Spitalfields Flashcards
Medieval Spitalfields - Who arrived, when, why and from where?
• Walter and Roisia Brune - wealthy Londoners who founded the Augustinian Priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary, around 1197. New Hospital of St Mary without Bishopsgate, or St Mary Spital.
• This priory was populated by Augustinian canons (men) and lay sisters (unordained women) who took in the poor and sick – links with France
• Open land outside city walls; cheaper
• Position on Ermine Street led to inns, waggoners and blacksmiths, and presumably establishments for drovers bringing cattle and sheep into the city, as well as meat curers and tanners
• Outside walls – so beyond reach of city authorities. Theatre in Shoreditch
Medieval Spitalfields - How were they received by the settled population and what were their experiences?
• Priory may originally have been small (catering for 12 or so poor and sick, especially women during and after pregnancy
• Children who died in pregnancy would be cared for by the sisters until 7
• Wealthy benefactors
Medieval Spitalfields - What was the impact of this migration on Spitalfields?
• Growing bustle was provided for by valuable gifts – from the deceased – but also from living men of high rank.
• Annual tradition for a public sermon to be preached at the Spital by a bishop in the audience of the Lord Mayor of London and the Alderman to raise money for the hospital ‘confirming St Mary’s as one of the most significant institutions in the medieval city’
• Open fields near the priory became an artillery ground where people practised combat skills such as archery, swordplay and later firearms.
16th Century Spitalfields - Who arrived, when, why and from where?
• Foreign-born people because they were prevented from living within the city walls
• ‘liberties’ - many monastic sites operated outside the usual legal system acting as sanctuaries for criminals, debtors and aliens in exchange for payment – allowed them to flout trade rules
• 2% of London’s population born abroad including:
• Francesco de Bardi (imported luxurious satin and velvet and exported raw English wool) and
• John Meautys (Frenchman and royal secretary who lived on Leadenhall Street).
• de Bardi granted licence by King to trade without paying customs duties. Meautys’ home became prominent sanctuary for French pickpockets and wool-carders, who flouted London’s rules on trading
16th Century Spitalfields - How were they received by the settled population and what were their experiences?
• Widespread poverty and suffering brought attention to immigrants who were seen as ‘taking work away from Londoners, and also putting themselves in positions where they [could] control the wool trade in London
• English merchants encouraged dissent and violence was eventually sparked off by a sermon against ‘strangers’, or foreigners, preached at St Mary Spital in mid-April by Dr Bell. He also preached at St Paul’s Cross and the anger grew as the April days passed. Bell told his audience that foreigners ‘eat the bread from poor fatherless children’ and exhorted Englishmen to ‘cherish and defend themselves, and to hurt and grieve aliens [foreigners]
• Evil May Day, 1517
16th Century Spitalfields - What was the impact of this migration on Spitalfields?
• Events of 1517 were disastrous for both the immigrants and for many of those who attacked them.
• The result was destroyed homes, ransacked possessions, and fatal repression.
• Yet it was not a random outburst of aimless xenophobia. It emerged directly from long-running and growing resentments towards the apparent ‘privileges’ enjoyed by a few prominent immigrants that spilled over into a wider attack on the thousands of foreigners who were merely trying to make ends meet. Flemish cobblers had little in common with French royal courtiers, but they both suffered at the hands of the crowd.
• The violence of 1517 must have scarred relations between immigrant and native Londoners for a long time to come.
Huguenot Spitalfields - Who arrived, when, why and from where?
• 1570s Huguenots – started arriving in the area as refugees from religious persecution.
• number increased rapidly in the 1680s after the French King Louis XIV overturned a law protecting their rights.
• Estimated 13,050 arrived in London by 1687, mostly living in Spitalfields. By 1700 Huguenots were about 5% of London’s population.
• Came to Spitalfields because the building boom meant there were empty properties and further space to build on.
• There was already a local silk weaving industry.
• There was a French Protestant church nearby an area that Protestant Dissenters – religious outsiders such as Quakers and Methodists – were drawn to
• Many of the Huguenots came from just two towns – Lyon and Tours – so they were often people who knew each other.
