some perspective to offer on the danger. The Nichol was a dangerous place to live, no doubt, but more for malnutrition, disease, and domestic violence than murder. Wise tells the story of how a rather rural area surrounded by gardens became a dark warren of poorly constructed and overcrowded buildings in a few decades. We hear what it was like to grow up in such an area, why so little was done for the residents, and finally the grand plans to transform the neighbourhood into a wholesome and aesthetically pleasing community for the "deserving poor", with predictable results.
It's an interesting angle on the nineteenth century and underlines how much, and how very little, has changed.
March 31, 2018
I began reading this for some background information about the Bethnal Green area in the late Victorian period for my MA dissertation and I can say I thoroughly enjoyed Wise’s writing style and intensive research and detail. Reading about one of the worst slums ever seen in London is extremely educational. Not only from a Victorian point of view. I think even today we can see the ways in which governments, not just in the UK, and society pushes people into such poverty. The systematic oppression for the sake of capitalism and the rich is frightening.
The other day I actually was in the area where the Old Nichol used to be, now where the Boundary Estate is now and it’s pretty much impossible, for me at least, to imagine how it would have looked 130 years ago. I plan on going again and just walking around a bit more to try and get more of a sense of the location.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it gave me a new interest in Victorian slums and slum clearance.
The other day I actually was in the area where the Old Nichol used to be, now where the Boundary Estate is now and it’s pretty much impossible, for me at least, to imagine how it would have looked 130 years ago. I plan on going again and just walking around a bit more to try and get more of a sense of the location.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it gave me a new interest in Victorian slums and slum clearance.
August 4, 2017
A very grim account of a part of East London where I grew up just a mile away. Unfortunately the book is just that, an account, lots of figures and numbers, but no heart. And that is what the East End was, here the book barely touches on the soul of the people that lived in these squalid conditions. I didn't feel any real compassion at all, just a reading of other writings with some 30/40 pages of notes and appendices at the end. Although the amount of facts and figures shows that Ms Wise has really done her homework, she has shown no passion for the place she is writing about.
February 11, 2013
Wise brings the Victorian slum to life, weaving facts, interviews, research & court cases seamlessly together with prose-like writing. Can be a little heavy going in parts but overall a brilliant depiction if life in East End London at the turn of the twentieth century.
September 14, 2011
not bad , starts well but looses a little direction, not as good as the Italian Boy, interesting all the same
October 16, 2013
An in-depth, thoroughly researched portrait of life in a Victorian slum. This book pulls no punches and does not sugar coat the indignities of slum life. Wonderful.
Read Katie's full review here
Read Katie's full review here
October 9, 2012
Three is generous. The writing is inconsistent, and sometimes a little difficult to follow. However, it's worth trudging through as it is a hot bed of information on life in a Victorian slum. There are few books out there that give a reasonably rounded portrayal of the subject.
November 28, 2012
A little heavy going in parts, but whe she writes about the people in the chapters Prince Arthur and Our Father, it's entertaining, I would have a look at her other, prize winning history The Italian Boy, as that sounds interesting
October 12, 2015
Very readable book about a notorious slum in London, England. When it evolved, who lived there and what it was like there and how it was destroyed. Be prepared for stories of extreme hardship, lived by those who had no welfare or old age pension system. Great history.
January 1, 2013
Excellent, excellent book.
June 20, 2015
Detailed and fascinating look into the complete anatomy of a neighborhood.
January 17, 2016
Fascinating, but pretty bleak
September 25, 2016
This is a fascinating book and I was really enjoying it up until the point that I somehow lost my copy.
August 22, 2017
Interesting narrative history of the Old Nichol.
April 7, 2020
Brilliant social history
February 12, 2024
Sarah Wise writes a detailed and varied account of the Old Nichol, a 15 acre East End slum in Victorian London, a place of desperate poverty yet brave and stoic community. She uses personal stories and varied sources to chronicle the depths of the problems: from filthy sewage contaminated streets and houses, to rising child mortality, malnutrition and overcrowding, whole families often forced into single room accommodations below ground and sharing with their donkeys and animals. She also exposes the ironic fact that the landlords making money out of this abysmal poverty were often London’s richest, including members of the peerage, lawyers and churchmen.
