The geography of victorian values: philanthropic housing in London, 1840–1900

Journal of Historical Geography, 15, 1 (1989)40-54

The geography of Victorian values: philanthropic housing in London, 1840-1900 Richard Dennis

There was a spatial as well as a social dimension to philanthropic housing in Victorian London. Housing agencies learnt by experience to avoid the poorest parts of London, where it was impossible to satisfy the financial demands of philanthropic capitalism. But they could afford to build in more favourable districts only by taking advantage of indirect subsidies offered by aristocratic landlords and the Metropolitan Board of Works. The mismatch between areas of need and areas of supply made it unlikely that the poor benefited even indirectly, through "levelling up".

In a recent review of the history of historical geography in Britain, Darby expressed some ambivalence concerning the role of ideology in historical geography. He acknowledged that "nothing in the past looks the same to one generation as to another", that our approach to the past will be conditioned by nationality, cultural environment, personal experience and temperament, llj Yet in practice, beset by quantitative and ideological revolutions, most historical geography has continued to reflect "pragmatic British empiricism", r21This paper no doubt fits this description, yet its subject matter is ideological. I plan to explore how "Victorian Values"--faith in a laissez-faire economy, self-help and personal responsibility, and a distaste for state intervention that trespassed on the rights of the individual--were expressed in the provision of working-class housing by philanthropic agencies in nineteenth-century London, reinforcing existing patterns of segregation between rich and poor, and creating new forms of residential differentiation within the working classes. I am, therefore, concerned with the interaction between ideology and geography, but my method is essentially empirical.

Philanthropic capitalism Social historians have frequently noted that nineteenth-century philanthropic housing agencies failed to house the "poorest of the poor", instead accommodating better-off, regularly employed artisans and service workers. I31 Some imply that this outcome was unexpected, and that the realization of failure led inevitably, if reluctantly, to the introduction of subsidized council housing. An initial faith in the efficacy of private philanthropy may at first have delayed the extension of municipal activity into the field of working-class housing, but once experience had demonstrated that this faith was misplaced, councils--especially the London County Council--embarked on extensive programmes of housing and rehousing. I41 0305-7488/89/010040 + 15 $03.00/0

40

9 1989 Academic Press Limited

VICTORIAN LONDON

41

More commonly, philanthropic housing has come to be regarded as "selfinterested benevolence", tSJ intended to maintain the existing order of industrial capitalism by ensuring the physical and social reproduction of labour, inculcating a curious mixture of deference and self-help, promoting respectability, a n d - - b y providing centrally-located housing at relatively low rents--allowing the perpetuation of a low-wage economy in which workers lived close to potential workplaces and could be hired or laid off at short notice. But the "benevolence" only extended to those who were necessary in the labour market, who had already proved themselves reliable employees. Likewise, the moral and public health arguments for philanthropic housing recognized a distinction between deserving and undeserving, protecting the former in islands of sanitation and respectability from the polluted and polluting waters of surrounding slums. Model dwellings were intended to protect a deserving working class that was already deferential and sympathetic to middle-class values, from the corruption of unconstrained and unsupervised radicalism, atheism and working-class consciousness. In this respect, the principal philanthropic agencies--housing trusts like the Peabody and Guinness Trusts, societies and limited companies like the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes (SICLC), the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes (MAIDIC), the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company (IIDCo.) and the East End Dwellings C o m p a n y (EEDCo.), and individual schemes like Baroness Burdett-Coutts' Columbia Square-differed from Octavia Hill, who believed in the practicability of improving the hitherto unimprovable, t6j Model dwellings contrasted with other institutional environments, like asylums, workhouses and reformatories where the object was to change people. [7] Yet the philanthropic housing movement was more diverse in both objectives and methods than recent interpretations have sometimes implied. The Charity Organisation Society distinguished between agencies founded on a charitable basis, or in which the charitable element predominated, like the Peabody Trust, and commercial agencies, like the IIDCo., where charitable impulses contributed to their origin and success, but rents were clearly fixed at market levels. The society was wary of philanthropic agencies operating "without accurate limitations as to the persons to be benefited", since this would undermine the free market: Philanthropic agencyin building dwellingsfor the poor, means the supply of one of the chief necessitiesof life, viz., lodging, below its market value. Were such a practice to be extensively or indiscriminately sanctioned, not only would the profits of commerical investment be impaired, but the principle of self-dependencewould be attacked, habits of self-indulgence would be encouraged, and even the wages of unskilled labour might be reduced. Charity to those who could help themselves was, quite literally, de-moralizing. Therefore, philanthropic agencies should admit only "the very lowest order of self-supporting labourers, a n d . . , individuals in that order who would be likely without this form of assistance to become the objects of charitable relief in some other form". I81 Hence the two kinds of solution of liberal philanthropy: to provide clean, but minimum-standard, one-room dwellings, either by improving the maintenance and management of hitherto slum dwellings--the policy advocated by Octavia Hill--or by building new block dwellings, but still with an element of personal management--the policy of the EEDCo. during it formative years in the 1880s;