Huguenot Spitalfields - How were they received by the settled population and what were their experiences?
• Committees set up to help them; one such committee, La Maison de Charité de Spitalfields was known as ‘La Soupe’ because of what it provided for refugees.
• They had a strong tradition of business skills, self-reliance and community support.
• Many were highly skilled silk weavers who settled in new houses that were being built over the fields.
• They transformed the area with their new high quality French styles that soon became fashionable. Along with Huguenot silversmiths and goldsmiths they could offer high fashion at prices that undercut taxed French imports. As these silks were now home produced they were not affected by war or stormy seas.
• The early generations of Huguenots kept close to their religion and cultural traditions. They were Calvinists
• While they were given the freedom to worship and build churches – something denied Quakers and Catholics – their dead still had, by law, to be buried in Anglican churchyards.
• The French immigrants were largely well received by the middle classes.
• The reaction from the working classes was mixed, though. Many saw the new arrivals as a threat to their livelihoods, competing for work and willing to undercut wages.
• Tensions mounted and some locals even began to arm themselves ready to rise up against foreigners.
• In 1683 King Charles II placed companies of Horse Guards around Spitalfields ‘to keep the weavers in order’.
• In 1709 Parliament passed a law naturalising Huguenots as English citizens -opposed by some
Huguenot Spitalfields - What was the impact of this migration on Spitalfields?
• By 1700 there were about 500 master weavers and 15,000 looms around Spital Square.
• The silk came from China, India and Italy, brought by ships of the East India Company. More and more people were attracted to Spitalfields and the area became a boom town.
• The Huguenots brought a new, profitable industry that opened up new markets. 50,000 locals now depended on the silk business.
• The new Spitalfields Market, set up by King Charles I, was a centre for their textile trading. Some
• Huguenots were already wealthy merchants and master weavers and soon became estate owners in the area. Families such as Rocher and Parroissien lived in grand houses on the newly built up Spital Square, where Brick House had been – and before it, the medieval priory and Roman cemetery.
• While they were given the freedom to worship and build churches – something denied Quakers and Catholics – their dead still had, by law, to be buried in Anglican churchyards.
Irish Spitalfields - Who arrived, when, why and from where?
• The migration of the Irish into the area began in the 1730s with the collapse of the Irish linen trade. There was also a large influx of Irish migrants into London following the potato famine in the 1830s, e.g. Donovan brothers
• Many had been forced into poverty by the linen industry’s decline and strict Penal Laws that discriminated against Catholics.
Irish Spitalfields - How were they received by the settled population and what were their experiences?
• There was some antagonism directed at Irish.
• Most were unskilled labourers, though some had been linen weavers back home.
• Employers in Spitalfields often preferred to hire them because, as the poorest residents, they accepted low wages.
• This made English weavers resent them.
• The Irish – most of whom spoke Gaelic - were the most likely to be underpaid and out of work, and to suffer racism
• In July 1736 serious fighting broke out after English labourers accused the Irish of undercutting their wages. A series of battles with guns and knives ended with 17 badly wounded on both sides and one English boy shot dead.
• The Catholic Irish were not allowed to worship openly or build churches.
• In 1780, when 1/11 Londoners were Irish, there were violent anti-Catholic ‘Gordon’ riots and a mob burnt down Catholic chapels in Brick Lane.
• For ‘journeyman’ weavers, the deeper conflict was about class. They – Irish, English and Huguenot – were ranged against their richer employers (English and Huguenot).
• In the 1760s protests were frequent and they included marches, sabotage, damage to looms. Things came to a violent climax in the ‘Cutters’ Riots’ of the 1760s which led to the execution of an Irish and a Huguenot weaver
• By 1790s the silk weaving industry was in decline and there was now real poverty on the streets of Spitalfields. The 1799 Combination Act stopping workers organising themselves in trades unions made it hard for weavers to get together and protect the poorer weavers
• In 1797 the Spitalfields Soup Society started helping the poorest families.