“ The Nichol’s thirty or so streets and courts of more or less rotten early-nineteenth-century houses were home to around 5,700 people, of whom four-fifths were children. Its death rate was almost double that of the rest of Bethnal Green, the very poor East London parish at whose western boundary the Nichol stood….The annual mortality rate of the Nichol in the late 1880s was 40 per 1,000 people; Bethnal Green’s hovered between 22 and 23 per 1,000 for these years, not much above the London (and, indeed, the national) figure of 19 to 20 per 1,000. (Today, the death rate for England and Wales is 5.94 per 1,000.) One-third of all these London deaths were those of babies and infants. Bethnal Green’s death rate for babies under the age of one was in line with the average figure for England and Wales of 150 per 1,000 live births; in the Nichol it was a horrific 252 per 1,000….the Nichol was for many an East Ender a final stopping-off point before entry into the dreaded workhouse, and the less-dreaded death therein.”
Wide also turns her attentions to the efforts of the wealthy to “rescue” the poor, a scope which spans from the ludicrous and self-aggrandizing to the truly altruistic. The philosophies range from socialism, religious fervour, to a belief that the poor are so because of their own moral vices, a hatred and contempt towards them, sometimes backed up by pseudoscience such as eugenics. She looks at various characters working within the Old Nichol such as the larger-than-life Father Jay of Holy Trinity with his boxing clubs and shelters. Finally the only plausible solution seemed to be demolition. The London City Council was created and began the building of a model new housing called Boundary Estate, which ironically when it was finally built, displacing thousands from the Old Nichol, only housed eleven of the original inhabitants due to being either unaffordable for them or unsuited to their needs.
I found this to be a highly informative, honest and sympathetic account which I appreciated as an insight into the real day-to-day lives of some of my ancestors who were unfortunate enough to live in the Old Nichol. Thank you Sarah Wise.
“ The Nichol’s thirty or so streets and courts of more or less rotten early-nineteenth-century houses were home to around 5,700 people, of whom four-fifths were children. Its death rate was almost double that of the rest of Bethnal Green, the very poor East London parish at whose western boundary the Nichol stood….The annual mortality rate of the Nichol in the late 1880s was 40 per 1,000 people; Bethnal Green’s hovered between 22 and 23 per 1,000 for these years, not much above the London (and, indeed, the national) figure of 19 to 20 per 1,000. (Today, the death rate for England and Wales is 5.94 per 1,000.) One-third of all these London deaths were those of babies and infants. Bethnal Green’s death rate for babies under the age of one was in line with the average figure for England and Wales of 150 per 1,000 live births; in the Nichol it was a horrific 252 per 1,000….the Nichol was for many an East Ender a final stopping-off point before entry into the dreaded workhouse, and the less-dreaded death therein.”
Wide also turns her attentions to the efforts of the wealthy to “rescue” the poor, a scope which spans from the ludicrous and self-aggrandizing to the truly altruistic. The philosophies range from socialism, religious fervour, to a belief that the poor are so because of their own moral vices, a hatred and contempt towards them, sometimes backed up by pseudoscience such as eugenics. She looks at various characters working within the Old Nichol such as the larger-than-life Father Jay of Holy Trinity with his boxing clubs and shelters. Finally the only plausible solution seemed to be demolition. The London City Council was created and began the building of a model new housing called Boundary Estate, which ironically when it was finally built, displacing thousands from the Old Nichol, only housed eleven of the original inhabitants due to being either unaffordable for them or unsuited to their needs.
I found this to be a highly informative, honest and sympathetic account which I appreciated as an insight into the real day-to-day lives of some of my ancestors who were unfortunate enough to live in the Old Nichol. Thank you Sarah Wise.
October 4, 2025
Sara Wise’s The Blackest Streets (2008) tells the story of the woeful existence of the downtrodden in the streets of Old Nichol of East London in the late Victorian period. Along with the scrutiny of the heart-wrenching impoverishment of the streets, it exposes the socio-political inefficiency of the era in any kind of upliftment of the unsalvageable people in this “empire of hunger” as she defines the place. The book is the outcome of an exhaustive research into the real lives of people. If Arthur Morrison diluted the gruesomeness of the place through a fictional account, Sara Wise is being explicitly brutal in unravelling the piteous with factual references and solid analysis. She does this through her well-founded use of archival evidence.