42

R. DENNIS

or to build to m u c h higher standards, but trust to a process o f "levelling up", whereby the poor would move into dwellings vacated by better-off workers who could afford to rent model dwellings--the policy of the IIDCo. Yet all these agencies, even including Octavia Hill and the EEDCo., thought of themselves as commercial, different from philanthropic housing trusts, like the Peabody Trust, where there were no shareholders to satisfy and supposedly more flexibility of response to the needs of the poor. Thus, James Moore, secretary of the IIDCo., protested to a parliamentary select committee in 1881 that his c o m p a n y was "a commercial association, and in no wise a charitable institution", fgl Housing the poor was deemed the responsibility o f the Peabody Trust, yet Peabody tenants appeared little different from those of five per cent companies, and the trust was frequently accused of poaching tenants who could well have afforded to pay more in rent. F o r example, Charles Gatliff, secretary o f M A I D I C , claimed that tenants had left his company's dwellings to move into Peabody flats, "in consequence of the rents being so much lower. They are at least 30 per cent under the market, and they are working a serious injury to us". And James Moore calculated that from 84 IIDCo. dwellings in Whitechapel, seven tenants had recently moved into a newly-opened Peabody estate. I1~ C. S. Loch, the secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, was particularly uncharitable in his view o f the trust's activities. He noted that it had acquired slum clearance sites "at 50 per cent less than their fair market price for Artisans' Dwellings or the price which might have been given by societies, even those restricted to 5 per cent". L1q Yet it had used the sites to house relatively well-off tenants at rents too dear for the poor to afford. As a result, ordinary, unsubsidized builders were in danger of being driven out of business: We thus see a large charity usurping the functions of commerce in such a way as will interfere with the efforts of capitalists to provide for their own workmen, and the speculations of commerical associations to build dwellings for artisans. It supplies habitations at less than cost price for a considerable population; and this is said to be done in the interests of the very poor, who reap but little benefit. Does not Mr Peabody's munificence appear likely to become an 'American weed' in English waters, displacing not only tumble-down dwellings, but also well-meaning Dwellings' Associations at the same timeY1 It is ironic that the Cross Act, facilitating the clearances from which the Peabody Trust had apparently benefited so extensively, had been promoted at the instigation o f the Charity Organisation Society, which presented a report in 1873, lamenting the lack of suitable sites for working-class block dwellings in central London. The society urged legislation to permit compulsory purchase by local authorities o f approved clearance areas. Their report also proposed "the institution o f a Central Municipal Authority for the Metropolis", so that "the march of improvements might be bold and comprehensive, and that the richer districts might come to the aid of the poorer, for a purpose of c o m m o n importance to all". I~31 Evidently, the society envisaged the metropolitan authority levying a city-wide rate to pay for improvements, yet at other times it vehemently opposed any idea that working-class housing should be subsidized. Presumably, the dwellings companies would be expected to pay the full market price when they acquired cleared sites from the local authority. No wonder that Loch was so outraged by the bargain struck between the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) and the Peabody Trust. Also implicit in the C.O.S. report was the assumption that sites in east and south-east London, where land values were much lower, were n o t suitable, presumably because local inhabitants were too poor or ill-disciplined to m a k e reliable tenants.

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While the Peabody Trust did charge slightly lower rents, they provided mainly "associated dwellings", with shared kitchens and toilets, in contrast to the IIDCo.'s completely self-contained flats. In theory, Peabody accepted only families where the head of household earned no more than 30s per week. In practice, this i n c l u d e d m o s t o f the working class, especially since the supplementary and intermittent earnings o f other household members were not taken into account. N o r were families required to leave if earnings rose above the 30s limit; indeed, such families were the successes whose continued presence offered examples to new tenants of the benefits of a secure and sanitary home. f~41 Even the Royal Commission on the Housing o f the W o r k i n g Classes, reporting in 1885, accepted that, where d e m a n d for a c c o m m o d a t i o n exceeded supply: it follows that a system of selection must be followed, and it would be strange if the most orderly and respectable were rejected. There is no injusticein this, but the fact remains that if the dwellers in the most wretched quarters, often the very persons who have been unhoused to make room for the new buildings, should attempt to find homes in the new buildingstheir chances are small against the respectable artisans to whom preference is given.~51 Just as the Royal Commission was reporting, the East End Dwellings C o m p a n y was opening its first estate, in Whitechapel. The c o m p a n y had been founded in 1884 with the intention of housing the really poor, conscious o f the failure of earlier agencies, and of the ineffectiveness of "levelling up". Two years earlier, C. S. Loch had noted that: The evidence with regard to "levelling up", i.e. the indirect improvement of the dwellingsof the lower classes through the provision of dwellings for those above them, and the upward shifting of the badly-housed to the vacuum thus created, is extremelyvague. Dr Griffiths,of Clerkenwell, said that the lower class never got into the "dwellings", they went to houses formerly inhabited by one family; there were thus in a single house sometimes eight families to eight rooms, with only one closet. This is hardly "levelling up". t~6J But the EEDCo., despite reverting to one-room dwellings and shared facilities, soon encountered the problem of matching the irregularity of employment, unreliability of income, and frequent mobility of the poor, to the discipline, order and regularity necessary if low-rent block dwellings were to earn a five per cent return to investors, l~71 Beatrice Webb, who served as a volunteer housing manager with the EEDCo., noted: " T h e practical problem of management: are the tenants to be picked, all doubtful or inconvenient persons excluded or are the former inhibitants to be housed as long as they are decently respectable?" Inevitably, the answer was the same pragmatic response as that of the superintendent of the adjacent Peabody estate: " W e had a rough lot to begin with, had to weed them of the old i n h a b i t a n t s - - n o w only take in men with regular employment. I~81

W h o was housed?