Irish Spitalfields - What was the impact of this migration on Spitalfields?
• Full freedom for Catholics came in 1829 with the Roman Catholic Relief Act.
• Fact that they shared poverty with many English and Huguenots, especially in the weaving industry, brought them together.
• Sometimes, to protect their industry, workers and employers were on the same side. When calico (printed cotton) dresses from overseas became fashionable they protested successfully and the government banned the material.
• When outsiders brought in new mechanical looms and weavers fearing unemployment started breaking the machines, they were often supported by employers who feared the competition.
• Spitalfields weavers, often led by the Irish, gained the reputation of being the most militant, organised of the British working class. They organised themselves into ‘combinations’ with names such as the Subscription Society, and the Liberty Men.
• As a result of violence in 1771, the govt responded with the 1773 Spitalfields Act, which was further extended in 1793. Under these Acts:
• Weavers could negotiate pay with magistrates who then set wages.
• Employers were punished if they paid wages above or below those set.
• Combinations were banned.
• Imports of foreign silk were controlled.
• No one was paid starvation wages
Jewish Spitalfields - Who arrived, when, why and from where?
• settled and growing Jewish community since 1650s
• Small numbers of Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese Jews had settled in Aldgate, just over the City walls from Spitalfields.
• increasing numbers of German Jews began to arrive in Britain, attracted to its relative freedoms, economic opportunities and lack of immigration controls.
• Many, landing by boat at the London docks, settled in the East End where accommodation was cheap.
• In 1881, after Jews were blamed for the assassination of the Tsar (Emperor), there were pogroms – violent attacks and massacres – aimed at Jews. Laws then restricted where Jews could live, banned them from owning property and put quotas on how many Jews could attend secondary school and higher education. Thousands of Jews from Russia, Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe migrated westwards, arriving by sea in British ports, especially London. They were escaping persecution and hoping to build new lives.
Jewish Spitalfields - How were they received by the settled population and what were their experiences?
• Jews experienced anti-Judaism and state discrimination, but by the mid-nineteenth century they had achieved civil and political rights equal to the wider population.
• To meet their needs, the Jews’ Free School moved to Bell Lane in Spitalfields in 1822 and catered for immigrant children, while a Jews’ Infant School opened on Commercial Street in 1841.
• In 1851 Henry Mayhew estimated that there were 18,000 Jews in London and many of them were poor pedlars and traders selling second-hand clothes in the ‘rag trade’ on stalls along Houndsditch and Petticoat Lane that had been a rough-and-ready market for centuries.
• the market was at its busiest on Sundays.
• The first synagogue in Spitalfields, established by Dutch Jews in 1874, took over a former Huguenot church in Sandy’s Row and is still functioning as a Jewish place of worship.
• In 1880s poor, with few possessions and little knowledge of English, most were forced into the cheapest places to live, where they could join a community with familiar language, food, religion and customs.
• Life was very hard for the new arrivals. There were also different reactions to them within the settled Jewish community. Many were worried that their own status might be threatened if there was an antisemitic backlash. Other Jewish groups organised charities to support the refugees and help them get on their feet. This included soup kitchens and a temporary shelter
Jewish Spitalfields - What was the impact of this migration on Spitalfields?
• Over a very short space of time there was a huge population shift: by 1899 a quarter of the population of Spitalfields was Jewish.
• Most Jews lived separate lives from the Irish and English: as they moved out, some areas became between 75% and 100% Jewish. When that happened, observers noted, the crime rate went down and these areas became quieter.
• However, they were also seen by some as a threat to jobs and wages. To many desperately poor people in Spitalfields it could appear that newly arriving immigrants were the problem, even though the true reasons for these included new technology, foreign competition and economic depression.
• Housing was also a real point of conflict. At a time when houses were being demolished for new roads and railways, some long term residents felt the influx of Jews was making it even harder for them to be housed. Wentworth Street, the area of the worst housing, had a lodging house containing 800 people and there was racial tension in the area.