In the second chapter of the book named “How to Create a Slum” she makes use of a map of the Nichol in 1746, captioned as “when the northern part of the area was still a mix of brick fields and market gardens” (Wise,15). The map is used here to mark the history of formation of such a slum; “Away from the eyes of surveyors, and in contravention of the Building Acts, an almost instant slum was erected by local builders who had leased the land from owners who didn't care what use was made of their acreage so long it was profitable” (Wise, 15-16). Wise takes us back to the very base before the erection of the fatal slum thereby appropriately placing this old map for better comprehension.
In the chapter “Telling Tales” Wise recalls the fictional accounts of the place by different writers and opts for the fictional map (Wise, 227) used by Arthur Morrison in his The Child of the Jago, as she finds it’s the closest to the real Old Nichol. “Morrison made little attempt to disguise the Nichol…and so persuasive was Morrison’s nightmare vision of the place, so great the notoriety of his depiction, that from 1896 onwards, even within the East End, ‘Nichol’ and ‘Jago’ became interchangeable names'' (Wise, 226). Wise is fascinated by how the crooked “twists and turns of the Jago/Nichol street plan to add movement and drama to the purpose” (Wise, 230). In the chapter “The Boundary Street Shuffle '' where she talks about the reinvention of the Old Nichol, Wise displays the map of the ‘Boundary Estate Scheme’. The map shows how the ‘reconfigured Nichol’ was ‘dry’ and different from the old one with more space, with its divergence of wide tree-lined avenues equipped with surveillance. “Nothing like this had ever been contemplated for the poor. Too often, philanthropic housing looked like a punishment inflicted upon the poor'' (Wise, 257). Wise shows how such a drastic difference in rebuilding something for the poor will culminate in further displacement of their lives rather than getting salvaged. The new Nichol that you can visit today has little trace of the old one, too much glossed over by the improper philanthropism which became a “punishment” for the slum dwellers as Wise pointed out.
One also cannot discard the obvious influence of Charles Booth’s 1889 Map of London Poverty, which encoded the level of poverty in blues and blacks of which Old Nichol fits in with the “blackest”, resonating with the name of Wise’s book.
In addition to such effective use of maps to enhance the understanding of Old Nichol, Wise’s book is strewn all over with sketches and old photographs of the place. She also made use of posters and cartoons that appeared in various print media to paint a vivid picture. For instance, in the chapter “Prince Arthur”, which tells the story of Arthur Harding, who spent his first ten years for his life in Old Nichol, shows along with the photographs of Arthur and his family, a drawing of the Nichol Street Ragged School appeared in an 1886 issue of the Illustrated London News. The caption on the drawing states the double purpose of such an illustration, both satirical as well as sentimental as it says “the artist appears to be torn between pathos and disgust: large-eyed waifs sit alongside diabolical, simian urchins” (Wise, 67). Wise, in fact elaborates the tale of Harding by making use of the oral history tape from the Museum of London. This is only one such example of how Wise weaves her picturesque yet factual tale of the slum with many such archival materials. A fair amount of archival photographs from well-known institutes and libraries like Bishopsgate, British Library, Hackney Archives, London Metropolitan Archives, US Library Congress, London City Council etc. came to her aid in giving a strong pillar for her narration. Many well-documented office records and surveys such as London County Council Minutes of Proceedings of the Council (1890) listing the occupations of household’s main breadwinners in Old Nichol, The Seventh Annual Report of the Local Government Board (1887-1888), which is a source of ‘Poor Law Data’. She even made use of unpublished papers found from archives and libraries as well as parliamentary papers along with other newspapers, periodicals and pamphlets as her endless footnotes and bibliography prove.
The Blackest Street is not just an enumeration of sentiment-boosted lament on the condition of a slum for the glory of modern society’s empathising or a condemnation of bygone injustice and manipulation on the poor. It’s an unprecedented narration on its different phases through the history of its geography, of the very nature of its residents, the very nature of approach and attitude of the outside world to this blackest pit, and its eventual transformation and subsequent effect of it on the slum dwellers and on the society as a whole. The author’s uncompromising hunt by availing all kinds of firm evidence mentioned above served to produce an unquestionable and incredible chronicle of Old Nichol, an excellent source for the future scholars who are eager to work on such similar tales.