Quite evidently there was a learning process. In early annual reports, each agency proudly listed the diversity of occupations of its tenants in an effort to demonstrate its appeal to every part of the labouring classes. F o r example, the EEDCo. claimed " a large number of dock labourers, carmen, porters, and men employed in the building trades, while a m o n g the women are twenty office cleaners and charwomen, and twenty-one tailoresses, needlewomen and sackmakers" a m o n g its first tenants; but later reports concentrated on the number of tenants (or, rather, the number of vacancies) rather than their

44

R. DENNIS

occupations or incomes. [19l Lists produced for government inquiries and statistical surveys generally confirmed the preponderance of skilled artisans among tenants, t2~ However, despite criticism from five per cent companies, it is evident that the Peabody Trust did house a poorer population (Table 1). By 1891, when George Arkell surveyed the inhabitants of block dwellings as part of Charles Booth's study of London life and labour, more than three-quarters of households living in philanthropic buildings were drawn from Booth's classes E and F (the better-paid working class), roughly one-fifth were from classes C and D (those with small earnings because of the irregularity of their employment or their regular low pay), and fewer than 4 per cent belonged to class A (loafers and semi-criminals) or class B (the very poor, following a hand-to-mouth existence, always in chronic want), t2~l As Table 2 shows, there were many more poor families living in tenement blocks owned by "large trading companies" and private individuals, but these blocks were much poorer in quality: These dwellings tell the visitor that the dominant idea of the architect in planning them was not the comfort and well-being of the people who should inhabit the buildings, but "what is the greatest number of tenements that can be built 'to let' on the given area.-[22]

Many blocks were criticized by the Mansion House Council on the Dwellings of the People, and some were so bad that they warranted demolition. In Poplar, Arnold Buildings were erected in 1888, closed by magistrate's order in 1894, and eventually demolished in 1904. [23] Of course, the learning process was two-way: just as philanthropic agencies quickly learned to discriminate among prospective tenants, so working-class households chose to avoid some kinds of philanthropic housing. Model dwellings were unpopular, even with some skilled workers who could have afforded to live in them. The working-class spokesmen to the 1882 Select

TABLE 1

Occupations o f philanthropic tenants per 1000 tenants

Occupation

Metropolitan Association 1874

Peabody Trust 1881

Improved Industrial Dwellings Company 1881

Clerks Policemen Printers & compositors Carpenters

13 35 41 30

5 60 22 13

24 67 43 33

Tailors Warehousemen

74 63

18 33

14 17

Carmen Porters Labourers

41 26 53

46 108 161

27 43 23

Charwomen Dressmakers & needlewomen

26 13

32 54

2 9

761

2780

3146

Total number of tenants

Source." C. Gatliff, Journal Statistical Society o f London 38 (1875) 52-3; SCALDI, PP 1881 VII, 310-11; Peabody Annual Report for 1881

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TABLE2 Block dwellings and their inhabitants, 1891 Percentage Population

Very poor

Poor

Better paid

Middle class

Philanthropic or semi-philanthropic

72441

3.9

19-4

76.2

0.5

Large trading Cos & private owners with at leastfour blocks

69598

10.0

33"6

55.8

0.6

Private owners or unknown landlords

45131

17.4

39.0

43.4

0.3

1938

--

6.2

93.8

--

189108

9"4

29-2

61.1

0-5

Type of dwelling-owner

Employers housing their workpeople Grand total

Source." C. Booth (Ed.), Labour and life of the people, volume H (London 1891) 245

C o m m i t t e e said as m u c h , a l t h o u g h t h e y did c o m m e n d s o m e o f the buildings o w n e d b y the I I D C o . A l f r e d E v a n s , a C l e r k e n w e l l h o u s e - p a i n t e r , c o n d e m n e d m o d e l dwellings f o r the d a n g e r to children c a u s e d b y the o u t s i d e staircases a n d lack o f p l a y g r o u n d s ; I241a n d T h o m a s Powell s u b m i t t e d a s t a t e m e n t o n b e h a l f o f the L o n d o n T r a d e s ' C o u n c i l , n o t i n g that: Dislike to what has been called the barrack-like publicity or gregariousness of the system, and their barrack-like external appearance, has in wide measure developed into a deep and settled prejudice, which has certainly not been without various and ample ground for its justification. The bare unplastered walls, the contracted rooms and windows, the painful monotony of the endless whitewash, unrelieved by even the most distant pretence of ornament, or of anything whatever to please the eye or mind, the cold, cheerless, uninviting appearance of the approaches and staircases, together with the sense of irksome restraint through the conditions and regulations imposed in some of those early examples of the system, have assisted largely to engender this feeling of hostility, and this prejudiceYJ But a n o t h e r witness d e c l a r e d h i m s e l f v e r y m u c h in f a v o u r o f m o d e l dwellings, w h e r e he f o u n d few r e s t r i c t i o n s a n d m u c h m o r e p r i v a c y t h a n s h a r i n g a house: " n o t h i n g b u t the m o s t p e r f e c t l i b e r t y " , lz61 In The N e t h e r W o r m G e o r g e G i s s i n g e l a b o r a t e d o n the parallels b e t w e e n m o d e l dwellings a n d b a r r a c k s : What terrible barracks, those Farringdon Road Buildings! Vast, sheer walls, unbroken by even an attempt at ornament; row above row of windows in the mud-coloured surface, upwards, upwards, lifeless eyes, murky openings that tell of bareness, disorder, comfortlessness within . . . . An inner courtyard, asphalted, swept clean--looking up to the sky as from a prison. Acres of these edifices, the tinge of grime declaring the relative dates of their erection; millions of tons of brute brick and mortar, crushing the spirit as you gaze. Barracks, in truth; housing for the army of industrialism. ~271 G i s s i n g ' s e v i d e n t d i s t a s t e m a y n o t h a v e b e e n s h a r e d b y all t h o s e o n w h o s e b e h a l f he w r o t e , b u t it s e e m s r e a s o n a b l e to a s s u m e t h a t families w h o h a d s p e n t their lives t r y i n g to k e e p o u t o f the w o r k h o u s e w o u l d n o t h a v e r u s h e d to o c c u p y dwellings w h o s e a r c h i t e c t u r e a n d c o d e o f discipline p r o v i d e d c o n s t a n t r e m i n d e r s . Several a u t h o r s h a v e stressed the strictness o f rules a n d r e g u l a t i o n s

