Urban Environments Flashcards
Where is Spitalfields?
- Outside the Roman walls to the North East of the City
- Once you were outside the walls you were no longer controlled by the City’s authorities so it became a place where outcasts, criminals and poorer people gathered
- It became a refuge for people who did not fit into social norms
Spitalfields migration timeline
- Huguenots 1570 - fled religious persecution after St Bartholomew Day Massacre 1572
- Jews 1646, re-admitted to England, small numbers settle near Spitalfields
- 1685 Louis XIV reverses the law protecting Huguenots promoting a second wave of refugees
- 1691 - The Jacobites in Ireland were defeated, beginning a period of repression against Catholics, forcing many Irish workers to emigrate
- Irish 1700 - Start arriving from 1700 to escape Penal Laws and religious persecution after failure of Jacobites
- 1769 - The authorities respond to the Cutters’ Riots with executions in Bethnal Green
- 1773,1793 - The Spitalfields Acts regulated weavers’ pay and conditions
- 1815 - End of the war with France
- 1824 - Repeal of the Spitalfields Act
- 1869 - The Suez Canal opened, providing jobs for Lascar seamen
- Jews 1881 - Start returning to Britain after OC lifts restrictions on them. More come following 1881 pogroms
- 1881 - The assassination of Russian Tsar leads to violence against the Jews (a program), forcing many of them to move west
- 1889 - Jewish tailors went on strike
- 1905 - The Aliens Act restricted immigration for the first time
- 1936 - Fascist Blackshirts stopped from marching through the East End
- Bengalis 1950 - Started coming as Lascar seamen from 1870, then war of independence plus 1970 cyclone saw immigration rise
- Somalis 2000 - Civil war in Somalia saw arrival of refugees
Combinations
Early examples of trade unions such as the Subscription Society and the Liberty Men who were established to support the poor and prevent them from being exploited
Journey men
Day rate workers (zero hours contracts) on the lowest pay
1773 Spitalfields Act
The government responded to this cycle of violence 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
- employers could not have more than two apprentices at any one time
- combinations were banned
- imports of foreign silk were controlled
Why did Irish migrants face antagonism (wages)?
- Most were unskilled labourers though some had been linen weavers back in Ireland
- Many had been forced into poverty by the linen industry’s decline and strict Penal Laws that discriminated against Catholics?
- Employers in Spitalfields often preferred to hire them because, as the poorest residents, they accepted low wages
- This made English weavers resent them
- In July 1736 serious fighting broke out after English labourers accused the Irish of undercutting their wages on a church building site
Why did Irish migrants face antagonism (religion)?
- Another reason that Irish migrants faced antagonism was because they were Catholic whilst living in Protestant England
- The Catholic Irish were not allowed to worship openly or build churches
- In 1780, when one in eleven Londoners were Irish, there were violent anti-Catholic ‘Gordon’ riots and a mob burnt down Catholic chapels in Brick Lane
- Full freedom for Catholics only came in 1829 with the Roman Catholic Relief Act
List of pressures which threatened jobs in this period
- Mechanisation: new technologies were threatening jobs, the period of being an apprentice was long and hard and eventual wages were a lot lower than for most other skilled workers, even during good times
- The Irish, English and Huguenot were ranged against their richer employers and landowners (English and Huguenot)
- The silk trade was unpredictable: there were boom times and deep depressions
- As the century went on, more and more master weavers brought in machines and some hired the cheapest labour (women and children) to operate them
- The richest employers ran workshops with hundreds of weavers under poor pay and conditions
How did the weavers of Spitalfields react to their jobs being threatened?
- In response, Spitalfields weavers, often led by the Irish, organised themselves into combinations with names such as the Liberty Men
- Their supporters were to support poorer families and prevent weavers being exploited by their bosses
- Opponents claimed that armed gangs of angry weavers were roaming the streets and cutting the silk weavers who worked at lower rates
- In the 1760s protests were frequent and they included marches, sabotage, damage to looms, even an effigy of an employer being hung and burnt
Outline the events of the Cutters’ Riots of the 1760s
- Louis Chauvet (Huguenot) on 40 Crispin Street was hated by many
- He employed 450 people and marked the coins he paid his workers so he could see how they spent their money
- In August 1769 a mob of about 1,500 people then broke hundreds of his looms
- At Chauvet’s request Spitalfields was put under military occupation and he offered a £500 reward for information
What reasons are there to explain the decline of Spitalfields as a centre of weaving?
- There was severe economic depressions across the country
- More and more master weavers were using mechanised looms that put local weavers out of a job
- In 1824 the Spitalfields Acts were repealed, ending import controls and making it easier for textiles from overseas, especially India, to flood the market
Which two trades replaced weaving, what nationality ran these trades and who worked there?
- As the weaving trade died the main employers in the area were Truman’s brewery in Brick Lane and the sugar-baking refineries south of Whitechapel Road
- Most of which were run by German immigrants benefiting from the shipments of sugar cane arriving at the docks from colonies in the Caribbean
- Many of the workers at the sugar bakeries were also German, living in lodging houses near their work
- Both industries employed many of the large Irish community
What were the 1882 May Laws?
- Restricted where Jews could live
- Banned them from owning property
- Put quotas on how many Jews could attend secondary school and higher education
The growth of Jewish settlement
1656 - Jews were readmitted to England, 366 years after they were expelled. Small numbers settles near Spitalfields
1851- Estimated 18,000 Jews in London and many of them were poor pedlars and traders selling second-hand clothes
1874 - First synagogue in Spitalfields was established by Dutch Jews and took over a former Huguenot church in Sandys Row
1881- The assassination of Czar Alexander in Russia led to violence against Jews, forcing them to move west, many arriving as refugees
1882 - May Laws imposed penalties on Jews such as restricting where they could live and banning them from owning property