In the second chapter of the book named “How to Create a Slum” she makes use of a map of the Nichol in 1746, captioned as “when the northern part of the area was still a mix of brick fields and market gardens” (Wise,15). The map is used here to mark the history of formation of such a slum; “Away from the eyes of surveyors, and in contravention of the Building Acts, an almost instant slum was erected by local builders who had leased the land from owners who didn't care what use was made of their acreage so long it was profitable” (Wise, 15-16). Wise takes us back to the very base before the erection of the fatal slum thereby appropriately placing this old map for better comprehension.
In the chapter “Telling Tales” Wise recalls the fictional accounts of the place by different writers and opts for the fictional map (Wise, 227) used by Arthur Morrison in his The Child of the Jago, as she finds it’s the closest to the real Old Nichol. “Morrison made little attempt to disguise the Nichol…and so persuasive was Morrison’s nightmare vision of the place, so great the notoriety of his depiction, that from 1896 onwards, even within the East End, ‘Nichol’ and ‘Jago’ became interchangeable names'' (Wise, 226). Wise is fascinated by how the crooked “twists and turns of the Jago/Nichol street plan to add movement and drama to the purpose” (Wise, 230). In the chapter “The Boundary Street Shuffle '' where she talks about the reinvention of the Old Nichol, Wise displays the map of the ‘Boundary Estate Scheme’. The map shows how the ‘reconfigured Nichol’ was ‘dry’ and different from the old one with more space, with its divergence of wide tree-lined avenues equipped with surveillance. “Nothing like this had ever been contemplated for the poor. Too often, philanthropic housing looked like a punishment inflicted upon the poor'' (Wise, 257). Wise shows how such a drastic difference in rebuilding something for the poor will culminate in further displacement of their lives rather than getting salvaged. The new Nichol that you can visit today has little trace of the old one, too much glossed over by the improper philanthropism which became a “punishment” for the slum dwellers as Wise pointed out.
One also cannot discard the obvious influence of Charles Booth’s 1889 Map of London Poverty, which encoded the level of poverty in blues and blacks of which Old Nichol fits in with the “blackest”, resonating with the name of Wise’s book.
In addition to such effective use of maps to enhance the understanding of Old Nichol, Wise’s book is strewn all over with sketches and old photographs of the place. She also made use of posters and cartoons that appeared in various print media to paint a vivid picture. For instance, in the chapter “Prince Arthur”, which tells the story of Arthur Harding, who spent his first ten years for his life in Old Nichol, shows along with the photographs of Arthur and his family, a drawing of the Nichol Street Ragged School appeared in an 1886 issue of the Illustrated London News. The caption on the drawing states the double purpose of such an illustration, both satirical as well as sentimental as it says “the artist appears to be torn between pathos and disgust: large-eyed waifs sit alongside diabolical, simian urchins” (Wise, 67). Wise, in fact elaborates the tale of Harding by making use of the oral history tape from the Museum of London. This is only one such example of how Wise weaves her picturesque yet factual tale of the slum with many such archival materials. A fair amount of archival photographs from well-known institutes and libraries like Bishopsgate, British Library, Hackney Archives, London Metropolitan Archives, US Library Congress, London City Council etc. came to her aid in giving a strong pillar for her narration. Many well-documented office records and surveys such as London County Council Minutes of Proceedings of the Council (1890) listing the occupations of household’s main breadwinners in Old Nichol, The Seventh Annual Report of the Local Government Board (1887-1888), which is a source of ‘Poor Law Data’. She even made use of unpublished papers found from archives and libraries as well as parliamentary papers along with other newspapers, periodicals and pamphlets as her endless footnotes and bibliography prove.
The Blackest Street is not just an enumeration of sentiment-boosted lament on the condition of a slum for the glory of modern society’s empathising or a condemnation of bygone injustice and manipulation on the poor. It’s an unprecedented narration on its different phases through the history of its geography, of the very nature of its residents, the very nature of approach and attitude of the outside world to this blackest pit, and its eventual transformation and subsequent effect of it on the slum dwellers and on the society as a whole. The author’s uncompromising hunt by availing all kinds of firm evidence mentioned above served to produce an unquestionable and incredible chronicle of Old Nichol, an excellent source for the future scholars who are eager to work on such similar tales.