46

R. DENNIS

imposed by philanthropic agencies--regular rent payments weekly in advance, sharing in the cleaning of c o m m o n parts, no subletting or overcrowding, no flats to be used for purposes of business, even excluding women from taking in washing; I281it is unlikely that these rules were strictly enforced, but the image of model dwellings current among the less-than-model poor was such as to deter them from applying for rooms) 29~ Hence, the philanthropic housing agencies found that, in the midst of desperate housing need, some of their dwellings proved "hard to let". The consequence was an important, but hitherto neglected, geographical dimension to their learning experience.

The geography of philanthropic housing The earliest philanthropic housing schemes were intended to be "model" in at least two senses of the term: they were to be ideal, perfectly sanitary; and they were to be an example for others, especially commercial builders and landlords, to follow. So the first agencies, the Metropolitan Association and the SICLC did not duplicate schemes, but built a variety of different types of accommodation, including two-storey family houses, fiats for families in block dwellings, hostels and lodging houses, both purpose-built and converted from existing c o m m o n lodgings; and they built in a variety of locations, but mostly in obviously needy localities in both old and new areas of poverty--in districts like St Giles's in the heart of London, and in Spitalfields and around King's Cross, in newer areas of poverty. They quickly learnt that hostels were less successful--harder to manage, because occupants changed nightly or weekly, and therefore vacancies were common, and less profitable--than family housing. L3~ When the Peabody Trust and IIDCo. were founded in the early 1860s, both began by building throughout inner London. Peabody's first estates were in Spitalfidds, ]slington, Shadwell, Westminster and Chelsea, followed in the early 1870s by a string of estates south of the Thames (Fig. 1). By 1870, the IIDCo. had built in Southwark, Wapping, King's Cross, Islington, Greenwich, Finsbury and Bethnal Green--nowhere at all in the West End (Fig. 2). Neither agency had any difficulty in attracting tenants to estates on the south bank, in Clerkenwell, the West End and around Victoria, all areas associated with skilled artisans and small-scale workshop industry. The early annual reports of the Peabody Trust recorded that Spitalfields and Islington were always fully occupied, that there was a long waiting list at Westminster, that applications for rooms at Blackfriars were so numerous that the trustees immediately resolved to build more blocks on the site. At Southwark Street, there were upwards of 1000 applications for 264 sets of rooms, at Pimlico applications for 12 blocks opened in 1876 were so numerous that it was decided to erect another 14 blocks on the site. 13~J The IIDCo. recorded especially heavy demand for Stanley Buildings, erected near St Pancras in 1875, partly because of demolition work connected with the Midland Railway's L o n d o n extension, while in 1872 at Clarendon Buildings, between Oxford Street and Grosvenor Square, there were 438 applications for 38 fiats. I321 By comparison, the IIDCo. soon found that the popularity of dwellings at Wapping "depended upon the fortunes of local trade and industry and there were frequent vacancies in lean times".I33J Much the same was true of their estate at Greenwich, while at Bethnal Green, where over the course of twenty years the company erected its most extensive estate, lettings were slow prior to the opening of a railway station, perhaps indicating the estate's appeal t o a

VICTORIAN LONDON O 9

o o 0 0

Estate location Slum clearance estates on land acquired from MBW No. of rooms 0 - 250 251 - 500 501-750

~' O T o t t e n h a m 1907 O 1865 o1910 1885 9 1 8 8 4 9 ~

751 - 1000

1882 9

OLOOO+

47

~.

1883 o Spitalfield s ~ / /.,, 1864

~ City of L o n d o n \

Shadwell

[ [ I

188 .

188:2~/ 1869 ~D l::!.il 19130 187~./

Bermondsey

:ii//:

o 1911

o

Km 6

Figure 1.

Mi'les

2

(•

Herne Hill 1901

Peabody Trust Estates, 1862-1914.

suburbanizing, regularly employed working class, willing and able to commute to work by train. [341 The Peabody Trust also encountered problems on its solitary Docklands estate at Shadwell, all the more significant given the success of all its other early estates. By July 1867, about six months after opening, 147 out of 195 tenements were occupied, the empties being blamed on the lack o f a suitable approach to the buildings. By the beginning o f 1868, the excuse had changed to "the depression of business and the consequent suspension of employment in that part o f London". But two years later it was still the case that " a b o u t one fourth of the tenements [were] unoccupied". To add to the trust's problems, the first superintendent was dismissed for embezzlement and forgery, and the estate experienced a severe epidemic o f scarlet fever, a matter o f some concern at a time when doubts were frequently cast over the healthiness o f high-density block livingJ 35] Even in 1880, the estate was still causing problems. The trust's secretary, Robert Vigers, told the Select Committee on Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings: "The only district that we built where we have not had a great rush for, is down by Shadwell; the people in that locality did not come into it readily, but within the last 18 months they have filled very much better. ''[361 In fact, there were also lettings problems with an experimental estate of cheaper concrete buildings in Bermondsey: "there we are not always full, because the buildings are objected to, and the concrete does not answer at all; the floors are cold and uncomfortable". [371

48

R. DENNIS

O O 0

0

No. of rooms ~L Estateson land > 3000 IP' acquired from MBW (1L Estateson land acquiredfrom 901-1500 Duke of Westminster 501-900 18810 301-500 201-300 0-200 1884 1865(-') 1865"1L 1866 1868 0 1885

1 " 0 1879

~ 0,--~ k._) O 1877(, )1869~--1882

1872t.~l~

,dL 1884~ W , u ~ 1887-92 f ~ ~ Grosvenor Estate ~ 18871~18 01893

18810

1869-83Green

Bethna, Estate

01874

/ I Wappin9

1865 f ~ ~1

18910 1 8 7 0 1 8 7 8 1 8 7 5 ~ i 1875('[(li1~. 0 1 8 7 ~ ~ ....

~

[

1881

Deptf~ O

~

?

Greenwich 1868

Ji o

,m

3

(3 Miles Figure 2. Improved Industrial Dwellings Company Estates, 1863-1900.

The officials of the IIDCo. were more inclined to distinguish between Inner and Outer London than between East End and West End. The company secretary blamed lettings problems at Bethnal Green on competition from speculative builders. At Greenwich, "For a long time we had a large per centage of empties, but they are now [1881] full, with the exception of about three [out of 40]; but the rents are low". At Deptford, "we have not been able to let to a greater extent than 50 per cent, but these buildings have not been opened longer than about 12 months". Three years later, Deptford was still a problem "because we come into competition with the small h0uses". [38J Sydney Waterlow, founder and chairman of the IIDCo., admitted to a policy of cross-subsidy: In the central districts, that is to say near Oxford Street, Westminster, and Pimlico, the tenements yield a better profit than they do in the outlying estates, namely, the Tower, Greenwich and Deptford; there we do not earn 5 per cent, but taking the average of the earnings of the whole estates, St. George's, Hanover Square, pays for Deptford and the Tower.[39]

In these circumstances, it is not surprising that both Peabody and the IIDCo. turned their attention westwards during the 1870s and 1880s (Figs 1 and 2). The Peabody Trust next built in the East End when it acquired a slum clearance site near St Katharine's Dock from the MBW as part of a "job lot" of six sites. The

VICTORIAN LONDON

49

other five were all in much more attractive districts--in Westminster, Covent Garden and Clerkenwell. The purchase of the East End site was clearly a compromise: the Trust had run out of sites and funds and was keen to acquire prime sites at low cost, while the Board of Works was keen to get the Cross Act off to a good start by redeveloping one of its East End sites as quickly as possible. Although the IIDCo. did continue to build in south-east L o n d o n (not only in Deptford, as recorded above, but also closer in along the Old Kent Road), it was much more enthusiastic about new developments in the West End.[4~ Again, the evidence lies in the record of demand for new dwellings. Peabody received "upwards of 3000 applicants" for 432 new dwellings opened in 1881 .[41] The annual reports of the IIDCo. offer equally spectacular evidence of oversubscription. In 1882 there were nearly 300 applicants for 48 dwellings at Hamilton Buildings, Great Eastern Street; the next year, there were 382 applications for 83 dwellings in City Road, Islington and 323 applications for 80 dwellings around the corner in Istington High Street. The 259 dwellings in Sandringham Buildings in Charing Cross Road attracted about 1300 applicants, and for 165 dwellings at Linton Street, off Edgware Road, 626 applications were made.j421 Neglect of the East End is also evident in the experience of the newly formed East End Dwellings Co. and in relations between philanthropic agencies and the MBW and its successor, the L o n d o n County Council, during the 1880s and 1890s. The LCC inherited sites in St Giles's, Limehouse, Shadwell, Deptford and Greenwich, which the BWM had compulsorily purchased but failed to sell under the terms of the Cross Act. Part of the Deptford site was sold to the Provident Association, but there were no takers for the remainder or for the site in Greenwich. Brook Street, Limehouse, was advertised for sale in 1887, and three further times by the LCC, without attracting any purchasers. Negotiations with the Guinness Trust for the purchase of a site in Cable Street, Shadwell, twice broke down. The EEDCo. offered to build on a site in A n n Street, Poplar, acquired by the LCC under Part lI of the 1890 Housing Act, but here too the sale fell through, because neither the Council nor the Local Government Board approved of the company's plans for one-room dwellings each occupied by two persons. In fact, when the LCC at last redeveloped the site itself, the Local Government Board withdrew the one person per room restriction. 1431 Faced with this reluctance on the part of government to approve its minimum-standards plans, and with the continuing problems of managing a shifting and poverty-stricken tenantry, the EEDCo. very quickly moved up-market and away from the "real" East End. By the turn of the century, it was building two- and three-room self-contained flats in Victoria Park Square, Stepney Green, King's Cross and Barnsbury. E441

The availability of sites So far I have argued that philanthropic agencies avoided the poorest parts of London because, from experience and observation, they reckoned that the population was too poor or ill-disciplined to allow even a modest return on investment. But the positive side of the equation, the preference for "artisan London", could only be fulfilled if sites were available at ground rents or freehold prices that allowed rents to be set at modest levels.