August 4, 2014
The details and descriptions along with the raw data are mind boggling. Impeccable research. I was impressed from the first page to the last.
April 15, 2022
4.5 stars, actually.
I rate non-fiction from the perspective of whether the author is impressive in their depth or breadth knowledge of the topic, and how well they convey that to a lay person.
The Blackest Streets' author, Sarah Wise, is super-impressive with her knowledge of the history, politics, letters, and spoken history of "The Nichol" slum neighborhood of London's Bethnal Green area in Victorian times.
From the verbal history of one of the last residents (as a boy), to letters written by well-meaning purveyors of charity or religious folks, to newspaper notices, police reports, and government data, Wise constructs a wideshot of the desperately poor of the Old Nichol. These were folks living many to a room in dilapidated housing, eeking out existence as costermongers, fishers, dog breeders, weavers, etc. An impressive hive of industry that various waves of greater London folks came into as outsiders to try to "reform" and "improve" the lives they led.
While the depth of details about the folks of Old Nichol, as well as the wider view of politics of that time (the lesser known to USAian me politics of boards, neighborhood vestries, Poor Law guardians, etc) is impressive, the author often assumes a familiar tone referencing politicians or famous figures offhandedly in a way that makes it clear she's writing for an audience already deeply familiar with British politics of that era.
So sometimes a bit confusing for lay folks like me. And the prose is quite dense.
But then she'd stick in some super interesting data like lists of rate-payers professions in the Old Nichol, or a letter from an anarchist who was organizing no rent strikes for absent landlords, and it became deeply interesting again.
Very interesting slice of Victorian life, along with a slightly cynical viewpoint of the religious and political folks who came into the neighborhood to change things.
I rate non-fiction from the perspective of whether the author is impressive in their depth or breadth knowledge of the topic, and how well they convey that to a lay person.
The Blackest Streets' author, Sarah Wise, is super-impressive with her knowledge of the history, politics, letters, and spoken history of "The Nichol" slum neighborhood of London's Bethnal Green area in Victorian times.
From the verbal history of one of the last residents (as a boy), to letters written by well-meaning purveyors of charity or religious folks, to newspaper notices, police reports, and government data, Wise constructs a wideshot of the desperately poor of the Old Nichol. These were folks living many to a room in dilapidated housing, eeking out existence as costermongers, fishers, dog breeders, weavers, etc. An impressive hive of industry that various waves of greater London folks came into as outsiders to try to "reform" and "improve" the lives they led.
While the depth of details about the folks of Old Nichol, as well as the wider view of politics of that time (the lesser known to USAian me politics of boards, neighborhood vestries, Poor Law guardians, etc) is impressive, the author often assumes a familiar tone referencing politicians or famous figures offhandedly in a way that makes it clear she's writing for an audience already deeply familiar with British politics of that era.
So sometimes a bit confusing for lay folks like me. And the prose is quite dense.
But then she'd stick in some super interesting data like lists of rate-payers professions in the Old Nichol, or a letter from an anarchist who was organizing no rent strikes for absent landlords, and it became deeply interesting again.
Very interesting slice of Victorian life, along with a slightly cynical viewpoint of the religious and political folks who came into the neighborhood to change things.
January 3, 2021
Thought this book was quite good in the end, although it was not what I expected from the summary. "This has been a voyeuristic book about voyeurism," Sarah Wise says at the end, and that's the best summary of the book. Most of it is not directly about the lives of the people in the Nichol, although there are vignettes, statistics, and a somewhat fuller picture of one resident, Arthur Harding. Far more of the book concerns the social workers, sociologists, priests, politicians, and slum lords who studied, judged, shaped, and exploited the district. Much of this is interesting in its own right, but I also found some of it boring, and sometimes strangely organized (why is so much time devoted to Father Jay, and why is eugenics introduced in an offhand way in the chapters centering on him, rather than being a topic in its own right, given the large and pernicious impact it had?). Perhaps the biggest lesson I took away was how similar views/treatment of the poor are today at least in the US, which never developed as robust a social safety net as Britain has, and where suffering in the name of personal responsibility, even where children are concerned, still flourishes. In any case, I think the evidence available for the Old Nichol has scope for a more imaginative exploration of the neighborhood that attempts to privilege the viewpoint of its residents more- along the lines of "Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments"- this is definitely not a book like that, but it contains much of interest.