50

R. DENNIS

Mention has already been made of the slum clearance sites offered for sale under the terms of the Cross Act, passed in 1875. [451 The Peabody trustees commented in 1873 that the only sites they could afford were south of the Thames. Once they knew that central London sites would be made available for residential redevelopment under the new act, they resolved not to buy any more land on the open market. Then they drove an extraordinarily hard bargain, acquiring for around s six sites for which the Board had paid approximately s [461 Some of the five per cent companies made less dramatic but still very favourable deals: the IIDCo. acquired sites in Southwark, Islington and Marylebone; the EEDCo. and Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Co. purchased land in Whitechapel. The IIDCo. also acquired rehousing sites in connection with street improvements, including frontages along Charing Cross Road and Great Eastern Street. [471 There was also a market in institutional land, whereby land that had been used for one charitable purpose was sold for another. Peabody's Blackfriars Road estate (1870) occupied the site of Magdalen Foundling Hospital, and later Peabody estates replaced the Royal Masonic Institution in Clapham and a convent in Hammersmith. ~481Peabody also offered, unsuccessfully, to acquire the Ironmongers' Almshouses now the home of the Geffrye Museum. The EEDCo. failed in an attempt to buy the site of the Royal Caledonian Asylum, Caledonian Road, but did redevelop land at Victoria Park previously occupied by barracks.149] By comparison with the MBW clearance sites in the West End, estimated to be worth at least s per acre on the open market, sites acquired by the Peabody Trust around the fringes of central L o n d o n - - i n Chelsea, St Pancras, and south of Blackfriars Bridge--all cost about s per acre. [5~ It is not surprising, therefore, that several agencies began to contemplate truly suburban sites: the Peabody Trust built in Herne Hill and T o t t e n h a m in the early 1900s; the IIDCo. constructed its largest estate in then-suburban Bethnal Green in the 1870s; the EEDCo. colonized the edges of Victoria Park and purchased one ready-built set of tenements in that most Victorian of suburbs, Camberwell. I5~1 But none of these ventures p r o v e d successful prior to World War I. Householders who could afford to commute from suburbia preferred cottages to flats; and even where cottages were provided, as at Herne Hill and Tottenham, it seems that skilled working-class tenants were deterred by the stigma of renting from an institutional landlord. The very first philanthropic housing scheme, erected by the SICLC in Bagnigge Wells, off the Gray's Inn Road, was on land supplied by Lord Calthorpe. I52J Thereafter, the philanthropists benefited from links with the Bedford Estate and the Marquis of N o r t h a m p t o n (in Clerkenwell). ~531But the most influential landowner was the Duke of Westminster who provided sites in both Mayfair and Pimtico, for the Metropolitan Association, the St. George's Workmen's Model Dwellings Association, the Artizans', Labourers' and General Dwellings Co., but particularly for the IIDCo. ESaJThere is no doubting the Duke's philanthropic motivation, but it is also clear that granting cheap sites for model dwellings was astute estate management. Model dwellings were a good way of protecting the most lucrative parts of estates from the spread of slum populations. Better an orderly model dwelling than a disorderly slum. As Donald Olsen has noted:

VICTORIAN LONDON

51

The new streets [in Mayfair] would secure more efficient social segregation, with the poor removed from back streets and mews and either placed under tidy supervision in new model blocks or expelled from the estate altogether. 1551

To implement these objectives, the Duke of Westminster was obliged to modify the terms under which the estate was settled. Tenants for life, which is what aristocratic landowners generally were, were required to obtain the best possible ground rents for sites on their estates. On the Northampton estate, the IIDCo. was charged 1.42d. and 2.01d. per foot, compared to a "market value" of between 3d. and 4d. per foot. If the "best ground rent" had been levied, model dwellings "certainly would not have been erected". I561However, it was a moot point how "best rents" should be assessed. In the short term, a soap works might yield a greater ground rent than a model dwelling, but in the long term, the negative externalities of a soap works would reduce the value of the surrounding property. Model dwellings were suitably neutral in their effect. In a relatively poor area, like Clerkenwell, model dwellings could act as good examples of decent behaviour and cleanliness. In a wealthier area, like Mayfair, they provided orderly accommodation for servants, shop assistants and other service workers on whom the rich depended. Conclusions

Overall, because aristocratic land ownership was more important in west than east London, the effect was to reinforce the spatial bias in the distribution of philanthropic housing. Of course, there were more than enough poor and deserving cases in Pimlico and Bloomsbury to keep a modestly-sized philanthropic housing movement busy for many decades, and no doubt some of the poor in those areas did benefit from the concentration of effort in their districts. But the hard core of poverty in east and south-east London attracted relatively little attention. According to Arkell's survey of block dwellings in London, over 8 per cent of the population of Westminster School Board District lived in philanthropic blocks. But in Tower Hamlets, the percentage was only 2.1 and in Southwark 2.8, although the proportion of the population in those districts classified as "very poor" (i.e. classes A and B) was much higher than in Westminster (Table 3). [571 One other consequence of the philanthropists' neglect of the East End was to oblige the London County Council to embark on a housing programme when it inherited Cross Act sites for which the MBW had been unable to find buyers. Initially, because the council followed the same financial principles as philanthropic agencies, the result was to create yet more "hard to let" estates and confirm the worst fears of philanthropic landlords. 1581 This is not the place to pursue parallels with present-day housing policy, consequent upon the selective resuscitation of "Victorian Values". I591Suffice it to conclude that values in historical geography are not just a matter for theoretical debate but also for empirical demonstration. As Geoffrey Best has written: "The 'model dwellings' and the common lodging house justify so much space because they were eminently characteristic of our period, not because of the numbers they housed"J 6~ Perhaps, as Martin Daunton has suggested, we have over-researched the well-documented but numerically insignificant forms of Victorian and Edwardian housing--not only philanthropic housing, but also

52

R. DENNIS TABLE 3 Block dwellings in London, 1891

School board district

Westminster Southwark Finsbury City Hackney Tower Hamlets East Lambeth Marylebone Chelsea West Lambeth Greenwich

Percentage population in

Percentage population

All blocks

Philanthropic blocks

Other blocks

Very poor

Middle class

10.9 10.8 8-5 6-0 5-8 5.6 4.9 2-6 1-2 1-2 0-3

8.1 2.8 3"6 4.0 2.6 2.1 0-5 0"6 0.3 0.2 0-2

2- 8 8-0 4.9 2.0 3.2 3.5 4-4 2.0 0.9 1-0 0.1

8-4 15.4 11-5 7'6 12.0 12-9 6-2 5-5 5.0 4.8 6.6

19.9 4.6 16'6 14.6 12.4 5.6 17-6 22'0 31.4 20.3 22.0

Source." C. Booth (Ed.), Labour and life of the people, volume II (London 1891) 21-39, 242-4

company housing (like Saltaire) and council housing--and need to pay m o r e attention to the "ordinary" privately rented sector in which most Victorian households were accommodated.I6~1Nonetheless, there was a geography to the implementation of Victorian philanthropy, as dramatic as any of the more usual spatial distributions studied by historical geographers; and the consequence of this geography was to reinforce the social and economic polarization of "two nations", but ultimately to prove the need for both London-wide government, allowing cross-subsidization between rich and poor districts, and .explicit housing subsidies. The recent abolition of the former and reduction of the latter are as much a part of "Victorian Values" as an emphasis on personal morality and individual responsibility.

University College London

Acknowledgements I a m grateful to the officers o f the P e a b o d y T r u s t for g r a n t i n g me access to the early records o f the trust a n d o f the S I C L C ; a n d to the c a r t o g r a p h y staff o f the D e p a r t m e n t o f G e o g r a p h y , U n i v e r s i t y College L o n d o n , w h o drew the m a p s .

Notes [1] H. C. Darby, Historical geography in Britain, 192(~1980: continuity and change Transactions, Institute o f British Geographers 8 (1983) 426 [2] M. Overton, Conference report: Historical geography at the IBG Journal of Historical Geography 8 (1982) 186, quoted in Darby, op cit. [3] G. Stedman Jones, Outcast London (Oxford 1971); J. White, Rothschild Buildings (London 1980); A. S. Wohl, The eternal slum (London 1977) [4] E. Gauldie, Cruel habitations (London 1974) 221,235 [5] J. White, in London Weekend Television series, The making o f modern London, first broadcast, 14 Oct 1983. See also Jones, op cit.; J. Foster, How imperial London preserved its slums International Journal o f Urban and Regional Research 3 (1979) 93 114

VICTORIAN LONDON

53

[6] For further details of the social and architectural history of these agencies, see Wohl, op. cit.; J. Tarn, Five per cent philanthropy (Cambridge 1973) [7] F. Driver, The English Bastile: dimensions of the workhouse system, 1834-1884 (unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge 1987) [8] Dwellings o f the poor." report o f the Dwellings Committee of the Charity Organisation Society (London 1873) 4, 10-11 [9] Report from the Select Committee on Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement (SCALDI), PP 1881 VII, 178 [10] Ibid. 147, 173 [11] C. S. Loch, The dwellings o f the poor (London 1882) 7 [12] Ibid. 9 [13] Dwellings o f the poor (1873) 15-16 [14] Return: Endowed Charities (County of London) Vol. VII (London 1904) 365; SCALDI, PP 1881 VII, 162; Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes (RCHWC), PP 1884-85 XXX, 54, QQ 11540-1 [15] RCHWC, PP 1884-85 XXX, 55 [16] Loch, op. cit. 11 [17] See the comments on vacancy rates in EEDCo. Ltd. Annual Reports 1884-; and on rent losses due to empties and rent arrears in inquiries conducted by the LCC, e.g. LCC HSG/ GEN/2/2/II. Reports by the Architect and Valuer, 31 October 1894 [18] N. and J. MacKenzie (Eds), The diary o f Beatrice Webb, volume one, 1873-1892 (London 1982) 134 [19] EEDCo. Ltd. 4th Report, 21 Feb 1887. After 1890 the reports became less personal and more concerned with finance and numbers [20] See, for example, SCALDI, PP 1881 VII, Appendices 15, 16, 19 for lists of occupations of tenants of MAIDIC, Peabody and IIDCo.; C. Gatliff, On improved dwellings and their beneficial effect on health and morals Journal o f the Statistical Society o f London 38 (1875) 49, 53; A. Newsholme, The vital statistics of Peabody buildings and other artisans' and labourers' block dwellings Journal o f the Royal Statistical Society 54 (1891) 90; the Peabody Trust recorded occupations of tenants in Annual Reports until at least 1960 [21] C. Booth (ed), Labour and life o f the people. Volume H (London 1891) 236-62 [22] Ibid. 240 [23] Reports of the Mansion House Council for 1884 and 1890 (London 1885, 1891); R. V. Steffel, Housing for the working classes in the East End of London, 1890-1907 (unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, Ohio State University 1969); Idem., The evolution of a slum control policy in the East End, 1889-1907 East London Papers 13 (1970) 25-35 [24] Report from the Select Committee on Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings (SCALD), PP 1882 VII, Q. 2791 [25] Ibid. 134-40 [26] Ibid. Q. 2651 [27] G. Gissing, The nether worm (London 1889) chapter XXX [28] Wohl, op. cit. 159--61; Stedman Jones, op. cit. 184-5; White, op. cit. esp. 54-60, 292-4. [29] On the lack of enforcement, see White, op. cit. 53, 78, 236; Newsholme, op. tit. 75; Peabody Fund Minutes (PFM), 15 February 1879. In general, there were more rules imposed by agencies hoping to house the poor (e.g. Peabody, 4% Industrial Dws. Co.) than by companies like the IIDCo. [30] Gatliff, op. cit.; J. Hollingshead, Ragged London in 1861 (London 1861) 199-223,266-81; on the SICLC, see J. S. Curl, The life and works o f Henry Roberts, Architect (Chichester 1983); the society's minute books are in the care of the Peabody Trust [31] PFM, 14 Jun 1866, 15 Feb 1868; Peabody Annual Reports for 1872, 1875, 1876 [32] J. N. Tam, The Improved Industrial Dwellings Company Transactions London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 22 (1968) 47, 54 [33] Ibid. 47 [34] Ibid. 51-2 [35] PFM, 13 Jul 1867, 15 Feb 1868, 5 Apr 1873; Peabody Annual Statement for 1874 [36] SCALDI, PP 1881 VII, 127 [37] RCHWC, PP 1884-85 XXX, Q. 11699 (evidence of Sir Curtis Lampson, Peabody trustee) [38] SCALDI, PP 1881 VII, 173, 175; RCHWC, PP 1884-85 XXX, Q. 11940 (evidence of Sir Sydney Waterlow, chairman IIDCo.) [39] RCHWC, PP 1884-85 XXX, Q. 11976 [40] On Peabody and the MBW, see Peabody Minutes and Annual Reports, passim, and C. J.