December 9, 2020
Disapointing....The opening chapter is so promising and intriguing with short snippets of information about the residents and families who live at the different addresses in the old Nichol. Apart from a couple of individuals you don't find much out about the lives of the people who actually lived in the slum: their personal circumstances, feelings, their livelihoods and struggles. Every now and then theres a few lines about an individual resident or family, but its so overly packed between endless facts and figures and political and theological opinions of others who don't live in the slum itself. One whole chapter is just a book review of a fictional book written at the time. Sadly it's always from the view of looking into the slum from the outside rather than inside the heart of the slum itself.
I tried so hard to like this book but I still feel none the wiser of the day to day experiences and challenges people in the slums faced how did they cope with hunger? How did they keep warm? What were their dreams? Etc. Etc. It's such a shame because the author had a perfect opportunity and its clearly been throughly researched. The book could be half the length and more focus on the residents.
I tried so hard to like this book but I still feel none the wiser of the day to day experiences and challenges people in the slums faced how did they cope with hunger? How did they keep warm? What were their dreams? Etc. Etc. It's such a shame because the author had a perfect opportunity and its clearly been throughly researched. The book could be half the length and more focus on the residents.
December 6, 2025
I have wanted for years to know the identities of the ultimate freehold landowners of the slum premises of this part of the east end of london and this book contains the right amount of detail and plenty to follow up on.
Corrupt vestry level local government is apportioned its fair share of the blame for what the locals had to endure. Criminal activity is deromanticised and myths of its pervasiveness are punctured.
Surprisingly fascinating to me, is the journey of the London county council from idealism to pragmatic engagement with the poverty of the Old Nichol.
Comprehensive , but not over long; detailed without being salacious. A great read.
Corrupt vestry level local government is apportioned its fair share of the blame for what the locals had to endure. Criminal activity is deromanticised and myths of its pervasiveness are punctured.
Surprisingly fascinating to me, is the journey of the London county council from idealism to pragmatic engagement with the poverty of the Old Nichol.
Comprehensive , but not over long; detailed without being salacious. A great read.
May 9, 2024
[2010] Sarah Wise has a track record for writing excellent social history books and this genre is 'right-up-my-street', so I knew I'd be in good hands. Here she turns her inquisitive eye on the `Old Nichol' slum area just east of Shoreditch High Street and the replacement Boundary Estate. This was the first example of a social housing scheme in London. She describes what it was like in the slum and how the local parish did little to relieve the plight of those living there. She develops her pace well and is at her best when describing real-people, some of whom, when they were very old, recorded their experiences on tape and she draws heavily on these.
Personally, I found my mind-wondering, when she takes us through the creation of London County Council and subsequent attempts to 'gentrify' the area and the subsequent population explosion. I also found her brief description of how the area is now - glossed over - the reality is that those who lived in the Old Nichol would not recognise the area - where in 2011, only 35% described themselves as 'White British'. The other thing that 'annoyed' me was the inclusion of the Charles Booth poverty maps inside the book cover, unfortunately they were too small to be readable and therefore could not be used to enrich the experience.
It is a well written, enjoyable book, with an excellent research basis and vivid descriptions of people's lives and the times they lived through. Well worth reading.
Personally, I found my mind-wondering, when she takes us through the creation of London County Council and subsequent attempts to 'gentrify' the area and the subsequent population explosion. I also found her brief description of how the area is now - glossed over - the reality is that those who lived in the Old Nichol would not recognise the area - where in 2011, only 35% described themselves as 'White British'. The other thing that 'annoyed' me was the inclusion of the Charles Booth poverty maps inside the book cover, unfortunately they were too small to be readable and therefore could not be used to enrich the experience.
It is a well written, enjoyable book, with an excellent research basis and vivid descriptions of people's lives and the times they lived through. Well worth reading.
May 18, 2025
A little dense and meandering at times, but for a book dealing with late 19th century London slums, there was a refreshing absence of Jack the Ripper. I believe he was namedropped once, and that was all. Since another book I read on the same subject devolved into graphic descriptions of the Ripper murders, I was a little worried going into this one, but instead, I was pleasantly surprised.
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