54

R. DENNIS

Stewart, The housing question in London (London 1900). On IIDCo., see Tarn, IIDCo., and IIDCo. Ltd, Company Reports, passim. [41] Peabody Annual Report for 1881 [42] IIDCo. Ltd. 39th, 41st, 43rd and 44th Half-Yearly Reports, 16 Feb 1883, 21 Feb 1884, 13 Feb 1885, 6 Aug 1885 [43] Stewart, op. cit.; EEDCo. Ltd. 16th Report, 6 Feb 1899; LCC HSG/GEN/2/3: Reports of the Public Health and Housing Committee, 1893-96, and of the Housing of the Working Classes Committee, 1897 1901 [44] EEDCo. Ltd. Company Reports, passim. [45] On MBW site selection, see J. A. Yelling, The selection of sites for slum clearance in London, 1875-1888 Journal of Historical Geography 7 (1981) 155-65; Stewart, op. eit. [46] Peabody Annual Report for 1872, 5 Apr 1873; Peabody Second Trust Proceedings, 4 Jul 1879; Stewart, op. cit. 41-3, 11(~53; J. A. Yelling, Slums and slum clearance in Victorian London (London 1986) [47] Yelling, The selection of sites; IIDCo. Ltd. 37th, 38th, 39th and 45th Half-Yearly Reports, 10 Feb 1882, 11 Aug 1882, 16 Feb 1883, 11 Feb 1886 [48] Peabody Annual Statement for 1869, Annual Reports for 1921, 1933 [49] PFM, 27 Feb 1907; EEDCo. Ltd. 15th, 17th, 18th Reports, 7 Feb 1898, 5 Feb 1900, 4 Feb 1901 [50] Peabody Annual Statement for 1869; Second Trust Proceedings, 15 May 1872, 30 Apr 1875 [51] Peabody Annual Reports for 1899, 1900, 1903; PFM, 24 Jul 1902; Tam, IIDCo., 48, 52~4; IIDCo. Ltd. 37th Half-Yearly Report, 10 Feb 1882; EEDCo. Ltd. 7th and 17th Reports, for 1889 and 1899 [52] SICLC Minutes, 19 Jul 1844; Curl. op. cit. 23 [53] Tarn, IIDCo., 55; SICLC Minutes, 11 Aug 1848; Curl, op. cit.; RCHWC, PP 1884-85 XXX, QQ. 790-1250 [54] Tarn, IIDCo., 51, 55, 58; IIDCo. Ltd. Reports, 1886 92; F. H. W. Sheppard (ed) Survey of London." XXXIX: The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair." Part I: The General History (London 1977); Idem., Survey of London: XL: The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair: Part II: The Buildings (London 1980) [55] D. J. Olsen, The growth of Victorian London (Harmondsworth 1979) 145 [56] RCHWC, PP 1884-85 XXX, QQ. 873 8, 881 91 [57] Booth, op. cit. 21-39, 242-4 [58] R. Dennis, 'Hard to let' in Edwardian London, paper presented to the Urban History Group, Cheltenham 1986 [59] R. Dennis, Victorian values and housing policy: London then and now Bloomsbury Geographer 13 (1985) 71-4 [60] G. Best, Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-75 (London 1971) 30 [61] M. J. Daunton, House andhomein the Victorian city (London 1983) 1, 194